The treasury is expanding the Patriot Act to attack Bitcoin self custody

The actual list of "suspicious activities" in the article is about pooling, structuring, delaying transactions -- the stuff you do to hide activity, whether for good or bad.

It says nothing whatsoever about self-custody. The author makes the imaginary leap because they say they personally recommend doing all those things with self-custody. But they're totally separate things.

So as far as I can tell, the headline is just false clickbait.

They also claim:

> If enacted, any user who leverages these tools will be flagged as a suspicious... and could potentially be sent to prison.

I don't think that's the case? Having a transaction considered suspicious doesn't send you to prison. At best it seems like traditional banks might not permit a transaction, or it could be used as supporting evidence for separate actual illegal activities like money laundering? But going to prison requires being convicted of an actual crime. Not just activity that is "suspicious".

--- Point 1

Crime is real. Can we agree on that?

If you were in charge of identifying and locating criminals based on on-chain transaction data, what are the list of guidelines you'd put together to use PUBLIC DATA to determine suspicious behavior?

If you're competent, at all, the list would look like this. Let's not immediately jump to "self custody is gonna be outlawed"

----

Point 2

Bitcoin was designed this way. This data is public. This is HOW THE DAMN THING WORKS.

This article is written by a "Seasoned Bitcoiner", which is a term that reveals just how cooked they are. They haven't come to terms with the fact that the Bitcoin price is predicated on being the first, but certainly not the best public blockchain for realizing the goals of a global decentralized currency, whether you agree that's even a possibility or not.

Some people adopt ignorance -- Others were born in it, molded by it.

Unless the Sanders Administration had a very favorable or majority Democrat Congress aligned with his progressive wing, many proposals would be outright blocked or heavily compromised. Knowing our limitation that everything else has stayed largely the same as history since, this wouldn't be the case. The hypothetical administration's attempts at sweeping reforms, such as healthcare and climate regulation, would very likely be significantly curtailed or overturned by courts or constrained by constitutional limits on separation. The GOP, even though they actively outspend Democrats when in power, obstruct via financial limits each and every Democratic-led effort while crowing about expansion of debt incursion; as such, spending on Bernie's proposed initiatives would raise concerns about deficits, inflation, and taxation. Even with tax increases, there would be pushback from wealthy individuals, corporations, and lobbyists.

Basically, nothing would change in any significant way except, perhaps, the SCOTUS would not be outright overturning DECADES of 'settled law' in favor of an absurd view of the world as it was hundreds of years ago.