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

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

#431

Post by derektank »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #404
yujzgzc wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually that's a problem for a lot of libertarian minded tech, it starts being thought of as enabling freedom from oppressive governments and ends up being adopted by criminals - Bitcoin, Tor, etc. In the tech industry you also find a bend of very economically self interested version of privacy, which is that giving privacy to your users is a great way to claim you didn't know anything bad was happening. I'm pretty…

> Actually that's a problem for a lot of libertarian minded tech, it starts being thought of as enabling freedom from oppressive governments and ends up being adopted by criminals - Bitcoin, Tor, etc. This is such a sham though. You have some privacy-protecting technology everyone would benefit from. Ordinary people don't really understand it but would use and benefit from it if it was the default. Laws are passed th…

I'm not disagreeing with your general point but in the specific case of Bitcoin I can't think of any laws that have been passed which make it highly inconvenient to use relative to other financial assets. If anything, it seems like legislators (at least in the US) have taken something of a laissez faire attitude toward the technology. Regulators have been more aggressive (e.g. the Treasury) but they're largely just enforcing existing laws which, again, apply to other financial assets.

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

#432

Post by xienze »

no_wizard wrote: post #398
xienze wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The right loves to say that violent rhetoric is the left's fault Well you know, they are the ones constantly comparing Republicans to Hitler, the Nazis, calling them fascists, making direct claims that electing Trump would lead to the end of democracy, having "punch Nazis" be a rallying cry, and so on. Not really crazy to see how that might influence people to think that killing Trump or even a conservative podcast…

Generally, accounted instances of credible calls for political violence originate far more often from the right side of the political spectrum[0], in fact it’s nearly their entire domain at this juncture (remember that both attempts on Trump’s life were carried out by registered Republicans, for example) Additionally, it’s disingenuous to say allegory statements to the behaviors of a person is inciting violence. Call…

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

#433

Post by xienze »

yepitwas wrote: post #394
xienze wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The right loves to say that violent rhetoric is the left's fault Well you know, they are the ones constantly comparing Republicans to Hitler, the Nazis, calling them fascists, making direct claims that electing Trump would lead to the end of democracy, having "punch Nazis" be a rallying cry, and so on. Not really crazy to see how that might influence people to think that killing Trump or even a conservative podcast…

Trump's the guy who suggested when he ran against Hillary that the "second amendment people" would be the only ones who could "do anything about it" if she won. Like, holy fucking shit , and then Republicans elected him president after he said that! TWICE! The right's been laughing it up for decades when liberals get attacked, and calling for aid for their attackers (Kirk did this exact thing with Paul Pelosi, and wa…

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

#434

Post by krapp »

tormeh wrote: post #383
integralid wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a lot of stupid people I mean not being condescending to them would go a long way.

They're generally not on HN. And since they're not here, we might as well speak about the problem using plain language.

There are plenty of Trump voters on HN, though.

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

#435

Post by gitfan86 »

LOL, the BTC people who thought "Digital Gold" was a good slogan are going to learn what happened to self custody of gold and the gold standard.

BTC is in a much worse situation than gold was in 1970. The government has the technology to follow transactions and require BTC transactions to be done on their chain with their BTC equivalent GBTCs. That is until the government decides to issue print more BTC equivalents

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

#438

Post by conductr »

derbOac wrote: post #413
TheGRS wrote: post #315

I have deep disagreements with my father on this subject. He worked as a federal agent for 30 years, mostly in digital forensics. He does not believe in the right to privacy in any of the same ways I do. Whereas I believe a right to privacy in your tools and communication is essential, he believes they infringe on the government's ability to catch criminals. Classic justification of "if you're not a bad guy, what do…

No offense to your father but I've always felt like the "innocent until proven guilty" philosophy is expansive and fundamental privacy rights are part of that principle. That is, the underlying principle isn't "innocent until proven guilty" but something more akin to "your complete autonomy should be assumed by default, and the government should have to clear an extremely high threshold to constrain it". I also reall…

This is the crux of my belief system on the topic too. Along with the associated “burden of proof” and how making it less burdensome should not be anyone citizens goal or responsibility.

The irony is that it’s precisely why GPs dad had a job, with full transparency there’s essentially no need for any type of forensics.

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

#439

Post by le-mark »

beambot wrote: post #338
SubiculumCode wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. In my opinion, and strictly from an American-centric view, privacy should only extend to transactions within borders between citizens. As soon as it involves transactions from outside our borders, then it is a national security concern. We know, right now, that both Russia and China are fueling internal political tension via massive and sophisticated disinformation/influence campaigns, a certain part of wh…

> a certain part of which involves paying influencers, extremists, shady media outlets, maybe a Representative or three in America to push their agendas, foment discontent aiming to destabilize and control the United States. Doesn't this describe every political party and megacorp in the US too...?

Political parties and mega corps don’t strive to undermine the fabric of democracy itself though.

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

#440

Post by j2kun »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #110

A lot of people keep looking for technology solutions to political problems. The fact is that privacy, especially of financial transactions, is becoming illegal. Any technology that allows you to send or spend money anonymously will be attacked by our governments. They won't be allowed. You can argue about whether you can get away with it due to difficulty of enforcement, but all that does is turn us all into crimina…

Except, you know, the dollar bills the government itself prints.
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