9 ms·

A cynical way to look at this will be that Switzerland had enabled people - corrupt politicians, dictators etc, especially from third world countries, hide mone

A cynical way to look at this will be that Switzerland had enabled people - corrupt politicians, dictators etc, especially from third world countries, hide money. They refused to divulge bank details citing privacy concerns. But in recent years details have come to light - either through leaked data or country actions. This has led to weakening of their infamous privacy rules. With cryptocurrency's rise, it offers Switzerland a new way to continue their privacy bs. So, obviously they are going to embrace and enable.

m_mueller 9y ago
> privacy bs Privacy is always BS until the lack of it bites you personally. Privacy (i.e. 4th amendment) is to Swiss what 2nd and 4th amendment is to conservative Americans: Our insurance against government overreach. The problem is of course that not every place is as democratic (i.e. ruled by the people as a whole) and low in crime, therefore privacy creates unwanted side effects in form of illegitimate uses. What exactly is illegitimate is up for discussion though - e.g. I consider tax hiding as simply a symptom of governments failing to create stringent market places where taxes flow automatically and fairly. As long as you don't have a world- (solar system?) wide government with total control, you'll never eliminate the availability of tax havens, they just get shifted around - currently the easiest place to hide is probably Delaware. I see cryptocurrency as a nice opportunity to introduce a much more stringent monetary system where it's trivial to trace back the origin of money and track whether it has been earned in a legitimate way, including the deduction of taxes. People will still have the same options in general: (a) store it in a personal offline wallet - somewhat dangerous due to potential loss and/or forgetting access codes (b) give access codes to a trusted bank who will have an interest in tracing whether everything is in order (due to regulations) (c) store it somewhere off-shore, risking fraud What crypto enables is basically a clean separation of (b) and (c), which would make life easier for Swiss banks in the current landscape, i.e. allow them to once again deal freely with foreign nationals, especially Americans.
- thisisit 9y ago
  It seems it is true - you read what you believe and rest is all lost. So thank you for quoting a misused qualifier from my post for your counter. I don't expect people who have not lived or experienced what people like me in the developing countries have to go through because of the Swiss privacy bs. Though I do expect them to hem and haw when stuff like Panama papers are revealed. Additionally, it seems you don't really understand how cryptocurrency work. Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous and hence, it allows stuff like this: > I see cryptocurrency as a nice opportunity to introduce a much more stringent monetary system where it's trivial to trace back the origin of money and track whether it has been earned in a legitimate way, including the deduction of taxes. True anonymity which you want from the 4th Amendment, happens in cryptocurrencies like Monero. Those are resistant to blockchain analysis and you can't trace it back to origin.
  - castle-bravo 9y ago
    Is it really fair to blame the Swiss for the behaviour of your politicians? I'm not convinced.
    - jacobush 9y ago
      Presumably they ("the Swiss") enabled, through privacy focused banking, the politicians to safely funnel away (big) money.
    - Chriky 9y ago
      He's blaming the Swiss for their own actions
  - m_mueller 9y ago
    You don’t seem to be interpreting what I write favorably. My main point is that there is a balance to strike between privacy and control. One of the main issues in developing nations is that opening a small business legally is overly complicated (in some cases literally years of administrative work for the applicant), so people are forced to keep everything out of the books, which prevents them from ever gaining wealth needed to reinvest. An ideal system IMO would achieve full transparency for the money of larger organisations (including governments) while giving privacy to private people and small businesses. The Swiss system is very good at achieving the latter but rather poor at at former (for which instead direct democratic processes are intended to achieve the necessary checks). I don’t have a perfect solution for this problem, but IMO it’s worth thinking about - and crypto seems to be promising. Maybe a combination of Monero and Ethereum where privacy is optional, with regulations for what kind of transactions transparence is required?
- microtherion 9y ago
  > Privacy (i.e. 4th amendment) is to Swiss what 2nd and 4th amendment is to conservative Americans: Our insurance against government overreach. Ah, that's utter BS. Not one of the advocates of banking privacy is demanding similar privacy for wage statements. Oh no, if your income comes mainly from wages, you obviously can't be trusted like people whose income comes from investments!
  - ttoinou 9y ago
    I solely demand similar privacy for wage statements
  - walshemj 9y ago
    The IRS and The HMRC do want to know where all your income comes from - J random buzy body or an employer should be told to GTFO
- HIPisTheAnswer 9y ago
  Your only defense against government overreach (ie violent aggression) is self-defense (ie genuine, well-trained militia of free people). Reference to: The constitution of no authority by Lysander Spooner, and, The law by F.Bastiat
  - EarthIsHome 9y ago
    What is an example of a genuine, well-trained militia, and how does it fare against a government's military?
    - jpttsn 9y ago
      Afghan militia has fared well both against US/NATO and Soviet militaries in the past 50 years.
      - danans 9y ago
        If you are referring to the Taliban and their precursors, they have had, and continue to have significant financial and logistical backing from nation states.
        jpttsn 9y ago
        Does that make them a bad example of a successful militia? Perhaps a successful militia requires significant financial and logistical backing from nation states, in addition to being well trained.
        danans 9y ago
        In that case they are paramilitaries, not just militias.
    - hueving 9y ago
      This question falsely presumes that the government's military is not also fractured by whatever is causing the militia to revolt. The military is made up of citizens.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
solotronics 9y ago
privacy BS? I find it weird that anyone would default to thinking nobody should have privacy. Why is it anyones business what anyone else does with money? Unless you are breaking the law ( which is already illegal ) why does it matter what people anywhere are doing with their money?
- ttoinou 9y ago
  What's even better is that crypto currencies are redefining in their own way "money" so I would rephrase what you said in "Why is it anyones business what anyone else does with their computer and internet connection? "
  - solotronics 9y ago
    encryption has brought data back into our own control to an extent. cryptocurrency is doing the same with money. I think people are so steeped in the current system that they don't realize that people expected a certain degree of financial privacy up until recently. Besides paying your taxes ( which is also a recent invention in the US ) it was never any business of the government what anyone did with their money. Reading about the history of the US people seem to have forgotten why the country was founded and what people thought before about 80 years ago. Life, liberty, property. In no way does that include thugs with guns forcing you to give up your hard earned money. There was NO income tax on individuals up until WW1 ever in the US. Through a slow process that takes years to change the Federal government has crept into our lives taking more money and control. It is extremely worrysome to me that other young people my age want more government control and not less. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State...
- danans 9y ago
  > Unless you are breaking the law ( which is already illegal ) I think the critique is that the privacy is being used as a mechanism for breaking the law, by hiding illegally gotten gains.
  - 9y ago
microtherion 9y ago
In my opinion as a Swiss - Large parts of our financial sector have never truly figured out how to make money doing honest services for honest customers. As traditional revenue sources (stealing from Nazi victims, hiding dictators' money, assisting in income tax fraud, LIBOR rate fraud) have gradually dried up, the prospect of a new, extremely shady, financial sector is irresistible to bankers and their political allies. - The lack of imagination in honest banking is going along with chasing the tail end of trends, especially US trends. The large Swiss banks were always happy to provide the dumb money, e.g. in the 2008 crash. So small wonder that a figure like Johann Gevers will find Swiss bankers and politicians eager to cozy up to him.
ssdd 9y ago
And that's based on the assumption that cryptocurrencies are only used for illegal activities, which is not true.
fla 9y ago
FYI, The Swiss government also often freezes assets when requested by legal international means [1]. [1] https://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home/foreign-policy/financial-centre-economy/illicit-assets-pep/freeze-assets.html https://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home/foreign-policy/financia... Edit: typo
malthaus 9y ago
I think you're giving our politicians/finance system too much credit. Besides, after the US debacle regulators did a 180 on the topic. If (and that's a big if) cryptocurrency ecosystems get large enough to attract significant institutional money / wealth management you can be sure that all participants will be held accountable in terms of KYC / AML / Regularization etc. If any of the startups here think differently they will be in for a rude awakening.
misja111 9y ago
Cryptocurrencies have made it easier than ever to channel large amounts of black money out of your country. And since Switzerland is the world's favorite place to hide money, it is no more than logical that it embraces this new vehicle of black money transport.
madshiva 9y ago
They didn't have enabled this. People, politicans, dicators was abusing our mentality of protection/privacy. We are not responsible for your politicans, your dicators, that are corrupt and abuse our system. We only support privacy. And US, EU was pushing us to the limit that we had not choice than break our rules. We still not happy with that. It's not because people abuse of the Tools that the Tools are the problem. People, should not gain anything from hidden money, it's the base of a system that works. If you don't want people to steal, then don't do class of people, with people so poor that they had not choice than steal.
TheLostOne 9y ago
https://twitter.com/gva_watcher https://twitter.com/gva_watcher
csomar 9y ago
> corrupt politicians, dictators etc, especially from third world countries How is that Switzerland issue or responsibility? They can't judge people for what they do overseas.

m_mueller 9y ago

> privacy bs Privacy is always BS until the lack of it bites you personally. Privacy (i.e. 4th amendment) is to Swiss what 2nd and 4th amendment is to conservative Americans: Our insurance against government overreach. The problem is of course that not every place is as democratic (i.e. ruled by the people as a whole) and low in crime, therefore privacy creates unwanted side effects in form of illegitimate uses. What exactly is illegitimate is up for discussion though - e.g. I consider tax hiding as simply a symptom of governments failing to create stringent market places where taxes flow automatically and fairly. As long as you don't have a world- (solar system?) wide government with total control, you'll never eliminate the availability of tax havens, they just get shifted around - currently the easiest place to hide is probably Delaware. I see cryptocurrency as a nice opportunity to introduce a much more stringent monetary system where it's trivial to trace back the origin of money and track whether it has been earned in a legitimate way, including the deduction of taxes. People will still have the same options in general: (a) store it in a personal offline wallet - somewhat dangerous due to potential loss and/or forgetting access codes (b) give access codes to a trusted bank who will have an interest in tracing whether everything is in order (due to regulations) (c) store it somewhere off-shore, risking fraud What crypto enables is basically a clean separation of (b) and (c), which would make life easier for Swiss banks in the current landscape, i.e. allow them to once again deal freely with foreign nationals, especially Americans.

thisisit 9y ago
It seems it is true - you read what you believe and rest is all lost. So thank you for quoting a misused qualifier from my post for your counter. I don't expect people who have not lived or experienced what people like me in the developing countries have to go through because of the Swiss privacy bs. Though I do expect them to hem and haw when stuff like Panama papers are revealed. Additionally, it seems you don't really understand how cryptocurrency work. Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous and hence, it allows stuff like this: > I see cryptocurrency as a nice opportunity to introduce a much more stringent monetary system where it's trivial to trace back the origin of money and track whether it has been earned in a legitimate way, including the deduction of taxes. True anonymity which you want from the 4th Amendment, happens in cryptocurrencies like Monero. Those are resistant to blockchain analysis and you can't trace it back to origin.
- castle-bravo 9y ago
  Is it really fair to blame the Swiss for the behaviour of your politicians? I'm not convinced.
  - jacobush 9y ago
    Presumably they ("the Swiss") enabled, through privacy focused banking, the politicians to safely funnel away (big) money.
  - Chriky 9y ago
    He's blaming the Swiss for their own actions
- m_mueller 9y ago
  You don’t seem to be interpreting what I write favorably. My main point is that there is a balance to strike between privacy and control. One of the main issues in developing nations is that opening a small business legally is overly complicated (in some cases literally years of administrative work for the applicant), so people are forced to keep everything out of the books, which prevents them from ever gaining wealth needed to reinvest. An ideal system IMO would achieve full transparency for the money of larger organisations (including governments) while giving privacy to private people and small businesses. The Swiss system is very good at achieving the latter but rather poor at at former (for which instead direct democratic processes are intended to achieve the necessary checks). I don’t have a perfect solution for this problem, but IMO it’s worth thinking about - and crypto seems to be promising. Maybe a combination of Monero and Ethereum where privacy is optional, with regulations for what kind of transactions transparence is required?
microtherion 9y ago
> Privacy (i.e. 4th amendment) is to Swiss what 2nd and 4th amendment is to conservative Americans: Our insurance against government overreach. Ah, that's utter BS. Not one of the advocates of banking privacy is demanding similar privacy for wage statements. Oh no, if your income comes mainly from wages, you obviously can't be trusted like people whose income comes from investments!
- ttoinou 9y ago
  I solely demand similar privacy for wage statements
- walshemj 9y ago
  The IRS and The HMRC do want to know where all your income comes from - J random buzy body or an employer should be told to GTFO
HIPisTheAnswer 9y ago
Your only defense against government overreach (ie violent aggression) is self-defense (ie genuine, well-trained militia of free people). Reference to: The constitution of no authority by Lysander Spooner, and, The law by F.Bastiat
- EarthIsHome 9y ago
  What is an example of a genuine, well-trained militia, and how does it fare against a government's military?
  - jpttsn 9y ago
    Afghan militia has fared well both against US/NATO and Soviet militaries in the past 50 years.
    - danans 9y ago
      If you are referring to the Taliban and their precursors, they have had, and continue to have significant financial and logistical backing from nation states.
      - jpttsn 9y ago
        Does that make them a bad example of a successful militia? Perhaps a successful militia requires significant financial and logistical backing from nation states, in addition to being well trained.
        danans 9y ago
        In that case they are paramilitaries, not just militias.
  - hueving 9y ago
    This question falsely presumes that the government's military is not also fractured by whatever is causing the militia to revolt. The military is made up of citizens.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

solotronics 9y ago

privacy BS? I find it weird that anyone would default to thinking nobody should have privacy. Why is it anyones business what anyone else does with money? Unless you are breaking the law ( which is already illegal ) why does it matter what people anywhere are doing with their money?

ttoinou 9y ago
What's even better is that crypto currencies are redefining in their own way "money" so I would rephrase what you said in "Why is it anyones business what anyone else does with their computer and internet connection? "
- solotronics 9y ago
  encryption has brought data back into our own control to an extent. cryptocurrency is doing the same with money. I think people are so steeped in the current system that they don't realize that people expected a certain degree of financial privacy up until recently. Besides paying your taxes ( which is also a recent invention in the US ) it was never any business of the government what anyone did with their money. Reading about the history of the US people seem to have forgotten why the country was founded and what people thought before about 80 years ago. Life, liberty, property. In no way does that include thugs with guns forcing you to give up your hard earned money. There was NO income tax on individuals up until WW1 ever in the US. Through a slow process that takes years to change the Federal government has crept into our lives taking more money and control. It is extremely worrysome to me that other young people my age want more government control and not less. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State...
danans 9y ago
> Unless you are breaking the law ( which is already illegal ) I think the critique is that the privacy is being used as a mechanism for breaking the law, by hiding illegally gotten gains.
- 9y ago

microtherion 9y ago

In my opinion as a Swiss - Large parts of our financial sector have never truly figured out how to make money doing honest services for honest customers. As traditional revenue sources (stealing from Nazi victims, hiding dictators' money, assisting in income tax fraud, LIBOR rate fraud) have gradually dried up, the prospect of a new, extremely shady, financial sector is irresistible to bankers and their political allies. - The lack of imagination in honest banking is going along with chasing the tail end of trends, especially US trends. The large Swiss banks were always happy to provide the dumb money, e.g. in the 2008 crash. So small wonder that a figure like Johann Gevers will find Swiss bankers and politicians eager to cozy up to him.

ssdd 9y ago

And that's based on the assumption that cryptocurrencies are only used for illegal activities, which is not true.

fla 9y ago

FYI, The Swiss government also often freezes assets when requested by legal international means [1]. [1] https://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home/foreign-policy/financial-centre-economy/illicit-assets-pep/freeze-assets.html https://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home/foreign-policy/financia... Edit: typo

malthaus 9y ago

I think you're giving our politicians/finance system too much credit. Besides, after the US debacle regulators did a 180 on the topic. If (and that's a big if) cryptocurrency ecosystems get large enough to attract significant institutional money / wealth management you can be sure that all participants will be held accountable in terms of KYC / AML / Regularization etc. If any of the startups here think differently they will be in for a rude awakening.

misja111 9y ago

Cryptocurrencies have made it easier than ever to channel large amounts of black money out of your country. And since Switzerland is the world's favorite place to hide money, it is no more than logical that it embraces this new vehicle of black money transport.

madshiva 9y ago

They didn't have enabled this. People, politicans, dicators was abusing our mentality of protection/privacy. We are not responsible for your politicans, your dicators, that are corrupt and abuse our system. We only support privacy. And US, EU was pushing us to the limit that we had not choice than break our rules. We still not happy with that. It's not because people abuse of the Tools that the Tools are the problem. People, should not gain anything from hidden money, it's the base of a system that works. If you don't want people to steal, then don't do class of people, with people so poor that they had not choice than steal.

TheLostOne 9y ago

https://twitter.com/gva_watcher https://twitter.com/gva_watcher

csomar 9y ago

> corrupt politicians, dictators etc, especially from third world countries How is that Switzerland issue or responsibility? They can't judge people for what they do overseas.