[HN Gopher] EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto w...
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EU to make Bitcoin traceable, ban anonymous crypto wallets
Author : mgh2
Score : 122 points
Date : 2021-08-24 16:35 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.euronews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.euronews.com)
| vinni2 wrote:
| Previous discussion here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27897314
| Animats wrote:
| The crypto world is running out of safe havens. China cracked
| down, and cut the power to large Bitcoin farms. In the US, the
| SEC and CFTC have been tightening up on crypto-related things
| that look like securities and things that look like exchanges.
| Israel kicked out the binary option crowd, which overlapped with
| the crypto crowd; they seem to have moved to Bulgaria. Now the
| EU.
|
| The bigger countries are in general tightening up on tax havens;
| incorporating in the Cayman Islands or Vanatu raises more red
| flags now.
|
| The Economist has an article this week, "What if Bitcoin went to
| zero?"[1] Cryptocurrencies haven't hit a recession yet, and we're
| getting close to one. Look at house prices. In a recession,
| things which depend on a net inflow of money collapse.
|
| I don't expect Bitcoin to go to zero, but Tether could, easily.
| When stablecoins crash, they crash all the way.
|
| [1] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-
| economics/2021/08/02/w...
| Youden wrote:
| Binary options shouldn't be compared to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a
| cryptocurrency and largely looks like a currency. You can buy
| it, own it, sell it and exchange it freely for other things.
| The same is mostly true for proper regulated options.
|
| Binary options are more like a game on a slot machine. You put
| money in, wait a bit and see if you get money out. You can't
| own them or transfer them to anybody else. There isn't an open
| market for them, the counterparty is the broker (i.e. casino).
| The broker is usually barely regulated if at all, so they can
| (and do) freely scam people as they please.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > The crypto world is running out of safe havens.
|
| So just to be clear, your definition of "safe haven" is, what,
| total lawlessness with no governmental oversight?
|
| Frankly, these moves make me think people are taking crypto
| seriously now, as we're finally treating it like real money or
| the banking sector and regulating it accordingly. If anything,
| it seems to me that should be a sign of _success_ , not
| failure.
|
| (and I should point out I own no crypto and I think blockchains
| are the biggest technical snake oil grift I've seen in the
| history of computing)
| peter303 wrote:
| But the aggregate value of crypto is comparable to the US
| currency in circulation: two trillion.
|
| https://futurism.com/the-byte/cryptocurrency-worth-more-than...
|
| Crypto has a muchlower velocity of trading than currency.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Crypto "market cap" is a complete fiction. Only the tiniest
| fraction of that value actually exists in any form.
|
| As you say, crypto has a much lower velocity of trading than
| currency. That is the hint.
| cryptica wrote:
| I've come to realize that the current fiat scheme and the
| crypto scheme are both unethical in their own way. But it makes
| me sick to hear people talk about banning crypto without at
| least suggesting to dramatically reform the fiat system.
|
| Crypto would not have existed in the first place if most people
| felt that the fiat system was fair.
|
| People who don't acknowledge this at this stage are either
| totally blind or totally corrupt.
| mikem170 wrote:
| I was just thinking this. The more control that governments
| try to exert over their populations the more of a reaction
| there will be to avoid these controls. One might assume the
| more they regulate bitcoin that more difficult to regulate
| alternatives will become more popular.
| cryptica wrote:
| Makes sense. People will always come up with some new
| innovative ways to get around regulations which harm them.
| Those new ways will never cease to defy our imaginations.
| Who could have imagined Bitcoin 20 years ago? The
| regulators are playing whack-a-mole.
|
| Problems must be fixed at the root instead of endlessly
| trying to patch the symptoms. Most software developers are
| familiar with what happens when you try to fix bugs quickly
| with hacks instead of first trying to identify the root
| cause.
| sennight wrote:
| > Cryptocurrencies haven't hit a recession yet, and we're
| getting close to one.
|
| We've been in a recession since Feb 2020...
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The crypto world is running out of safe havens. China cracked
| down, and cut the power to large Bitcoin farms. In the US, the
| SEC and CFTC have been tightening up on crypto-related things
| that look like securities and things that look like exchanges.
| Israel kicked out the binary option crowd, which overlapped
| with the crypto crowd; they seem to have moved to Bulgaria. Now
| the EU.
|
| Which further proves the idea that cyberspace is independent of
| actual space is a lie, which renders any idea predicated on
| that as suspect.
|
| There may be a brief periods where cyberspace is "more free,"
| but it doesn't take long for the real-space authorities to
| notice and assert control (often in a way that's more complete
| than could ever be achieved in real-space).
| bserge wrote:
| Any currency not backed by a military is doomed to fail the
| moment anyone with actual power decides they've had enough of
| it.
|
| Afaik shitcoins aren't even backed by the threat of violence
| (i.e. "fuck with us and we'll do bad shit").
|
| They only work as long as actual organizations with actual
| armed forces let them be.
|
| Most people forget how fickle their freedoms are, and
| overestimate their extent.
| dusted wrote:
| Sounds like this will only cause people to trade more in crypto.
| It's not like bitcoin needs to be able to be traded to fiat to be
| useful as an item for transferring value.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Maybe that's the point. By accelerating the use of it as a
| currency, it may become more widely used by larger commercial
| interests that the government can lean on.
| seibelj wrote:
| It is very hard to ban math. An "anonymous wallet" is a random
| number!
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| It's very hard to ban math. It's very easy to ban
| communications, which may happen to contain math.
| rspeele wrote:
| > In practice, this means that a service provider exchanging
| crypto on behalf of a customer would have to record their name,
| address, date of birth and account number, as well as the name
| of the intended recipient of the transfer.
|
| As usual, the regulation checkpoint is at the exchanges.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| And what happens when you transfer it to a mixer? A self-
| hosted wallet? Or the EU regulate exchanges to the point you
| can't transfer your Bitcoin to a wallet you own?
| neverywhere wrote:
| Mixers will be considered illegal by the EU. It sort of
| makes sense. Mixers are primarily used to hide one's
| identity when doing shady/illegal things with
| cryptocurrency.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| What about deFi swappers?
| meepmorp wrote:
| No, they're cool with that specific kind of money
| laundering.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "Or the EU regulate exchanges to the point you can 't
| transfer your Bitcoin to a wallet you own?"_
|
| Why not? The EU regulates banks to the point that you can't
| transfer money to an account in North Korea. It's not
| obvious why Bitcoin exchanges should be regulated
| differently (as you can't prove the random Bitcoin address
| isn't controlled by NK).
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| Not allowing individuals autonomy over how they choose to
| spend their own money sounds authoritarian.
| Thiez wrote:
| You live in a country where _everything_ is legal to buy
| and sell, then?
| [deleted]
| nathias wrote:
| This is good for Bitcoin. (really, we need more traffic to go to
| fully decentralized exchanges)
| avnigo wrote:
| I've experienced HN to be highly anti-Bitcoin for some reason --
| got instantly downvoted for commenting neutrally on it [0].
|
| However, I sort of expected more people on here would sympathize
| with the Cypherpunk Manifesto [1] and band together against
| pressures to minimize our privacy.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28114156
|
| [1]: https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html
| elliekelly wrote:
| I am absolutely of the opinion that we deserve more privacy
| when it comes to our transactions. We need and deserve a
| privacy-oriented payment system but we also need a financial
| system that is reliable, trustworthy, and most of all, fair.
| That's not Bitcoin.
|
| I don't know whether predatory investments and outright scams
| are simply inevitable with the anonymity cryptocurrency
| provides. I'd like to think there are some perfectly valid and
| net-beneficial use cases. But it seems pretty clear that
| crypto, in its current iteration, is exploitative at best and
| the only real use case beyond pyramid schemes is facilitating
| criminal activity.
|
| It was a cool experiment. We tried it. It doesn't work. A lot
| of people have learned (and some are still yet to learn) the
| hard way why our financial systems are so heavily regulated.
| But if we're looking for increased privacy (and we should be!)
| we need to start looking beyond Bitcoin.
| meowkit wrote:
| This is a really cynical and oversimplified take in my
| opinion.
|
| Our centralized financial systems have a lot of regulation
| for outsiders, but the rules selectively apply to those with
| power and capital. If the Panama Papers/FinCEN leaks have
| shown me anything its that our financial systems are not
| sufficiently policing themselves.
|
| Having all transactions on open source ledgers is a good
| start. With zero knowledge proofs I'm fairly confident we can
| design auxiliary systems that can obfuscate
| senders/receivers/amounts while also allowing for fraud
| detection by the community as a whole - with slashing style
| incentives we won't have to worry as much about regulatory
| capture and similar things.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| It's because it's an established technology that only attracts
| speculation and scams because it detaches the creation of
| capital from the utilization of labor and production and
| replaces it with hardware.
|
| It's a fundamentally "wrong" currency in that you cannot
| request labor in exchange for debt. Instead you can request
| labor in exchange for waiting for a machine to generate the
| value of labor.
|
| People say, well that's great, because no one wants debt.
| Except you do. You do want debt to exist in the world, because
| you want people to have an incentive to make things and do
| things versus not making things and doing things.
|
| It makes no sense. It's mass appeal is driven by the fact that
| one person exchanges fiat to another person in exchange for the
| currency itself in larger price to fiat over time.
|
| I think it's actually somewhat sustainable nonsense too,
| because people really think you can dollar cost average it. And
| if you have it and need to actually buy something with it, you
| are only incentivized to ask for more fiat in exchange for it,
| because people will buy it for strange reasons like simple
| moving average.
|
| It's not a good currency, because it's not price stable, and
| it's not a good investment, since there's no underlying or
| relational value associated with it. So what is it?
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| The governement should know who you are and the bank you are
| associated too, if that's required to do business with them.
| Eg. VISA should be able to return my money to my bank account
| if someone has a chance to abuse the system and target me.
|
| I don't want companies to share my information to third
| parties, this includes the banks about my purchases. And eg.
| Facebook shouldn't be able to target me because a site added
| their 'like button'.
|
| Privacy doesn't mean lawless land of crypto companies hiding in
| unknown countries. I actually expect governement regulation to
| protect it's tax-paying citizens.
|
| That's why we vote for them.
|
| Edit: As a counter argument, there are also a lot of downvotes
| without reasonable arguments when you argument against crypto
| ;)
|
| Edit 2: the informed article you shared is actually pretty
| biased from my POV, definitely not neutral + The additional
| sanity check when checking the author didn't check out either.
| djbebs wrote:
| The government shouldn't know about any of that.
|
| Not their business.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| That's exactly their business.
|
| What about a simple letter as invitation on how to register
| for a COVID vaccination center.
|
| Or a sms-alert for a incoming storm.
|
| Or if someone hits you with their car and runs away. Based
| on the license plate that they can track them down.
|
| Or if you call 911 for an emergency and you can't finish
| your sentence with the address.
|
| Or if you die, that you children are taken care of and can
| receive your inheritance. They need to be a neutral party.
|
| Even a simple birth certificate is done by the government.
| RileyJames wrote:
| And that's the two sides of the coin.
|
| Where does this 'government doesn't know any of that'
| actually work in practice? America has become a joke, the
| rich do not pay their share of taxes and face no
| punishment.
|
| They do not declare what they should be paying taxes on
| (spirit of the law, not what they can get away with,
| remember you wanted that honesty policy).
|
| It's unfortunate that crypto has become a worse state of
| affairs in terms of greed and inequality, but I think long
| term it offers the capacity for transparent finance.
|
| I'm pro privacy on a individual basis, but I don't think
| financial or corporate privacy has served the world well.
| dt2m wrote:
| This is going to work out just as well as when the EU banned
| tracking cookies!
| croes wrote:
| When did the EU ban tracking cookies?
| lmkg wrote:
| The EU regulates tracking cookies. They're not banned, but
| the requirements for their use are rather strict, due to the
| interactions between the ePrivacy Directive (2002) and the
| GDPR (2016).
|
| To GP's broader point, "what about GDPR?" the GDPR basically
| steps back when other laws apply. Processing personal data
| requires a legal basis, and one option for legal basis is
| "Legal Requirement," so if another law says it's required,
| GDPR says it's OK. And furthermore several provisions (like
| erasure) don't necessarily apply. GDPR would impose some
| restrictions like access and notice. The biggest issue is
| going to be "who is the Controller?", i.e. who 'owns' the
| data and who is in control of the processing?
| 0xy wrote:
| Instead of making meaningful change, the EU proceeded to make
| almost every European website 10x worse with egregious cookie
| nag screens filled with dark patterns.
|
| They trained users to accept all advertising cookies, while
| being massive hypocrites (a lot of EU bureaucratic websites
| ship user data to Google via GA or GTM).
|
| The EU is one of the biggest threats to online freedom.
| Threatening to ban memes, egregious copyright laws to serve
| Hollywood interests, cookie nag screens and US media excluding
| EU IPs altogether because EU law is insane.
|
| Access to media within the EU has never been worse. A
| significant portion of US news media exclude all EU traffic due
| to regulation.
| yrro wrote:
| > Instead of making meaningful change,
|
| Meaningful change: the ways that web sites track you are now
| disclosed and require your explicit consent.
|
| > the EU proceeded to make almost every European website 10x
| worse with egregious cookie nag screens filled with dark
| patterns.
|
| It is the web sites that have chosen to make your experience
| worse. The blame lies with them.
| lkramer wrote:
| Does that not make you wonder what it is that they want to
| track which is so incompatible with those regulations that
| they'd rather ban the traffic?
| 0xy wrote:
| Tracking is a choice. uBlock Origin is a free download.
| Geoblocking is not a choice.
|
| EU citizens are worse off only having access to insular
| media with one viewpoint. If you're German and a
| significant amount of foreign media is either blocked or
| scorned, you end up enabling giant frauds like Wirecard.
|
| Germany's homegrown DW had fawning coverage of the fraud,
| calling it remarkable and a "weapon against poverty". [1]
| [2]
|
| [1] https://www.dw.com/en/whats-behind-the-remarkable-rise-
| of-ge...
|
| [2] https://www.dw.com/en/is-fintech-the-latest-weapon-in-
| the-fi...
| eulenteufel wrote:
| For what it's worth DW is not allowed to broadcast in
| Germany and therefore relatively unknown amongst Germans.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| I'm mostly pro-EU but the cookie thing is just a display of
| unbelievable incompetence. It's ridiculous that they still
| haven't fixed the highly annoying popup problem.
| tpush wrote:
| What do you want them to do about that? The vast majority of
| those popups are already illegal according to GDPR. More
| legislation wouldn't fix that, I think.
| blibble wrote:
| > I'm mostly pro-EU but the cookie thing is just a display of
| unbelievable incompetence.
|
| this is an example of you knowing the area they're
| legislating in better than they do
|
| they're just as bad in pretty much every other area too
| dheera wrote:
| Exactly, I block _all_ cookies (except for a whitelist of
| sites I need to log into) and that ironically prevents the
| fucking popups from tracking that they have been clicked away
| or agreed to.
|
| I use uBlock origin and various CSS injection to get rid of
| the popups but they don't catch every single one of them.
|
| I wish the US would institute law making unsolicited (i.e.
| not triggered by a user click, like clicking on "Login")
| popups illegal, arrest the CEOs of companies that violate
| this, put them in a CEO jail for a week, make them wear an "I
| suck" T-shirt and dunce cap, and live stream their faces the
| entire time.
| gruez wrote:
| >arrest the CEOs of companies that violate this, put them
| in a CEO jail for a week, and live stream their faces the
| entire time.
|
| I was with you until this point. Then it just turned into
| vengeance porn.
| afiori wrote:
| You are blocking a legitimate use of the web platform.
|
| It is as if you set a dns to the other side of the globe,
| disabled browser cache and then complained that pages now
| take longer to load.
|
| Tracking is bad, scary, and with worring consequences in
| how much ML can predict statical human behaviour, but the
| solution is not "cookies bad" or "ads bad".
|
| If a website as any kind of first-onboarding interaction
| (be it a video, some marketing crap, asking for
| permissions, or whatever) and you disable _any_ form of
| tracking how are they supposed to know it is not your first
| visit?
|
| Many of those website do not need to track you, many do so
| with malicious intent, but the concept of the consent modal
| itself serves a useful purpose
| liuliu wrote:
| I know this is an unpopular take, but for sites (like
| Stackoverflow) that give me options (if they don't, some times
| I just skip), I will select "strict" and continue. This is
| probably an improvement from previous status-quo for me.
| hogFeast wrote:
| Yes, what people really need when they browse the internet is
| to be asked every ten seconds what kind of cookies they want,
| every time a different form with different options that loads
| so many third-party scripts that my browser chokes...and then
| you have to fill out the form.
|
| I can see why bureaucrats like this system though, try to
| inflict the horror of their jobs onto everyone else.
|
| And ofc, this makes no difference for tracking at all. Most
| people just click whatever option is the default, they have
| no idea what cookies are, they have no idea how the cookies
| are being used because the forms don't tell you...what is the
| decision that is supposedly been improved here? People are
| still being tracked, but we showed them a totally baffling
| form and they clicked "Yes"...society has been preserved.
|
| Oh, and you have now split the internet into different
| regions...it was all worth it, no ragrats.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| If they were competent, they would have worked with web
| browser developers, and made it browser side like other
| permission dialogs.
|
| Imagine what could have been: a standardised prompt that is
| always the same, persists when clearing cookies, etc. Instead
| we have full screen modal popups that render 5 seconds after
| page load and move around while loading.
| paulgb wrote:
| I see that point, but the problem I have is the sites that
| offer the option (and respect it) are probably the sites that
| were the least offensive with tracking to begin with.
| afiori wrote:
| Sound like a good rule of thumb on how much to trust a
| website
| seaourfreed wrote:
| How are they going to require this in open source crypto wallet
| applications that download to your computer. They can be made
| outside of the EU. Downloaded by EU citizens.
| [deleted]
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| By "ban anonymous crypto wallets", this article is referring to
| commercial custodians that offer wallet services to customers.
|
| But it doesn't say anything about whether the ban will apply to
| FOSS crypto wallets people can download and run on their personal
| computers.
|
| As long as the latter remains protected by free speech laws,
| similar to cryptography code, and commercial custodial wallets
| are affected, then this is a reasonable compromise not a huge
| problem imho.
| qnsi wrote:
| I understand anti-EU sentiment, but who uses bitcoin for
| something different than transfering illegal funds and
| speculation?
|
| I understand Ethereum and other smart contract cryptocurcies, but
| time when people believed Bitcoin is going to become currency are
| long gone
| kobalsky wrote:
| > but who uses bitcoin for something different than transfering
| illegal funds and speculation?
|
| A lot of people. You just have to NOT live in a country that
| uses a currency that could be considered a global reserve to
| find us.
| burnished wrote:
| could you elaborate? I'm ignorant. From my perspective it
| seems like the value of bitcoin changes too much, having
| risen sharply in value recently, to spend as currency, but
| I'm also assuming that there are other more stable options.
| What kind of things do you buy, and how often? What sort of
| things do you do considering that the value might sky-rocket
| or dive overnight?
| xtracto wrote:
| > I'm ignorant. From my perspective it seems like the value
| of bitcoin changes too much,
|
| The value of Bitcoin fluctuates UP and DOWN too much *when
| compared to the US Dollar*.
|
| But compared say, to the Mexican Peso or say (more
| extremely) Venezuelan Peso, it has gone steadily up. So for
| us who don't live in a place with a sufficiently stable
| central bank and a trustful government, Cryptocurrencies
| are one avenue to safeguard the value of our income.
| imtringued wrote:
| You know, this is one of those things that would go away
| with the snap of a finger if the leaders cared about
| their country. Okay it's harder than that because the IMF
| is completely backwards but let's assume that the
| Venezuelan government was willing to listen and the IMF
| actually understood economics. It wouldn't take a year to
| fix the problem. Shortages may last longer because the
| real world is slow.
| xtracto wrote:
| Shame on me... "Venezuelan Peso" is Bolivar. That was
| pretty ignorant haha.
| kobalsky wrote:
| To add to what xtracto said, I live in Argentina and our
| currency has an annual inflation rate of 50% (it's actually
| higher, but I'll stick to official numbers).
|
| Banks here have a bad history of keeping your foreign
| currency deposits when things go south and then converting
| your balance at a government mandated exchange rate, which
| was a fraction of the real value (think 1/10 of the real
| value).
|
| Now, the government can always make cryptos illegal, but
| news like OP show that globally we moving towards
| regulation instead of prohibition, so for now cryptos are
| were we can still take refuge.
|
| So here you can either keep your savings in a currency that
| evaporates, buy real state at insanely high price because
| that's where big money is stored, illegaly purchase foreign
| currency and physically hide it somewhere like a criminal,
| our you can legally purchase crypto and keep it safe
| outside the reaches of our governments and banks.
| burnished wrote:
| do you use crypto for daily purchases, like going to a
| corner store or buying groceries, or is it more informal
| and a way to transfer money between friends? Or is it a
| store of value and you liquidate some periodically for
| purchases? Also thank you for educating me, this makes
| much more sense than anything from my perspective.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Why can't you just invest in an index fund or a money
| market fund?
| kobalsky wrote:
| it's literally easier to move your money overseas to an
| international broker than to try to operate here, which
| is what people with enough money do.
|
| we tried to invest some backup cash we had in a company
| here a couple a years ago and it was a nightmare. the
| only way to operate was through phone calls.
|
| EDIT: I read a bit to the check the current state of
| affairs and it's still complicated, and apparently there
| is a currency conversion process that is hit by a very
| heavy fee. Something similar happens with credit cards,
| when we pay for a service or product in a foreign
| currency we get charged a 65% tax that puts the official
| USD exchange rate in line with the real one.
| wesleywt wrote:
| If you are in the HN news bubble then you will not have a
| rounded view on the use of crypto. It has bad and good aspects.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| El Salvador is trying to use it a currency. Well, I still
| wouldn't consider it a currency since pretty much everything
| will be priced in dollars, but they are using to transfer
| value. One of the man reasons for this was to send home
| remittances.
|
| Many people still believe Bitcoin could at least be used to
| transfer value, like a currency. AMC, Starbucks, and United
| Wholesale Mortgage are all looking into accepting it. Whether
| these come to be seems to be seen, but there is obviously a lot
| of people that still expect Bitcoin to be a currency, or at the
| very least a way to transfer value.
| [deleted]
| jacobr1 wrote:
| My understanding is that they are trying to use the Lightning
| Network. Though my brief googling of this only shows
| speculation that this is the case, rather than confirmation.
| lottin wrote:
| Yes, Bitcoin promoters are fully aware that the Bitcoin
| blockchain is unsuitable for any practical purpose, so they
| started working on a replacement, the so-called Lightning
| Network, but it turns the LN is even less likely to work
| than the Bitcoin blockchain. See this video for some if its
| fatal design flaws
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOZaLbUUZUs
| mech422 wrote:
| Bitcoin is generally considered a 'store of value' rather
| then a day to day 'currency'...
|
| Sorta like a savings bond vs a credit card
|
| And a few years back, before the transaction fees got so high
| - there were a few places that took it. NewEgg comes to mind.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| BTC is not like a bond at all. A bond is a collection of
| future cash flows (coupon payments) and a principle payment
| at the end (or for savings bonds/t-bills, you are buying
| one future payment for a discount).
|
| BTC has no intrinsic value or cash flows or earnings or
| assets or..
| lottin wrote:
| It's _marketed_ as a store of value. The fact is value can
| 't be stored reliably anywhere. And storing it in a purely
| imaginary asset, of all things, seems about the dumbest
| idea.
| acdha wrote:
| More accurately, after years of failing to be viable as a
| currency the salespeople started claiming the goal had
| never been replacing cash and instead was some sort of
| poorly defined "store of value" instead of what they'd
| spent the previous decade spinning stories about.
|
| Since a real reserve currency is stable and backed by
| consistent demand, it's unclear why anyone expects a pure
| fiat currency backed only by a small community of
| speculators to be successful.
| imtringued wrote:
| The speculators want to make money and they don't care
| how they get that money so they imagine something stupid
| like a major country adopting it as a reserve currency.
|
| Using El Salvador as an example would be funny because
| they use Bitcoin as a life raft for remittances, not
| because the currency is a good fit for day to day
| transactions.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Well, not really. BTC was sort of usable as a currency to
| a point. You could even buy games on Steam with it.
|
| But it had a 1MB block size limit, which was initially
| implemented to prevent spam. This was obstinately kept in
| place, and that quickly destroyed its usefulness as a
| currency -- since now there's a lot of contention,
| transacting is slow and expensive. This doesn't bother
| the people who want an asset to buy once, but makes it
| useless as a currency.
| acdha wrote:
| It was technically possible but nobody seriously did it
| because the transactions were very slow and fees were
| massive compared to everything else, not to mention that
| the deflationary design meant that anyone who did would
| be mocked for not having held on until the value went up.
| Remember all of those comments about people buying a
| pizza with what a few years later would have been
| thousands of dollars? That sealed its fate as a currency
| because anyone who has an alternative will be better off
| using it as long as speculators are pouring money in.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Fees were tiny before it hit the block limit. If you look
| at the stats before the blocks started filling up, the
| average fee was around 5 cents USD. Massive fees only
| started once the blocks started filling up.
|
| And yup, the deflationary model certainly favors not
| using it as a currency.
| dannyobrien wrote:
| a couple of stories from Palestine and Cuba (I'd say both of
| these classes fall mostly under the category of where
| remittances and other cashflows deliberately exclude some
| communities)
|
| https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/can-bitcoin-bring-palest...
|
| https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/cubas-bitcoin-revolution
| unemphysbro wrote:
| I've used eth twice for motorcycle purchases from private
| sellers.
|
| Perhaps it's useful in for medium-large purchases.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Does it have a particular advantage over something like Venmo
| or Zelle? At least in the US?
| reidjs wrote:
| I think Venmo has a limit on how much you can transfer in a
| day
| unemphysbro wrote:
| That was the reason, both cases the bikes were $7&9k and
| I had some surplus crypto :).
|
| Both sellers were happy accepting crypto. Otherwise, I
| stick to the traditional cash-in-hand.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That is a good point. It looks like they have a $4999.99
| limit in any seven day period [0]. That is also the
| single-transaction limit (though there are some
| variations if you are doing transactions with a merchant
| and not another private individual). Zelle has higher
| limits (over seven days, at least), but more of them.
| $3500 in a day, $10000 in a seven day period, or $20000
| in a 30 day period [1].
|
| So for certain high-dollar cash-equivalent transactions,
| these might not be the best choice. Though personally I
| think I'd probably end up using something more formal if
| I were transferring that kind of cash in a single private
| party transaction.
|
| [0] https://help.venmo.com/hc/en-us/articles/221010968
|
| [1] https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/zelle-
| transfer-...
| imtringued wrote:
| Bitcoin miners use Bitcoin to pay their bills.
| SamPatt wrote:
| When governments stop taking monetary policy seriously and
| inflation starts to meaningfully destroy savings, you can
| understand why alternatives gain some traction.
| anm89 wrote:
| The EU isn't doing anything to bitcoin. They have no ability to
| regulate bitcoin. They can make it traceable when it is held on
| kycd exchanges In their jurisdiction. That is a big difference
| bdcravens wrote:
| Any government can't regulate Bitcoin per se, but they can
| always regulate the intersection of their currency and Bitcoin.
| If they require banks to observe a whitelist of acceptable
| exchanges when honoring transfer requests, the banks will
| happily comply.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Serious question: Couldn't they ban ISPs from connecting to
| known networks? A public blockchain must remain public and they
| can largely prevent that. They could (not saying they will) ban
| VPN connections to other countries.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Blockchain isn't where the concern is. It's where the
| exchanges interact with the banking system.
| askl56 wrote:
| The EU can't tell each country's ISPs what to ban or not.
| That is a matter for each country.
| bserge wrote:
| It's easier when most ISPs are owned by a handful of
| companies (looking at you, Telekom).
| Daishiman wrote:
| They have the same ability to regulate it as they do cash
| transactions. Which is to say, people will still find
| workarounds if they really want to take a shot at it, but
| forget about transacting with legit companies and institutions
| unless you want the spotlight shone on you.
| anm89 wrote:
| The EU prints Euros. The EU does not in any direct way
| control production of bitcoin.
|
| Custody of the two assets has bordering on nothing in common.
|
| Exchange of the who assets has bordering on nothing in
| common.
|
| Conflating them is wildly innacurate.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Who's going to exchange euro for crypto, if all European
| banks are prohibited from touching it?
| anm89 wrote:
| The rest of the world
| DudeInBasement wrote:
| He did it boys, solved money laundering.
|
| They'll go somewhere else, and convert that to Euro. Same
| as they do now.
| elric wrote:
| They don't need the ability to regulate bitcoin. They can just
| treat illegal exchanges as money launderers (or terrorism
| funders, or whatever else the go-to argument is today) and slap
| them with hefty fines. Anyone using these exchanges is
| committing a crime and can be treated accordingly.
|
| Anyone caught with large amounts of crypto can be treated as a
| criminal, the same way people who have large amounts of cash on
| them are treated. It's obviously harder to spot someone walking
| around with a hoard of crypto coins, no black briefcase
| required.
|
| This is just another tool in an already _very expansive_
| toolbox. All in the name of "security".
| vkou wrote:
| There's no need to put scare quotes around security.
| Cryptocurrencies are mostly used for one of three things.
|
| 1. Paying ransomware. 2. Buying drugs. 3. Day-trading.
|
| That's it. There's no meaningful slice of the pie that goes
| to #4.
|
| Almost all of us can agree that #1 is illegal, many people
| and countries currently believe that #2 is illegal, and
| almost all of us can agree that people participating in #3
| should probably pay taxes on their gains/get tax credits on
| their losses.
| nradov wrote:
| #4 is, or has been, evading laws in China and other
| countries with tight currency controls. A wealthy Chinese
| citizen can't necessarily just transfer money to a foreign
| bank account. But he can purchase crypto mining hardware
| and electricity for local currency, then sell the resulting
| coins for convertible hard currency on foreign exchanges.
| vkou wrote:
| That's a fair point, that I forgot about.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| You forgot outright money laundering / tax evasion
| ethbr0 wrote:
| #4 is "holding currency independent of any central bank's
| monetary policy."
|
| Ironically, that's the strongest long term feature. But
| probably the one driving the least amount of volume
| (outside of hyperinflation states).
| kimixa wrote:
| But the idea of it being a "currency" requires it to have
| some value outside of it being stored (IE someone wants
| to buy it).
|
| If the only reason for it existing is to show how many
| you have, it has zero value outside the possible
| curiosity of "Having the largest number that happens to
| match this set of arbitrary mathematical restrictions"
| imtringued wrote:
| They can't regulate bitcoin but they sure can discourage
| investors from putting in billions into Bitcoin. Considering
| that the growth story is based around those future investors it
| would be pretty bad news for Bitcoin if that flow of investors
| suddenly stopped.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Old news... also the people announcing it are actually idiots or
| misinformed on terminology because they aren't talking about
| local wallets on your computer. By "anonymous crypto wallets"
| they are talking about anonymous wallets on _exchanges_ , which
| is very different than most people would think at first glance.
| This is not "send in the public key of every wallet you've ever
| touched to the tax service."
| laurent92 wrote:
| Next step: Forbid exchanges from exchanging with non-compliant
| wallets.
| vjust wrote:
| Reaffirming the fact that Cash is king, as far as traceability is
| concerned. Unless of course, the FBI is tracking the bill
| numbers. But for all nefarious activities good old fashioned cash
| rules. No transaction or 'gas' fees either. If you can handle the
| physical bulk/inconvenience.
|
| Bitcoin transactions take minutes or even hours to settle
| sometime, so 'digital speed' is vaporware at this point.
| drummer wrote:
| Monero and Pirate Chain will reach the moon in 2 years.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Everybody who ever thought that crypto currencies will not come
| under this scrutiny was highly delusional.
|
| All other governments will follow soon.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Yup. A technology which is mainly used for money laundering,
| dark-net markets, ransoms, and speculation will certainly
| attract the attention of government.
| darig wrote:
| A technology which is entirely based on mathematics can
| withstand more than a little attention.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Governments can either get onboard, and come up with a
| reasonable, practical regulatory environment, or alternatively
| they will be left behind and Crypto will evolve to circumvent
| their wishes.
|
| It is a shame but the USA may end up leapfrogging the EU in the
| same way they have done with other innovations, like Social
| Media, Self Driving Cars, and other cutting edge tech. It turns
| out regulating entire sectors of the economy out of existence
| has consequences.
| imtringued wrote:
| Cutting edge? The only special thing about Bitcoin is the
| blockchain which only matters when there is a shortage of
| trust. Bitcoin may force government to be more responsible
| because it can be used to circumvent capital controls or
| price controls. Any advantage other than trust that a public
| blockchain has can be replicated through a private
| blockchain. It's just software after all.
|
| Considering the monetary philosophy behind Bitcoin it is
| basically motivated by gold which is something we abandoned
| as a currency because we know it doesn't work and doesn't
| make sense. It's akin to having shares in the global economy.
| If you own 1% of the economy in 1930 then you will also own
| 1% of the economy in 2021. You're just a deadweight leeching
| off the economy. Since your share is fixed but the economy
| growing you are getting richer at the expense of other
| people. More and more people start investing "into money" and
| then quit working. You get a bust or recession or depression
| when people consider money a superior investment over actual
| work. Thus the economies' size is limited by the quantity of
| shares. If you issue new shares people will immediately start
| working for them even if it is at the cost of diluting them.
| You can clearly see it happening with the block reward.
| Bitcoin miners work like crazy, consuming an absurd amount of
| energy. The same applies to gold.
| Sevii wrote:
| Considering that trust in government is at an all time low
| public blockchains provide some much needed openness.
|
| The reason we went off the gold standard is because the US
| government printed off more money than they had gold and
| then got caught.
|
| Instead of trying to make up for their crime the government
| decided to ban ownership of gold.
|
| Cryptocurrency doesn't have a deflationary restriction. If
| bitcoin is too similar to gold, people will just use some
| other coin.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Governments have no interest in being "ahead" in enabling
| fraud, crime and tax evasion.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| You have a lot of trust in people. There are plenty of
| politicians with financial crime convictions and organised
| crime ties.
| danaris wrote:
| Sure, but even looking at the most corrupt, they have
| little incentive to enable fraud, crime, and tax evasion
| by people they're _not_ already in mutually beneficial
| arrangements with, and none to enable it for people who
| won 't give them a cut.
|
| Do _you_ want to give them a cut?
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Cough... wirecard... cough.
| elric wrote:
| And then what? Crypto will magically take over all government
| functions? Or will people be happy in a governmentless-
| society? Where hospitals and roads don't get built but at
| least there's "freedom"?
| sennight wrote:
| Are you assuming that somebody thought that? Or did somebody
| share that opinion with you? I don't mean some anonymous person
| you argued with, I'm talking about a real person. Because I was
| involved back in the single digit days - and I never
| encountered that kind of sentiment. Things have actually played
| out as expected: governments stalling for time in a weird
| prisoner's dilemma by sowing as much uncertainty possible
| without hamstringing their economies for the next century.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| I am not assuming. People have shared that sentiment with me
| at the beginning of the crypto craze.
| sennight wrote:
| The beginning, like when people were commonly introduced to
| the concept through the whitepaper and a link to the
| reference client source? And those people thought "public
| ledger" meant "governments can't track how I spend my
| money"? A short time after the USG shuttered a non-
| fractional, gold reserve backed, paypal-like financial
| network? Okey dokey.
| nenadg wrote:
| Pure wapor. How will they ban anonymous wallets?
| nenadg wrote:
| It's the same thing as if EU jumped to ban our classic,
| leather, pocket wallets. Pure bullshit, except if this is
| marketing?
| xtracto wrote:
| What about the EU banning ivory wallets?
| wrs wrote:
| If your leather wallet has more than $10,000 in it, there are
| restrictions today on what you can do with it anonymously.
| saba2008 wrote:
| Limit monthly cash withdrawals to 100 EUR
|
| Limit cash currency exchange to 100 EUR (or just outlaw it)
|
| Wait for some time
|
| Retract cash being mandatory debt settling tender
|
| Wait a little more
|
| And then pompously declare, that only criminals need cash
| (not far from truth, anybody but criminals and hardcore
| privacy people will be driven away by then) and ban it
| completely.
| uniclaude wrote:
| Typically, by preventing regulated institutions to accept
| deposits from and withdrawals to addresses that do not match a
| wallet that has been associated with an identified entity. That
| would be unfortunate.
| tomp wrote:
| "Every retailer, bank or money transmitter that receives a
| cryptocurrency must show the origin and past transactions of
| the funds."
| bdcravens wrote:
| By putting pressure on the banking system. No transfers to or
| from exchanges that don't play by their rules.
| burnished wrote:
| Look, where I live weed was decriminalized relatively recently.
| I could still get weed before, but I couldn't rock up some
| where and get a CBD soda, or a vape cartridge, or nice edibles,
| or a variety of products. In the same way you say "how will
| they ban anonymous wallets" you might say "how do you
| criminalize a plant", and thats by making possession illegal
| and following up on that by targeting people/places they expect
| to find said things. They don't have to make it physically
| impossible, they just need to introduce enough friction into
| the process that for most people it stops being worthwhile.
| [deleted]
| nenadg wrote:
| Looks like a ton of bureaucracy with little or no output. I
| agree, might be the same thing as a war against the drugs
| lmfao.
| bserge wrote:
| Yeah, that never stopped them before. Taxpayers are a
| magical thing.
| burnished wrote:
| well, it had a lot of output! it completely stifled a whole
| industry of economic activity, for one. thats sort of my
| point, you might not be able to make a completely 100%
| unbeatable ban, but you really don't need to in order to
| effectively stifle certain kinds of activity. like, the
| harder you make something to do, the fewer people are going
| to have the energy to do it. arguments like "why bother,
| you cant make it literally impossible" miss the point that
| you can make it difficult enough that for most people it
| may as well be impossible.
| afiori wrote:
| The War on Drugs was a matter of method and intensity; the
| aim was to completely and swiftly eradicate drug abuse
| rather than move societal incentives.
|
| This could go either way, as far as I know both are
| possible
| burnished wrote:
| wasn't it to discredit political rivals and minorities?
| like, there really wasn't ever a strong argument against
| weed (that relied on that stated aim), especially in a
| post-prohibition America.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| Unless you only ever transact in crypto, at some point you need
| an on-ramp or off-ramp from/to the traditional banking system,
| and at that point regulation is pretty straight forward. My
| read of it is that they're going to ban anonymous accounts on
| platforms that provide those services.
| rlpb wrote:
| I think maybe they mean anonymous _hosted_ wallets where the
| hoster is inside the EU.
| viro wrote:
| by making it a crime to have one or accept money from one?
| -\\_(tsu)_/-....
| nenadg wrote:
| Good luck making it a crime to install program.
| afiori wrote:
| It is quite easy to criminalize distribution and possession
| of digital assets.
|
| Also no one care if you bounce bitcoins between your own
| wallets, any governments just needs to regulate at the
| border: retail shops that accept crypto and exchanges of
| crypto/fiat are very easy to identify and regulate.
| xtracto wrote:
| > Good luck making it a crime to install program.
|
| It is already a crime to passively posses certain
| combinations of bits (i.e. that directly or indirectly
| [zip, truecrypt] represent a child porn image).
|
| It has been made illegal to possess the implementation of a
| mathematical function (i.e. Kerberos being a "Auxiliary
| Military Equipment"). It will be pretty trivial for the
| government to make it ilegal to download, posses or install
| a program (e.g that interacts in some way with the Bitcoin
| network).
| lottin wrote:
| By passing a law that makes them illegal, simple as that.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| They should make gravitation illegal. Would save lots of
| money spent on transportation.
| zigradett wrote:
| This was news back on July 20th. What has changed?
| cryptica wrote:
| EU regulations are all over the place. There is no cohesive moral
| thread behind any of them.
|
| Firstly, they introduced GDPR regulations to prevent companies
| and organizations from collecting data on citizens... But now
| they introduce regulations to force companies and organizations
| to collect data on citizens. It's ridiculous.
|
| It's frightening that the government could possibly win a case in
| a court of law with such fundamentally flawed logic. What would
| the verdict be like? "Collecting data on people is illegal, but
| it's also illegal to not collect data, therefore you are guilty!"
|
| That must be how totalitarianism comes about; make sure everyone
| is guilty of something, then you can arrest all your political
| opponents on any pretext you like.
|
| What is the point of the law if it contradicts itself? We may as
| well go back to living in caves.
| ajay-b wrote:
| Does this not defeat the whole purpose of cryptocurrency? The
| fact that a government can control its transparency, anonymity,
| the "currency" is now just a digital object, like any other in a
| bartering system. I don't like that a government can trace and
| identify payment. Perhaps that is nihilistic but it speaks for me
| to the heart of freedom.
| russdpale wrote:
| The entire point is accountability, that seems to be what many
| people have forgotten. Also, you still have to use the state to
| enforce property disputes, so cryptocurrency will never buck
| the traditional system, it simply cant.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Was the ability to move money easily between the government-
| owned systems and cryptocurrency ever a purpose, or did it just
| evolve organically?
| bserge wrote:
| Yeah, perhaps instead of working around it, people should work
| to change the existing systems.
|
| Otherwise you're always going to be stuck completely
| underground and treated like a criminal/third rate citizen.
| hamburgerwah wrote:
| europe will also ban the practicing of arithmetic and mathematics
| penultimatebro wrote:
| Thank you EU - Bitcoin transactions weren't traceable at ALL
| before.
| gfodor wrote:
| In other news, the government has declared by decree that nobody
| is allowed to memorize seed phrases anymore.
|
| Also, multiplying prime numbers is now illegal.
|
| edit: Downvotes are funny because we are almost certainly going
| to see laws passed in the next few years that are functionally
| equivalent to the rules stated above.
| volta83 wrote:
| The downvotes you are getting is for not reading the article.
|
| Your comment is not on-topic.
| gfodor wrote:
| I read the article. Why is what I wrote not on-topic?
|
| I tend to think the government will find its attempts to rein
| in crypto will just feed into the anti-fragility of the whole
| thing, and the result will be increasingly nonsensical
| attempts to stomp it out up until capitulation.
|
| And yes, this leads to a prediction that some very
| technologically illiterate legislators will probably draft
| rules that are semantically equivalent to what I wrote.
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| The title is simply incorrect and clickbait, so it should be
| changed. I think that is a quite relevant point
| burnished wrote:
| Yeah, it would be, if done to pursue ends that the law has
| deemed criminal. This isn't the gotcha you might think it is,
| because no one is going to bat an eye at your attempt to boil
| the nuance of a law out in an effort to expose some underlying
| paradox that only matters on a technical level. I'm not saying
| that the law will be wise, or efficacious, or even really
| pertinent, just that we already have ways of reconciling what
| you may perceive as being an intractable problem. Like, laws
| against theft don't mean that any action where I take something
| of yours without express permission is theft, like a genuine
| intent with the context that it was needed to safely handle an
| immediate hazard to life or limb.
|
| That example is admittedly weak, but do you see where I'm going
| with that?
| gfodor wrote:
| I see where you are going, but I'm not arguing that the
| government won't be willing or able to enforce what
| transactions are permissible if they can prove the
| multiplication involved was used to facilitate an exchange.
|
| What I am saying is that governments who are passing laws not
| to regulate transactions, but to prevent the use of
| cryptocurrencies in general, will fail due to a first
| principles analysis of what they'll be trying to do.
| thirtyseven wrote:
| In other news, the government has declared by decree that you
| can't move objects outside of an arbitrarily defined border
| that a piece of paper says is someone's "house", and then
| exchange those objects for different pieces of paper that the
| very _same_ government has declared has value.
| gfodor wrote:
| abstracting these things to sound silly doesn't move you
| outside the realm of well established norms regarding the
| government's role in mediating property rights through force.
|
| what I wrote above is in a totally different ballpark - and
| we should expect to see government laws that pop up that do
| in fact attempt to regulate digit memorization or
| multiplication.
| seriousquestion wrote:
| To build on this; Is code equivalent to speech? Is Bitcoin free
| speech?
| user-the-name wrote:
| Probably not, and no.
| blibble wrote:
| if the employees in charge of writing this legislation
| understood bitcoin enough to even consider that it would be
| impressive
|
| but they don't, in the same way they don't understand cookies,
| databases or stock exchanges
|
| none of this stops them legislating though...
| amacalac wrote:
| lol
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