38 ms·

EU draft proposes identity requirement for cryptocurrency transactions

77 points by malermeister 5y ago

rasengan 5y ago
Why not just ban anonymous payments period then. That’s weird. Seems like this isn’t about anonymous payments at all?
- anononaut 5y ago
  That would require first eliminating bills and coins, a task I fear isn't very far down the road.
  - horsawlarway 5y ago
    Nor are bills and coins nearly as anonymous as most people believe. There's a reason every Euro note and US dollar comes stamped with a serial number...
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  Bad title. It’s requiring de-anonymisation for crypto transactions. Not banning crypto.
  - dang 5y ago
    We've changed the title to one that uses representative language from the first paragraph. Submitted title was "EU wants to completely ban anonymous payments with cryptocurrency assets".
- Jensson 5y ago
  Other forms of electronic payments already aren't anonymous.
- louwrentius 5y ago
  As far as I know, digital payments were never anonymous, so there was nothing to ban in the first place.
- dathinab 5y ago
  They are already kinda banned. Once payments are above a certain amount contact information must be collected as far as I know. No bank transactions are anonymous. Smaller money payments are anonymous, but mainly due to physical limitations creating enough hassle so that it can't be abused too much (without also braking the law). As well as historic reasons. But did you ever consider that every bank note has a unique id which is tracked by banks when you pay in money (and I think) retrieve it? Furthermore the EU as since basically it's creation slowly working on de-anonymizing payments wit the purpose of fighting crime and money laundering. It's pretty much a straight forward continuation of pre-bitcoin invention policies.
- miohtama 5y ago
  Because if you are a politician who bans the crypto you won’t be ever elected again. Thus, you do it sneaky way.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    The disconnect with reality is quite astounding. Do you actually believe that the majority interest right now lies with crypto? 'Normal' people have heard about it but have never in their life used crypto for a payment.
    - miohtama 5y ago
      Cryptocurrency regulation is being discussed in the US, in the EU, in Russia. 50% millenials hold crypto in the US https://cointelegraph.com/news/low-millennial-financial-well-being-drives-crypto-adoption-report https://cointelegraph.com/news/low-millennial-financial-well... Top cryptocurrency users are in Vietnam, Pakistan, Ukraine and India https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-global-crypto-adoption-index/ https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-global-crypto-adop... While cryptocurrencies may not matter for you, or people around you that you identify as normal, based on the facts the topic matters a lot for lawmakers, politicians and large audiences you may not know.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        50% of millenials is not 50% of the voting public. And yes, regulation is being discussed, that's what this article is all about. For pretty good reasons, the whole idea that there would be a forever unregulated way to transfer vast sums of money instantly is a pipe dream at best.
        miohtama 5y ago
        The article is about setting the reporting threshold to zero, not to some meaningful number that would prevent crime. What would be a comfortable purchase amount for you that you would like to have someone else to read your receipts? For the perspective, the FAFT recommendation is $1000.
bufferoverflow 5y ago
Ridiculous. I can make anonymous payments with cash. This is a good example of regulations going too far.
- riffraff 5y ago
  Paynents with cash above a certain sum are also restricted in some legislations. In Italy they are illegal above a couple thousand euros, for example.
- dijonman2 5y ago
  Anonymous payments are critical to society. We’re already surveilled from every possible angle, total surveillance isn’t too far away. Many of these technologies are not well understood by the general public and of course their proprietors will never admit to any wrongdoing. Our freedoms are eroding by the week. Many people here on HN right now probably don’t know what life was like prior to the Patriot Act. I just want to be left alone, to think and behave freely, including the ability to share my ideas without fear of reprisal.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    I see no correlation between ability to track and oppressiveness of regimes. Scandinavian countries are great at tracking their people and very much not oppressive for example. > I just want to be left alone, to think and behave freely, including the ability to share my ideas without fear of reprisal. That requires the government to behave nicely, as long as the government would attack you if they knew about these things you would have to live in fear regardless if they tracked you or not. Freedom doesn't come from hiding things from the government, it comes from ensuring that your government isn't behaving like shit, as otherwise you will always dread the government finding out about your stuff. A person who has to hide what he does from the government isn't free, he is basically a refugee in his own country.
    - dijonman2 5y ago
      I’m more afraid of my radical peers than the government. However, the government is made up of my peers. I come to terms with this by reminding myself how insignificant I am, and I’m not worth harassing. I’m not going to give an example but I hold a few unpopular beliefs. There are people who would like to see me die because of them. This is no way to live.
miohtama 5y ago
I wrote about the topic of slow possible cryptocurrency death in the context of Estonia and their upcoming laws. Although banning of cryptocurrencies might not be an explicit goal, regulation, either by bureacratic regulators, lack of undestanding from senior politicians and citizens, kneejerk reactions, overreaching policing and spooks (Canada), protect the kids folks, conservatives fearing porn payments, general decline of democracy and freedom of speech and pissed off traditional bankers might cause it: https://capitalgram.com/posts/estonia-cryptocurrency-ban/ https://capitalgram.com/posts/estonia-cryptocurrency-ban/ The only way to stop the slippery slope towards the political ban is for voters to start caring about the topic. Also FATF guidelines to not require zero threshold, but propose $1000. This is completely self made rule by weak minded EU members of parliaments who try to score votes from concerned (senior) citizens https://mobile.twitter.com/moo9000/status/1491386266377945088 https://mobile.twitter.com/moo9000/status/149138626637794508... https://mobile.twitter.com/moo9000/status/1466455515119206400 https://mobile.twitter.com/moo9000/status/146645551511920640... Zero reporting threshold for transactions is not practical or desirable.
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  I have a different more nuanced take on this. I've commented earlier, but I'll repeat myself here: ----- Currency is only as good as the government that mediates its exchange. If mediating that exchange incurs costs, then the government will take steps to either stop mediating those exchanges (ex: China - where all crypto exchanges are illegal by default, so the legal system can no longer be used to offset the cost of those exchanges at cost to itself) or it will bring that currency under control so that it can make those costs predictable and acceptable (ex: The US - where crypto is getting "all the bad bits" added back through legislation) Which means the original intent of crypto only works in this honeymoon period (which I actually think ended not too long after the silk road went down) where it happens to get treated as an asset by a government that hasn't yet found out that they're essentially mediating exchanges in a foreign currency for free (not something most governments want to do).
  - matthewdgreen 5y ago
    The theory a decade ago was that cryptocurrency would develop an native economy of sorts: you could buy and sell things directly in crypto, and there would be markets for that. Maybe not markets for everything! But at least enough that it would start to erode the need for fiat ramps. That hasn't really happened yet, despite the fact that we now have various permissionless stablecoins to tackle the volatility problems. Maybe it never will.
gillesjacobs 5y ago
> The reason: They want to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. > Criticism comes from the Pirate Party. “A complete ban on anonymous payments would not have any appreciable reducing effects on crime, but it would deprive innocent citizens of their financial freedom. For example, to collect donations, opposition figures like Alexej Navalny are increasingly dependent on anonymous donations in virtual currencies around the world,” says Patrick Breyer, MEP for the Pirate Party Germany and member of the LIBE committee. The critique is 100% on the money. This will not stop criminals, at all. They will continue to use privacy coins such as Monero which are entirely untraceable by design. The only people hit by this are legitimate business or causes who offer crypto payments, or grey area businesses such as cannabis shops. The timing coinciding with the Emergency Act in Canada, feels like this is likely about suppression of undesirable political groups.
- louwrentius 5y ago
  > This will not stop criminals, at all. Laws don't stop criminals at all, but we still have them and we still try to enforce them. > They will continue to use privacy coins such as Monero In the end you need an off-ramp where you convert Monero into actual currency and that's where you get fucked. Frankly speaking, the $5 wrench XKCD comes to mind. There is no conspiracy here, except that we want to keep society functional and not be disrupted by tools that mostly cater to criminals.
  - dotnet00 5y ago
    This just rehashing the "if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide" fallacy
    - louwrentius 5y ago
      None of the digital payments were anonymous, but still private. You don't need anonymity to have privacy. Before you downvote, really think about this for a moment. Because you'll realise that almost none of your payments are anonymous, unless you pay cash (while being recorded).
nickff 5y ago
This is especially terrifying when combined with governments freezing people out of the financial system (with no prospect of appeal) as has happened in Canada, along with the decreasing popularity, and prospective elimination of cash (as seems most common in China and the Nordic countries). https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-banks-ottawa-protests-1.6353968 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-banks-ottaw...
- nikanj 5y ago
Animats 5y ago
I'd argue that cryptocurrency payments to anonymous receivers should not be irrevocable. If you want to send money anonymously, that's OK. But, to prevent fraud, receivers must be either known, or subject to clawback. That could be done with a smart contract. When you buy something with a cryptocurrency, the funds go into lockup for, say, 30 days. With no action by either party, funds are released to the seller after 30 days. If the buyer wants to dispute the transaction, they can trigger an arbitration hold by sending a message to the smart contract. The seller can then give up anonymity and go to arbitration or court, or abandon the transaction.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  If you choose to send money to an anonymous wallet for goods or services that have not yet been delivered, that's on you. The government can't eliminate stupidity with legislation.
- analog31 5y ago
  How can a consumer possibly understand smart contracts to the point where they even know if there's any protection? It would be wiser to assume that the payment has gone into a black hole.
  - csee 5y ago
    You could make a site that provides the nice UI and charges a fee.
    - analog31 5y ago
      Paying someone else to eat a risk is the time honored way. I've already got PayPal. What ultimately makes transactions reversible with regular money is that a person can manually override the ledger.
    - Animats 5y ago
      There's a startup idea. The crypto answer to PayPal.
traveler01 5y ago
Funny, everytime governments remove people's freedoms they do it for "security", even though most of these things aren't actually making us more secure.
- mhitza 5y ago
  Governments gonna govern. Fewer freedoms thanks to laws and regulation that hide behind CSAM, AML, CFT, pushed in the last two years while activist groups were less likely to assemble and protest.
- soco 5y ago
  Somehow the EU is good when it promotes GDPR but bad when it touches crypto?
  - traveler01 5y ago
    I even think when considering GDPR the EU went too far. It ruinned website experience with all those cookies garbages. Dumb politicians who never did anything else than politics creating popular laws just to look like they're actually doing something.
    - soco 5y ago
      GDPR is not only cookies. It's also new data practices, audits and fines, happening as we speak.
louwrentius 5y ago
I think this hacker news post may yet again be a lesson for a lot of crypto fans that there are a ton of laws and regulations in place about money for very good reason. There really is no conspiracy here. The real problem is that crypto is a solution in search of a legal problem, and it hasn't found one yet. Unfortunately, it did find a lot of 'illegal problems'... Yes, I'm making that argument again, but there's nothing more to it than this, as I see it.
daenz 5y ago
I am not a crypto fan, but it's becoming more and more clear to me that crypto is the battleground for governments versus people. To survive and function, governments need the ability to levy taxes. This means that income needs to be tied to identity, and it needs to be accessible by the government. But cryptocurrency generally does not support those things, and in fact consider the resistance to them a feature, not a bug. If a hypothetical world existed where an ungovernable cryptocurrency took over all forms of transactions, what is the plan to pay taxes? I'm not a huge fan of taxes either, but I think most of us can agree that we need some taxes.
- user4353332325 5y ago
  That world already existed, it was every civilization that used currency before the electronic payment system. The only caveat was that it had to be exchanged in person. Governments levied taxes on goods at points they could easily view and control, e.g. tariffs on imports and exports, taxes on goods produced by businesses that couldn't hide, and on landowners, which also can't hide how much land they own.
ivan_gammel 5y ago
> For example, to collect donations, opposition figures like Alexej Navalny are increasingly dependent on anonymous donations in virtual currencies around the world,” says Patrick Breyer, MEP for the Pirate Party Germany and member of the LIBE committee. Those donations are going to be useless soon, because Russia is going to forbid payments via crypto inside the country and regulate investments in crypto.
plsbenice34 5y ago
It will be fascinating to see how regulation deals with trying to regulate anonymous cryptocurrency payments. It leads to innocent people suffering from bitcoin's lack of fungibility; this is already happening. I don't know how it will turn out in the end. I believe it is one of the most important issues of our time, given that physical cash seems to be in danger of being phased out and several countries are working on Central Bank Digital Currency in some form. It is not so simple as "ban Monero". People can swap trustlessly from Monero to BTC. There are 'privacy features' on other chains too, like CoinJoin on bitcoin. Making these activities illegal means there are coins with acceptable history, and tainted coins that have been used for anonymous transactions. Businesses can use subscriptions to blockchain analysis companies to check if funds are acceptable or tained, then choose to reject payments if necessary. People doing peer-to-peer payments cannot do this, they can't check other peer's coins are tainted. Even if chain analysis software was publicly available, you need access to valuable, sensitive data from exchanges and merchants etc updated on the fly. If "criminals" have access to the chain analysis results then it also helps them to find a way to evade it. The bitcoin whitepaper is titled 'A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System' but it really doesn't work for that. Interesting example case where an innocent user suffered because they ended up with coins that someone else mixed: https://old.reddit.com/r/blockfi/comments/skxiei/blockfi_horrible_loan_experience_fortune_lost/ https://old.reddit.com/r/blockfi/comments/skxiei/blockfi_hor...

77 points by malermeister 5y ago

rasengan 5y ago

Why not just ban anonymous payments period then. That’s weird. Seems like this isn’t about anonymous payments at all?

anononaut 5y ago
That would require first eliminating bills and coins, a task I fear isn't very far down the road.
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  Nor are bills and coins nearly as anonymous as most people believe. There's a reason every Euro note and US dollar comes stamped with a serial number...
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
Bad title. It’s requiring de-anonymisation for crypto transactions. Not banning crypto.
- dang 5y ago
  We've changed the title to one that uses representative language from the first paragraph. Submitted title was "EU wants to completely ban anonymous payments with cryptocurrency assets".
Jensson 5y ago
Other forms of electronic payments already aren't anonymous.
louwrentius 5y ago
As far as I know, digital payments were never anonymous, so there was nothing to ban in the first place.
dathinab 5y ago
They are already kinda banned. Once payments are above a certain amount contact information must be collected as far as I know. No bank transactions are anonymous. Smaller money payments are anonymous, but mainly due to physical limitations creating enough hassle so that it can't be abused too much (without also braking the law). As well as historic reasons. But did you ever consider that every bank note has a unique id which is tracked by banks when you pay in money (and I think) retrieve it? Furthermore the EU as since basically it's creation slowly working on de-anonymizing payments wit the purpose of fighting crime and money laundering. It's pretty much a straight forward continuation of pre-bitcoin invention policies.
miohtama 5y ago
Because if you are a politician who bans the crypto you won’t be ever elected again. Thus, you do it sneaky way.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  The disconnect with reality is quite astounding. Do you actually believe that the majority interest right now lies with crypto? 'Normal' people have heard about it but have never in their life used crypto for a payment.
  - miohtama 5y ago
    Cryptocurrency regulation is being discussed in the US, in the EU, in Russia. 50% millenials hold crypto in the US https://cointelegraph.com/news/low-millennial-financial-well-being-drives-crypto-adoption-report https://cointelegraph.com/news/low-millennial-financial-well... Top cryptocurrency users are in Vietnam, Pakistan, Ukraine and India https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-global-crypto-adoption-index/ https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-global-crypto-adop... While cryptocurrencies may not matter for you, or people around you that you identify as normal, based on the facts the topic matters a lot for lawmakers, politicians and large audiences you may not know.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      50% of millenials is not 50% of the voting public. And yes, regulation is being discussed, that's what this article is all about. For pretty good reasons, the whole idea that there would be a forever unregulated way to transfer vast sums of money instantly is a pipe dream at best.
      - miohtama 5y ago
        The article is about setting the reporting threshold to zero, not to some meaningful number that would prevent crime. What would be a comfortable purchase amount for you that you would like to have someone else to read your receipts? For the perspective, the FAFT recommendation is $1000.

bufferoverflow 5y ago

Ridiculous. I can make anonymous payments with cash. This is a good example of regulations going too far.

riffraff 5y ago
Paynents with cash above a certain sum are also restricted in some legislations. In Italy they are illegal above a couple thousand euros, for example.
dijonman2 5y ago
Anonymous payments are critical to society. We’re already surveilled from every possible angle, total surveillance isn’t too far away. Many of these technologies are not well understood by the general public and of course their proprietors will never admit to any wrongdoing. Our freedoms are eroding by the week. Many people here on HN right now probably don’t know what life was like prior to the Patriot Act. I just want to be left alone, to think and behave freely, including the ability to share my ideas without fear of reprisal.
- Jensson 5y ago
  I see no correlation between ability to track and oppressiveness of regimes. Scandinavian countries are great at tracking their people and very much not oppressive for example. > I just want to be left alone, to think and behave freely, including the ability to share my ideas without fear of reprisal. That requires the government to behave nicely, as long as the government would attack you if they knew about these things you would have to live in fear regardless if they tracked you or not. Freedom doesn't come from hiding things from the government, it comes from ensuring that your government isn't behaving like shit, as otherwise you will always dread the government finding out about your stuff. A person who has to hide what he does from the government isn't free, he is basically a refugee in his own country.
  - dijonman2 5y ago
    I’m more afraid of my radical peers than the government. However, the government is made up of my peers. I come to terms with this by reminding myself how insignificant I am, and I’m not worth harassing. I’m not going to give an example but I hold a few unpopular beliefs. There are people who would like to see me die because of them. This is no way to live.

miohtama 5y ago

I wrote about the topic of slow possible cryptocurrency death in the context of Estonia and their upcoming laws. Although banning of cryptocurrencies might not be an explicit goal, regulation, either by bureacratic regulators, lack of undestanding from senior politicians and citizens, kneejerk reactions, overreaching policing and spooks (Canada), protect the kids folks, conservatives fearing porn payments, general decline of democracy and freedom of speech and pissed off traditional bankers might cause it: https://capitalgram.com/posts/estonia-cryptocurrency-ban/ https://capitalgram.com/posts/estonia-cryptocurrency-ban/ The only way to stop the slippery slope towards the political ban is for voters to start caring about the topic. Also FATF guidelines to not require zero threshold, but propose $1000. This is completely self made rule by weak minded EU members of parliaments who try to score votes from concerned (senior) citizens https://mobile.twitter.com/moo9000/status/1491386266377945088 https://mobile.twitter.com/moo9000/status/149138626637794508... https://mobile.twitter.com/moo9000/status/1466455515119206400 https://mobile.twitter.com/moo9000/status/146645551511920640... Zero reporting threshold for transactions is not practical or desirable.

horsawlarway 5y ago
I have a different more nuanced take on this. I've commented earlier, but I'll repeat myself here: ----- Currency is only as good as the government that mediates its exchange. If mediating that exchange incurs costs, then the government will take steps to either stop mediating those exchanges (ex: China - where all crypto exchanges are illegal by default, so the legal system can no longer be used to offset the cost of those exchanges at cost to itself) or it will bring that currency under control so that it can make those costs predictable and acceptable (ex: The US - where crypto is getting "all the bad bits" added back through legislation) Which means the original intent of crypto only works in this honeymoon period (which I actually think ended not too long after the silk road went down) where it happens to get treated as an asset by a government that hasn't yet found out that they're essentially mediating exchanges in a foreign currency for free (not something most governments want to do).
- matthewdgreen 5y ago
  The theory a decade ago was that cryptocurrency would develop an native economy of sorts: you could buy and sell things directly in crypto, and there would be markets for that. Maybe not markets for everything! But at least enough that it would start to erode the need for fiat ramps. That hasn't really happened yet, despite the fact that we now have various permissionless stablecoins to tackle the volatility problems. Maybe it never will.

gillesjacobs 5y ago

> The reason: They want to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. > Criticism comes from the Pirate Party. “A complete ban on anonymous payments would not have any appreciable reducing effects on crime, but it would deprive innocent citizens of their financial freedom. For example, to collect donations, opposition figures like Alexej Navalny are increasingly dependent on anonymous donations in virtual currencies around the world,” says Patrick Breyer, MEP for the Pirate Party Germany and member of the LIBE committee. The critique is 100% on the money. This will not stop criminals, at all. They will continue to use privacy coins such as Monero which are entirely untraceable by design. The only people hit by this are legitimate business or causes who offer crypto payments, or grey area businesses such as cannabis shops. The timing coinciding with the Emergency Act in Canada, feels like this is likely about suppression of undesirable political groups.

louwrentius 5y ago
> This will not stop criminals, at all. Laws don't stop criminals at all, but we still have them and we still try to enforce them. > They will continue to use privacy coins such as Monero In the end you need an off-ramp where you convert Monero into actual currency and that's where you get fucked. Frankly speaking, the $5 wrench XKCD comes to mind. There is no conspiracy here, except that we want to keep society functional and not be disrupted by tools that mostly cater to criminals.
- dotnet00 5y ago
  This just rehashing the "if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide" fallacy
  - louwrentius 5y ago
    None of the digital payments were anonymous, but still private. You don't need anonymity to have privacy. Before you downvote, really think about this for a moment. Because you'll realise that almost none of your payments are anonymous, unless you pay cash (while being recorded).

nickff 5y ago

This is especially terrifying when combined with governments freezing people out of the financial system (with no prospect of appeal) as has happened in Canada, along with the decreasing popularity, and prospective elimination of cash (as seems most common in China and the Nordic countries). https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-banks-ottawa-protests-1.6353968 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-banks-ottaw...

nikanj 5y ago

Animats 5y ago

I'd argue that cryptocurrency payments to anonymous receivers should not be irrevocable. If you want to send money anonymously, that's OK. But, to prevent fraud, receivers must be either known, or subject to clawback. That could be done with a smart contract. When you buy something with a cryptocurrency, the funds go into lockup for, say, 30 days. With no action by either party, funds are released to the seller after 30 days. If the buyer wants to dispute the transaction, they can trigger an arbitration hold by sending a message to the smart contract. The seller can then give up anonymity and go to arbitration or court, or abandon the transaction.

fallingknife 5y ago
If you choose to send money to an anonymous wallet for goods or services that have not yet been delivered, that's on you. The government can't eliminate stupidity with legislation.
analog31 5y ago
How can a consumer possibly understand smart contracts to the point where they even know if there's any protection? It would be wiser to assume that the payment has gone into a black hole.
- csee 5y ago
  You could make a site that provides the nice UI and charges a fee.
  - analog31 5y ago
    Paying someone else to eat a risk is the time honored way. I've already got PayPal. What ultimately makes transactions reversible with regular money is that a person can manually override the ledger.
  - Animats 5y ago
    There's a startup idea. The crypto answer to PayPal.

traveler01 5y ago

Funny, everytime governments remove people's freedoms they do it for "security", even though most of these things aren't actually making us more secure.

mhitza 5y ago
Governments gonna govern. Fewer freedoms thanks to laws and regulation that hide behind CSAM, AML, CFT, pushed in the last two years while activist groups were less likely to assemble and protest.
soco 5y ago
Somehow the EU is good when it promotes GDPR but bad when it touches crypto?
- traveler01 5y ago
  I even think when considering GDPR the EU went too far. It ruinned website experience with all those cookies garbages. Dumb politicians who never did anything else than politics creating popular laws just to look like they're actually doing something.
  - soco 5y ago
    GDPR is not only cookies. It's also new data practices, audits and fines, happening as we speak.

louwrentius 5y ago

I think this hacker news post may yet again be a lesson for a lot of crypto fans that there are a ton of laws and regulations in place about money for very good reason. There really is no conspiracy here. The real problem is that crypto is a solution in search of a legal problem, and it hasn't found one yet. Unfortunately, it did find a lot of 'illegal problems'... Yes, I'm making that argument again, but there's nothing more to it than this, as I see it.

daenz 5y ago

I am not a crypto fan, but it's becoming more and more clear to me that crypto is the battleground for governments versus people. To survive and function, governments need the ability to levy taxes. This means that income needs to be tied to identity, and it needs to be accessible by the government. But cryptocurrency generally does not support those things, and in fact consider the resistance to them a feature, not a bug. If a hypothetical world existed where an ungovernable cryptocurrency took over all forms of transactions, what is the plan to pay taxes? I'm not a huge fan of taxes either, but I think most of us can agree that we need some taxes.

user4353332325 5y ago
That world already existed, it was every civilization that used currency before the electronic payment system. The only caveat was that it had to be exchanged in person. Governments levied taxes on goods at points they could easily view and control, e.g. tariffs on imports and exports, taxes on goods produced by businesses that couldn't hide, and on landowners, which also can't hide how much land they own.

ivan_gammel 5y ago

> For example, to collect donations, opposition figures like Alexej Navalny are increasingly dependent on anonymous donations in virtual currencies around the world,” says Patrick Breyer, MEP for the Pirate Party Germany and member of the LIBE committee. Those donations are going to be useless soon, because Russia is going to forbid payments via crypto inside the country and regulate investments in crypto.

plsbenice34 5y ago

It will be fascinating to see how regulation deals with trying to regulate anonymous cryptocurrency payments. It leads to innocent people suffering from bitcoin's lack of fungibility; this is already happening. I don't know how it will turn out in the end. I believe it is one of the most important issues of our time, given that physical cash seems to be in danger of being phased out and several countries are working on Central Bank Digital Currency in some form. It is not so simple as "ban Monero". People can swap trustlessly from Monero to BTC. There are 'privacy features' on other chains too, like CoinJoin on bitcoin. Making these activities illegal means there are coins with acceptable history, and tainted coins that have been used for anonymous transactions. Businesses can use subscriptions to blockchain analysis companies to check if funds are acceptable or tained, then choose to reject payments if necessary. People doing peer-to-peer payments cannot do this, they can't check other peer's coins are tainted. Even if chain analysis software was publicly available, you need access to valuable, sensitive data from exchanges and merchants etc updated on the fly. If "criminals" have access to the chain analysis results then it also helps them to find a way to evade it. The bitcoin whitepaper is titled 'A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System' but it really doesn't work for that. Interesting example case where an innocent user suffered because they ended up with coins that someone else mixed: https://old.reddit.com/r/blockfi/comments/skxiei/blockfi_horrible_loan_experience_fortune_lost/ https://old.reddit.com/r/blockfi/comments/skxiei/blockfi_hor...