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Ignore at your own potential peril.. BTCers don't care, apparently https://coingeek.com/could-taproot-privacy-features-make-btc-illegal/ https://coingeek.com/

Ignore at your own potential peril.. BTCers don't care, apparently https://coingeek.com/could-taproot-privacy-features-make-btc-illegal/ https://coingeek.com/could-taproot-privacy-features-make-btc...

G3rn0ti 5y ago
All Layer 2 scaling solutions would also be obfuscating transactions because all out of chain transactions are invisible on chain.
vmception 5y ago
Exchanges that delisted privacy coins were not doing so because they were viewed as illegal. Those businesses just didn't have the risk profile to ever take anything to court to solidify the obvious reality that they're not illegal. Their relationship with the regulators is too important for them. Fortunately, CeFi exchanges are less of the volume these days than DeFi and institutional OTC. When I was using institutional OTC in the United States, they would make markets for me in Monero if I asked. If I said "I want to trade this random erc20 altcoin for Monero" they'd say "say less, we got you", and quote me a very competitive price. Same for moving dollars in and out. But I've been using DeFi AMMs all year. The DeFi bridges for bitcoin are fine as well. There are only 1 or 2 permissionless ones for Bitcoin itself, for now, but they're okay. Moving a few billion in volume already this year. The permissioned ones operate under the same risk profile and regulatory profile as exchanges do, so its not a deal breaker if you already use CeFi, and the user experience on any bridge can still be better - depending on what you want to do. Even Monero has a permissionless bridge too now, on the Secret Network. so you don't even need any exchanges or those sketchy centralized swapping services to move in and out of Monero anymore, and from Secret Network you can bridge to the broader DeFi ecosystem. This should get even better.
anonporridge 5y ago
There's game theory at play here that transcends the legal system. Yes, the US and the EU could deem these cryptocurrencies to be illegal. However, as we saw in China, all that accomplishes is squeezing it out of your borders, or squeezing it to the black market. Making it illegal would also be an insanely strong signal to the entire world that this thing actually is uncontrollable by our current governments, and that they're scared of it. Knowing they can never actively kill it, just drive it elsewhere, these societies have to take a gamble. Either assume it's eventually going to wither and die after they ban it, thereby protecting their citizens from wasting time and money on the system, or assume it's going continue to grow into being the foundation of a new global monetary system that's going to automate and consume everything that's existed before, and severely miss out on being at the vanguard of that industry.
- snarf21 5y ago
  Serious question: Can't a government block it at the ISP level? They could also make out of country VPN illegal. How would BTC work in practicality under those conditions?
  - aftbit 5y ago
    That becomes a cat-and-mouse game. See the Great Firewall of China.
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    It's just information. You could broadcast it on any communications medium. You could theoretically run it over a global ham radio mesh network. Lots of the network is already running on Tor, so you'd also have to shut that down. You could embed the information in the pixels of cat pictures and broadcast it via instagram posts. Unless there exists a global, horrifically authoritarian constriction on the information we are allowed to share, it's not going to happen.
  - ulzeraj 5y ago
    Then we go to spaaaaace https://blockstream.com/satellite/ https://blockstream.com/satellite/ Semi-serious jokes aside (the block stream satellite can receive blocks but not broadcast), the protocol can operate under Tor in which the bitcoin core daemon is very well integrated. If worst come to happen, sneaker net is somewhat popular (https://opendime.com https://opendime.com) and people have transacted using radio waves as a proof of concept (https://satoshi.radio.br/wp/ https://satoshi.radio.br/wp/).
    - Hjfrf 5y ago
      Peer to peer on-chain transactions seem unkillable at this point. Surely governments would target exchanges instead? Without the dollars coming from retail investors, the value proposition for speculators disappears. You could still trade bitcoin (slowly) at that point, but converting to fiat would be difficult.
FDSGSG 5y ago
Why are you posting a disinfo blog on HN? This same blog pushes the lie that Craig Wright is actually Satoshi.

G3rn0ti 5y ago

All Layer 2 scaling solutions would also be obfuscating transactions because all out of chain transactions are invisible on chain.

vmception 5y ago

Exchanges that delisted privacy coins were not doing so because they were viewed as illegal. Those businesses just didn't have the risk profile to ever take anything to court to solidify the obvious reality that they're not illegal. Their relationship with the regulators is too important for them. Fortunately, CeFi exchanges are less of the volume these days than DeFi and institutional OTC. When I was using institutional OTC in the United States, they would make markets for me in Monero if I asked. If I said "I want to trade this random erc20 altcoin for Monero" they'd say "say less, we got you", and quote me a very competitive price. Same for moving dollars in and out. But I've been using DeFi AMMs all year. The DeFi bridges for bitcoin are fine as well. There are only 1 or 2 permissionless ones for Bitcoin itself, for now, but they're okay. Moving a few billion in volume already this year. The permissioned ones operate under the same risk profile and regulatory profile as exchanges do, so its not a deal breaker if you already use CeFi, and the user experience on any bridge can still be better - depending on what you want to do. Even Monero has a permissionless bridge too now, on the Secret Network. so you don't even need any exchanges or those sketchy centralized swapping services to move in and out of Monero anymore, and from Secret Network you can bridge to the broader DeFi ecosystem. This should get even better.

anonporridge 5y ago

There's game theory at play here that transcends the legal system. Yes, the US and the EU could deem these cryptocurrencies to be illegal. However, as we saw in China, all that accomplishes is squeezing it out of your borders, or squeezing it to the black market. Making it illegal would also be an insanely strong signal to the entire world that this thing actually is uncontrollable by our current governments, and that they're scared of it. Knowing they can never actively kill it, just drive it elsewhere, these societies have to take a gamble. Either assume it's eventually going to wither and die after they ban it, thereby protecting their citizens from wasting time and money on the system, or assume it's going continue to grow into being the foundation of a new global monetary system that's going to automate and consume everything that's existed before, and severely miss out on being at the vanguard of that industry.

snarf21 5y ago
Serious question: Can't a government block it at the ISP level? They could also make out of country VPN illegal. How would BTC work in practicality under those conditions?
- aftbit 5y ago
  That becomes a cat-and-mouse game. See the Great Firewall of China.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  It's just information. You could broadcast it on any communications medium. You could theoretically run it over a global ham radio mesh network. Lots of the network is already running on Tor, so you'd also have to shut that down. You could embed the information in the pixels of cat pictures and broadcast it via instagram posts. Unless there exists a global, horrifically authoritarian constriction on the information we are allowed to share, it's not going to happen.
- ulzeraj 5y ago
  Then we go to spaaaaace https://blockstream.com/satellite/ https://blockstream.com/satellite/ Semi-serious jokes aside (the block stream satellite can receive blocks but not broadcast), the protocol can operate under Tor in which the bitcoin core daemon is very well integrated. If worst come to happen, sneaker net is somewhat popular (https://opendime.com https://opendime.com) and people have transacted using radio waves as a proof of concept (https://satoshi.radio.br/wp/ https://satoshi.radio.br/wp/).
  - Hjfrf 5y ago
    Peer to peer on-chain transactions seem unkillable at this point. Surely governments would target exchanges instead? Without the dollars coming from retail investors, the value proposition for speculators disappears. You could still trade bitcoin (slowly) at that point, but converting to fiat would be difficult.

FDSGSG 5y ago

Why are you posting a disinfo blog on HN? This same blog pushes the lie that Craig Wright is actually Satoshi.