8 ms·

From TFA: > Users can trade the tokens anonymously 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from anywhere, unhindered by capital controls, “know your client” rules i

by aewct 5y ago

From TFA: > Users can trade the tokens anonymously 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from anywhere, unhindered by capital controls, “know your client” rules imposed on broker-dealers, and other frictions of the traditional financial system. These are certainly new innovations and features, be they good or bad.

yawaworht1978 5y ago
Oh my, they cal KYC "friction", that is indeed creative writing.
- aewct 5y ago
  An OS asking you to confirm that you want to delete a file is also friction. Like KYC, it is a positive, but friction nonetheless. In context, they also mention traditional markets being closed at certain days and times. This is also friction, but negative.
- baby 5y ago
  How is it not friction?
  - verdverm 5y ago
    It's a law that requires financial institutions to "Know Their Customer" in order to operate legally. It's a reasonable law. Following existing regulations will be needed for crypto to have a chance at being mainstream
    - rawtxapp 5y ago
      Or arguably, it's burdening 99% of legitimate users to stop the 1% of bad actors.
      - rwallace 5y ago
        Yep. It's burdening 99% of legitimate users with a very minor inconvenience, to stop the 1% of bad actors who would otherwise end up doing a lot of really bad things that would harm the 99% in ways that go far outside the scope we think of as covered by the financial system. So yes, I understand where you're coming from, but my libertarian instincts to reflexively think of KYC/AML as excessive and annoying regulation and untrammeled exchange as a good thing, turn out on closer examination to be simply wrong.
        rawtxapp 5y ago
        I'm not sure I would categorize it as "minor inconvenience". In terms of financial numbers, it's estimated to cost 180B$ [1]. You also have to consider all the opportunity costs of what we could achieve with a faster and smoother financial system. And you have to consider financial inclusion and all that, there are lots of really interesting financial instruments that I can't access because there's some retail that doesn't understand exactly how it works and because we lower regulations to lowest common denominator, let's just ban it. We are also cutoff from these exchanges like Binance which have much more liquidity, more interesting products, etc. And I'm not sure that it's all that effective, especially after seeing HSBC launder money for cartels and get away with it [2]. Oh and none of these regulations obviously stopped 2008 or any of the previous crises. To me a lot of these regulations seem like the TSA security theatre, seems useful, but at this point, pretty outdated and inefficient. 1: https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/global-cost-of-financial-crime-compliance-over-180-billion-report-reveals/ https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/global-cost-of-fi... 2: https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-news-for-jan-29-hsbcs-money-laundering-scandal-hbc-scbff-ing-cs-rbs0129.aspx https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-n...
        fennecfoxen 5y ago
        Agreed that this isn't just a "minor inconvenience" and as a resident alien in another country for a while (the UK), I found KYC regulations to be really quite obnoxious — and I was a pretty good position to handle them, at that. The question of whether it's worth it is a real one, and more honestly answered (whether positive or negative) if we admit these substantial costs.
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      How is it a reasonable law? It's an invasion of privacy that ties every book you buy on Amazon to your government ID. People argue that voter ID is an unreasonable burden on vulnerable populations. If that's the case then how is it a reasonable burden for interacting with the financial system? If cryptocurrency does anything useful at all it will be to make privacy invasions like that sufficiently toothless that the case can be made to eliminate them in the ordinary financial system as well. Arguably it already has and all that's left is to eliminate the pointless KYC requirements.
    - dcolkitt 5y ago
      It’s not reasonable. The government should not be snooping into people’s financial accounts anymore than they should be snooping into people’s private homes or email inbox. It astounds me how even principled civil libertarians wholesale accept an Orwellian level of surveillance on anything related to money. The Founding Fathers would have all revolted at anything even resembling modern KYC/AML law.
      - verdverm 5y ago
        KYC does not give the gov't your transaction history, it simply means that your financial institution needs to verify your identity. It is part of an overall strategy to reduce the amount of damage malevolent actors can create. You might try reading the Federalist Papers before making claims about the founding fathers. Again, it is not surveillance by government anyhow.
    - baby 5y ago
      Reasonable doesn't mean it doesn't add friction btw
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  I've both implemented, and been impacted by, KYC workflows. It is definitely friction. "Required by law," sure. "Prevents money laundering," on occasion. But friction, most definitely.
tablespoon 5y ago
>> Users can trade the tokens anonymously 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from anywhere, unhindered by capital controls, “know your client” rules imposed on broker-dealers, and other frictions of the traditional financial system. > These are certainly new innovations and features, be they good or bad. That's saying a car with its seat belts removed has an "innovative new feature." The usual word for that situation is "regression."
- aewct 5y ago
  There's no benefit to the user to having no seatbelts. There's a huge benefit to having open markets at all times. The usual phrase for your argument is "false analogy."
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > There's no benefit to the user to having no seatbelts. There's a huge benefit to having open markets at all times. I quoted the full sentence, but I was mainly referring to: >> unhindered by capital controls, “know your client” rules imposed on broker-dealers, and other frictions of the traditional financial system While you can always find some little exceptions, most financial regulation has actually has good reason to exist and solves actual problems (though maybe not your problems, as in burglary laws do not solve burglars' problems). It's not much of a "feature" to do away with them, since then you just invite the re-emergence of problems that have already been solved or mitigated.
  - whoaisme 5y ago
    There are no benefits to you. There are plenty of benefits to me. Let the market decide? Probably not. It's easy to accuse people of logical fallacies while somehow you're the sole arbitrator to what is and isn't good for users.
  - toast0 5y ago
    > There's no benefit to the user to having no seatbelts. No seatbelts means it's easier to get out of the vehicle (if you planned to or not). Some seatbelts are uncomfortable. Seatbelts add to the materials and assembly cost of the vehicle, and add weight to the vehicle which increases fuel usage and wear on the tires and suspension and road. Maybe they wrinkle your clothes? Installing retrofit seatbelts on a vehicle without them can be difficult and the result may be really uncomfortable. Very ocassionally, it might be preferable to be flung from a vehicle rather than retained in a vehicle during a colission, although that would have to be a pretty specific set of circumstances, because being flung from a vehicle results in a lot of undesirable injury. Not having seatbelts has minor benefits. All of them are outweighed by the benefits of seatbelts in my opinion (and I think there's broad consensus) but claiming there's no benefit to not having them or that there's no cost to having them is silly.

by aewct 5y ago

yawaworht1978 5y ago

Oh my, they cal KYC "friction", that is indeed creative writing.

aewct 5y ago
An OS asking you to confirm that you want to delete a file is also friction. Like KYC, it is a positive, but friction nonetheless. In context, they also mention traditional markets being closed at certain days and times. This is also friction, but negative.
baby 5y ago
How is it not friction?
- verdverm 5y ago
  It's a law that requires financial institutions to "Know Their Customer" in order to operate legally. It's a reasonable law. Following existing regulations will be needed for crypto to have a chance at being mainstream
  - rawtxapp 5y ago
    Or arguably, it's burdening 99% of legitimate users to stop the 1% of bad actors.
    - rwallace 5y ago
      Yep. It's burdening 99% of legitimate users with a very minor inconvenience, to stop the 1% of bad actors who would otherwise end up doing a lot of really bad things that would harm the 99% in ways that go far outside the scope we think of as covered by the financial system. So yes, I understand where you're coming from, but my libertarian instincts to reflexively think of KYC/AML as excessive and annoying regulation and untrammeled exchange as a good thing, turn out on closer examination to be simply wrong.
      - rawtxapp 5y ago
        I'm not sure I would categorize it as "minor inconvenience". In terms of financial numbers, it's estimated to cost 180B$ [1]. You also have to consider all the opportunity costs of what we could achieve with a faster and smoother financial system. And you have to consider financial inclusion and all that, there are lots of really interesting financial instruments that I can't access because there's some retail that doesn't understand exactly how it works and because we lower regulations to lowest common denominator, let's just ban it. We are also cutoff from these exchanges like Binance which have much more liquidity, more interesting products, etc. And I'm not sure that it's all that effective, especially after seeing HSBC launder money for cartels and get away with it [2]. Oh and none of these regulations obviously stopped 2008 or any of the previous crises. To me a lot of these regulations seem like the TSA security theatre, seems useful, but at this point, pretty outdated and inefficient. 1: https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/global-cost-of-financial-crime-compliance-over-180-billion-report-reveals/ https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/global-cost-of-fi... 2: https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-news-for-jan-29-hsbcs-money-laundering-scandal-hbc-scbff-ing-cs-rbs0129.aspx https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-n...
        fennecfoxen 5y ago
        Agreed that this isn't just a "minor inconvenience" and as a resident alien in another country for a while (the UK), I found KYC regulations to be really quite obnoxious — and I was a pretty good position to handle them, at that. The question of whether it's worth it is a real one, and more honestly answered (whether positive or negative) if we admit these substantial costs.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    How is it a reasonable law? It's an invasion of privacy that ties every book you buy on Amazon to your government ID. People argue that voter ID is an unreasonable burden on vulnerable populations. If that's the case then how is it a reasonable burden for interacting with the financial system? If cryptocurrency does anything useful at all it will be to make privacy invasions like that sufficiently toothless that the case can be made to eliminate them in the ordinary financial system as well. Arguably it already has and all that's left is to eliminate the pointless KYC requirements.
  - dcolkitt 5y ago
    It’s not reasonable. The government should not be snooping into people’s financial accounts anymore than they should be snooping into people’s private homes or email inbox. It astounds me how even principled civil libertarians wholesale accept an Orwellian level of surveillance on anything related to money. The Founding Fathers would have all revolted at anything even resembling modern KYC/AML law.
    - verdverm 5y ago
      KYC does not give the gov't your transaction history, it simply means that your financial institution needs to verify your identity. It is part of an overall strategy to reduce the amount of damage malevolent actors can create. You might try reading the Federalist Papers before making claims about the founding fathers. Again, it is not surveillance by government anyhow.
  - baby 5y ago
    Reasonable doesn't mean it doesn't add friction btw
fennecfoxen 5y ago
I've both implemented, and been impacted by, KYC workflows. It is definitely friction. "Required by law," sure. "Prevents money laundering," on occasion. But friction, most definitely.

tablespoon 5y ago

>> Users can trade the tokens anonymously 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from anywhere, unhindered by capital controls, “know your client” rules imposed on broker-dealers, and other frictions of the traditional financial system. > These are certainly new innovations and features, be they good or bad. That's saying a car with its seat belts removed has an "innovative new feature." The usual word for that situation is "regression."

aewct 5y ago
There's no benefit to the user to having no seatbelts. There's a huge benefit to having open markets at all times. The usual phrase for your argument is "false analogy."
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > There's no benefit to the user to having no seatbelts. There's a huge benefit to having open markets at all times. I quoted the full sentence, but I was mainly referring to: >> unhindered by capital controls, “know your client” rules imposed on broker-dealers, and other frictions of the traditional financial system While you can always find some little exceptions, most financial regulation has actually has good reason to exist and solves actual problems (though maybe not your problems, as in burglary laws do not solve burglars' problems). It's not much of a "feature" to do away with them, since then you just invite the re-emergence of problems that have already been solved or mitigated.
- whoaisme 5y ago
  There are no benefits to you. There are plenty of benefits to me. Let the market decide? Probably not. It's easy to accuse people of logical fallacies while somehow you're the sole arbitrator to what is and isn't good for users.
- toast0 5y ago
  > There's no benefit to the user to having no seatbelts. No seatbelts means it's easier to get out of the vehicle (if you planned to or not). Some seatbelts are uncomfortable. Seatbelts add to the materials and assembly cost of the vehicle, and add weight to the vehicle which increases fuel usage and wear on the tires and suspension and road. Maybe they wrinkle your clothes? Installing retrofit seatbelts on a vehicle without them can be difficult and the result may be really uncomfortable. Very ocassionally, it might be preferable to be flung from a vehicle rather than retained in a vehicle during a colission, although that would have to be a pretty specific set of circumstances, because being flung from a vehicle results in a lot of undesirable injury. Not having seatbelts has minor benefits. All of them are outweighed by the benefits of seatbelts in my opinion (and I think there's broad consensus) but claiming there's no benefit to not having them or that there's no cost to having them is silly.