[HN Gopher] EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable
___________________________________________________________________
EU plans to make Bitcoin transfers more traceable
Author : alexanderdmitri
Score : 63 points
Date : 2021-07-20 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| young_unixer wrote:
| > The new rules would also prohibit providing anonymous crypto-
| asset wallets.
|
| Does that include open source wallets that you can run in your
| own computer, like Electrum?
| verdverm wrote:
| your wallet == a BTC address, not the software or hardware you
| create or access it with
| Trias11 wrote:
| That's why the move to decentralized everything.
|
| This total control nonsense will eventually end and these
| dinosaur idiots will stuck with their own destructive ideas
| nly wrote:
| Is uniswap really decentralised? I mean it has a domain you can
| take down
| ushakov wrote:
| it's hosted on IPFS and the source code is on GitHub
|
| https://github.com/Uniswap
| nly wrote:
| My understanding was the licensing on the web interface was
| not liberal
| ushakov wrote:
| sure, but the smart contract (backend) is deployed on
| public ethereum blockchain, nothings can stop you from
| building your own client
| Trias11 wrote:
| No KYC. It's good enough for now.
| delaaxe wrote:
| Decentralize everything = make all your transactions visible by
| anyone
| stavros wrote:
| Except this is completely untrue, since there are private
| cryptocurrencies you can use.
| elmo2you wrote:
| How private are those then? Isn't it true that at least
| everything is visible to at least all participants?
|
| EDIT: in other words, my question is actually whether your
| claim has relevance, considering how most crypto currencies
| aim to be public (or that's at least my impression).
| stavros wrote:
| No, you can't see anything, basically. You can only see
| your own wallet and transactions, and (AFAIK) you can't
| even see _who_ sent you funds.
| elmo2you wrote:
| So, then how does that technically work? How will
| integrity be verified/guaranteed?
|
| If it's just an application level shielding, as in a
| separation between user software that can't access the
| information but a layer/cluster of infrastructure
| software that can, then I'm not so sure if its nothing
| more than rather meaningless cosmetics.
|
| Do you by any change have some references as to how this
| would work? because I sincerely believe that this
| statement of "decentralization means access to all"
| actually fundamentally holds.
|
| EDIT: I'm also doubting the classification of
| decentralized, if a piece of the user software relies on
| something else that has more capabilities (essentially a
| typical trait of centralization).
| stavros wrote:
| Sure, there are a ton of resources here:
| https://www.monero.how/how-does-monero-privacy-work
| elmo2you wrote:
| That is actually a surprisingly simple yet fundamentally true
| summation. Thank you.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I do not really want to discourage this line of thinking, but
| please note the old fashioned golden rule ( he with the gold
| makes the rules ).
|
| Apart from that, check crypto trends and quickly you will
| notice that they are very few projects that care about it in
| any real way. Every major crypto now effectively all about
| centralization, not the opposite. For different reasons than
| the central banks, naturally. Still, the trends are hard to
| ignore.
|
| Otherwise, we would already have crypto outright banned or
| fully decentralized by now.
| Trias11 wrote:
| Lots of crypto projects are commercial businesses and this
| certainly creates conflict of interest toward monetizing and
| centralization.
|
| However there are more and more truly decentralization
| projects. Anything that doesn't do KYC when related to crypto
| trading/exchanging - have to be
| the-dude wrote:
| > This total control nonsense
|
| Also known as taxes.
|
| > these dinosaur idiots
|
| Taxman.
| dylkil wrote:
| So this is just going to apply to exchanges operating inside the
| EU right? This will only make bitcoin transfers to and from
| custodians more traceable.
| verdverm wrote:
| There's likely to be effectively the same law in the US sooner
| or later
| Anon84 wrote:
| Should apply to anyone interacting with a european bank account
| shiado wrote:
| Cash wouldn't be allowed to be invented today.
| thomasahle wrote:
| Cash mostly isn't allowed today, if you are transferring large
| enough sums of money. Probably for the better.
| gambiting wrote:
| Source of such bold claim? You can absolutely pay cash for
| (almost) anything. Even if you're buying a house, you can pay
| cash if both sides agree to it, and the solicitors check
| everything is legit and you can prove where you got the money
| from - but there is completely nothing in law that would
| prohibit such transaction from happening.
| djbebs wrote:
| Legally speaking, no you can't.
|
| Where I'm from basically anything above 1000EUR you're
| legally prohibited from using cash and might be f8ned for
| it.
| jsbdk wrote:
| In Spain soon it will be impossible to pay more than 1k in
| cash. Current limit is around 3k iirc. I guess it's the
| same in most EU countries.
| forty wrote:
| Not sure why someone downvoted that. In France it's
| limited to 1000EUR currently.
|
| https://www.service-
| public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F10999
| jsbdk wrote:
| Any comment that criticises the EU gets downvoted
| immediately here.
|
| Link to a news piece commenting the new Spanish law:
| https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20210630/congrso-aprueba-
| ley-pr...
| forty wrote:
| I'm not really sure your comment was criticizing anything
| though, just stating fact. Whether this is good or bad is
| a matter of opinion. Personally I'm more than happy to
| see cash disappear since I think it's mostly useful for
| laundering money and tax avoidance.
| tobltobs wrote:
| Payments over 10K in Cash are already forbidden in most EU
| countries. There are some exemptions to this rule and
| Germany and Austria do not have such a law until now. But
| it is planned to make this an EU wide law. Source: https://
| ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_...
| (EU-wide limit of EUR10,000 on large cash payments)
| Andys wrote:
| Australian government has been unsuccessfully trying to
| bring this in too. its only a matter of time.
| [deleted]
| dogma1138 wrote:
| As others have mentioned the EU is mulling an EU wide "ban"
| of transactions above EUR10,000.
|
| However most member states already have that in place
| including far lower limits.
|
| In Greece all cash transactions above EUR500 have to go
| through an AML due diligence process which includes a full
| KYC for both the buyer, seller and any beneficiaries of the
| transaction.
|
| Basically it's too much of a hassle to do so businesses
| simply do not accept cash, so anything from paying for a
| Hotel stay to buying a Laptop isn't possible without a
| mountain of paper work which means it's impossible in
| reality.
| Trias11 wrote:
| >> The new rules would also prohibit providing anonymous crypto-
| asset wallets.
|
| Where should I send my Ledger to so i can be a good, obedient
| citizen and be compliant with this law?
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Pretty easy actually: let me give you 0.01BTC, then I'll know
| what you spend your money on. Forever.
| Trias11 wrote:
| You'll know which addresses i sent my money to. Maybe.
|
| But unlikely you'll know what i bought
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Metadata is sufficient.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| This is not right - pretty much all modern wallet software
| generates brand new key pairs each time there is a
| transaction, thereby creating a new address. The unspent
| utxo's (unspent transaction outputs) are then sent to the new
| address and the old address can (but shouldn't) be used.
| lxgr wrote:
| This amounts to little more than trivial obfuscation in
| practice.
|
| The UTXO "privacy" model of Bitcoin has never worked out,
| and more modern cryptocurrencies aren't even attempting
| anything like it anymore.
| SnowProblem wrote:
| In practice, Bitcoin's privacy model was never even tried
| though. BTC fees are so prohibitively expensive that no
| wallet or user would generate more UTXOs or transactions
| than they have to, making it trivial to trace, yes. But
| if BTC had been allowed to scale like it was originally
| designed, then wallets would not fear inputting and
| outputting potentially hundreds of UTXOs in every
| transaction of varying amounts so that it becomes
| practically impossible to trace.
|
| On Bitcoin SV, basically a high-scale version of Bitcoin,
| there are today several wallets taking smarter approaches
| to privacy. HandCash's Output Bills [1] for example
| splits outputs into fixed denominations like cash, and
| Paymail [2] is a email-like addressing scheme to avoid
| sharing addresses publicly. I'm sure more approaches will
| be tried too now that wallets have some freedom to
| experiment.
|
| [1] https://handcash.medium.com/introducing-output-bills-
| a-coin-...
|
| [2] https://bsvalias.org/
| mr_sturd wrote:
| 38EQT9MqNU6SU7cUdXw9cx2GoRKJi1EhYX
| tobltobs wrote:
| If anybody wants to read the fine-print for this proposal:
| https://ec.europa.eu/finance/docs/law/210720-proposal-funds-...
| idownvoted wrote:
| The only thing stunning about this, is how anyone ever could've
| believed that cryptocurrencies would not end in the dystopian
| future of a government knowing every single transaction of yours
| plus being able to confiscate every single e-penny at will.
| Lichtso wrote:
| I think total traceability would be fair, if it was truly total.
| But the state is gonna scramble all their addresses and
| transactions, leaving only the citizens unprotected in the open.
| Otherwise they (the state) themself would become transparent and
| suddenly people could find out where their tax money actually
| went.
|
| Corruption anyone?
| yellow_lead wrote:
| > The new rules would also prohibit providing anonymous crypto-
| asset wallets.
|
| When you drill this down, it seems they are really outlawing
| certain math.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| When you drill down, laws against murder are really just
| outlawing moving various atoms around in specific ways.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| There you go.
|
| People have been successfully brainwashed into believing that
| money transfer is equivalent to murder.
| xtracto wrote:
| Don't know why you are being downvoted, this is the same case
| as DeCSS and and AACS. A "crypto wallet" is nothing but a
| public/private key pair. So... will SSH keys be banned? will
| sharing a SSH public key be banned? will sharing a program that
| transforms a public SSH key into a "wallet address" be banned?
|
| The premise is stupid.
| nly wrote:
| I recently tried to figure out how to transfer some GBP in to a
| crypto asset and couldn't find a way to do so without losing 3%
| or more.
|
| Direct GBP pairings didn't exist, so choices were either go
| through a USD denominated service or through multiple pairings,
| losing a high % each time and/or gas fees in uniswap etc.
|
| None of the forex efficient services like Wise or Revolut will
| wire money to US crypto exchanges.
|
| In the end I didn't bother. People really underestimate how
| quickly regulators can snuff out mainstream crypto.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Pretty late and how will they deal with location independent
| companies like Binance? The CEO is more or less permanently on
| the lam.
| sadfasdfsad wrote:
| > The CEO is more or less permanently on the lam.
|
| Source?
| digianarchist wrote:
| Binance isn't location independent. They're incorporated in the
| Caymans.
| wyager wrote:
| The EU regularly fines companies that don't even have a
| business entity in the EU so I doubt they're worried about it.
| peteretep wrote:
| > location independent companies
|
| That's not a real thing
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Human beings are not "location independent". They will arrest
| the humans who run the companies.
| lxgr wrote:
| All crypto on- and offramps are by definition connected to the
| regulated banking infrastructure.
|
| If customers can't deposit or withdraw money to an exchange,
| that makes the exchange effectively inaccessible to customers
| in that jurisdiction.
| ushakov wrote:
| > a company transferring crypto-assets for a customer would be
| obliged to include their name, address, date of birth and account
| number, and the name of the recipient
|
| guess what, Mr. Commissionaire? Bitcoin isn't a company and you
| don't need to ask companies to transfer crypto assets
|
| edit: this just shows how little power they have over the
| network, so they will tyrannise the middlemen instead
| Barrin92 wrote:
| nope but if you want to actually convert your crypto into any
| good or service or currency that doesn't happen to be crypto,
| you're going to be rendered legible.
|
| And that alone is going to make tax evasion or laundering a lot
| harder, and probably makes it a way less attractive asset for
| criminals.
| nybble41 wrote:
| On the contrary, nothing has really changed here. If you're
| moving your crypto to an exchange in order to sell it and
| withdraw euros or dollars or whatever, guess what--you're
| already in the system. These rules already applied due to the
| interaction with the traditional financial system when you
| withdraw your balance. Now the exchange will be required to
| do the same reporting on the crypto side, but they already
| had that data. The same goes for moving traditional currency
| into an exchange to buy crypto. The only areas really
| affected by the new rules would be exchanges which _only_
| involve crypto (e.g. BTC for ETH), direct transfers between
| customers on an exchange or between exchanges--which aren 't
| actually crypto transactions to begin with even if they are
| denominated in crypto units--and withdrawals to addresses
| controlled by parties other than the account holder, which
| many exchanges didn't permit anyway. (Withdraw to your own
| unhosted wallet first.)
|
| It's still a huge invasion of privacy etc., completely
| unjustified and unethical etc., but let's not get too worked
| up over what seems to me like a fairly predictable shift in
| which businesses are subjected to KYC/AML regulations. The
| more reputable exchanges have basically been assuming that
| these rules applied to them all along. Unhosted wallets and
| direct transfers between them are unaffected since they don't
| involve a Crypto-Asset Service Provider. Centralized
| exchanges were always an awkward stop-gap measure in any
| case, not a fundamental part of the crypto ecosystem. If this
| encourages people to trade directly through the decentralized
| network and avoid CASPs wherever possible, so much the
| better.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > Bitcoin isn't a company and you don't need to ask companies
| to transfer crypto assets
|
| You don't need to ask a company to commit a crime you're still
| going to get punished.....
|
| The vast majority of EU citizen are using some kind of exchange
| as an onramp and offramp. Those exchanges will do KYC and
| happily turn over any addresses they send/receive crypto too.
| kozak wrote:
| Bitcoins are not really fungible. There are already services that
| provide "fresh, minted straight to your wallet with no history"
| bitcoins, which cost more than normal "used" bitcoins.
| lxgr wrote:
| Wouldn't a coin mixer achieve the same outcome of obfuscating
| the coins' source (if the provider of the service can be
| trusted and does not run away with the money) in exchange for
| explicitly tagging them as "somebody laundered these coins"?
| Animats wrote:
| _" The new rules would also prohibit providing anonymous crypto-
| asset wallets."_
|
| That's awful. Hosted wallets are an invitation for "exchanges" to
| steal.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| What about generating your own wallet? Are EU citizens required
| to report that when they do?
| elmo2you wrote:
| I believe that the moment you hold valuable assets (i.e. any
| value of crypto currency) in any wallet, then you should
| report that (even now).
|
| I have no idea how these new rules will play out, but I can
| image how exchanges might be forced allow only transactions
| with "sanctioned" wallets (i.e. traceable to person), and
| international exchanges not playing complying being blocked
| from to the EU market.
| Tenoke wrote:
| I don't see the full rules but perhaps self-hosted can still be
| allowed if you do KYC with a central authority to link the
| address to your identity.
| ipnon wrote:
| Cryptocurrency financial crimes are often masked as a technical
| issue inherent to decentralized, trustless networks rather than
| the truth; they are issues inherent to centralized, trustful
| systems.[a] Transfers within the blockchain are already perfectly
| traceable. Perfect traceability is the reason for the blockchains
| being. It is the interface between the blockchains and
| traditional finance where this problem lies.
|
| [a] The history of finance is the history of financial crime.
| Jews starting banks because of Christian usury laws, the Medici
| sidestepping the monetary power of the church and kingdoms, etc.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Hmm the whole way bitcoin is set up is tailored to making this
| impossible. Anyone can write a wallet program and create a
| private key.
|
| Of course when converting to Fiat money they have a chance to ask
| for ID but I don't see this happening with bitcoin to bitcoin
| transactions unless the whole protocol is changed around.
| vinni2 wrote:
| Ya the Bitcoin protocol won't allow it but the law can
| certainly be make it illegal to make anonymous wallets.
| ushakov wrote:
| i'm shocked how ignorant these lawmakers are, trying to gain
| control over a _decentralised_ structure
|
| nobody asked them for this and even if this change ends up in
| bitcoin's core, it will ultimately fail to reach consensus
|
| our wallets are none of your business, EU, get out!
| bpodgursky wrote:
| From the bureaucrat's point of view, all of your assets are
| "yours" contingent only on the goodwill of the relevant
| regulations. Parable of the scorpion and turtle; expect neither
| more nor less.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| You will own nothing, and be happy. What are you going to do,
| rebel against the EU? \s
| sergiomattei wrote:
| I'm shocked how naive the DeFi industry was to think they could
| get away with little to no regulation.
|
| Tech doesn't rule the world. Old power structures are still in
| place.
| ushakov wrote:
| DeFi was built with censorship resistance in mind
|
| EU can come up with new laws all day every day, but
| considering the technical detail, these laws will be
| impossible to enforce
| stavros wrote:
| The laws will be trivial to enforce. Expect to be unable to
| exchange cryptocurrency (that you own in your wallet) to
| fiat, which will almost kill the cryptocurrency market for
| anything other than speculation.
|
| I expect a parallel, dark economy will still be around,
| where people transact with cryptocurrency and can only
| exchange it for cash.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm not so sure. Unless an EU citizen wants to risk
| submitting a false tax return under penalty of perjury, any
| DeFi money that results in a profit has to be reported
| elsewhere. Your bank will probably also start to ask
| questions if you do enough DeFi activity. You can probably
| get away with small transactions, but is it honestly worth
| the risk?
|
| I don't see this law as impossible to enforce, but rather,
| difficult to enforce. The government will still _try_ , and
| most likely succeed in catching several institutions that
| don't comply. Governments don't actually need thorough
| enforcement for laws to be effective.
|
| Being easily capable of breaking a law does not mean that
| the law is unenforceable.
| mdoms wrote:
| > nobody asked them for this
|
| I'm in favour of regulating and tracing cryptocurrency. I don't
| think people should be able to sell kiddie porn, bribe
| officials, scam innocent people or launder money with impunity.
| I think lots of people would agree with me.
| boredwithlife wrote:
| People should be able to transact business among themselves
| without the government knowing. The ugly comes with the good.
| It's part of life, personal responsibility.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >nobody asked them for this
|
| I very much support the policy. Anonymous money pretty much
| serves one thing uniquely well which is avoiding the law,
| sanctions, laundering money, buying drugs or funding crime and
| I don't think any society has interest in having these markets
| exist outside of the purview of the state.
| ushakov wrote:
| would you also support banning words?
|
| it's apparent, that money launderers, drug buyers, criminals
| communicate using words
| Barrin92 wrote:
| What kind of strawman is that? I didn't say I want to get
| rid of all forms of digital payments, I'm perfectly fine
| with any form of digital payment system if it is able to
| comply with basic due diligence required by the law.
| Anonymous payments stand out in that their only
| distinguishing advantage is that they make that impossible.
|
| I don't want to ban words and I don't want to ban money.
| But society very well can demand that there is no shadow
| financial system that avoids obligations everyone else has
| to comply with.
| ushakov wrote:
| society and the EU are welcome to demand whatever they
| want! :)
|
| the ugly truth is that they have no power over the
| bitcoin network and their ideas will not reach consensus
| from miners
|
| that's why they're to attacking the middlemen instead
| phatfish wrote:
| Bitcoin has no power in the real world. For digital
| transactions is has some leverage as pure data is much
| harder to control. Unless people are spending their
| Bitcoin gainz on Second Life property and not real world
| assets then regulation targeting the "middle men" is
| simply common sense.
|
| Crypto is trivial for a functioning government to
| regulate, until we all live in the Matrix.
| beiller wrote:
| I'm not understanding your argument. You are against
| anonymous money? You realize what the alternative is?
| Credit cards. Ie you can only transact with visas
| permission, also they skim some cents off each
| transaction inflating all prices for all consumers. Have
| you heard about interest rates before? Because credit
| cards have the worst interest rate of any financial
| product. This is what centralized money gets us. The same
| problems exist in debit cards and fed digital coins as
| well fyi. Also skimming off the top and controlling how
| much your savings are worth via monetary policy. But at
| least little Billy cantbbuy drugs right? Also he has no
| spare change for the homeless either.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| They don't need to go after the protocol they can simply put
| legislation to regulate how exchanges and other services that
| allow you to trade and easily transfer digital currency
| operate.
| nootropicat wrote:
| I traced the definitions a bit and it applies to:
|
| " (8)'crypto-asset service provider' means any person whose
| occupation or business is the provision of one or more crypto-
| asset services to third parties on a professional basis; "
|
| "'crypto-asset service' means any of the services and activities
| listed below relating to any crypto-asset:
|
| (a)the custody and administration of crypto-assets on behalf of
| third parties; (b)the operation of a trading platform for crypto-
| assets; (c)the exchange of crypto-assets for fiat currency that
| is legal tender; (d)the exchange of crypto-assets for other
| crypto-assets; (e)the execution of orders for crypto-assets on
| behalf of third parties; (f)placing of crypto-assets; (g)the
| reception and transmission of orders for crypto-assets on behalf
| of third parties (h)providing advice on crypto-assets; "
|
| which is extremely broad. In particular
|
| '" (14)'the execution of orders for crypto-assets on behalf of
| third parties' means concluding agreements to buy or to sell one
| or more crypto-assets or to subscribe for one or more crypto-
| assets on behalf of third parties; "
|
| is the most worrying - it appears to make block generation itself
| illegal (because of the kyc requirements) on any blockchain that
| can do anything more than simple transfers (which includes even
| bitcoin), because every transaction could be a dex swap of some
| type, knowingly or unknowingly to the block generator.
|
| On the other hand, the additional point is
|
| "Crypto-asset service providers that are authorised to execute
| orders for crypto-assets on behalf of third parties shall take
| all necessary steps to obtain, when executing orders, the best
| possible result for their clients taking into account the best
| execution factors of price, costs, speed, likelihood of execution
| and settlement, size, nature or any other consideration relevant
| to the execution of the order, unless the crypto-asset service
| provider concerned executes orders for crypto-assets following
| specific instructions given by its clients."
|
| so clearly the intention was to regulate cexes, but the
| definition language is dangerously broad. If interpreted in the
| most strict way, it would basically make all blockchains that
| can't run on anonymous home nodes force every user to kyc - while
| anonymous home nodes would break the law, it would be
| unenforceable without China-style network filtering at least.
|
| https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
| gruez wrote:
| >The new rules would also prohibit providing anonymous crypto-
| asset wallets.
|
| As a business/service, or in general? If the latter, then it's
| literally a ban on cryptography.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> The new rules would also prohibit providing anonymous
| crypto-asset wallets.
|
| > As a business/service, or in general? If the latter, then
| it's literally a ban on cryptography.
|
| There are more applications of cryptography than
| cryptocurrency, which is why the term "crypto" for
| cryptocurrency was so unfortunate. It pretty much erased the
| prior established usages, leading to lots of confusing
| situations.
|
| This could ban _cryptocurrency_ (the tells are focusing on
| terms like "assets", "wallets", and using Bitcoin as an
| example), but it doesn't sound like it bans _cryptography_ (if
| it did, tells would be "keys", "messages", etc.).
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| You're already not allowed to move undeclared cash across
| borders, not sure why you can't have a rule that you can't have
| undeclared crypto wallets. That does not ban cryptography, that
| just forces people to declare their wallets.
| gruez wrote:
| > You're already not allowed to move undeclared cash across
| borders
|
| Right, because it's generally recognized that countries have
| the right to protect their borders
|
| > not sure why you can't have a rule that you can't have
| undeclared crypto wallets
|
| Are you exempt from this if you don't make cross-border
| transactions? Would it be constitutional for the EU to make a
| rule that you can't have undeclared _cash_ wallets?
|
| > That does not ban cryptography, that just forces people to
| declare their wallets.
|
| In the strict sense you're correct. However, I would counter
| with saying that this isn't a "ban on cryptography" in the
| same sense recent proposals for key escrow (eg.
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/as-doj-calls-
| for...) isn't "a ban on cryptopgrahy". However, the end
| result is the same: you won't be allowed to practice
| cryptography unless you also give up your secrets to the
| government.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| It's possible to demonstrate control of a wallet without
| giving the secrets to the government.
| gruez wrote:
| Your cryptographic identity is arguably a secret in
| addition to whatever the private key is.
| darig wrote:
| People don't own wallets... whoever holds the private key
| owns the coins. If I don't have the key memorized or on my
| person, I don't own anything.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| This is completely unenforceable.
| vkou wrote:
| It's perfectly enforceable by asking exchanges to do KYC.
|
| Yes, you'll be able to break the law if you turn to a
| hawala payment system, but I can also break the law against
| murder by hiring a hitman. That doesn't mean laws against
| murder are completely uneforceable.
| ben_w wrote:
| For small amounts; large amounts tend to get noticed by
| what they end up buying, and that's probably what they care
| about.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| It's very enforceable, in a practical sense, for the
| majority of holders. Most people use services to exchange
| crypto for fiat. If you're in the EU, and use any such
| services, expect changes.
|
| For the people that it isn't enforceable for, they're stuck
| either moving countries, hodling eternally, or laundering
| the cash they get in return for their crypto assets.
| gambiting wrote:
| I mean, you are allowed to take up to 10k euro in cash with
| you across borders without reporting it(in the EU anyway), so
| there is a provision in the law for "small" amounts of money.
| There is nothing like that here - even if you want to use
| crypto to send someone 1 euro for something, you will have to
| register.
| nly wrote:
| The 10K limit is just there to reduce admin cost. A
| Blockchain can be datained continuously at almost no cost
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Call me paranoid but I think governments of the 21st
| century ultimately want the ability to track every single
| transaction they can.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Governments of every century wanted that. They just
| didn't have the means before.
| chippiewill wrote:
| If you're worried about that then Bitcoin isn't for you.
| It's not just Governments, anyone can see _every_
| transaction as it's in the public ledger.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm aware that full ledger visibility is a fundamental
| part of Bitcoin. I'm actually more concerned that the
| governments and central banks of the world will push for
| near total traceability with their own currencies.
| Whether that comes in the form of "GovCoins" or reporting
| requirements, I do not know. But I think it is
| practically inevitable.
| elmo2you wrote:
| Your concerns likely are legit and justified. It appears
| indeed what plenty of governments are already working on
| and pushing towards just that .. and it won't be pretty
| if they ever manage to convince enough people to make it
| a mandatory if not the only legitimate way of monetary
| exchange.
|
| However, I think it's actually the current unregulated
| crypto currencies ecosystem that should worry people far
| more. Consider the shady people that operate this space
| and their ability to mine all kinds of data. People might
| be surprised how valuable and useful behavioral data of
| individuals can be, especially when it relates to how
| they behave when dealing with speculative and uncertain
| dynamics (like e.g. the realities of crypto currencies
| themselves). That's all I will say about it.
| ushakov wrote:
| the banks are already reporting every transaction,
| including your personal info
|
| see Common Reporting Standard:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Reporting_Standard
| gruez wrote:
| If that's the case why would they need these regulations?
| Is the whole exercise just bEUcrats trying to trying to
| justify their existence?
| tobltobs wrote:
| There seems to be an exemption for crypto transfers up to
| 1K Euro. Source:
| https://ec.europa.eu/finance/docs/law/210720-proposal-
| funds-...
| monkeydust wrote:
| Yea I think that's what they are proposing. If your in the EU
| and move crypto around then you have to register your wallet
| with you PII with some EU authority?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| A crypto wallet doesn't have a location though. It exists
| simultaneously on every connected node.
| api wrote:
| The location is where the secret key is stored. Wallet
| data is distributed but wallet holders are not.
|
| In any case this kind of thing will be implemented by
| mandating it at the exchanges where crypto is converted
| to/from traditional currencies, making it impossible to
| actually use crypto (legally) without complying.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| That definition of location allows for:
|
| * The wallet existing in no places
|
| * The wallet existing in an unlimited number of places
|
| * The wallet spontaneously replicating itself in a new
| location (with or without information transfer)
|
| Certainly not a very mainstream interpretation of
| "location".
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