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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

#81

Maybe in 2028 a presidential candidate can run with removing the Patriot Act as one of their campaign points. I suspect the world will be very different then. The America I knew, remembered, and loved started dying with the passage of the Patriot Act.

Can you imagine the world today if Bernie had won?

He was sabotaged by the DNC. Even Elizabeth Warren said that the nomination process was rigged by the DNC. Absolute corruption and the world would absolutely be a different place.

But his support of ratcheting up the Ukraine war disappointed profoundly. That’s not the Bernie I would have voted for.

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

#83

> [The Patriot Act] contains many sunset provisions beginning December 31, 2005, approximately four years after its passage. Before the sunset date, an extension was passed for four years which kept most of the law intact. In May 2011, President Barack Obama signed the PATRIOT Sunset Extensions Act of 2011, which extended three provisions. These provisions were modified and extended until 2019 by the USA Freedom Act,…

Whenever leftists say that "Trump is a symptom of an illness that has been metastasizing for a long time" this is what we mean.

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

#84
post #5

I'm confused how the connection was made between "here are our guidelines for suspicious activity" and "self custody is outlawed"

It can be hard to figure out exactly what is outlawed with banking interactions. It seems a lot of the KYC/AML stuff is based on industry best practices and guidelines. There's no law you need a state ID with address to open a bank account, but when I tried to open up a bank account without an address I found it basically impossible. The bank will then cite that these practices are what they're held to as law, becaus…

That's the whole point. They can't overtly outlaw things because aggrieved parties would sue and win. So they soft outlaw them with expensive record keeping requirements and ambiguity because no business big enough to win but smaller than a giant mega-corp will intentionally risk going toe to toe with the government in court as doing so would likely be financially ruinous.

And even if the government doesn't look like it's disposed to do that in your situation you're still sticking your neck out by deviating from the herd because then you can't screech "standard business practice" when some contrived chain of facts results in you fending off a civil suit for whatever reason.

This isn't just a banking thing or a guns thing, you see examples in every industry once you know the pattern.

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

#85
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> creating and using single-use wallets, addresses, or accounts, and sending [cryptocurrency] through such wallets, addresses, or accounts through a series of independent transactions One could argue that's how normal Bitcoin wallets work. The addresses are deterministic based on your passphrase (or derived private key). The addresses don't need to get reused because there's no real value in doing so, and no real cos…

What you quoted is regarding the use of a SERIES of single use wallets. What is the "normal Bitcoin" use case for funneling money through a chain of throwaway wallets?

People are interpreting the ‘and’ here as meaning ‘either of these things’ rather than ‘these things in sequence’ as you (and I) do.

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

#86
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you quoted is regarding the use of a SERIES of single use wallets. What is the "normal Bitcoin" use case for funneling money through a chain of throwaway wallets?

The quote is "single-use wallets, addresses, or accounts." If you download any normal Bitcoin wallet today, it'll use a series of words to derive a series of private keys that are used by the wallet. Each one gets a different address. Then your wallet software is smart enough to treat all the addresses derived as a single wallet. When you go to make a payment, it makes it from the various addresses owned by the walle…

Doesn't that result in multiple transactions/transaction fees if you ever need to spend more than a single wallet contains?

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

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be hard to figure out exactly what is outlawed with banking interactions. It seems a lot of the KYC/AML stuff is based on industry best practices and guidelines. There's no law you need a state ID with address to open a bank account, but when I tried to open up a bank account without an address I found it basically impossible. The bank will then cite that these practices are what they're held to as law, becaus…

That's the whole point. They can't overtly outlaw things because aggrieved parties would sue and win. So they soft outlaw them with expensive record keeping requirements and ambiguity because no business big enough to win but smaller than a giant mega-corp will intentionally risk going toe to toe with the government in court as doing so would likely be financially ruinous. And even if the government doesn't look like…

As long as the government only tazes your dogs and ruins your business, you can't even sue against the law even on constitutional grounds.

See Knife Rights V Garland. []

No one had been convicted in the past 10 years for violating the switchblade act, so the state ruled the law couldn't be challenged ("no standing"), even though it was actively being used to ruin people's businesses and raid their homes (the government would just give everything back a few years after doing so and not go through with charges).

[] https://kniferights.org/legislative-update/court-opines-feds...

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

#88

As someone who hasn't read the article, is holding bitcoin in your own wallet going to become illegal? Also, which wallet do you guys recommend, I use Coinbase but it sucks.

If you are in Europe, it already kinda is. You need to declare/KYC that wallet. Europe also want these self-custodial wallets to become "accessible" somehow to the authorities.

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

#89

Maybe in 2028 a presidential candidate can run with removing the Patriot Act as one of their campaign points. I suspect the world will be very different then. The America I knew, remembered, and loved started dying with the passage of the Patriot Act.

Can you imagine the world today if Bernie had won?

Yes, it would have been 4 years of zero progress because he would have been stonewalled by both parties.

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

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you imagine the world today if Bernie had won?

He was sabotaged by the DNC. Even Elizabeth Warren said that the nomination process was rigged by the DNC. Absolute corruption and the world would absolutely be a different place. But his support of ratcheting up the Ukraine war disappointed profoundly. That’s not the Bernie I would have voted for.

Alternatively, it could have been over long ago with a lot less loss of life, if Ukraine had been supported more full-throatedly, instead of allowing to drag on as it has.

Sometimes you gotta rip that bandaid off.

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