4 ms·

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

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 To me a lot of these regulations seem like the TSA security theatre, seems useful, but at this point, pretty outdated and inefficient. 1: https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/global-cost-of-financial-crime-compliance-over-180-billion-report-reveals/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.
- rwallace 5y ago
  Okay, fair enough, maybe 'very minor inconvenience' is understating it. And granted that the safeguards are not perfect, and some financial crime does get through. I still think the current state of affairs is a big improvement on what we would have if we just threw out the regulations.

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.

rwallace 5y ago
Okay, fair enough, maybe 'very minor inconvenience' is understating it. And granted that the safeguards are not perfect, and some financial crime does get through. I still think the current state of affairs is a big improvement on what we would have if we just threw out the regulations.