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I’m amazed by how short sighted most of the comments here are. When it comes to large financial operations, society has clearly chosen transparency over privac

by d--b 5y ago

I’m amazed by how short sighted most of the comments here are. When it comes to large financial operations, society has clearly chosen transparency over privacy. Cause guess what, tax evasion, money laundering, political fixing, terrorism financing are things that exist and really are hurtful to our economies. Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. And Bitcoin’s anonymity is not a feature of blockchain and never has been. There is the wallet, but who holds the wallet is not part of the protocol. You can’t show up in a bank with a bucket load of $100 bills and open an anonymous bank account. Well you shouldn’t be able to with bitcoins either.

ekianjo 5y ago
> You can’t show up in a bank with a bucket load of $100 bills and open an anonymous bank account. Well you shouldn’t be able to with bitcoins either. So we have to make a superior system inferior?
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  well, we had to make the superior system of cash inferior - as just described.
  - OtomotO 5y ago
    We didnt have to, some chose to. I never voted for any of those clowns in power
    - alkonaut 5y ago
      There is currently no political (and therefore I assume public) will to go for privacy over transparency for large money transfers. You can vote for someone who wants to reverse this, and it might change. Since this is pretty much an international system though (banks offering anonymous accounts will have difficulty interoperating with other actors), it’s likely not enough with political/public opinion in just one country.
realcertify 5y ago
I would argue with "society has clearly chosen" statement. The governments are putting more and more strict regulations in place for last decades and they often don't care what the society thinks about those. There used to be a time not long ago when one could show up in bank with a bunch of cash and it would be of no issue. I don't think that terrorism was less important back then.
- lottin 5y ago
  Do you mean not long ago when the government budget was 1% of GDP? Nowadays it's 40-60%, in developed countries. Large levels of public spending are a choice that we have made as a society, and the spending needs to be funded somehow.
  - ur-whale 5y ago
    > Large levels of public spending are a choice that we have made as a society It most certainly isn't a choice we've made democratically. Rather, it's a case of boiling the frog: a thousand tiny cuts inflicted by elected politicians over the very long term which has slowly led to the monster size leech our government has become.
    - lottin 5y ago
      No, it is a choice that we've made. For example, in Europe spending cuts after the 2007-2009 financial crisis were met with widespread protests.
    - tobltobs 5y ago
      No, most people are just stupid enough to elect the one promising the most.
      - workallday21 5y ago
        You could also say a true alternative will never be allowed to get big enough to have votes. Systemic something something.
balozi 5y ago
Isn't transparency in trade and commerce a relatively new practice? Like maybe in the last 100-150 years. Mostly so as a means to collect taxes based on treaties? And there is still very little transparency.
tamrix 5y ago
Society can vote with its wallet.
- honzzz 5y ago
  I think that the majority considers the system where a few billionaires can outvote everyone else to be the bad thing we are trying to avoid.
- Bancakes 5y ago
  There is no negative vote with a wallet. Only positive and neutral.
  - nybble41 5y ago
    This is a feature, not a bug. In the "vote with your wallet" system you only get a "negative vote"—actually veto power—when something directly harms you. Which is as it should be.
    - Bancakes 5y ago
      It's definitely a bug. In the rare case where something is harmful, there must be a way to vote it down. This avoids rushing to the government to pass laws. Like the right of repair, I want to vote against Apple, not write my senator once a month.
      - nybble41 5y ago
        > In the rare case where something is harmful, there must be a way to vote it down. If you are harmed by it then you get a veto, which is better than merely getting to "vote it down". No action which harms you can legitimately be taken without your consent. If you are not harmed then your opinion as a mere bystander on whether it is "harmful" is neither needed nor wanted.
        Bancakes 5y ago
mannerheim 5y ago
If society chose transparency over privacy by implanting listening devices in every individual, would that be acceptable?
- onion2k 5y ago
  To me as a privacy-aware nerd, no. That would be a step too far. To every person who downloads random phone apps and gives them mic permissions, who has Siri or Alexa listening all the time, or who has a Nest doorbell recording their street... probably?
repsilat 5y ago
When it comes to small financial transactions, society is at least comfortable people who choose privacy over transparency. Some places have banned businesses from only accepting card/electronic payments, but I'm not aware of anywhere that has banned businesses from only accepting cash. That said, you're probably right in the long run. Cash is already less convenient, and it's only a matter of time until it's gone. The "transparency" argument will win, for the arguments you've outlined: "tax evasion, money laundering, political fixing, terrorism financing" and anything the government can prosecute under those descriptions. And to add to the list, non-accredited investors having a flutter, people spreading disinformation, people we don't like etc.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
It's only transparency for us, big players still have means of privacy. The gov do care about what you buy.
ceilingcorner 5y ago
Last time I checked, “society” is more than the monied class that makes up government and finance. Bizarre that I have to point this out on a site with the word hacker in its name.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  It's not bizarre to realize society needs some constraints to function. A computer isn't just a bunch of electrons thrown into a box, much like society isn't just a bunch of people doing whatever they want.
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    What does this have to do with my comment? Being critical of the government doesn’t automatically make you an anarchist.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  What does the “monied class” have to do with anything? Are you suggesting that regular voters would opt against transparency and for privacy? I sure wouldn’t
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    You are one person and you weren’t asked to vote on it. So yes, the monied classes decided for you.
    - alkonaut 5y ago
      Every voter is one person and in all parliamentary systems I just vote for representatives/parties that push the opinion I want. This isn’t different from any other issue.
      - nybble41 5y ago
        > ... in all parliamentary systems I just vote for representatives/parties that push the opinion I want. ... on perhaps one or two hot-button issues. You won't find any "representative" which actually represents you on more than a few issues (at best), so voters have to prioritize—and then the winners go on to vote on their constituents' behalf on many other issues which weren't major talking points during the elections, in effect representing only themselves. You're right that this isn't different from (almost) any other issue. It's a real problem for any issue that isn't right at the top of the priority list.
bigyikes 5y ago
> Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. It’s never about you, until it is. You should assume the government will do the maximum amount of evil given the power they are granted. This is the classic anti-privacy argument: this isn’t about you, you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide, etc. Sure, there’s a pretty good chance that a random person, e.g. you, isn’t the target of these policies. However, when applied to an entire population, these sorts of policies result in privacy violations on a broad scale.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  It's not that you're wrong, it's that the balance of power in the financial system is weighted strongly to the very rich, who own most of the money supply not held by banks and the treasury. Private transactions offer them incredible opportunities to screw the rest of us over.
  - bigyikes 5y ago
    Fair enough. I see this as a price worth paying for privacy.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Well that, crime, money laundering, terrorist financing and evasion of international sanctions allowing hermit kingdoms to finance nuclear warheads. But half dozen of one, I guess.
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        So if I give up just this little bit of privacy, all of those concerns melt away to nothingness? Or is it more likely that I give that away and nothing else really improves?
        arcticbull 5y ago
        If you give up some privacy (subject to release with a judge's approval) then we can attempt to reign in bad actors. Deciding that we shouldn't attempt to reign in bad actors is, IMO, a bad call - and one I don't think enjoys broad-based support. Yes, I think it's worse if North Korea gets a nuke than if the FBI gets a peek at my Amazon purchases pursuant to a judge's order.
delaaxe 5y ago
> You can’t show up in a bank with a bucket load of $100 bills and open an anonymous bank account. You used to be able to do this at HSBC, and for a very long time, before all these annoying KYC laws
- dheera 5y ago
  You might still be able to do it in Switzerland?
  - pas 5y ago
    They will spend a lot of time to make sure you are not a US citizen. At least the big Swiss banks. And frankly any bank that wants to do business with/in the US/EU, or wants to process bankcards. If you want to launder money there are people for that, they will take your money, set uou5 up with legitimate businesses, put your money into other businesses and over some time those businesses will order a ton of shit from your ones, so you'll end up with a lot of clear after-tax income.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Or, just go to a sketchy OTC desk, drop a burlap sack with a $ on it on their desk. They'll get you some USDT, then you USDT:USD at Coinbase, cash out and you're golden. Need a paper trail? Just sell your buddy an NFT of a cat or something.
      - pas 5y ago
        Eventually a tax authority will ask where your buddy got the money to buy that NFT. But if your buddy is some random guy from Russia things get easier :)
Bancakes 5y ago
Funding terrorism and tax evasion are incredibly rare. I mean it, not-credibly rare. The main difficulty in discerning that is legality. Is this person/company evading taxes according to the law. Is this person allowed to purchase $5,000 of Syrian saffron on wish.com? No, I'm afraid governments already track all data necessary to pursue and convict tax evasion and terrorists. We don't need to sacrifice this new, exciting technology because of bureaucratic laziness and FUD. $800 billion defense + $200 billion law enforcement should be enough to track all dozen suspected domestic terrorists in the USA, and Interpol/Nato/EU share technology with the USA.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  > tax evasion are incredibly rare. It is extremely common where I live, India. To an extent that, going by official statistics, paying tax is rare. I agree with your second assertion though. The government is tracking more and more transactions by making it mandatory to use tax ID for transactions above a certain threshold.
dheera 5y ago
Since when is Bitcoin anonymous? Buy one thing with Bitcoin with your shipping address and name and guess what, the seller can back track through the blockchain and knows your entire purchase history and crypto net worth.
- mm983 5y ago
  Yes, Revil and Co clearly are technically illiterate and chose Bitcoin for their RaaS campaigns because they don't know anything about anonymity
denkmoon 5y ago
>Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. Except they fucking do, otherwise I could walk down the road and buy my cannabis from a legal business.
Bellamy 5y ago
I thought the crypto was born as the ALTERNATIVE to regular fiat money. Therefore it should not be regulated, says the supporters.
deepGem 5y ago
Well, transparency works both ways doesn't it? Governments are largely not transparent. If they were, you wouldn't have something like the CIA, Guantanamo bay and the entire surveillance enterprise. I am just quoting the US government as an example but most governments are more or less the same. Expecting others to be transparent, while governments go on about their private secret activities is very unfair. Case in point - why hasn't any government adopted any open blockchain till date ? I mean, there are gazillions of operations that the government can use a blockchain for. OK, forget about a blockchain, at least an open distributed ledger ? For instance, all public RFPs and contracts can go on a queryable open distributed ledger. Why hasn't this happened yet ? Let the governments show a spend log of every tax penny collected and then we'll talk about transparency.
- ArnoVW 5y ago
  A 6700-page report (1) and a Hollywood movie were made about Gitmo. Just like climate change, the issue is not one of knowledge or information. (1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_report_on_CIA_torture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committe...
- jstummbillig 5y ago
  > Well, transparency works both ways doesn't it? Governments are largely not transparent. If they were, you wouldn't have something like the CIA, Guantanamo bay and the entire surveillance enterprise. Given that the existence of your examples and its horrors is very much common knowledge, at this point it is clearly not an issue of transparency. The people quite simply choose to be okay with it.
max_ 5y ago
Bitcoin's goal was to help people "get out" of the traditional financial system "not inside it". Everyone knows where the real money laundering and terrorist financing happens. It is done by the likes of HSBC, Standard Chartered and other big banks. This is public knowledge, as we have seen with the Panama papers and most recently the FinCen files. Our financial institutions are too rotten for you to even assume that the intention of this regulation is altruistic (i.e public benefit). The tradition of regulation in finance is to perform a kind of scam called "regulator capture"[0]. It is what we have mostly observed to be the goal of complex financial regulations. For it to divert from this would be an exception. [0]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulatory-capture.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulatory-capture.asp
- stkdump 5y ago
  "Getting out" is very fuzzy goal. For my understanding people usually cite two central goals: 1. Stop central bank imposed inflation. 2. Serve the people who are excluded from banking. If either of those goals can't be reached, it is due to misdesign/inherent flaws of the approach and not governments.
- rad_gruchalski 5y ago
  > It is done by the likes of HSBC, Standard Chartered and other big banks. And, as it happens, because of the records, it has been discovered and everyone involved is traceable. The system works.
  - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
    So where are the consequences?
    - rad_gruchalski 5y ago
      What do you expect? That I google this for you? Here’s an example: 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... It’s all public knowledge and pretty easy to find.
xunn0026 5y ago
"Society" has not clearly chosen such thing. Governments LOVE this power, but don't confuse governments with society. I would also LOVE to see each and every transaction my state does but all I see is high-level budgets with no individual level transactions. States and state institutions have much much greater "privacy" while the people are heading towards 0 privacy. I would have expected the reverse to happen first but here we are. The government most definitely cares about the shit you buy. If they had an infrastructure they would tax you and "nudge" you based on a lot of societal / individual metrics. I would say the whole purpose of BitCoin was to counter government stupidity so this new regulation continues the trend.
BatteryMountain 5y ago
I want to add the other problem of offline wallets getting lost/stolen/destroyed which results in funds being permanently lost/stuck. Is there any solution to this yet? If I die my estate can be dished out to family members via estate laws and the banks comply with it.. how does one liquidate cryptocurrencies when I die? My family will most likely not be protected in that case and the funds will be stuck forever.
bouncycastle 5y ago
tax evasion: Simplicity the tax system instead. Investigate ways to make it rewarding to pay tax through incentives. money laundering: focus on catching the actual criminals and stopping real crime instead. political fixing: privacy tech actually helps here. (Eg Secret ballot) terrorism financing: terrorists don't need much money. Just a deranged mind, a hand gun or even a sharp sushi chef knife and a social media account are enough.
arthur_sav 5y ago
The goal of bitcoin was to reduce the barriers that traditional financial systems have set in place. From a 10 year old in the US to a 20 year old somewhere in Africa, bitcoin has no barriers and can be used just like that. > You can’t show up in a bank with a bucket load of $100 bills and open an anonymous bank account. Well you shouldn’t be able to with bitcoins either. So no, this statement goes against bitcoin and what it stands for.
127 5y ago
How often does the government decide to give back power to the people just out of the goodness of their hearts? How often does a career politician decide to step aside because someone else has better ideas? All I'm saying is that there's no optimal solution here, it's all a balance. I don't want to live in a government mandated box. One of the biggest problems of the state has always been how to hold power accountable. I can see a nightmare forming where one becomes a slave to their managerial class. Where everything is tracked and managed. No new ideas can form. No new paths can be taken. Everything is mercilessly beaten down as they don't obey the rules or the standards. It all leads to stagnation and misery, and a few people making a killing off the backs of the majority. Sure, very few people want to live in a total anarchy. But giving the state a total control over money and wealth seems like a complete solution to the too much freedom problem.
inglor_cz 5y ago
"society has clearly chosen transparency over privacy" Instead of society, read political elite. A random voter cannot choose a politician who is totally aligned with him on all thousand important topics. Much less so in America, a two-party system, where your choice is binary. As a result, whatever the top brass does with regard to most topics, is what they want, not what society wants. Notably, big business and important people still enjoy a lot of economic privacy that is being denied to us.
TheGigaChad 5y ago
Suck dick you brain-damaged, inbred retard!
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Just note that in my country you can get labelled as an extremist for peacefully opposing Putin, and consequently be cut off all banking services. Reading western media, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of being labelled as extremist for, say, supporting Trump, and consequently be cut off all services by companies that are owned by his political opponents. Twitter, Facebook, airlines, banks, ...
Uke 5y ago
i can however go somewhere with a bucket load of $100 bills and pay in person
elevenoh 5y ago
>society has clearly chosen transparency over privacy This is quite a speculative & ambitious comment.. >Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. ...wot. You assume this is why folks want privacy in their transactions? >And Bitcoin’s anonymity is not a feature of blockchain and never has been. Bitcoin is psuedonymous, & always will be.
ulzeraj 5y ago
Let me tell you in an unfiltered way that this is bullshit. I don't care about language. Downvote me or report this if you like but this is literally the kind of bullshit that makes the world a terrible place. Big money laundering and state wide unethical operations always find a way to operate on the clear financial system. You are probably using some shinny brand device bought from a famous company that contains parts made by slave labor in a certain region of a certain country. AML/KYC only affect small people. To comply with those regulations is expensive and time consuming and the punishments are heavy so its better to just remove anyone who has a slight hint of suspicious activity. Because banks are terrified of being punished by governments they will kick honest person out of the system because they've sent money to their mother in some war thorn Middle East country. Thats it. You are banned from the platform with no right to appeal. For fuck sake. You live in a world where Snowden is a fugitive, Assange is sickened in Jail and the literal criminal Christine Lagarde is the god damn president of the European Central Bank! YOU need to stop fantasizing.
- LightG 5y ago
  lol
- valdiorn 5y ago
  this is woefully inaccurate. Like, seriously wrong. parent comment was on point. I can tell you, as someone who works in finance, that KYC rules are taken very, very seriously. The bigger the client, the more important they become. There is harsh punishment from both my company if not the government if KYC processes aren't followed correctly. Losing your job is the least of your worries if you're complicit in a case like that.
  - ulzeraj 5y ago
    > The bigger the client, the more important they become. Yet accountability is so great for big offenders that one day they might preside over the European Central Bank. > There is harsh punishment from both my company if not the government if KYC processes aren't followed correctly. And that's why banks will just kick Amir who has only 3000 EUR on his account out of the platform. Why risk such a heavy punishment for a poor bloke? I invite you to visit the reddit pages for N26, Revolut and similar banks. I don't think those threads about accounts being closed without justification are made by terrorists and money launderers.
kleene_op 5y ago
>Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. Well, it sorta is when this plan applies to everyone.
logifail 5y ago
> You can’t show up in a bank with a bucket load of $100 bills and open an anonymous bank account [..] Short newsflash: People can - and do - pay for goods and services in cash. Sometimes these transactions aren't declared. If you insist on a written record of your transaction, sometimes the price goes up :) None of these things are new, they've been going on since very shortly after taxation was invented!
yosito 5y ago
> Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. While I do think there's a case to be made that it's none of the government's business how many times per week I visit Starbucks, my main concern is big tech companies, banks and insurance companies collecting this information about me, and using it to build a profile based on which they place me into different groups or more or less privilege, offer me different deals, or otherwise manipulate me and my behavior.
Chris2048 5y ago
> society has clearly chosen transparency over privacy No more than America has chosen the 1% over 99%; or white lives over black. The gov says "laundering, terrorism" in the same way it says "terrorism, paedophiles" in other civil liberties cases. Then explanation of why a government should tax its citizens is usually the fact that those citizens use that countries infrastructure to make money, so that country should take "it's" cut. But many countries now want to tax CG on cyber currencies that has nothing to do with any of that countries infrastructure. Why should a system of value that exists entirely without the support of the EU require a payment to the EU? > You can’t show up in a bank with a bucket load of $100 bills and open an anonymous bank account. Well you shouldn’t be able to with bitcoins either. Why? bills are backed by the country and legal tender as a result - BTC isn't. Bank accounts, and banks themselves, are nationally regulated w/ consumer protections - BTC wallets aren't. How are these two things similar at all?
wpdev_63 5y ago
>Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. Government cares very much what people buy and worst yet companies care even more. Believe or not society functioned pretty well before the surveillance zoo and people were able to spend their money without worrying about their privacy. For the 99% of people that aren't money laundering or tax evading, yes the right to privacy is important.

by d--b 5y ago

ekianjo 5y ago

> You can’t show up in a bank with a bucket load of $100 bills and open an anonymous bank account. Well you shouldn’t be able to with bitcoins either. So we have to make a superior system inferior?

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
well, we had to make the superior system of cash inferior - as just described.
- OtomotO 5y ago
  We didnt have to, some chose to. I never voted for any of those clowns in power
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    There is currently no political (and therefore I assume public) will to go for privacy over transparency for large money transfers. You can vote for someone who wants to reverse this, and it might change. Since this is pretty much an international system though (banks offering anonymous accounts will have difficulty interoperating with other actors), it’s likely not enough with political/public opinion in just one country.

realcertify 5y ago

I would argue with "society has clearly chosen" statement. The governments are putting more and more strict regulations in place for last decades and they often don't care what the society thinks about those. There used to be a time not long ago when one could show up in bank with a bunch of cash and it would be of no issue. I don't think that terrorism was less important back then.

lottin 5y ago
Do you mean not long ago when the government budget was 1% of GDP? Nowadays it's 40-60%, in developed countries. Large levels of public spending are a choice that we have made as a society, and the spending needs to be funded somehow.
- ur-whale 5y ago
  > Large levels of public spending are a choice that we have made as a society It most certainly isn't a choice we've made democratically. Rather, it's a case of boiling the frog: a thousand tiny cuts inflicted by elected politicians over the very long term which has slowly led to the monster size leech our government has become.
  - lottin 5y ago
    No, it is a choice that we've made. For example, in Europe spending cuts after the 2007-2009 financial crisis were met with widespread protests.
  - tobltobs 5y ago
    No, most people are just stupid enough to elect the one promising the most.
    - workallday21 5y ago
      You could also say a true alternative will never be allowed to get big enough to have votes. Systemic something something.

balozi 5y ago

Isn't transparency in trade and commerce a relatively new practice? Like maybe in the last 100-150 years. Mostly so as a means to collect taxes based on treaties? And there is still very little transparency.

tamrix 5y ago

Society can vote with its wallet.

honzzz 5y ago
I think that the majority considers the system where a few billionaires can outvote everyone else to be the bad thing we are trying to avoid.
Bancakes 5y ago
There is no negative vote with a wallet. Only positive and neutral.
- nybble41 5y ago
  This is a feature, not a bug. In the "vote with your wallet" system you only get a "negative vote"—actually veto power—when something directly harms you. Which is as it should be.
  - Bancakes 5y ago
    It's definitely a bug. In the rare case where something is harmful, there must be a way to vote it down. This avoids rushing to the government to pass laws. Like the right of repair, I want to vote against Apple, not write my senator once a month.
    - nybble41 5y ago
      > In the rare case where something is harmful, there must be a way to vote it down. If you are harmed by it then you get a veto, which is better than merely getting to "vote it down". No action which harms you can legitimately be taken without your consent. If you are not harmed then your opinion as a mere bystander on whether it is "harmful" is neither needed nor wanted.
      - Bancakes 5y ago

mannerheim 5y ago

If society chose transparency over privacy by implanting listening devices in every individual, would that be acceptable?

onion2k 5y ago
To me as a privacy-aware nerd, no. That would be a step too far. To every person who downloads random phone apps and gives them mic permissions, who has Siri or Alexa listening all the time, or who has a Nest doorbell recording their street... probably?

repsilat 5y ago

When it comes to small financial transactions, society is at least comfortable people who choose privacy over transparency. Some places have banned businesses from only accepting card/electronic payments, but I'm not aware of anywhere that has banned businesses from only accepting cash. That said, you're probably right in the long run. Cash is already less convenient, and it's only a matter of time until it's gone. The "transparency" argument will win, for the arguments you've outlined: "tax evasion, money laundering, political fixing, terrorism financing" and anything the government can prosecute under those descriptions. And to add to the list, non-accredited investors having a flutter, people spreading disinformation, people we don't like etc.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

It's only transparency for us, big players still have means of privacy. The gov do care about what you buy.

ceilingcorner 5y ago

Last time I checked, “society” is more than the monied class that makes up government and finance. Bizarre that I have to point this out on a site with the word hacker in its name.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
It's not bizarre to realize society needs some constraints to function. A computer isn't just a bunch of electrons thrown into a box, much like society isn't just a bunch of people doing whatever they want.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  What does this have to do with my comment? Being critical of the government doesn’t automatically make you an anarchist.
alkonaut 5y ago
What does the “monied class” have to do with anything? Are you suggesting that regular voters would opt against transparency and for privacy? I sure wouldn’t
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  You are one person and you weren’t asked to vote on it. So yes, the monied classes decided for you.
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    Every voter is one person and in all parliamentary systems I just vote for representatives/parties that push the opinion I want. This isn’t different from any other issue.
    - nybble41 5y ago
      > ... in all parliamentary systems I just vote for representatives/parties that push the opinion I want. ... on perhaps one or two hot-button issues. You won't find any "representative" which actually represents you on more than a few issues (at best), so voters have to prioritize—and then the winners go on to vote on their constituents' behalf on many other issues which weren't major talking points during the elections, in effect representing only themselves. You're right that this isn't different from (almost) any other issue. It's a real problem for any issue that isn't right at the top of the priority list.

bigyikes 5y ago

> Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. It’s never about you, until it is. You should assume the government will do the maximum amount of evil given the power they are granted. This is the classic anti-privacy argument: this isn’t about you, you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide, etc. Sure, there’s a pretty good chance that a random person, e.g. you, isn’t the target of these policies. However, when applied to an entire population, these sorts of policies result in privacy violations on a broad scale.

tehjoker 5y ago
It's not that you're wrong, it's that the balance of power in the financial system is weighted strongly to the very rich, who own most of the money supply not held by banks and the treasury. Private transactions offer them incredible opportunities to screw the rest of us over.
- bigyikes 5y ago
  Fair enough. I see this as a price worth paying for privacy.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Well that, crime, money laundering, terrorist financing and evasion of international sanctions allowing hermit kingdoms to finance nuclear warheads. But half dozen of one, I guess.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      So if I give up just this little bit of privacy, all of those concerns melt away to nothingness? Or is it more likely that I give that away and nothing else really improves?
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        If you give up some privacy (subject to release with a judge's approval) then we can attempt to reign in bad actors. Deciding that we shouldn't attempt to reign in bad actors is, IMO, a bad call - and one I don't think enjoys broad-based support. Yes, I think it's worse if North Korea gets a nuke than if the FBI gets a peek at my Amazon purchases pursuant to a judge's order.

delaaxe 5y ago

> You can’t show up in a bank with a bucket load of $100 bills and open an anonymous bank account. You used to be able to do this at HSBC, and for a very long time, before all these annoying KYC laws

dheera 5y ago
You might still be able to do it in Switzerland?
- pas 5y ago
  They will spend a lot of time to make sure you are not a US citizen. At least the big Swiss banks. And frankly any bank that wants to do business with/in the US/EU, or wants to process bankcards. If you want to launder money there are people for that, they will take your money, set uou5 up with legitimate businesses, put your money into other businesses and over some time those businesses will order a ton of shit from your ones, so you'll end up with a lot of clear after-tax income.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Or, just go to a sketchy OTC desk, drop a burlap sack with a $ on it on their desk. They'll get you some USDT, then you USDT:USD at Coinbase, cash out and you're golden. Need a paper trail? Just sell your buddy an NFT of a cat or something.
    - pas 5y ago
      Eventually a tax authority will ask where your buddy got the money to buy that NFT. But if your buddy is some random guy from Russia things get easier :)

Bancakes 5y ago

Funding terrorism and tax evasion are incredibly rare. I mean it, not-credibly rare. The main difficulty in discerning that is legality. Is this person/company evading taxes according to the law. Is this person allowed to purchase $5,000 of Syrian saffron on wish.com? No, I'm afraid governments already track all data necessary to pursue and convict tax evasion and terrorists. We don't need to sacrifice this new, exciting technology because of bureaucratic laziness and FUD. $800 billion defense + $200 billion law enforcement should be enough to track all dozen suspected domestic terrorists in the USA, and Interpol/Nato/EU share technology with the USA.

vishnugupta 5y ago
> tax evasion are incredibly rare. It is extremely common where I live, India. To an extent that, going by official statistics, paying tax is rare. I agree with your second assertion though. The government is tracking more and more transactions by making it mandatory to use tax ID for transactions above a certain threshold.

dheera 5y ago

Since when is Bitcoin anonymous? Buy one thing with Bitcoin with your shipping address and name and guess what, the seller can back track through the blockchain and knows your entire purchase history and crypto net worth.

mm983 5y ago
Yes, Revil and Co clearly are technically illiterate and chose Bitcoin for their RaaS campaigns because they don't know anything about anonymity

denkmoon 5y ago

>Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. Except they fucking do, otherwise I could walk down the road and buy my cannabis from a legal business.

Bellamy 5y ago

I thought the crypto was born as the ALTERNATIVE to regular fiat money. Therefore it should not be regulated, says the supporters.

deepGem 5y ago

Well, transparency works both ways doesn't it? Governments are largely not transparent. If they were, you wouldn't have something like the CIA, Guantanamo bay and the entire surveillance enterprise. I am just quoting the US government as an example but most governments are more or less the same. Expecting others to be transparent, while governments go on about their private secret activities is very unfair. Case in point - why hasn't any government adopted any open blockchain till date ? I mean, there are gazillions of operations that the government can use a blockchain for. OK, forget about a blockchain, at least an open distributed ledger ? For instance, all public RFPs and contracts can go on a queryable open distributed ledger. Why hasn't this happened yet ? Let the governments show a spend log of every tax penny collected and then we'll talk about transparency.

ArnoVW 5y ago
A 6700-page report (1) and a Hollywood movie were made about Gitmo. Just like climate change, the issue is not one of knowledge or information. (1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_report_on_CIA_torture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committe...
jstummbillig 5y ago
> Well, transparency works both ways doesn't it? Governments are largely not transparent. If they were, you wouldn't have something like the CIA, Guantanamo bay and the entire surveillance enterprise. Given that the existence of your examples and its horrors is very much common knowledge, at this point it is clearly not an issue of transparency. The people quite simply choose to be okay with it.

max_ 5y ago

Bitcoin's goal was to help people "get out" of the traditional financial system "not inside it". Everyone knows where the real money laundering and terrorist financing happens. It is done by the likes of HSBC, Standard Chartered and other big banks. This is public knowledge, as we have seen with the Panama papers and most recently the FinCen files. Our financial institutions are too rotten for you to even assume that the intention of this regulation is altruistic (i.e public benefit). The tradition of regulation in finance is to perform a kind of scam called "regulator capture"[0]. It is what we have mostly observed to be the goal of complex financial regulations. For it to divert from this would be an exception. [0]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulatory-capture.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulatory-capture.asp

stkdump 5y ago
"Getting out" is very fuzzy goal. For my understanding people usually cite two central goals: 1. Stop central bank imposed inflation. 2. Serve the people who are excluded from banking. If either of those goals can't be reached, it is due to misdesign/inherent flaws of the approach and not governments.
rad_gruchalski 5y ago
> It is done by the likes of HSBC, Standard Chartered and other big banks. And, as it happens, because of the records, it has been discovered and everyone involved is traceable. The system works.
- read_if_gay_ 5y ago
  So where are the consequences?
  - rad_gruchalski 5y ago
    What do you expect? That I google this for you? Here’s an example: 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... It’s all public knowledge and pretty easy to find.

xunn0026 5y ago

"Society" has not clearly chosen such thing. Governments LOVE this power, but don't confuse governments with society. I would also LOVE to see each and every transaction my state does but all I see is high-level budgets with no individual level transactions. States and state institutions have much much greater "privacy" while the people are heading towards 0 privacy. I would have expected the reverse to happen first but here we are. The government most definitely cares about the shit you buy. If they had an infrastructure they would tax you and "nudge" you based on a lot of societal / individual metrics. I would say the whole purpose of BitCoin was to counter government stupidity so this new regulation continues the trend.

BatteryMountain 5y ago

I want to add the other problem of offline wallets getting lost/stolen/destroyed which results in funds being permanently lost/stuck. Is there any solution to this yet? If I die my estate can be dished out to family members via estate laws and the banks comply with it.. how does one liquidate cryptocurrencies when I die? My family will most likely not be protected in that case and the funds will be stuck forever.

bouncycastle 5y ago

tax evasion: Simplicity the tax system instead. Investigate ways to make it rewarding to pay tax through incentives. money laundering: focus on catching the actual criminals and stopping real crime instead. political fixing: privacy tech actually helps here. (Eg Secret ballot) terrorism financing: terrorists don't need much money. Just a deranged mind, a hand gun or even a sharp sushi chef knife and a social media account are enough.

arthur_sav 5y ago

The goal of bitcoin was to reduce the barriers that traditional financial systems have set in place. From a 10 year old in the US to a 20 year old somewhere in Africa, bitcoin has no barriers and can be used just like that. > You can’t show up in a bank with a bucket load of $100 bills and open an anonymous bank account. Well you shouldn’t be able to with bitcoins either. So no, this statement goes against bitcoin and what it stands for.

127 5y ago

How often does the government decide to give back power to the people just out of the goodness of their hearts? How often does a career politician decide to step aside because someone else has better ideas? All I'm saying is that there's no optimal solution here, it's all a balance. I don't want to live in a government mandated box. One of the biggest problems of the state has always been how to hold power accountable. I can see a nightmare forming where one becomes a slave to their managerial class. Where everything is tracked and managed. No new ideas can form. No new paths can be taken. Everything is mercilessly beaten down as they don't obey the rules or the standards. It all leads to stagnation and misery, and a few people making a killing off the backs of the majority. Sure, very few people want to live in a total anarchy. But giving the state a total control over money and wealth seems like a complete solution to the too much freedom problem.

inglor_cz 5y ago

"society has clearly chosen transparency over privacy" Instead of society, read political elite. A random voter cannot choose a politician who is totally aligned with him on all thousand important topics. Much less so in America, a two-party system, where your choice is binary. As a result, whatever the top brass does with regard to most topics, is what they want, not what society wants. Notably, big business and important people still enjoy a lot of economic privacy that is being denied to us.

TheGigaChad 5y ago

Suck dick you brain-damaged, inbred retard!

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

Just note that in my country you can get labelled as an extremist for peacefully opposing Putin, and consequently be cut off all banking services. Reading western media, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of being labelled as extremist for, say, supporting Trump, and consequently be cut off all services by companies that are owned by his political opponents. Twitter, Facebook, airlines, banks, ...

Uke 5y ago

i can however go somewhere with a bucket load of $100 bills and pay in person

elevenoh 5y ago

>society has clearly chosen transparency over privacy This is quite a speculative & ambitious comment.. >Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. ...wot. You assume this is why folks want privacy in their transactions? >And Bitcoin’s anonymity is not a feature of blockchain and never has been. Bitcoin is psuedonymous, & always will be.

ulzeraj 5y ago

Let me tell you in an unfiltered way that this is bullshit. I don't care about language. Downvote me or report this if you like but this is literally the kind of bullshit that makes the world a terrible place. Big money laundering and state wide unethical operations always find a way to operate on the clear financial system. You are probably using some shinny brand device bought from a famous company that contains parts made by slave labor in a certain region of a certain country. AML/KYC only affect small people. To comply with those regulations is expensive and time consuming and the punishments are heavy so its better to just remove anyone who has a slight hint of suspicious activity. Because banks are terrified of being punished by governments they will kick honest person out of the system because they've sent money to their mother in some war thorn Middle East country. Thats it. You are banned from the platform with no right to appeal. For fuck sake. You live in a world where Snowden is a fugitive, Assange is sickened in Jail and the literal criminal Christine Lagarde is the god damn president of the European Central Bank! YOU need to stop fantasizing.

LightG 5y ago
lol
valdiorn 5y ago
this is woefully inaccurate. Like, seriously wrong. parent comment was on point. I can tell you, as someone who works in finance, that KYC rules are taken very, very seriously. The bigger the client, the more important they become. There is harsh punishment from both my company if not the government if KYC processes aren't followed correctly. Losing your job is the least of your worries if you're complicit in a case like that.
- ulzeraj 5y ago
  > The bigger the client, the more important they become. Yet accountability is so great for big offenders that one day they might preside over the European Central Bank. > There is harsh punishment from both my company if not the government if KYC processes aren't followed correctly. And that's why banks will just kick Amir who has only 3000 EUR on his account out of the platform. Why risk such a heavy punishment for a poor bloke? I invite you to visit the reddit pages for N26, Revolut and similar banks. I don't think those threads about accounts being closed without justification are made by terrorists and money launderers.

kleene_op 5y ago

>Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. Well, it sorta is when this plan applies to everyone.

logifail 5y ago

> You can’t show up in a bank with a bucket load of $100 bills and open an anonymous bank account [..] Short newsflash: People can - and do - pay for goods and services in cash. Sometimes these transactions aren't declared. If you insist on a written record of your transaction, sometimes the price goes up :) None of these things are new, they've been going on since very shortly after taxation was invented!

yosito 5y ago

> Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. While I do think there's a case to be made that it's none of the government's business how many times per week I visit Starbucks, my main concern is big tech companies, banks and insurance companies collecting this information about me, and using it to build a profile based on which they place me into different groups or more or less privilege, offer me different deals, or otherwise manipulate me and my behavior.

Chris2048 5y ago

> society has clearly chosen transparency over privacy No more than America has chosen the 1% over 99%; or white lives over black. The gov says "laundering, terrorism" in the same way it says "terrorism, paedophiles" in other civil liberties cases. Then explanation of why a government should tax its citizens is usually the fact that those citizens use that countries infrastructure to make money, so that country should take "it's" cut. But many countries now want to tax CG on cyber currencies that has nothing to do with any of that countries infrastructure. Why should a system of value that exists entirely without the support of the EU require a payment to the EU? > You can’t show up in a bank with a bucket load of $100 bills and open an anonymous bank account. Well you shouldn’t be able to with bitcoins either. Why? bills are backed by the country and legal tender as a result - BTC isn't. Bank accounts, and banks themselves, are nationally regulated w/ consumer protections - BTC wallets aren't. How are these two things similar at all?

wpdev_63 5y ago

>Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you. Government cares very much what people buy and worst yet companies care even more. Believe or not society functioned pretty well before the surveillance zoo and people were able to spend their money without worrying about their privacy. For the 99% of people that aren't money laundering or tax evading, yes the right to privacy is important.