5 ms·

It seems that crypto and blockchain-based systems may well hurt the standing of the US if they allow US adversaries to evade financial sanctions. I wonder if U

• adventured 4y ago
  The power of the USD and related sanctions isn't whether North Korea can move trivial sums of money in the process of modest criminal activities (trivial and modest in the scale of national economies of consequence), it's whether you can heavily limit their ability to freely trade with the global economy. Bitcoin and Ethereum are not going to help North Korea very much in the scope of what they'd require. The US will (sooner or later) notice if X country in Asia suddenly starts doing $20 billion per year in crypto-based trade with North Korea, and that X country can be damaged economically as necessary to dissuade (make it not worth doing). That ability continues until you can convince most nations to abandon their currencies and turn all of that economic self-determination and political power over to independent crypto systems they have no control over. It ain't gonna happen.
• bko 4y ago
  Have financial sanctions worked in anything other than making the people of the country remain poor?
  • vkou 4y ago
    Making your adversary poor is the whole point of sanctions, so no. But that is the end in itself. Poor countries have a much harder time waging offensive wars. It also supplies a opposing fact to some forms of internal propaganda, especially when tied to a discrete event in the country's foreign policy.
    • chrischen 4y ago
      The counter argument to that justification of sanctions is that financial interdependence also discourages war. I mean, if North Korea gets nukes they can still shoot them and cause a lot of trouble, and we pretty much have no additional leverage aside from direct military intervention or taking the people one step further from poor -> dead. With Russia sanctions are doing some damage right now, even if it hasn’t stopped the war. With North Korea we’ve blown our load and the main casualty is just a destitute population over there.
      • rosndo 4y ago
        > With North Korea we’ve blown our load Actually no, much more could be done against North Korea. A total naval blockade, for example.
        • dragonwriter 4y ago
          > Actually no, much more could be done against North Korea. A total naval blockade, for example. Isn't virtually all their trade land trade via China? Short of a land invasion to cut off that border, I don't see how any kind of a blockade makes much of a difference.
          • rosndo 4y ago
            There’s a decent amount of maritime trade, especially for oil. Fishing is also important for the domestic economy.
            • chrischen 4y ago
              That’s going from passive to active though. If active it can be considered basically like invasion/physical war.
              • rosndo 4y ago
                I’m not convinced that actually matters wrt North Korea. Besides, sanctions enforcement turns pretty active when you start prosecuting violators.
• CryptoPunk 4y ago
  If a state like North Korea, that brutally represses its population, is able to use a censorship resistant technology to escape US sanctions, the US should not respond by instituting highly repressive laws to contain that censorship resistant technology. This is totally counter-productive to the larger policy objective, of advancing the values of liberal democracy, like individual liberty, privacy and respect for human rights, that motivates opposition to the North Korean state. If sanctions cannot be effectively enforced without repressing decentralized platforms, then the US should look to other tools of statecraft to combat problematic states like North Korea.
  • beachy 4y ago
    Are you saying that the censor-resistant purity of crypto has the ability to inspire values of liberal democracy in the lackies who toil in NK's hacking farms? That seems rather idealistic, let alone any likelihood of it leading to democratic values taking root there.
    • CryptoPunk 4y ago
      No. I have no idea if North Korean society has the necessary conditions, like globally integrated internet communities of appreciable size, where cryptocurrency can effect change. I'm saying that censorship resistant finance reduces the impact of repressive laws around the world. It helps individuals circumvent laws like those instituted in places like Venezuela and China, that give the state enormous power over private citizens by controlling how they move money. Stopping North Korea from using cryptocurrency would require very repressive laws to shut down entire global cryptocurrency networks, which in and of itself would make for a less free world because of the extremely heavy-handed enforcement actions that such a campaign would require. On top of this, the end result of such a campaign were it to succeed - of these censorship resistant networks not existing - would further undermine the goal of creating more free societies, for reasons mentioned above.
      • capitalsigma 4y ago
        How does funding organized crime help worldwide freedom?
• ElonMuskrat 4y ago
  > I wonder if US lawmakers would step in to try to shut down these systems. It's unecessary to shut down because fiat off-ramps are the Achilles heal. Already there are wallet address banlist [1]; and woe to any instituion who processes transactions which originate from those addresses. [1] https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/recent-actions/20211108 https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...
  • mrep 4y ago
    How do those banlists work? If they send a bunch of coins to innocent wallets, are those now completely tainted or are people tracking what percentage of coins in each wallet are "legitimate"?
    • mkhpalm 4y ago
      I always figured the best way to take your filthy crypto lucre to an fiat is through NFTs. Mint something stupid and sell it to your banned wallet for a ridiculous price. If you just send it from one wallet to another there is no plausible deniability and that transaction will be tracked and scrutinized. Just like laundering fiat through fine art you have to have something that can be subjectively valued and sold.
• root_axis 4y ago
  I'm skeptical that crypto tokens are capable of allowing NK to effectively evade sanctions. The reality is that cryptocurrencies are terrible currencies and doing business with a sanctioned country is far less risky using fiat cash than than using any type of blockchain.
• cyanydeez 4y ago
  They hurt everyone.theyre scams. Don't turn a scam into some political commentary