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U.S. Senate Vote in Favor of Amendment That Threatens Crypto Industry

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Re: U.S. Senate Vote in Favor of Amendment That Threatens Crypto Industry

#91

Post by starkd »

onepointsixC wrote: post #78

As someone who has been sorely disappointed by much of how crypto has developed since it's early days and is somewhat a crypto pessimist, I'm extremely disturbed that something which could outright kill US Crypto is being rammed into a infrastructure spending bill. If you want to ban crypto, fine, that's a position which could be taken, debated, and discussed. But it should be done separately and given sufficient tim…

Maybe because they know it is unpopular and they can't buy off senators who will only vote for it because it contains unrelated provisions they want?

Re: U.S. Senate Vote in Favor of Amendment That Threatens Crypto Industry

#92

Post by sumeno »

frankbreetz wrote: post #55

Strangely, crypto has gone up in spite of this news. This seems worse then China banning mining, which caused a pretty significant drop earlier this year. Why would this not effect the market in a similar fashion. As far as I understand it, this effectively bans crypto mining in the US. Am I missing something?

Because whenever there is bad news for cryptocurrency Tether prints a billion dollars worth of coins out of thin air to artificially inflate the price of BTC

Re: U.S. Senate Vote in Favor of Amendment That Threatens Crypto Industry

#93

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #31

I've been following this discussion in Washington and on Hacker News. I'm moderately anti-crypto--I don't buy the pitch but am open to being wrong and believe folks should be free to do what they want with it. I've also been struck by the proliferation of bank-like services without bank-like obligations. This stretches from fractional-reserve and maturity-transforming services like Tether to exchanges/dealers like Bi…

Almost every exchange I know of has mandatory KYC/AML now.

Re: U.S. Senate Vote in Favor of Amendment That Threatens Crypto Industry

#94

Post by EGreg »

Fnoord wrote: post #70
woodruffw wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes you anti-crypto specifically? To me, crypto means cryptography, that enables both digital signatures and encryption. Are you against end-to-end encryption as well, for the same reasons? This is an unreasonable contortion of the OP’s comment. Conflating cryptocurrency (an industry rife with scams) to cryptography (a branch of discrete mathematics) belies precisely the reason people don’t take cryptocurren…

It is shameful the cryptocurrency community hijacked the term crypto. Cryptography is the very thing cryptocurrency relies on to make their technology working in the first place (if we may call it 'working', YMMV). Cryptography is used in vastly more important systems, it is much more important than cryptocurrency. I mean, without cryptography you could not even use something like Git to develop software such as Bitc…

And it goes deeper than that, including a point that woodruffw totally misses (perhaps he read only the first paragraph of what I wrote?)

If you are against anonymous cryptocurrency transactions, should you not also be against all end-to-end encryption? After all, it could conceal cryptocurrency transactions!

Or any of an endlessly growing amount of potentially dangerous information or assets, transferred peer to peer.

If you read what I wrote carefully, I clarify the issue so the substance can be discussed, rather than gotcha questions about equivocating words like “crypto”, as what woodruffw has done.

The issue is broken down into two things: 1) control over one’s own speech/identity/brand/etc so no one can take it from you, and 2) anonymity and freedom from consequences for illegal speech or transactions (according to the local lass in different countries).

I think nearly everyone is in favor of #1. The question is about #2. It is an interesting one - and notice that I myself do not advocate a position in my comment, just lay out the two issues and ask which direction you would be more comfortable for society to go in.

Re: U.S. Senate Vote in Favor of Amendment That Threatens Crypto Industry

#95

Post by woah »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #31

I've been following this discussion in Washington and on Hacker News. I'm moderately anti-crypto--I don't buy the pitch but am open to being wrong and believe folks should be free to do what they want with it. I've also been struck by the proliferation of bank-like services without bank-like obligations. This stretches from fractional-reserve and maturity-transforming services like Tether to exchanges/dealers like Bi…

Your comment is completely unrelated to the matter at hand, and the article.

The controversy here is about this law potentially placing reporting obligations on software developers who never have any custody of client funds. Sort of like requiring the developers of Excel to report on users of Excel using it to manage their money.

> I've also been struck by the proliferation of bank-like services without bank-like obligations. This stretches from fractional-reserve and maturity-transforming services like Tether to exchanges/dealers like Binance and ersatz money transmitters like BitPay.

All these centralized services that have some involvement with crypto already comply with a large number of regulations, and usually do much more stringent KYC than non-crypto payment processors do.

Re: U.S. Senate Vote in Favor of Amendment That Threatens Crypto Industry

#96

Post by [deleted] »

NateEag wrote: post #32
vishakh82 wrote: post #4

If you think all cryptocurrencies are scams or think blockchains do nothing useful, please skip this comment. If you think things like decentralized finance, storage and identity have the potential to improve our lives and offer some of the only genuine alternatives to an increasingly privacy-hostile status quo, please look into the shambolic legislative process that threatens the entire blockchain industry in the Un…

How does being required to track data about taxation challenge the existence of the builders you mention? I can see how it might for the companies - people who use crypto for tax and authority avoidance seem likely to stop using any service that complies with this law. I don't see how this bill threatens any human's existence.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. Senate Vote in Favor of Amendment That Threatens Crypto Industry

#97

Post by specialist »

Just to be clear, "crypto" is short for cryptocurrencies?

This legislation does or does not impact other cryptography use cases?

My concern comes from government's long standing opposition to personal cryptography. eg Clipper chip in phones.

Re: U.S. Senate Vote in Favor of Amendment That Threatens Crypto Industry

#98

Post by starkd »

salawat wrote: post #35
cs702 wrote: post #24

WINNERS: Large corporations and financial institutions. They can afford the now-required overhead for all kinds of services, including transaction processing with fees and rewards, i.e., mining, and make a nice profit at high volumes. LOSERS: Smaller service providers. They cannot afford the now-required overhead because they don't have sufficient economies of scale.

What? You expected the U.S. Government to not go after maintaining the levers it needs to project power through economic control of who is allowed to transact what?

There are less heavy ham-fisted approaches they could take. But they don't seem inclined or even interested in knowing the topic well enough to figure out how to do so.

Re: U.S. Senate Vote in Favor of Amendment That Threatens Crypto Industry

#99

Post by echopurity »

Many people start coding at a young age. Imagine your kid having to report their dapp to the IRS. It's not about the money. It's about the control.

The situation is probably worse for adults. Why go through the hassle of developing dapps when it means dealing with the IRS and potentially jail, etc.? Personally I've abandoned working on completely harmless dapps because of threats from the state. It's stifling for independent development.

On the other hand, when people compare this to China banning mining, I think the USA is far friendlier to crypto than China, because, as the ascending fiat superpower, China has much more to lose. As the dollar continues to devalue, the USA would most likely prefer a future based on Ethereum rather than the Yuan.

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