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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

#591

Post by sneak »

graemep wrote: post #112
sneak wrote: post #78

Financial privacy and national security are fundamentally at odds. With financial privacy and real freedom, you can hire a competing army. The state will never allow large scale financial privacy because it poses an existential threat to the state.

It is a nuisance to the state. I do not see how it is an existential threat. Nation states existed for centuries in which money was frequently held as cash and even large transactions were often done in cash. its still common (or was until very recently) in a lot of (mostly poor) countries > With financial privacy and real freedom, you can hire a competing army. Having the money to pay an army is a long way from hiri…

What, like building a factory in Texas that manufactures ICBMs? :D

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

#592

Post by tormeh »

komali2 wrote: post #491
tormeh wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean republicans? That’s different. I have some sympathy for the whole small government thing. I even kinda vote that way myself. But there’s a certain kind of person who will instantly vote for a “man of the people” who “tells it like it is” and promises that he’ll fix everything and says the foreigners took your jobs. And we have a term for those people.

Honestly I'm realizing they're right, I've seen multiple comments here promoting the great replacement conspiracy. Personally I don't mind calling such people stupid, but, they are on HN.

I don't understand why people look for a conspiracy. The people being replaced are being replaced because they're not having any babies. There's no government policy for that, nor is one needed. Is anything less than being forced by the government to have kids a conspiracy to being replaced by people who do have kids? What a weird thing to think.

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

#593

Post by cowboylowrez »

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…

common sense says trump isn't president material. its worth remembering how he was viewed by the GOP (his own party) before he started racking up states in 2016. the american voting public put him in office twice despite knowing what sort of fellow he is. should we really expect good results from this?

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

#594

Post by paulddraper »

observationist wrote: post #248
crazygringo wrote: post #42

The headline is not supported by the article. 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 thi…

If you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about! Nobody will ever run afoul of the system or fall through the cracks. We only have the best and brightest bureaucrats who won't make mistakes. Nobody will ever be attacked with this for politicized reasons. This will never be used to debank or isolate or penalize or attack an innocent person. And even if it did, the government would never use its immunity…

Fair points, but you understand it does everyone a disservice to conflate anonymity with custody.

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

#595

Post by dented42 »

This is blatant misinformation. Firstly this has nothing to do with the patriot act, I’m pretty sure the patriot act expired years ago.

But more importantly it doesn’t seem like the government is trying to ban anything, they’re just extending the anti-fraud / anti-money laundering measures enjoyed by the ‘traditional’ financial institutions to the world of cryptocurrency.

Those measures don’t prevent people from doing ‘suspicious’ things, they just treat certain transaction types with more care because of the increased likelihood that they are evidence of a crime.

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

#596

Post by moi2388 »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #347
moi2388 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to bet 10k? You’re literally making claims without any basis. He left last time, he will leave again, if he even makes it to the end of his term

> without any basis This is his second, ostensibly last, term, meaning he will have an uphill battle at best to convince the public that he should get another term for some bullshit reason. His last term ended with him obviously trying to prevent the next guy from taking over. He obviously wants to be in power. It's disingenuous to say there is no basis. Whether it's likely is another matter but this is intellectuall…

Every president wants to be in power, or they never would have ran.

Fact is you’re fear mongering for no reason. Last time he also just left. There are zero cases of a president staying in office after their terms.

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

#597

Post by teiferer »

Fade_Dance wrote: post #549
fluoridation wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You talk as if "minimum price" is objective. The "minimum price" you're referring to here is the most useless, but valued, property of the object for you. For other people, having weight can be a burden. It doesn't matter. The things oranges are good for are known, even if they're not applicable to you personally. Those applications are objective. It is objectively true that oranges are edible, even if you subjectiv…

Store of Value. Digital gold, with the added utility of being able to teleport across jurisdictions and being able to plug directly into the next wave of smart contracts and decentralized securitization. It's no more complicated than that. (No, gold does not primarily derive its value from practical applications). These tools have practical application within the financial system. Speaking as a portfolio manager, gol…

> being able to teleport across jurisdictions

"Teleporting" doesn't need a blockchain. In fact, a central database is much faster than a distributed ledger.

The "across jurisdictions" part only works as long as the jurisdictions allow you. As soon as you are a serious contender, your tech gets just as much regulated as everybody else.

It's similar to saying "I use Uber, it's so much easier to order than a cab". How you order a taxi is unrelated to the employment structure of the particular transportation business you are using. That's why we're seeing cabs and neo cabs (uber, lyft, etc) converge in term uf UX.

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

#598

Post by LightBug1 »

moi2388 wrote: post #596
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without any basis This is his second, ostensibly last, term, meaning he will have an uphill battle at best to convince the public that he should get another term for some bullshit reason. His last term ended with him obviously trying to prevent the next guy from taking over. He obviously wants to be in power. It's disingenuous to say there is no basis. Whether it's likely is another matter but this is intellectuall…

Every president wants to be in power, or they never would have ran. Fact is you’re fear mongering for no reason. Last time he also just left. There are zero cases of a president staying in office after their terms.

If you're willing - how old are you? Where are you from? What do you do?

I'm just really curious how you get to a stage in life firing off this kind, sorry, naive view.

The American rule book has well and truly been ripped up and burned ... you just can't seem to see the smouldering embers at your feet ...

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

#599

Post by johnwheeler »

rocqua wrote: post #199
johnwheeler wrote: post #137

Well, hopefully this will help prevent Bitcoin's biggest use case, which is criminal finance and money laundering. Why wouldn’t we want that?

For very similar reasons why the US has the 5th amendment, why blanket surveillance is not considered a good thing by functioning democracies, and why most people want their porn-viewing habits to remain private. There are plenty of bad things that need to be prevented, but a functioning democracy requires the ability to act outside the surveillance of both your peers, and the currently sitting government.

I just know it’s true, just like you know bitcoin will be the reserve currency of he world.

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

#600

Post by jollyllama »

andirk wrote: post #589
jollyllama wrote: post #80

This would come as no surprise, since all the original promises of Bitcoin circa 15-ish years ago are long dead. The turning point occurred when all exchanges agreed to report transactions directly to the IRS. I say this as someone who had an interest prior to that but lost all interest when the Crypto community sold out its ideals and consented to certain regulations in the interest of mass marketing cryptocurrency…

Doing KYC is somewhat against the whole idea of like "no government involvement" but it doesn't negate that the government controls the currency. You lost all interest because Bitcoin became attractive to people who deal with companies who insist on KYC? How is that in any relation to the underlying code or mantra that Bitcoin is about?

Yes, I lost interest at the point where entirely all of the on/off ramps to Bitcoin submitted to universal data sharing with the central government in the interest of greater profitability. At that point, "being your own bank" is gone, and the process is equivalent to withdrawing cash from a normal bank, and the value proposition of Bitcoin is limited to its features as a deflationary speculative asset.
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