4 ms·

…if you can match addresses to people.

• grey-area 9y ago
  Pretty trivial for a nation state, given sufficient motivation.
  • StavrosK 9y ago
    Not if it's something like Monero.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • anonymfus 9y ago
      Good reason to ban Monero
      • VMG 9y ago
        Good reason to buy Monero
    • acdha 9y ago
      They can still require mandatory reporting when real money enters and leaves the system. Everyone is going to need to convert currency into Monero or vice versa and governments routinely require disclosure information at such points.
      • StavrosK 9y ago
        Yes, for sure. But there can be a secondary market if people accept Monero directly, so you don't have to convert.
        • acdha 9y ago
          Sure - just as cash and barter have allowed for millennia, but there’s an upper bound before that draws attention. Your landlord or supermarket have too much to lose if they help you cheat on your taxes. With a digital transaction record keeping is less burdensome, too, so it’s more likely that if a substantial number of people started using cryptocurrencies the tax authorities would simply require reporting both sides of the transaction so they could confirm that the other party is reporting accurately as well.
        • JumpCrisscross 9y ago
          It always surprises me how casually crypto currency enthusiasts treat wilful money laundering and tax fraud.
          • StavrosK 9y ago
            The scenario you had in mind was money laundering and tax fraud? Mine was an oppressive government trying to dictate where you spend your money.
          • acdha 9y ago
            Often with palpable enthusiasm, right before whining about the assumption that most non-speculative transactions are illegal.
          • cfadvan 9y ago
            They’re almost as bad as the “sovereign citizen” crowd, more numerous, and just as sanctimonious. Maybe Blockchain has a future, but this current crop of money launderers and thieves don’t. Between the SEC in the US and tax authorities elsewhere, it’s a just a matter of time before having an immutable ledger of these activists is shown to be a really bad idea.
    • Sangermaine 9y ago
      This isn't a new problem for tax authorities, it's an old and solved one, despite the shiny new technological wrapper. If you're making a lot of unreported income, there are ways for the tax authorities to know, in the same way they do with income from illegal activities that you're not reporting or large amounts of cash payments you're hiding, or just unreported income in general. They don't need to match your identity to your Monero addresses. If you're using your Monero in any way that interacts with the real world they're going to ask where the money in your accounts came from, where the money for these assets you've been buying but don't seem to have a way to afford came from, where the money for these investments you've been making came from... Even if you can somehow obtain things without converting out of the cryptocurrency, you're still acquiring assets, investments, and the like that require registration and disclosure, which will then lead to the same questions. Paying your monthly rent directly in cryptocurrency? If anyone audits or investigates you're going to have to explain how you're affording it when your reported income doesn't seem to support it. And the sellers/landlords/etc will themselves have records, so you better hope they're also completely committed to protecting you if they themselves get audited or investigated.
  • sametmax 9y ago
    zerocoin and private send is going to make that pretty hard.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
• test6554 9y ago
  ...and if no assets are kept off the books