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> Do you also call it a "privacy disaster" when your bank account requires your name and address so they can report interest payments to the government? Or when

> Do you also call it a "privacy disaster" when your bank account requires your name and address so they can report interest payments to the government? Or when Robinhood/Schwab/Vanguard/Etc send the IRS a list of all your stock transactions for the year in a form 1099? This isn't like that at all. This would be like the government requiring Microsoft to KYC every single user of Excel, because people use their software to manage money.

asdff 5y ago
Not really, since excel can be used for everything from budgeting to making a list of your favorite movies. Cryptocurrency is for transactions and speculation, not much different than any other financial product when you shuck off the technical mumbo jumbo surrounding it. Why would that not be regulated?
- nostrademons 5y ago
  Except it's not, if you look at the broader Ethereum & smart contract ecosystem. It's also for decentralized organizations (Aragon), incentivizing distributed storage (Filecoin/IPFS), pricing ad markets (Brave/BAT), supply chain management (VeChain), managing ownership (NFTs), and project governance and voting (many tokens). This is like saying "The Internet is for porn" because that's your only exposure to it. Yes, it's the most common early use - but it's very far from the only use.
  - 8note 5y ago
    Those things should be split out then, so there isn't a coin attached to it. If you couple things badly, you can end up with more responsibilities than you want
    - nostrademons 5y ago
      There has to be a coin attached to it because that is how you incentivize actors within the ecosystem to take certain actions (eg. "share their hard disk space" for FileCoin or "view ads" for BAT). The central premise of these projects is that humans make terrible decisions, markets make good decisions, so let's replace humans with markets whenever possible. Right now, some exec at Google determines how many ads you see on the Internet. The premise of Brave & BAT is that you decide whether you want to see ads on the Internet, you get compensated for viewing them, and if enough people decide the ads are not worth their time, they'll turn them off and drive the price of BAT up enough that people do want to view them. Right now, some exec at Amazon decides how much you pay for S3. The premise of FileCoin & IPFS is that lots of ordinary home users have spare hard drive space, and they should be able to be compensated for renting out that space to projects that need lots of distributed storage. The market price of FileCoin is that which equilibrates demand for storage with supply.
      - 8note 5y ago
        The requirement is compensation. You could just pay them through PayPal. There's no need to have them do a stock trade for somebody else in order for you to pay them for S3 space.
        w4llstr33t 5y ago
        PayPal is centralized. S3 is centralized. This is not an apples to apples comparison. Compensation is what is driving the decentralized ecosystem (including payments, file storage, among the other things mentioned in this thread).
- dcolkitt 5y ago
  Okay. How about companies that create book keeping software? Should they be required to KYC their customers.
- superlopuh 5y ago
  "digital assets" includes more than cryptocurrency
knorker 5y ago
No it's not. Not at all.

asdff 5y ago

Not really, since excel can be used for everything from budgeting to making a list of your favorite movies. Cryptocurrency is for transactions and speculation, not much different than any other financial product when you shuck off the technical mumbo jumbo surrounding it. Why would that not be regulated?

nostrademons 5y ago
Except it's not, if you look at the broader Ethereum & smart contract ecosystem. It's also for decentralized organizations (Aragon), incentivizing distributed storage (Filecoin/IPFS), pricing ad markets (Brave/BAT), supply chain management (VeChain), managing ownership (NFTs), and project governance and voting (many tokens). This is like saying "The Internet is for porn" because that's your only exposure to it. Yes, it's the most common early use - but it's very far from the only use.
- 8note 5y ago
  Those things should be split out then, so there isn't a coin attached to it. If you couple things badly, you can end up with more responsibilities than you want
  - nostrademons 5y ago
    There has to be a coin attached to it because that is how you incentivize actors within the ecosystem to take certain actions (eg. "share their hard disk space" for FileCoin or "view ads" for BAT). The central premise of these projects is that humans make terrible decisions, markets make good decisions, so let's replace humans with markets whenever possible. Right now, some exec at Google determines how many ads you see on the Internet. The premise of Brave & BAT is that you decide whether you want to see ads on the Internet, you get compensated for viewing them, and if enough people decide the ads are not worth their time, they'll turn them off and drive the price of BAT up enough that people do want to view them. Right now, some exec at Amazon decides how much you pay for S3. The premise of FileCoin & IPFS is that lots of ordinary home users have spare hard drive space, and they should be able to be compensated for renting out that space to projects that need lots of distributed storage. The market price of FileCoin is that which equilibrates demand for storage with supply.
    - 8note 5y ago
      The requirement is compensation. You could just pay them through PayPal. There's no need to have them do a stock trade for somebody else in order for you to pay them for S3 space.
      - w4llstr33t 5y ago
        PayPal is centralized. S3 is centralized. This is not an apples to apples comparison. Compensation is what is driving the decentralized ecosystem (including payments, file storage, among the other things mentioned in this thread).
dcolkitt 5y ago
Okay. How about companies that create book keeping software? Should they be required to KYC their customers.
superlopuh 5y ago
"digital assets" includes more than cryptocurrency

knorker 5y ago

No it's not. Not at all.