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Tell HN: Coinbase now requires physical address of recipient in crypto transfers

387 points by jb1991 4y ago

Just got this email from Coinbase, and it seems one by one the promises of crypto of the last several years are evaporating: Starting on June 27, Coinbase will introduce some changes required by local regulations. Specifically, when you send crypto outside of Coinbase, we are required to ask you for the name and physical address of the recipient and the purpose of transfer. In certain cases we may require you to link a Coinbase Wallet to your main Coinbase account in order to send crypto assets off the Coinbase platform. This allows us to verify that you control the Coinbase Wallet that is receiving the crypto assets.

pmorici 4y ago
Practically speaking this isn’t a big deal. Just transfer to a wallet you own and from there you can do whatever you want without providing that additional detail. Also this silly rule only applies in a particular country.
bouncycastle 4y ago
This is for Netherlands.
idiocratic 4y ago
The promise of crypto is still valid. It’s the centralized idea of crypto platforms like Coinbase that is evaporating, and that’s a good thing.
- ls15 4y ago
  I think that there is some value in these platforms too. They provide a service after all. Given they are not regulated to death.
- jollybean 4y ago
  The very fact that such exchanges exist kind of abnegate the promise of crypto. Coinbase is asking for this information for very rational reasons ... the crypto space is re-learning all the problems that pop up when it comes to money and implementing regulations ad hoc. There are definitely arguments to be made one way or another about such regulations either government or industry sanctioned ... but what we can't ignore is that money is important, and usually needs something more than what crypto offers in terms of practical integrity.
- nickgubbins 4y ago
  As someone with only a cursory knowledge of crypto, what are the decentralised alternatives to the likes of Coinbase to buy/sell crypto assets?
  - usednet 4y ago
    You can use a decentralized exchange like Bisq but liquidity is horrible. Hopefully more people make the switch.
  - mudrockbestgirl 4y ago
    https://uniswap.org/ https://uniswap.org/
    - colinsane 4y ago
      uniswap is for exchanging crypto assets. you can’t use it to exchange non-crypto ($USD from your bank) assets with crypto assets. it’s not an on-ramp.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    It's a hard problem to solve, which doesn't have any fool-proof solutions (yet?). Imagine, someone creates a centralized Twitter and a decentralized Twitter. How can you connect them two and being able to trust any data you receive 3rd-hand which is supposed to originate from the centralized version? The only information you can really trust, is the one you get from the centralized version, as it was built with that principle in mind, that you get it first-hand. Similar problem with hooking together two monetary systems, one which is centralized and one which is decentralized. How could you include a centralized system within the decentralized one without making trade-offs that could potentially ruin the whole integration? There are attempts at it, but as the problem is generally hard to solve (cryptocurrencies or tweets or any other data structure), it's hard to solve with cryptocurrencies as well.
  - valcron1000 4y ago
    Look into P2P crypto trading
- WA 4y ago
  How would I purchase Bitcoin anonymously? I can't, because there is no way to exchange my cash for (significant) amount of Bitcoin. If I can't get Bitcoin anonymously, how is the promise of crypto still valid for newcomers?
  - ibz 4y ago
    You can buy bitcoin with cash. You can work and get paid in bitcoin. You can sell stuff for bitcoin. You can mine bitcoin. If you want something, you will find a way.
    - WA 4y ago
      > You can buy bitcoin with cash. Where can I buy 500,000€ worth of Bitcoin with cash? > You can work and get paid in bitcoin. That's usually not anonymous. > You can sell stuff for bitcoin. I don't own stuff worth 500,000€, except cash and stocks. > You can mine bitcoin. Not in a significant way, no. > If you want something, you will find a way. You ran out of arguments. My point still holds: Crypto isn't anonymous, because you can't easily get in and out of it anonymously.
      - anon9001 4y ago
        I think you've missed the point entirely. Practically, there are a ton of ways to turn 500,000 EUR into "anonymous" crypto, depending on what you mean by "anonymous". You can use an exchange (KYC or non-KYC) that lets you trade USDT/XMR pairs. Wire 500,000 EUR and convert to USDT. Buy the full amount worth of XMR and send it to your own XMR hardware wallet. You now have anonymous XMR (assuming you trust their math). You can do something similar with ZEC shielded transactions. Many KYC exchanges support ZEC (but without shielded transactions). You can get your ZEC this way and then shield it. If you're interested in anonymous crypto, XMR or ZEC is probably what you'd want to have anyway instead of BTC. Also, LTC recently adopted a new privacy-enabling feature. It's not functional yet as far as I know, but it did cause LTC to be delisted from several korean exchanges last week. This one is interesting because of the widespread adoption of litecoin before it added privacy features. Or if you'd rather use the ETH ecosystem, you can use https://tornado.cash/ https://tornado.cash/. Buy your KYC'd ETH, send to tornado.cash, wait, withdraw a partial amount to a fresh anonymous ethereum address. There are even privacy-oriented wallets like https://unstoppable.money/ https://unstoppable.money/ that can use tor to further improve anonymity while doing wallet actions. But let's say you really do want bitcoin only. Take your 500,000 EUR and wire it to a KYC exchange. Buy your bitcoin and send it to your wallet. Send that BTC into renVM pools, wait, send your renBTC to a new address, release renBTC back to BTC on the new address: https://bridge.renproject.io/ https://bridge.renproject.io/. In other words, your point does not hold at all. There are probably a dozen different ways to get anonymous crypto right now. In the near future, many common coins will have privacy features anyway, maybe even by default. You have to think about what level of anonymity you want and what premium you're willing to pay, but there's a wide spectrum of options. And if you think it's not easy enough yet, just wait. The math works, it's just not wrapped up into a convenient user experience yet.
- usrbinbash 4y ago
  Question: How many people would use cryptocurrencies without such platforms?
  - knorker 4y ago
    If you want to buy drugs, ransomware, tax fraud (i.e. theft[1]), fake IDs, or have someone whacked, then you'll still use it. So this only affects the single other use case, the legal one: greater fool speculation. [1] before anarchist libertarians object saying "taxation is theft": Please don't start that conversation if you've ever used public roads, parks, or even passively benefited from the security provided by your country having police or a judicial system.
    - danaris 4y ago
      ...or been to a public school, or ever interacted with someone who went to a public school, or, or, or..... If you don't want taxes, you don't want society.
      - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
        I mean, there's a few people that move to a cabin in the woods off the grid for that reason, which is fine if they want to live like that. There's a lot of people however that want the benefits of society (for example to make money) without contributing back.
perlgeek 4y ago
I am surprised that "Know your customer" regulations have taking this long to arrive at a fairly reputable exchange.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Many exchanges have applied the 'know your customer' stuff only for withdrawing and depositing fiat. I think they argue that crypto is effectively worthless and therefore financial regulations don't apply.
  - oefrha 4y ago
    Pretty sure Coinbase already requires a photo ID if you want to send or receive any coin to or from an external address. I know this because a few years ago I decided to completely pull (what little I had) out of crypto, and couldn’t send BTC from my Coinbase account to my own wallet without submitting a photo ID, which was not what I signed up for. Apparently having a U.S. bank account linked wasn’t enough at that point.
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  They've been in place since forever for withdrawing cash
tremarley 4y ago
They're doing way too much now
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
wow, this really undermines the privacy aspect of cryptocurrencies. i guess more reason to move off of exchanges.
mudrockbestgirl 4y ago
> and it seems one by one the promises of crypto of the last several years are evaporating Promises of crypto have nothing to do with some random US-based centralized entity. Not your keys, not your coins.
- jollybean 4y ago
  They aren't random, and they're not doing this for random reasons. They're an industry leading exchange acting rationally at least from some perspective. Which means there are at least some practical reasons why 'real people' and 'addresses' etc. might be useful in financial transactions.
  - Shatnerz 4y ago
    > might be useful in financial transactions This is likely to satisfy regulators. I highly doubt that this change has anything to do with practical usefulness
    - jollybean 4y ago
      ? Hmm ... and why might 'regulations' be in place such that when large sums of money change hands, there's some way to know who's involved, or at least to attribute the transaction to some legal entity ?
      - Shatnerz 4y ago
        We can turn this to a semantic argument over the meaning of "practical usefulness", but in my opinion collecting such information provides no additional benefit to Coinbase other than keeping regulators at bay and avoiding future fines and restrictions. > why might 'regulations' be in place such that when large sums of money change hands I have done some work in the financial compliance space. You would be surprised how small some of these "large sums" are and they keep getting smaller even while inflation weakens the value of the currency involved. In some locations, the limit is as low as ~$1000 USD. Yes the motivation is anti-terrorism, protect the children, national security etc... but in practice it is just a vehicle for governments to collect data on its people. In this case, good actors will behave the same while their data is collected and shared. Bad actors who are aware of these restrictions can just pay the $0.25 to transfer through a newly created wallet and then send without these restrictions while regulators pat themselves on the back for stopping money laundering. What can end up happening with policies like this? Well if governments, regulators, or monopolies get out of hand all of a sudden you cannot send money to a political party. Maybe all your bank accounts are frozen for supporting a protest or all of a sudden you have no way to purchase a flight to leave. Maybe Mastercard/Visa ban donations to entities like Wikileaks for "moral reasons" while allowing donations to the KKK and other similar organizations. These changes don't typically happen all at once. Freedoms are salami sliced away at a rate that doesn't upset the majority and the norm slowly moves to believe that these restrictions are for our own good. (sorry I went a bit off topic here) Also, why was "regulations" in quotes? Sorry if I missed something or misinterpreted your tone here. Hopefully I answered your question.
joyfylbanana 4y ago
"Promises of crypto" have never been about being able to have reasonable regulations for crypto. In the opposite, heavy regulations were expected to be coming from the very early days.
contentboot 4y ago
SonOfThePlower 4y ago
How many TWh crypto consumed? Would one be able to build Egyptian pyramids with this amount of energy?
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Clearly, yes. Building a pyramid, in the ideal case, simply requires the energy to lift each stone into place. Lifting 6.5 million tons of stone on average 40 meters (remember that most of the weight of a pyramid is at the bottom!) uses 6.5e9 * 40 * 10 Joules of energy, which is 722 MWh, which costs $144,000 in (California) electricity. Okay - thats a lot more than I expected actually...
jorisvansoest 4y ago
Bitonic filed a lawsuit last year (and won) against the Dutch DNB [1][2] about the verification of wallet addresses. Does anyone know the current state of regulations (in NL) about this subject? [1] https://www-rechtspraak-nl.translate.goog/Organisatie-en-contact/Organisatie/Rechtbanken/Rechtbank-Rotterdam/Nieuws/Paginas/Verzoek-Bitonic-is-ontvankelijk-maar-geen-schorsing-registratievereiste-.aspx?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-rechtspraak-nl.translate.goog/Organisatie-en-con... [2] https://bitonic-nl.translate.goog/news/231/dnb-stelt-bitonic-in-het-gelijk-en-komt-terug-op-verificatie-eis?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://bitonic-nl.translate.goog/news/231/dnb-stelt-bitonic...
- jeffhuys 4y ago
  Still full KYC here.
TekMol 4y ago
Does anybody know in which countries they are doing this? Anyhow, I think it is not as bad as it sounds. If you use Coinbase like a "crypto bank" that does the crypto stuff on your behalf - then yes, this makes things even more annoying than using a fiat bank. But the way I understand the announcement, it means nothing changes when you use Coinbase simply to buy Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. After you moved the coins to your wallet, Coinbase is not involved anymore, and you can do whatever you want in a decentralized fashion. Overall, my image of Coinbase has gone down quite a bit lately. It seems they are not embracing decentralization and just hope to build a strong crypto company. One that makes the more money, the more centralized this industry will become. Reminds me of AOL. And of Yahoo under Marissa Mayer. A big indicator for this is that they have so little focus on the Lightning Network. That reminds me of how Yahoo tried to use their portal to become a media company rather than an internet company. And then Google came along and got way bigger than Yahoo. By letting people explore the open web. I remember a Google employee once saying "Our goal is that the user leaves our website as soon as possible. Because that means they found what they were looking for.". Coinbase seems to not have that mindset. They seem to bet on becoming "the crypto everything company". A bank, a marketplace, a social network, a browser .... did this "We will do everything" ever work for a young company? But maybe it will now, that so much money flows into tech companies? The market cap of Coinbase at IPO was 50x bigger than that of Yahoo. It will be interesting to watch this company progress.
- jschulenklopper 4y ago
  > Does anybody know in which countries they are doing this? At least in The Netherlands. I got the mail too.
- krzyk 4y ago
  EU was talking about that, but currently I heard only Netherlands are doing that.
Shatnerz 4y ago
Send to your own privately controlled wallet and then transfer as your heart desires.
- m00dy 4y ago
  exactly. It is not easy to regulate unhosted wallets :)
rvz 4y ago
Contrary to what the anti-crypto keep on screeching about these money launderers using crypto, as soon as they send the funds to an exchange they are going to be met with a bunch of KYC/AML/ID checks and that is even before they are able to use the withdraw button. Money launderers, criminals and scammers are running out of options to cash out some cryptocurrencies as many exchanges are also increasing compliance with regulations and are already delisting privacy coins.
- ur-whale 4y ago
  Where does Julian Assange fall in that very neat and convenient dichotomy of yours?
whatisweb3 4y ago
This is pretty brutal regulation as it basically forces users to pay twice - once to transfer to a non custodial wallet they own and have KYC’d, and then again on-chain to transfer out to the desired beneficiary to maintain the receivers privacy. It’s the kind of cookie popup law that does nothing to stop bad actors, but does everything to make the average user experience worse. The regulation here feels invasive and poorly constructed - no surprise it is coming from the EU which is also attempting to put surveillance mechanisms into E2EE chat apps. EDIT: to the OP, Coinbase is not the promise of crypto. The promise of crypto is non custodial access to digital assets and peer to peer exchange. but it can be nice to have easier, cheaper, and privacy preserving on and off ramps into this ecosystem, something this kind of stiff regulation is fighting against.
- Tepix 4y ago
  Looks like yet another reason to switch to modern crypto currencies with low transfer fees.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  If you're a regulator, having all of the transactions on the interface between institutions and individuals pinned to PII, following money around the public ledger becomes significantly easier. If you're, say, a drug dealer only taking bitcoin, the police just have to buy some of your drugs and watch where the money goes to have a pretty good idea of all of your clients, your entire business history, and the names and addresses of your customers. It is perhaps sometimes technically possible to have good OpSec and launder the crypto so it can't be traced, but this is really hard and not making big mistakes is as well (and people breaking laws are often pretty stupid about it). Unless you are very competent and very paranoid, the advertised benefits of crypto are very hard to achieve.
  - whatisweb3 4y ago
    The advertised benefits - non custodial ownership and peer to peer exchange - still work fine. Privacy is not a design goal of every chain but even on a public chain like Eth it’s easy to use privacy solutions like Tornado and now Aztec to achieve a level of privacy most of us would say is adequate - a similar level as Tor and E2EE messaging apps. This regulation does little except to add an extra hurdle and unnecessary additional costs for average CEX users who want to withdraw assets to a wallet on the network.
radiojasper 4y ago
Solution: Don't use a publically trading, US-based company for trading crypto.
Kiro 4y ago
Stop abusing "Tell HN".
SilverBirch 4y ago
I know in these crypto threads there are always some questionable characters who turn up and say "Well actually <obviously bad thing> is really good". In this case I'm going to kind of be that person. Very often with tech start ups a big part of their success is basically breaking the standard rules whilst they grow. Like Uber operating illegally in NYC or skirting employment laws in various jurisdictions. Inevitably as those types of businesses grow they have to move into line with the actual law, and it's not a bad thing, Uber doesn't have to hand back the growth that they got with that dodgy behavior, now they're the market leader. Sure, it cuts into their profits, but the cost of continuing to break those rules was slowly going to cost them more and more. In the case of Uber it was things like facing an outright ban from London for example. So on balance I think this is a good indicator that Coinbase is maturing into a stable business. Maybe that means some of the libertarian dreams die, but from a wider business point of view I think this is natural and fine. It's perfectly fine to run an exchange, it's a decent business. CME Group has a P/E ratio of 27 versus a P/E ratio of 6 for coinbase (for obvious reasons it's not doing well right now). I've said before, if COIN drops into the $5-10Bn range it would be a great acquisition target.
- strofcon 4y ago
  Key difference - Uber didn't break the law while wiping out entire life savings volumes. I understand that's a much broader-scoped situation than mentioned in the article (who cares about one country getting certain regs enforced), but the point stands - coinbase is a literally Ponzi scheme, and comparing it to other "eventually became legal" business models seems disingenuous.
plsbenice34 4y ago
1) This is only for the Netherlands. This should really be stated in the title; the post is extremely misleading as it is. 2) It is a meaningless and merely slightly inconvenient rule. It simply adds an extra step: withdraw to your own wallet, then transfer with whomever you want and you don't need to tell Coinbase about them. It is better to transact with third parties from your own wallet anyway.
- elevaet 4y ago
  Yes, this seems like one of the least newsworthy stories to make it to the frontpage today.
- sealeck 4y ago
  "It is a meaningless and merely slightly inconvenient rule. It simply adds an extra step: withdraw to your own wallet, then transfer with whomever you want and you don't need to tell Coinbase about them. It is better to transact with third parties from your own wallet anyway. " Except that you'd be committing a crime in doing so (from my understanding of the law). You can't get around anti money laundering regulation by claiming "oh I did it with my personal wallet not Coinbase's"
  - plsbenice34 4y ago
    The regulations do not apply to individuals using their own wallets. It is not unusual for different laws to apply to businesses and individuals.
    - saalweachter 4y ago
      Specifically, taking actions to evade AML regulations also gets you in trouble. Withdrawing money from the bank for your own purposes is fine; withdrawing $9500 multiple times is fine. Making multiple withdrawals of $9500 to avoid reporting a transaction of $10,000 or more gets you in trouble, once someone notices. Making withdrawals to yourself from Coinbase is analogously fine (to this non-lawyer), but doing so to avoid reporting transactions you are otherwise obligated to will eventually get you in trouble.
tomputer 4y ago
Currently this seems to apply only for customers in the Netherlands: https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/sending-or-receiving-cryptocurrency/sending-crypto-nl https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/se... Related to this: In 2020 the Netherlands approved the implementation for the European fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD5). Crypto providers operating in or from the Netherlands also needed to apply for registration with the Dutch Central Bank (DNB). Besides the AMLD5 implementation DNB required from crypto providers to implement additional measures, which is the same wallet verification that Coinbase now requires. Bitonic (a dutch crypto broker/provider) filed a lawsuit against DNB regarding the additional wallet verification requirement, which was not part of AMLD5. DNB formally acknowledged the complaints from Bitonic and revoked the wallet verification. I'm not sure but I believe (until now) it has only be revoked for Bitonic. Bitonic published some articles on their site: https://bitonic.nl/en/news/206/dutch-amld5-implementation-law-adopted https://bitonic.nl/en/news/206/dutch-amld5-implementation-la... https://bitonic.nl/en/news/224/lawsuit-bitonic-vs-dutch-central-bank https://bitonic.nl/en/news/224/lawsuit-bitonic-vs-dutch-cent... https://bitonic.nl/en/news/231/dnb-formally-acknowledges-complaints-bitonic-and-revokes-wallet-verification-requirement https://bitonic.nl/en/news/231/dnb-formally-acknowledges-com...
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  I got the e-mail too; probably for the best, but for a good while now I couldn't send money to Coinbase, probably also for legal reasons.
ur-whale 4y ago
Coinbase has never been down on the core principles underlying Bitcoin. From day one, their only motivation has been to benefit from the ecosystem without ever paying attention to why it existed in the first plate nor giving back to it. Worse they have actually constructed something that goes exactly against those principles. - centralized - not your keys, not your coins - requires KYC - tracks where the BTC you deposit comes from and arbitrarily closes accounts if the don't like what they see. - tracks where the BTC you *withdraw* go and how they are used. Arbitrarily closes you account if they don't like what they see. - and now this, basically requiring KYC on the *recipients*, what a bunch of losers. They are basically ruining Bitcoin's fungibility (unfortunately one of the weak points of BTC as compared to more recent coins like zcash, monero, grin and beam). This dumpster fire of a company can't go bankrupt soon enough in my book, and it'll be a good thing for the Bitcoin ecosystem. And PLEASE don't make the simple-minded mistake the OP makes of confusing/amalgamating coinbase and Crypto. One is a random US-based corporation that leverages the lack of knowledge of their customers, specifically the fact that the so-called "service" they provide is something that provides exactly zero additional value over managing your coins yourselves. The other is permission-less, decentralized, and if managed properly quasi-anonymous money, something that - as wikileaks and the crazy run of the printing press leading to 8% inflation in the amply demonstrated - the planet needs badly.
- lordofgibbons 4y ago
  > - tracks where the BTC you deposit comes from and arbitrarily closes accounts if the don't like what they see. > - tracks where the BTC you withdraw go and how they are used. Arbitrarily closes you account if they don't like what they see. Wouldn't it be great if it was impossible to do these things based on the currency's intrinsic properties?
  - ur-whale 4y ago
    > Wouldn't it be great if it was impossible to do these things based on the currency's intrinsic properties? It would indeed, which is what I meant by saying this is one established weakness of Bitcoin, which some of its successors (monero, zcash, grin, beam, etc...) try to fix.
quickthrower2 4y ago
You can make up an address. How can they verify it?
- knorker 4y ago
  That sounds like a HUGE legal liability. Ask your lawyer first.
jacquesm 4y ago
Funny! Dutch coinbase users are now on the hook for American regulations that have been used to strong-arm EU central banks into compliance with anti money laundering and terrorist financing rules. Meanwhile, in the USA there is no such requirement. NL is ahead of the curve here because the banks here have received some pretty massive fines for not having their house in order to so now they want to show they're good boys & girls.
- ur-whale 4y ago
  > Funny! Dutch coinbase users are now on the hook for American regulations A country losing its sovereignty ... not entirely sure I'd tuck that in the "Funny" drawer.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    The degree to which economies are interconnected now makes us all co-dependent. And truth be told: NL banks were making a serious mess of their KYC processes.
    - ur-whale 4y ago
      > makes us all co-dependent. Co-dependent isn't synonymous with subservient. To convince yourself of that fact, try to find an instance of a situation where the NL forced the US to comply to an NL-originated rule and was successful.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        This happens all the time, so I'm not too worried about that. As for the 'subservient': international finance is a complex and extremely delicate subject, what triggered all this oversight was that Europe had become the laundromat of the world, and things were really getting out of hand. For instance: https://www.wsj.com/articles/once-a-money-laundering-risk-latvia-looks-to-rebuild-reputation-in-face-of-russia-sanctions-11651224602 https://www.wsj.com/articles/once-a-money-laundering-risk-la... Similar stories about dutch (large) banks: https://www.om.nl/actueel/nieuws/2021/04/19/abn-amro-betaalt-480-miljoen-euro-vanwege-ernstige-tekortkomingen-bij-het-bestrijden-van-witwassen https://www.om.nl/actueel/nieuws/2021/04/19/abn-amro-betaalt... This isn't a theoretical risk, no matter where the rule originated. Financial law - like copyright law - is international and the countries that collaborate a lot on this sort of thing because they trade a lot between them would gain an immediate advantage if the rest would play by the same ruleset and one would purposefully break those rules. The deal is that we won't do that. AML and ATF rules exist for a reason and even if the US originated the rules they are in the end quite effective and serve a real purpose, in Europe as well. Finally, the only penalty that US has that it can give is to revoke these banks' ability to do business in USD, and that card can be played exactly once so it's in the end in the banks own interest to play ball. You are mixing NL and EU and probably are not aware that the ECB has decided to enforce a similar regime voluntarily long before individual banks ended up crossing the lines for profit. Of course even though the ECB is not in the pocket of the Americans it is clear that pressure has been brought to bear, but in this particular case it was beneficial, the EU was awash with criminal money seeking all kinds of ways into the respectable world.
prajwalshetty 4y ago
The whole idea was to not have a "bank" in between!
wyager 4y ago
Using centralized shitcoin casinos, why would you expect to take advantage of the "promises of crypto"?
ls15 4y ago
Knowing the recipients home address helps tremendously with performing the 5$ wrench attack.
JustFinishedBSG 4y ago
How is that in anyway a tech news ? Is Hackernews now just a crypto-bro link aggregator ?
dubswithus 4y ago
Are other exchanges doing the same thing?
Existenceblinks 4y ago
That's a good move, whatever it takes to slow down sinking reserve.
physicsguy 4y ago
KYC stuff is and will continue to be a requirement to do business in any country. I wouldn't be surprised if we see other countries implement requirements for firms to do further strict checks on people moving money into and out of cryptocurrency accounts.
badcppdev 4y ago
I don't understand why people think that they can link crypto currency systems to fiat currency systems without the government regulations getting involved. Sovereign nations have borders, citizens, and currency. If you are a citizen, live within those borders, or use the currency then they make the rules.
- nly 4y ago
  You sort of can. I mean once you have USDT or USDC you can trade them in a decentralised and permissionless way
jasonlingx 4y ago
Just send it to yourself first?
haarts 4y ago
There's a lot of confusion regarding this. TLDR: This actually involves two pieces of legislation: - Travel Rule - unhosted wallet verification Both are Anti Money Laundering (AML) laws and not Know Your Customer (KYC) laws. On any exchange you have to tell the exchange who you are. The first is global FATF[1] wrote a 'recommendation' and all jurisdiction on the world are expected to implement it. It mandates the exchange of originator/beneficiary data. When you do a regular/fiat bank transfer you also need to fill out the name of the beneficiary. This legislation brings that to crypto. The second much less global. The Netherlands wants it, but the EU and UK (to a degree) will follow suite. The reasoning behind this law is that IF you DO NOT provider beneficiary data THEN you must be transferring to an unhosted/private wallet. You need to prove that you do. Coinbase is merely a trailblazer here. Every single exchange will do this in the near future (within 2 years). Elaboration: This move has been a long time coming. FATF published their recommendation in 2019 and ever since the industry has been working to come of with a solution. There are MANY different approaches: TRP[2], TRISA[3], TRUST[4], Netki[5], VerifyVASP[6], Shyft[7], Sygna[8]. Some are purely a protocol, others are purely a SaaS offering and anything in between. The main trouble with these laws is that exchanges need to exchange data. That means they need to talk to each other via mutually agreed upon standards. Added difficultly is that some exchanges are in a jurisdiction that requires this, while their counterparty is in a jurisdiction that doesn't require this. Solutions to this and more need to be devised. Coinbase is heavily involved, and one of the initiators of TRUST. They are pushing this more than anyone else and see being compliant early as a competitive advantage. Binance, for example, got a reprimand of the Dutch National Bank. Making it harder for them to do business there. While I'm not a fan of this regulation I believe this to be a crucial step into making Bitcoin (and others) mainstream. Without clear regulation institutionals won't enter. Retail will see this as a clear sign of endorsement from the government. The challenge is now to make the implementation of these new laws as sensible as possible, preserving privacy. Some initiatives I listed do that better than others. The EU will have legislation in place in 24 months. The UK will start enforcing this in September 2023. Switzerland and Liechtenstein already enforce this since a couple of years. Singapore started to enforce this since not too long ago. As does South Korea. It is not clear to me when the US will actually start to enforce. Disclaimer: I am one of the co-founders of 21 Analytics[9] and we are trying to make a living keeping the Travel Rule compliance space sane and clear. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Action_Task_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Action_Task_Force [2]: https://www.travelruleprotocol.org/ https://www.travelruleprotocol.org/ [3]: https://trisa.io/ https://trisa.io/ [4]: https://www.coinbase.com/travelrule https://www.coinbase.com/travelrule [5]: https://www.netki.com/ https://www.netki.com/ [6]: https://verifyvasp.com/ https://verifyvasp.com/ [7]: https://www.veriscope.network/ https://www.veriscope.network/ [8]: https://www.sygna.io/ https://www.sygna.io/ [9]: https://21analytics.ch/ https://21analytics.ch/
irthomasthomas 4y ago
Not surprised. Monero, the privacy centric crypto, has always been barred from Coinbase. That told me everything about Coinbase's philosophy.
koolba 4y ago
Can you send it to yourself and then send it again somewhere else? Or do you not have actual keys with a the “Coinbase Wallet”?
chris123 4y ago
Coinbase is an unregulated casino, full of s-coins, I would stay away, as far away as you could. And never leave any coins on there. Hopefully the only coins you stack or bitcoins. All the rest are scams, with pre-mines, venture backing, marketing budgets, centralization, and get rich quick teams and investors selling their pre-mine coins to you, the bag holder. Coinbase on the other exchanges profit massively by providing a platform for the scam.
knorker 4y ago
Oh, you mean KYC and AML? Turns out "math" doesn't make legislators and regulators go "oh, it's math? Ok, then I have no requirements". I've said it many times before: Cryptocurrency and smart contracts just does not solve any of the hard problems in their space. It tries to solve some of the most simple problems in the whole domain, at a cost of making the hard problems even harder.
- redox99 4y ago
  You don't need to use centralized exchanges. In fact you aren't even using crypto when you use centralized exchanges.
  - strofcon 4y ago
    This is... A bizarre take. Impressive how wrong you can be in just two sentences. Kudos! :-)
    - redox99 4y ago
      Would you mind actually pointing out what I said is wrong, instead of just saying "You're wrong lol"?
  - knorker 4y ago
    Unlike the other guy I agree with you, on both your sentences. But none of this contradicts what I said. Not using an exchange does mean it's harder to enforce, especially at scale, but "not getting caught" is not the same as "not committing a crime". And I have no sympathy for all the people e.g. trading crypto and then getting all surprised when they owe capital gains tax. They thought it was "just math" and that "math is law". Turns out math isn't law.
oliwarner 4y ago
> one by one the promises of crypto Many countries have anti-money-laundering provisions. It shouldn't be any surprise that entities like Coinbase are forcing users through due-diligence checks; they'd be torn apart otherwise. If you need anonymity and want to evade the legal checks, and declarations that your government might require, you have to rely on the protocol, not interstitial companies. But also if you're not declaring required information to your government, don't be too shocked when they knock your door down.
theplumber 4y ago
I'm pretty sure coinbase users don't send crypto anywhere. They just "invest" in crypto.
- birracerveza 4y ago
  That's a mighty giant brush you have there
jhugo 4y ago
Crypto in a Coinbase wallet isn't your crypto, it's a promise by Coinbase to give you that crypto when you ask. Of course if the government tells them they now have to attach conditions to that promise, they will do it — their only alternative is to stop offering their services in that market. > it seems one by one the promises of crypto of the last several years are evaporating I don't think "the promises of crypto" have anything to do with the actions of Coinbase or any other centralised custodial entity.
throwaway22032 4y ago
This is so funny. Like, yo, how? What does it even mean? Cryptocurrency addresses don't have names or physical addresses. There is no recipient. It could be a multisig address with ten owners, it could be a smart contract, it could be fully computerised in which case the address is like some AWS datacenter somewhere, etc. The idea that an address is under the control of a single person who lives at a single place is like, the entire concept that cryptocurrency was designed to eliminate, just layers of fluff on fluff.
- parkingrift 4y ago
  If you want to send crypto in the Netherlands that’s you’re problem to solve. From Coinbase or other exchanges it’ll be as simple as denying the transfer if the requirements aren’t met. Just the same as wire or money transfers today.
  - throwaway22032 4y ago
    I deny you the ability to read this comment using a Nike trainer. It really makes no sense, lol.
irusensei 4y ago
> Just got this email from Coinbase, and it seems one by one the promises of crypto of the last several years are evaporating This is a a somewhat weird take to not say uneducated. What coinbase does has nothing to do with promises of crypto, if those promises existed to begin with. The fact that OP omitted the part of the message that specifies that such measures are meant to comply with Dutch laws also tells me there is some dishonesty at play here.
- neilalexander 4y ago
  Cryptocurrencies have long made promises of decentralisation and fairness and, despite that, people still centralise around exchanges in the same way that people centralise around traditional banks. To that end, what the exchanges do is far more important than people seem to think. Financial institutions have always operated on a reputational basis and KYC has long been important to that (if nothing else because it allows them to shift some liability). In theory, anyone can run a bank. That doesn’t mean that anyone else in the world has to trust your bank if they believe that you represent bad actors or don’t take due diligence. There’s currently no reason to believe that cryptocurrency exchanges will (or should) be any different.
  - PretzelPirate 4y ago
    > Cryptocurrencies have long made promises of decentralisation and fairness and, despite that, people still centralise around exchanges in the same way that people centralise around traditional banks. This is the value of crypto. People can choose how much they want to trust 3rd parties and how much personal responsibility they want to take on. Some people may always choose a centralized mechanism for managing their assets, some will choose to manage their assets completely on their own, and others will decide on a case-by-case basis if they want a 3rd party involved.
    - strofcon 4y ago
      "This is the value of cash. People can choose how much they want to trust 3rd parties and how much personal responsibility they want to take on. Some people may always choose a centralized mechanism for managing their assets, some will choose to manage their assets completely on their own, and others will decide on a case-by-case basis if they want a 3rd party involved." Fixed that for ya.
alasdair_ 4y ago
There have been a number of liquidity problems at exchanges and similar entities over the last few weeks and multiple exchanges have placed strong limits on withdrawals and transfers. This additional barrier to moving money around will absolutely reduce the sums that can be quickly withdrawn. I wonder if part of this additional friction is something that Counbase actively wants
victor22 4y ago
Delete coinbase, they've completely sold out many years ago. Not your keys, not your coins.
0des 4y ago
Nail in the coffin
what-imright 4y ago
WHAT! Coinbase just became PayPal Doesn’t matter anyway. The coup de grace is coming in days, maybe weeks. Bye bye Bitcoin. Thanks for burning down a forest.
stevespang 4y ago
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
They should do that so that they can send tax reports to a relevant state.
Barrera 4y ago
> ... it seems one by one the promises of crypto of the last several years are evaporating ... Hardly. What's happening is that a financial institution is being regulated and pro-actively adopting steps to please regulators. And those regulators will never be satisfied. As regulators squeeze harder and harder, it will drive Coinbase under. That is not the disaster that some might think. It's a necessary next step for Bitcoin to prove that it can actually deliver on the promise of censorship-resistant money. At the very least what's happening with exchanges, regulation, and the over-eager suits at Coinbase demonstrates the need for censorship-resistance in the first place. None of the new steps add anything whatsoever to the experience of the user. It's all about other people exercising control over that user's money.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  You're never going to have a currency that can operate outside of black markets avoiding regulation. Every connection to any legal entity is going to be regulated, full stop. There is no promise crypto can make to get around this.
  - lebed2045 4y ago
    I think you forgot there’s whole planet with billions of people beyond the USA borders. Something what doesn’t follow every single us regulation != black market.
    - colechristensen 4y ago
      For better or worse, US law extends to anything that touches our financial network. Even a whiff of a connection to a US financial institution can get you prosecuted by the US. The Bank of Somewhereelse really wants to be able to continue doing business with the Bank of America, so they accept regulation.
      - mistrial9 4y ago
        please go to Dubai and learn Arabic edit or Farsi or Mandarin, if they confide in you, report back on the universality of the US banks.. secondly, I send you a beaming picture of BRICS leaders this week to reinforce the "fish sees no water" nature of your statement. American here
fortran77 4y ago
> Specifically, when you send crypto outside of Coinbase, we are required to ask you for the name and physical address of the recipient and the purpose of transfer. So how do you pay off your ransomware? They don't tell you their name and address.
matt321 4y ago
Who ever has the wallet is the owner. If coinbase has a copy of your private wallet then they are part owner of it.
djschnei 4y ago
Stop using these token casinos. Selling you unregulated securities and creating bag holder "communities" is all they are good for. They know how gross they are so they're going to kowtow to the regulators so the regulators don't make them register all those securities. It's gross self preservation. There are much better options.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lebed2045 4y ago
Aside of evil nature of such regulations, it’s annoying af for me as a digital nomad. I DO NOT HAVE a physical address. Just don’t. No, no electricity bills. No, I don’t receive correspondence. There are more a more people like myself who got essentially a excluded from important services because of archaic regulations written by old people.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  I pay $20/month to have a postal address with a mail processor, and know other digital nomads who do as well. You do not? Odd, as it’s cheaper than dealing with issues like this saying “I have no address.” My financial service providers (bank, brokerage, credit cards) require an address for example. I agree with you asking for addresses is starting to become silly in certain situations, but don’t swim upstream.
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    A mail processor is not a physical address and will not be accepted by banks that require one for KYC purposes.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      This has not been my experience with my mail processor (possibly because they enable you to establish residency/domicile as part of your service and have the address put on your drivers license or state ID). Don’t tell Fidelity or American Express shhh. (humorously I work in risk mgmt at a fintech and AML/KYC controls are a part of that)
      - shkkmo 4y ago
        I'd love to know which mail processor does that (mine does not), though I still doubt they would provide that service in the state where I've established permanent residence.
      - csomar 4y ago
olalonde 4y ago
This is so dumb. Trivially bypassed by sending coins to yourself first and then to the actual recipient.
r12343a_19 4y ago
I understand the logic of KYC but 3rd parties are not "customers". This is almost like mandatory doxxing. Brave new world! Of course, one could just send tokens to a separate wallet outside Coinbase and then send from that wallet to 3rd parties.
gw67 4y ago
Bitcoin was invented so that anybody could be a bank. Therefore, Coinbase will fail in the long term if Bitcoin will succeed. I think one day we'll invent biometric access to bitcoin wallet so there is no more worry to lose the private key because we'll also able to restore it.
mgamache 4y ago
Of course this is only for the Netherlands... https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/sending-or-receiving-cryptocurrency/sending-crypto-nl https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/se...
usrn 4y ago
Just send it to your node first. This is trivial to get around. Coinbase is for exchanging crypto and dollars not for a wallet, you should never use an exchange for a wallet.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
> it seems one by one the promises of crypto of the last several years are evaporating Cryptocurrencies as originally envisioned was over the second these exchanges showed up. They're literally banks with all the associated government bureaucracy but none of the benefits.
SN76477 4y ago
Im pulling out of coinbase. They are more difficult to use than my local bank at this point. No thanks.
rib3ye 4y ago
You’re still not getting it. Crypto isn’t meant to be converted to fiat, it’s meant to replace fiat.
dpedu 4y ago
I got banned from Coinbase years ago because they think I'm a decade younger than I actually and because they don't serve minors. But I was 18+ before Coinbase existed. If memory serves, I got banned after they first implemented identity verification, or at least a form of it that required me to upload a photo of my ID, which I did. They must have misread the birthyear on the ID but I don't understand how that's possible since the mistake would require replacing 19xx with 20xx. A handful of support tickets never got anywhere. I had already bought and sold hundreds of dollars worth of crypto at that point, linked a bank account, etc. I had already exited crypto at that point so it didn't really matter to me, so I let it be. I thought it was amusing at that point, because of where crypto appeared to be headed. I've always thought poorly of Coinbase since then.
vbezhenar 4y ago
You should use P2P transfers to exchange bitcoins. You should avoid any kind of centralized exchanges. That defeats the whole idea of crypto currency.
honestduane 4y ago
Yes and a group of us are doing everything we can to make it worse because electronic currency is a grift. https://concerned.tech/ https://concerned.tech/
anotherrandom 4y ago
So what I'm getting from this is buy a bunch of stuff now and get it off the platform before it's too late?
t0mmyb0y 4y ago
smokey_circles 4y ago
Coinbase is a representative of crypto as much as China is a representative of the USD. It exists only to exchange crypto for fiat. That means it _must_ be subject to regulation. Only yourself to blame if you thought otherwise. Inb4 anonymity in crypto: says who? Monero is an actually private chain, and as a result you can't trust the claims it makes. "Just believe us" nah, I won't. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a publicly auditable chain. It's not anonymous or private. You can tie identity to a wallet if you know how (nation states for example, or just knowing your friend's address). It's really not that hard to wrap your head around, but if all you do is meme trade well then someone thanks you for their Lamborghini.
bluetidepro 4y ago
> ...it seems one by one the promises of crypto of the last several years are evaporating... Did you even read it? > Starting on June 27, Coinbase will introduce some changes required by local regulations... How is this hardly Coinbase or crypto's fault? Sounds like local regulations made by local people who don't understand it at all.
anony999 4y ago
why would you keep your crypto on "Coinbase" wallet? People deserve to have their funds frozen indefinitely a'la PayPal mode. "crypto" currency was about "owning" your money not handing it into a paypal-like walled garden.
etaioinshrdlu 4y ago
Can you work around this by sending it to your own wallet first?
upupandup 4y ago
I no longer care about crypto. It's finally in its last cyclical stage. Although I'm curious what the next "crypto" will be. In the 90s it was e-gold, early 2000s, it was liberty reserve, then bitcoin and crypto derivatives. This is perhaps the most destructive wave. Some countries that went thru a ponzi frenzy did not recover: Albania.
- elevenoh 4y ago
  open source finance = ded rite? check back in 20 yrs. doubt it.
mise_en_place 4y ago
Why are you leaving your crypto on an exchange wallet? There's something called counterparty risk, that these crypto folks need to read up on.
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  Most people obtain cryptocurrency for the purpose of speculating on its value. "Investing" is by far the most popular use of crypto (excluding criminal activity).
  - mise_en_place 4y ago
    The instrument used to speculate on the price of cryptocurrency is a CFD, in which case you take gains in stablecoins like Tether. It's foolish to leave any cryptocurrency long-term on an exchange wallet. If you're trading the spot market directly, you should take the cryptocurrency off the exchange immediately, as soon as you buy it.
seydor 4y ago
I can only laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Cryptocurrency was invented specifically to liberate people from the allseeing eyes of governments.
randomhodler84 4y ago
“Wow, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are getting a lot of withdrawals lately!”
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

387 points by jb1991 4y ago

pmorici 4y ago

Practically speaking this isn’t a big deal. Just transfer to a wallet you own and from there you can do whatever you want without providing that additional detail. Also this silly rule only applies in a particular country.

bouncycastle 4y ago

This is for Netherlands.

idiocratic 4y ago

The promise of crypto is still valid. It’s the centralized idea of crypto platforms like Coinbase that is evaporating, and that’s a good thing.

ls15 4y ago
I think that there is some value in these platforms too. They provide a service after all. Given they are not regulated to death.
jollybean 4y ago
The very fact that such exchanges exist kind of abnegate the promise of crypto. Coinbase is asking for this information for very rational reasons ... the crypto space is re-learning all the problems that pop up when it comes to money and implementing regulations ad hoc. There are definitely arguments to be made one way or another about such regulations either government or industry sanctioned ... but what we can't ignore is that money is important, and usually needs something more than what crypto offers in terms of practical integrity.
nickgubbins 4y ago
As someone with only a cursory knowledge of crypto, what are the decentralised alternatives to the likes of Coinbase to buy/sell crypto assets?
- usednet 4y ago
  You can use a decentralized exchange like Bisq but liquidity is horrible. Hopefully more people make the switch.
- mudrockbestgirl 4y ago
  https://uniswap.org/ https://uniswap.org/
  - colinsane 4y ago
    uniswap is for exchanging crypto assets. you can’t use it to exchange non-crypto ($USD from your bank) assets with crypto assets. it’s not an on-ramp.
- capableweb 4y ago
  It's a hard problem to solve, which doesn't have any fool-proof solutions (yet?). Imagine, someone creates a centralized Twitter and a decentralized Twitter. How can you connect them two and being able to trust any data you receive 3rd-hand which is supposed to originate from the centralized version? The only information you can really trust, is the one you get from the centralized version, as it was built with that principle in mind, that you get it first-hand. Similar problem with hooking together two monetary systems, one which is centralized and one which is decentralized. How could you include a centralized system within the decentralized one without making trade-offs that could potentially ruin the whole integration? There are attempts at it, but as the problem is generally hard to solve (cryptocurrencies or tweets or any other data structure), it's hard to solve with cryptocurrencies as well.
- valcron1000 4y ago
  Look into P2P crypto trading
WA 4y ago
How would I purchase Bitcoin anonymously? I can't, because there is no way to exchange my cash for (significant) amount of Bitcoin. If I can't get Bitcoin anonymously, how is the promise of crypto still valid for newcomers?
- ibz 4y ago
  You can buy bitcoin with cash. You can work and get paid in bitcoin. You can sell stuff for bitcoin. You can mine bitcoin. If you want something, you will find a way.
  - WA 4y ago
    > You can buy bitcoin with cash. Where can I buy 500,000€ worth of Bitcoin with cash? > You can work and get paid in bitcoin. That's usually not anonymous. > You can sell stuff for bitcoin. I don't own stuff worth 500,000€, except cash and stocks. > You can mine bitcoin. Not in a significant way, no. > If you want something, you will find a way. You ran out of arguments. My point still holds: Crypto isn't anonymous, because you can't easily get in and out of it anonymously.
    - anon9001 4y ago
      I think you've missed the point entirely. Practically, there are a ton of ways to turn 500,000 EUR into "anonymous" crypto, depending on what you mean by "anonymous". You can use an exchange (KYC or non-KYC) that lets you trade USDT/XMR pairs. Wire 500,000 EUR and convert to USDT. Buy the full amount worth of XMR and send it to your own XMR hardware wallet. You now have anonymous XMR (assuming you trust their math). You can do something similar with ZEC shielded transactions. Many KYC exchanges support ZEC (but without shielded transactions). You can get your ZEC this way and then shield it. If you're interested in anonymous crypto, XMR or ZEC is probably what you'd want to have anyway instead of BTC. Also, LTC recently adopted a new privacy-enabling feature. It's not functional yet as far as I know, but it did cause LTC to be delisted from several korean exchanges last week. This one is interesting because of the widespread adoption of litecoin before it added privacy features. Or if you'd rather use the ETH ecosystem, you can use https://tornado.cash/ https://tornado.cash/. Buy your KYC'd ETH, send to tornado.cash, wait, withdraw a partial amount to a fresh anonymous ethereum address. There are even privacy-oriented wallets like https://unstoppable.money/ https://unstoppable.money/ that can use tor to further improve anonymity while doing wallet actions. But let's say you really do want bitcoin only. Take your 500,000 EUR and wire it to a KYC exchange. Buy your bitcoin and send it to your wallet. Send that BTC into renVM pools, wait, send your renBTC to a new address, release renBTC back to BTC on the new address: https://bridge.renproject.io/ https://bridge.renproject.io/. In other words, your point does not hold at all. There are probably a dozen different ways to get anonymous crypto right now. In the near future, many common coins will have privacy features anyway, maybe even by default. You have to think about what level of anonymity you want and what premium you're willing to pay, but there's a wide spectrum of options. And if you think it's not easy enough yet, just wait. The math works, it's just not wrapped up into a convenient user experience yet.
usrbinbash 4y ago
Question: How many people would use cryptocurrencies without such platforms?
- knorker 4y ago
  If you want to buy drugs, ransomware, tax fraud (i.e. theft[1]), fake IDs, or have someone whacked, then you'll still use it. So this only affects the single other use case, the legal one: greater fool speculation. [1] before anarchist libertarians object saying "taxation is theft": Please don't start that conversation if you've ever used public roads, parks, or even passively benefited from the security provided by your country having police or a judicial system.
  - danaris 4y ago
    ...or been to a public school, or ever interacted with someone who went to a public school, or, or, or..... If you don't want taxes, you don't want society.
    - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
      I mean, there's a few people that move to a cabin in the woods off the grid for that reason, which is fine if they want to live like that. There's a lot of people however that want the benefits of society (for example to make money) without contributing back.

perlgeek 4y ago

I am surprised that "Know your customer" regulations have taking this long to arrive at a fairly reputable exchange.

londons_explore 4y ago
Many exchanges have applied the 'know your customer' stuff only for withdrawing and depositing fiat. I think they argue that crypto is effectively worthless and therefore financial regulations don't apply.
- oefrha 4y ago
  Pretty sure Coinbase already requires a photo ID if you want to send or receive any coin to or from an external address. I know this because a few years ago I decided to completely pull (what little I had) out of crypto, and couldn’t send BTC from my Coinbase account to my own wallet without submitting a photo ID, which was not what I signed up for. Apparently having a U.S. bank account linked wasn’t enough at that point.
jokethrowaway 4y ago
They've been in place since forever for withdrawing cash

tremarley 4y ago

They're doing way too much now

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

wow, this really undermines the privacy aspect of cryptocurrencies. i guess more reason to move off of exchanges.

mudrockbestgirl 4y ago

> and it seems one by one the promises of crypto of the last several years are evaporating Promises of crypto have nothing to do with some random US-based centralized entity. Not your keys, not your coins.

jollybean 4y ago
They aren't random, and they're not doing this for random reasons. They're an industry leading exchange acting rationally at least from some perspective. Which means there are at least some practical reasons why 'real people' and 'addresses' etc. might be useful in financial transactions.
- Shatnerz 4y ago
  > might be useful in financial transactions This is likely to satisfy regulators. I highly doubt that this change has anything to do with practical usefulness
  - jollybean 4y ago
    ? Hmm ... and why might 'regulations' be in place such that when large sums of money change hands, there's some way to know who's involved, or at least to attribute the transaction to some legal entity ?
    - Shatnerz 4y ago
      We can turn this to a semantic argument over the meaning of "practical usefulness", but in my opinion collecting such information provides no additional benefit to Coinbase other than keeping regulators at bay and avoiding future fines and restrictions. > why might 'regulations' be in place such that when large sums of money change hands I have done some work in the financial compliance space. You would be surprised how small some of these "large sums" are and they keep getting smaller even while inflation weakens the value of the currency involved. In some locations, the limit is as low as ~$1000 USD. Yes the motivation is anti-terrorism, protect the children, national security etc... but in practice it is just a vehicle for governments to collect data on its people. In this case, good actors will behave the same while their data is collected and shared. Bad actors who are aware of these restrictions can just pay the $0.25 to transfer through a newly created wallet and then send without these restrictions while regulators pat themselves on the back for stopping money laundering. What can end up happening with policies like this? Well if governments, regulators, or monopolies get out of hand all of a sudden you cannot send money to a political party. Maybe all your bank accounts are frozen for supporting a protest or all of a sudden you have no way to purchase a flight to leave. Maybe Mastercard/Visa ban donations to entities like Wikileaks for "moral reasons" while allowing donations to the KKK and other similar organizations. These changes don't typically happen all at once. Freedoms are salami sliced away at a rate that doesn't upset the majority and the norm slowly moves to believe that these restrictions are for our own good. (sorry I went a bit off topic here) Also, why was "regulations" in quotes? Sorry if I missed something or misinterpreted your tone here. Hopefully I answered your question.

joyfylbanana 4y ago

"Promises of crypto" have never been about being able to have reasonable regulations for crypto. In the opposite, heavy regulations were expected to be coming from the very early days.

contentboot 4y ago

SonOfThePlower 4y ago

How many TWh crypto consumed? Would one be able to build Egyptian pyramids with this amount of energy?

londons_explore 4y ago
Clearly, yes. Building a pyramid, in the ideal case, simply requires the energy to lift each stone into place. Lifting 6.5 million tons of stone on average 40 meters (remember that most of the weight of a pyramid is at the bottom!) uses 6.5e9 * 40 * 10 Joules of energy, which is 722 MWh, which costs $144,000 in (California) electricity. Okay - thats a lot more than I expected actually...

jorisvansoest 4y ago

Bitonic filed a lawsuit last year (and won) against the Dutch DNB [1][2] about the verification of wallet addresses. Does anyone know the current state of regulations (in NL) about this subject? [1] https://www-rechtspraak-nl.translate.goog/Organisatie-en-contact/Organisatie/Rechtbanken/Rechtbank-Rotterdam/Nieuws/Paginas/Verzoek-Bitonic-is-ontvankelijk-maar-geen-schorsing-registratievereiste-.aspx?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-rechtspraak-nl.translate.goog/Organisatie-en-con... [2] https://bitonic-nl.translate.goog/news/231/dnb-stelt-bitonic-in-het-gelijk-en-komt-terug-op-verificatie-eis?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://bitonic-nl.translate.goog/news/231/dnb-stelt-bitonic...

jeffhuys 4y ago
Still full KYC here.

TekMol 4y ago

Does anybody know in which countries they are doing this? Anyhow, I think it is not as bad as it sounds. If you use Coinbase like a "crypto bank" that does the crypto stuff on your behalf - then yes, this makes things even more annoying than using a fiat bank. But the way I understand the announcement, it means nothing changes when you use Coinbase simply to buy Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. After you moved the coins to your wallet, Coinbase is not involved anymore, and you can do whatever you want in a decentralized fashion. Overall, my image of Coinbase has gone down quite a bit lately. It seems they are not embracing decentralization and just hope to build a strong crypto company. One that makes the more money, the more centralized this industry will become. Reminds me of AOL. And of Yahoo under Marissa Mayer. A big indicator for this is that they have so little focus on the Lightning Network. That reminds me of how Yahoo tried to use their portal to become a media company rather than an internet company. And then Google came along and got way bigger than Yahoo. By letting people explore the open web. I remember a Google employee once saying "Our goal is that the user leaves our website as soon as possible. Because that means they found what they were looking for.". Coinbase seems to not have that mindset. They seem to bet on becoming "the crypto everything company". A bank, a marketplace, a social network, a browser .... did this "We will do everything" ever work for a young company? But maybe it will now, that so much money flows into tech companies? The market cap of Coinbase at IPO was 50x bigger than that of Yahoo. It will be interesting to watch this company progress.

jschulenklopper 4y ago
> Does anybody know in which countries they are doing this? At least in The Netherlands. I got the mail too.
krzyk 4y ago
EU was talking about that, but currently I heard only Netherlands are doing that.

Shatnerz 4y ago

Send to your own privately controlled wallet and then transfer as your heart desires.

m00dy 4y ago
exactly. It is not easy to regulate unhosted wallets :)

rvz 4y ago

Contrary to what the anti-crypto keep on screeching about these money launderers using crypto, as soon as they send the funds to an exchange they are going to be met with a bunch of KYC/AML/ID checks and that is even before they are able to use the withdraw button. Money launderers, criminals and scammers are running out of options to cash out some cryptocurrencies as many exchanges are also increasing compliance with regulations and are already delisting privacy coins.

ur-whale 4y ago
Where does Julian Assange fall in that very neat and convenient dichotomy of yours?

whatisweb3 4y ago

This is pretty brutal regulation as it basically forces users to pay twice - once to transfer to a non custodial wallet they own and have KYC’d, and then again on-chain to transfer out to the desired beneficiary to maintain the receivers privacy. It’s the kind of cookie popup law that does nothing to stop bad actors, but does everything to make the average user experience worse. The regulation here feels invasive and poorly constructed - no surprise it is coming from the EU which is also attempting to put surveillance mechanisms into E2EE chat apps. EDIT: to the OP, Coinbase is not the promise of crypto. The promise of crypto is non custodial access to digital assets and peer to peer exchange. but it can be nice to have easier, cheaper, and privacy preserving on and off ramps into this ecosystem, something this kind of stiff regulation is fighting against.

Tepix 4y ago
Looks like yet another reason to switch to modern crypto currencies with low transfer fees.
colechristensen 4y ago
If you're a regulator, having all of the transactions on the interface between institutions and individuals pinned to PII, following money around the public ledger becomes significantly easier. If you're, say, a drug dealer only taking bitcoin, the police just have to buy some of your drugs and watch where the money goes to have a pretty good idea of all of your clients, your entire business history, and the names and addresses of your customers. It is perhaps sometimes technically possible to have good OpSec and launder the crypto so it can't be traced, but this is really hard and not making big mistakes is as well (and people breaking laws are often pretty stupid about it). Unless you are very competent and very paranoid, the advertised benefits of crypto are very hard to achieve.
- whatisweb3 4y ago
  The advertised benefits - non custodial ownership and peer to peer exchange - still work fine. Privacy is not a design goal of every chain but even on a public chain like Eth it’s easy to use privacy solutions like Tornado and now Aztec to achieve a level of privacy most of us would say is adequate - a similar level as Tor and E2EE messaging apps. This regulation does little except to add an extra hurdle and unnecessary additional costs for average CEX users who want to withdraw assets to a wallet on the network.

radiojasper 4y ago

Solution: Don't use a publically trading, US-based company for trading crypto.

Kiro 4y ago

Stop abusing "Tell HN".

SilverBirch 4y ago

I know in these crypto threads there are always some questionable characters who turn up and say "Well actually <obviously bad thing> is really good". In this case I'm going to kind of be that person. Very often with tech start ups a big part of their success is basically breaking the standard rules whilst they grow. Like Uber operating illegally in NYC or skirting employment laws in various jurisdictions. Inevitably as those types of businesses grow they have to move into line with the actual law, and it's not a bad thing, Uber doesn't have to hand back the growth that they got with that dodgy behavior, now they're the market leader. Sure, it cuts into their profits, but the cost of continuing to break those rules was slowly going to cost them more and more. In the case of Uber it was things like facing an outright ban from London for example. So on balance I think this is a good indicator that Coinbase is maturing into a stable business. Maybe that means some of the libertarian dreams die, but from a wider business point of view I think this is natural and fine. It's perfectly fine to run an exchange, it's a decent business. CME Group has a P/E ratio of 27 versus a P/E ratio of 6 for coinbase (for obvious reasons it's not doing well right now). I've said before, if COIN drops into the $5-10Bn range it would be a great acquisition target.

strofcon 4y ago
Key difference - Uber didn't break the law while wiping out entire life savings volumes. I understand that's a much broader-scoped situation than mentioned in the article (who cares about one country getting certain regs enforced), but the point stands - coinbase is a literally Ponzi scheme, and comparing it to other "eventually became legal" business models seems disingenuous.

plsbenice34 4y ago

1) This is only for the Netherlands. This should really be stated in the title; the post is extremely misleading as it is. 2) It is a meaningless and merely slightly inconvenient rule. It simply adds an extra step: withdraw to your own wallet, then transfer with whomever you want and you don't need to tell Coinbase about them. It is better to transact with third parties from your own wallet anyway.

elevaet 4y ago
Yes, this seems like one of the least newsworthy stories to make it to the frontpage today.
sealeck 4y ago
"It is a meaningless and merely slightly inconvenient rule. It simply adds an extra step: withdraw to your own wallet, then transfer with whomever you want and you don't need to tell Coinbase about them. It is better to transact with third parties from your own wallet anyway. " Except that you'd be committing a crime in doing so (from my understanding of the law). You can't get around anti money laundering regulation by claiming "oh I did it with my personal wallet not Coinbase's"
- plsbenice34 4y ago
  The regulations do not apply to individuals using their own wallets. It is not unusual for different laws to apply to businesses and individuals.
  - saalweachter 4y ago
    Specifically, taking actions to evade AML regulations also gets you in trouble. Withdrawing money from the bank for your own purposes is fine; withdrawing $9500 multiple times is fine. Making multiple withdrawals of $9500 to avoid reporting a transaction of $10,000 or more gets you in trouble, once someone notices. Making withdrawals to yourself from Coinbase is analogously fine (to this non-lawyer), but doing so to avoid reporting transactions you are otherwise obligated to will eventually get you in trouble.

tomputer 4y ago

Currently this seems to apply only for customers in the Netherlands: https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/sending-or-receiving-cryptocurrency/sending-crypto-nl https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/se... Related to this: In 2020 the Netherlands approved the implementation for the European fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD5). Crypto providers operating in or from the Netherlands also needed to apply for registration with the Dutch Central Bank (DNB). Besides the AMLD5 implementation DNB required from crypto providers to implement additional measures, which is the same wallet verification that Coinbase now requires. Bitonic (a dutch crypto broker/provider) filed a lawsuit against DNB regarding the additional wallet verification requirement, which was not part of AMLD5. DNB formally acknowledged the complaints from Bitonic and revoked the wallet verification. I'm not sure but I believe (until now) it has only be revoked for Bitonic. Bitonic published some articles on their site: https://bitonic.nl/en/news/206/dutch-amld5-implementation-law-adopted https://bitonic.nl/en/news/206/dutch-amld5-implementation-la... https://bitonic.nl/en/news/224/lawsuit-bitonic-vs-dutch-central-bank https://bitonic.nl/en/news/224/lawsuit-bitonic-vs-dutch-cent... https://bitonic.nl/en/news/231/dnb-formally-acknowledges-complaints-bitonic-and-revokes-wallet-verification-requirement https://bitonic.nl/en/news/231/dnb-formally-acknowledges-com...

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
I got the e-mail too; probably for the best, but for a good while now I couldn't send money to Coinbase, probably also for legal reasons.

ur-whale 4y ago

Coinbase has never been down on the core principles underlying Bitcoin. From day one, their only motivation has been to benefit from the ecosystem without ever paying attention to why it existed in the first plate nor giving back to it. Worse they have actually constructed something that goes exactly against those principles. - centralized - not your keys, not your coins - requires KYC - tracks where the BTC you deposit comes from and arbitrarily closes accounts if the don't like what they see. - tracks where the BTC you *withdraw* go and how they are used. Arbitrarily closes you account if they don't like what they see. - and now this, basically requiring KYC on the *recipients*, what a bunch of losers. They are basically ruining Bitcoin's fungibility (unfortunately one of the weak points of BTC as compared to more recent coins like zcash, monero, grin and beam). This dumpster fire of a company can't go bankrupt soon enough in my book, and it'll be a good thing for the Bitcoin ecosystem. And PLEASE don't make the simple-minded mistake the OP makes of confusing/amalgamating coinbase and Crypto. One is a random US-based corporation that leverages the lack of knowledge of their customers, specifically the fact that the so-called "service" they provide is something that provides exactly zero additional value over managing your coins yourselves. The other is permission-less, decentralized, and if managed properly quasi-anonymous money, something that - as wikileaks and the crazy run of the printing press leading to 8% inflation in the amply demonstrated - the planet needs badly.

lordofgibbons 4y ago
> - tracks where the BTC you deposit comes from and arbitrarily closes accounts if the don't like what they see. > - tracks where the BTC you withdraw go and how they are used. Arbitrarily closes you account if they don't like what they see. Wouldn't it be great if it was impossible to do these things based on the currency's intrinsic properties?
- ur-whale 4y ago
  > Wouldn't it be great if it was impossible to do these things based on the currency's intrinsic properties? It would indeed, which is what I meant by saying this is one established weakness of Bitcoin, which some of its successors (monero, zcash, grin, beam, etc...) try to fix.

quickthrower2 4y ago

You can make up an address. How can they verify it?

knorker 4y ago
That sounds like a HUGE legal liability. Ask your lawyer first.

jacquesm 4y ago

Funny! Dutch coinbase users are now on the hook for American regulations that have been used to strong-arm EU central banks into compliance with anti money laundering and terrorist financing rules. Meanwhile, in the USA there is no such requirement. NL is ahead of the curve here because the banks here have received some pretty massive fines for not having their house in order to so now they want to show they're good boys & girls.

ur-whale 4y ago
> Funny! Dutch coinbase users are now on the hook for American regulations A country losing its sovereignty ... not entirely sure I'd tuck that in the "Funny" drawer.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  The degree to which economies are interconnected now makes us all co-dependent. And truth be told: NL banks were making a serious mess of their KYC processes.
  - ur-whale 4y ago
    > makes us all co-dependent. Co-dependent isn't synonymous with subservient. To convince yourself of that fact, try to find an instance of a situation where the NL forced the US to comply to an NL-originated rule and was successful.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      This happens all the time, so I'm not too worried about that. As for the 'subservient': international finance is a complex and extremely delicate subject, what triggered all this oversight was that Europe had become the laundromat of the world, and things were really getting out of hand. For instance: https://www.wsj.com/articles/once-a-money-laundering-risk-latvia-looks-to-rebuild-reputation-in-face-of-russia-sanctions-11651224602 https://www.wsj.com/articles/once-a-money-laundering-risk-la... Similar stories about dutch (large) banks: https://www.om.nl/actueel/nieuws/2021/04/19/abn-amro-betaalt-480-miljoen-euro-vanwege-ernstige-tekortkomingen-bij-het-bestrijden-van-witwassen https://www.om.nl/actueel/nieuws/2021/04/19/abn-amro-betaalt... This isn't a theoretical risk, no matter where the rule originated. Financial law - like copyright law - is international and the countries that collaborate a lot on this sort of thing because they trade a lot between them would gain an immediate advantage if the rest would play by the same ruleset and one would purposefully break those rules. The deal is that we won't do that. AML and ATF rules exist for a reason and even if the US originated the rules they are in the end quite effective and serve a real purpose, in Europe as well. Finally, the only penalty that US has that it can give is to revoke these banks' ability to do business in USD, and that card can be played exactly once so it's in the end in the banks own interest to play ball. You are mixing NL and EU and probably are not aware that the ECB has decided to enforce a similar regime voluntarily long before individual banks ended up crossing the lines for profit. Of course even though the ECB is not in the pocket of the Americans it is clear that pressure has been brought to bear, but in this particular case it was beneficial, the EU was awash with criminal money seeking all kinds of ways into the respectable world.

prajwalshetty 4y ago

The whole idea was to not have a "bank" in between!

wyager 4y ago

Using centralized shitcoin casinos, why would you expect to take advantage of the "promises of crypto"?

ls15 4y ago

Knowing the recipients home address helps tremendously with performing the 5$ wrench attack.

JustFinishedBSG 4y ago

How is that in anyway a tech news ? Is Hackernews now just a crypto-bro link aggregator ?

dubswithus 4y ago

Are other exchanges doing the same thing?

Existenceblinks 4y ago

That's a good move, whatever it takes to slow down sinking reserve.

physicsguy 4y ago

KYC stuff is and will continue to be a requirement to do business in any country. I wouldn't be surprised if we see other countries implement requirements for firms to do further strict checks on people moving money into and out of cryptocurrency accounts.

badcppdev 4y ago

I don't understand why people think that they can link crypto currency systems to fiat currency systems without the government regulations getting involved. Sovereign nations have borders, citizens, and currency. If you are a citizen, live within those borders, or use the currency then they make the rules.

nly 4y ago
You sort of can. I mean once you have USDT or USDC you can trade them in a decentralised and permissionless way

jasonlingx 4y ago

Just send it to yourself first?

haarts 4y ago

There's a lot of confusion regarding this. TLDR: This actually involves two pieces of legislation: - Travel Rule - unhosted wallet verification Both are Anti Money Laundering (AML) laws and not Know Your Customer (KYC) laws. On any exchange you have to tell the exchange who you are. The first is global FATF[1] wrote a 'recommendation' and all jurisdiction on the world are expected to implement it. It mandates the exchange of originator/beneficiary data. When you do a regular/fiat bank transfer you also need to fill out the name of the beneficiary. This legislation brings that to crypto. The second much less global. The Netherlands wants it, but the EU and UK (to a degree) will follow suite. The reasoning behind this law is that IF you DO NOT provider beneficiary data THEN you must be transferring to an unhosted/private wallet. You need to prove that you do. Coinbase is merely a trailblazer here. Every single exchange will do this in the near future (within 2 years). Elaboration: This move has been a long time coming. FATF published their recommendation in 2019 and ever since the industry has been working to come of with a solution. There are MANY different approaches: TRP[2], TRISA[3], TRUST[4], Netki[5], VerifyVASP[6], Shyft[7], Sygna[8]. Some are purely a protocol, others are purely a SaaS offering and anything in between. The main trouble with these laws is that exchanges need to exchange data. That means they need to talk to each other via mutually agreed upon standards. Added difficultly is that some exchanges are in a jurisdiction that requires this, while their counterparty is in a jurisdiction that doesn't require this. Solutions to this and more need to be devised. Coinbase is heavily involved, and one of the initiators of TRUST. They are pushing this more than anyone else and see being compliant early as a competitive advantage. Binance, for example, got a reprimand of the Dutch National Bank. Making it harder for them to do business there. While I'm not a fan of this regulation I believe this to be a crucial step into making Bitcoin (and others) mainstream. Without clear regulation institutionals won't enter. Retail will see this as a clear sign of endorsement from the government. The challenge is now to make the implementation of these new laws as sensible as possible, preserving privacy. Some initiatives I listed do that better than others. The EU will have legislation in place in 24 months. The UK will start enforcing this in September 2023. Switzerland and Liechtenstein already enforce this since a couple of years. Singapore started to enforce this since not too long ago. As does South Korea. It is not clear to me when the US will actually start to enforce. Disclaimer: I am one of the co-founders of 21 Analytics[9] and we are trying to make a living keeping the Travel Rule compliance space sane and clear. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Action_Task_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Action_Task_Force [2]: https://www.travelruleprotocol.org/ https://www.travelruleprotocol.org/ [3]: https://trisa.io/ https://trisa.io/ [4]: https://www.coinbase.com/travelrule https://www.coinbase.com/travelrule [5]: https://www.netki.com/ https://www.netki.com/ [6]: https://verifyvasp.com/ https://verifyvasp.com/ [7]: https://www.veriscope.network/ https://www.veriscope.network/ [8]: https://www.sygna.io/ https://www.sygna.io/ [9]: https://21analytics.ch/ https://21analytics.ch/

irthomasthomas 4y ago

Not surprised. Monero, the privacy centric crypto, has always been barred from Coinbase. That told me everything about Coinbase's philosophy.

koolba 4y ago

Can you send it to yourself and then send it again somewhere else? Or do you not have actual keys with a the “Coinbase Wallet”?

chris123 4y ago

Coinbase is an unregulated casino, full of s-coins, I would stay away, as far away as you could. And never leave any coins on there. Hopefully the only coins you stack or bitcoins. All the rest are scams, with pre-mines, venture backing, marketing budgets, centralization, and get rich quick teams and investors selling their pre-mine coins to you, the bag holder. Coinbase on the other exchanges profit massively by providing a platform for the scam.

knorker 4y ago

Oh, you mean KYC and AML? Turns out "math" doesn't make legislators and regulators go "oh, it's math? Ok, then I have no requirements". I've said it many times before: Cryptocurrency and smart contracts just does not solve any of the hard problems in their space. It tries to solve some of the most simple problems in the whole domain, at a cost of making the hard problems even harder.

redox99 4y ago
You don't need to use centralized exchanges. In fact you aren't even using crypto when you use centralized exchanges.
- strofcon 4y ago
  This is... A bizarre take. Impressive how wrong you can be in just two sentences. Kudos! :-)
  - redox99 4y ago
    Would you mind actually pointing out what I said is wrong, instead of just saying "You're wrong lol"?
- knorker 4y ago
  Unlike the other guy I agree with you, on both your sentences. But none of this contradicts what I said. Not using an exchange does mean it's harder to enforce, especially at scale, but "not getting caught" is not the same as "not committing a crime". And I have no sympathy for all the people e.g. trading crypto and then getting all surprised when they owe capital gains tax. They thought it was "just math" and that "math is law". Turns out math isn't law.

oliwarner 4y ago

> one by one the promises of crypto Many countries have anti-money-laundering provisions. It shouldn't be any surprise that entities like Coinbase are forcing users through due-diligence checks; they'd be torn apart otherwise. If you need anonymity and want to evade the legal checks, and declarations that your government might require, you have to rely on the protocol, not interstitial companies. But also if you're not declaring required information to your government, don't be too shocked when they knock your door down.

theplumber 4y ago

I'm pretty sure coinbase users don't send crypto anywhere. They just "invest" in crypto.

birracerveza 4y ago
That's a mighty giant brush you have there

jhugo 4y ago

Crypto in a Coinbase wallet isn't your crypto, it's a promise by Coinbase to give you that crypto when you ask. Of course if the government tells them they now have to attach conditions to that promise, they will do it — their only alternative is to stop offering their services in that market. > it seems one by one the promises of crypto of the last several years are evaporating I don't think "the promises of crypto" have anything to do with the actions of Coinbase or any other centralised custodial entity.

throwaway22032 4y ago

This is so funny. Like, yo, how? What does it even mean? Cryptocurrency addresses don't have names or physical addresses. There is no recipient. It could be a multisig address with ten owners, it could be a smart contract, it could be fully computerised in which case the address is like some AWS datacenter somewhere, etc. The idea that an address is under the control of a single person who lives at a single place is like, the entire concept that cryptocurrency was designed to eliminate, just layers of fluff on fluff.

parkingrift 4y ago
If you want to send crypto in the Netherlands that’s you’re problem to solve. From Coinbase or other exchanges it’ll be as simple as denying the transfer if the requirements aren’t met. Just the same as wire or money transfers today.
- throwaway22032 4y ago
  I deny you the ability to read this comment using a Nike trainer. It really makes no sense, lol.

irusensei 4y ago

> Just got this email from Coinbase, and it seems one by one the promises of crypto of the last several years are evaporating This is a a somewhat weird take to not say uneducated. What coinbase does has nothing to do with promises of crypto, if those promises existed to begin with. The fact that OP omitted the part of the message that specifies that such measures are meant to comply with Dutch laws also tells me there is some dishonesty at play here.

neilalexander 4y ago
Cryptocurrencies have long made promises of decentralisation and fairness and, despite that, people still centralise around exchanges in the same way that people centralise around traditional banks. To that end, what the exchanges do is far more important than people seem to think. Financial institutions have always operated on a reputational basis and KYC has long been important to that (if nothing else because it allows them to shift some liability). In theory, anyone can run a bank. That doesn’t mean that anyone else in the world has to trust your bank if they believe that you represent bad actors or don’t take due diligence. There’s currently no reason to believe that cryptocurrency exchanges will (or should) be any different.
- PretzelPirate 4y ago
  > Cryptocurrencies have long made promises of decentralisation and fairness and, despite that, people still centralise around exchanges in the same way that people centralise around traditional banks. This is the value of crypto. People can choose how much they want to trust 3rd parties and how much personal responsibility they want to take on. Some people may always choose a centralized mechanism for managing their assets, some will choose to manage their assets completely on their own, and others will decide on a case-by-case basis if they want a 3rd party involved.
  - strofcon 4y ago
    "This is the value of cash. People can choose how much they want to trust 3rd parties and how much personal responsibility they want to take on. Some people may always choose a centralized mechanism for managing their assets, some will choose to manage their assets completely on their own, and others will decide on a case-by-case basis if they want a 3rd party involved." Fixed that for ya.

alasdair_ 4y ago

There have been a number of liquidity problems at exchanges and similar entities over the last few weeks and multiple exchanges have placed strong limits on withdrawals and transfers. This additional barrier to moving money around will absolutely reduce the sums that can be quickly withdrawn. I wonder if part of this additional friction is something that Counbase actively wants

victor22 4y ago

Delete coinbase, they've completely sold out many years ago. Not your keys, not your coins.

0des 4y ago

Nail in the coffin

what-imright 4y ago

WHAT! Coinbase just became PayPal Doesn’t matter anyway. The coup de grace is coming in days, maybe weeks. Bye bye Bitcoin. Thanks for burning down a forest.

stevespang 4y ago

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

They should do that so that they can send tax reports to a relevant state.

Barrera 4y ago

> ... it seems one by one the promises of crypto of the last several years are evaporating ... Hardly. What's happening is that a financial institution is being regulated and pro-actively adopting steps to please regulators. And those regulators will never be satisfied. As regulators squeeze harder and harder, it will drive Coinbase under. That is not the disaster that some might think. It's a necessary next step for Bitcoin to prove that it can actually deliver on the promise of censorship-resistant money. At the very least what's happening with exchanges, regulation, and the over-eager suits at Coinbase demonstrates the need for censorship-resistance in the first place. None of the new steps add anything whatsoever to the experience of the user. It's all about other people exercising control over that user's money.

colechristensen 4y ago
You're never going to have a currency that can operate outside of black markets avoiding regulation. Every connection to any legal entity is going to be regulated, full stop. There is no promise crypto can make to get around this.
- lebed2045 4y ago
  I think you forgot there’s whole planet with billions of people beyond the USA borders. Something what doesn’t follow every single us regulation != black market.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    For better or worse, US law extends to anything that touches our financial network. Even a whiff of a connection to a US financial institution can get you prosecuted by the US. The Bank of Somewhereelse really wants to be able to continue doing business with the Bank of America, so they accept regulation.
    - mistrial9 4y ago
      please go to Dubai and learn Arabic edit or Farsi or Mandarin, if they confide in you, report back on the universality of the US banks.. secondly, I send you a beaming picture of BRICS leaders this week to reinforce the "fish sees no water" nature of your statement. American here

fortran77 4y ago

> Specifically, when you send crypto outside of Coinbase, we are required to ask you for the name and physical address of the recipient and the purpose of transfer. So how do you pay off your ransomware? They don't tell you their name and address.

matt321 4y ago

Who ever has the wallet is the owner. If coinbase has a copy of your private wallet then they are part owner of it.

djschnei 4y ago

Stop using these token casinos. Selling you unregulated securities and creating bag holder "communities" is all they are good for. They know how gross they are so they're going to kowtow to the regulators so the regulators don't make them register all those securities. It's gross self preservation. There are much better options.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

lebed2045 4y ago

Aside of evil nature of such regulations, it’s annoying af for me as a digital nomad. I DO NOT HAVE a physical address. Just don’t. No, no electricity bills. No, I don’t receive correspondence. There are more a more people like myself who got essentially a excluded from important services because of archaic regulations written by old people.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
I pay $20/month to have a postal address with a mail processor, and know other digital nomads who do as well. You do not? Odd, as it’s cheaper than dealing with issues like this saying “I have no address.” My financial service providers (bank, brokerage, credit cards) require an address for example. I agree with you asking for addresses is starting to become silly in certain situations, but don’t swim upstream.
- shkkmo 4y ago
  A mail processor is not a physical address and will not be accepted by banks that require one for KYC purposes.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    This has not been my experience with my mail processor (possibly because they enable you to establish residency/domicile as part of your service and have the address put on your drivers license or state ID). Don’t tell Fidelity or American Express shhh. (humorously I work in risk mgmt at a fintech and AML/KYC controls are a part of that)
    - shkkmo 4y ago
      I'd love to know which mail processor does that (mine does not), though I still doubt they would provide that service in the state where I've established permanent residence.
    - csomar 4y ago

olalonde 4y ago

This is so dumb. Trivially bypassed by sending coins to yourself first and then to the actual recipient.

r12343a_19 4y ago

I understand the logic of KYC but 3rd parties are not "customers". This is almost like mandatory doxxing. Brave new world! Of course, one could just send tokens to a separate wallet outside Coinbase and then send from that wallet to 3rd parties.

gw67 4y ago

Bitcoin was invented so that anybody could be a bank. Therefore, Coinbase will fail in the long term if Bitcoin will succeed. I think one day we'll invent biometric access to bitcoin wallet so there is no more worry to lose the private key because we'll also able to restore it.

mgamache 4y ago

Of course this is only for the Netherlands... https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/sending-or-receiving-cryptocurrency/sending-crypto-nl https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/se...

usrn 4y ago

Just send it to your node first. This is trivial to get around. Coinbase is for exchanging crypto and dollars not for a wallet, you should never use an exchange for a wallet.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

> it seems one by one the promises of crypto of the last several years are evaporating Cryptocurrencies as originally envisioned was over the second these exchanges showed up. They're literally banks with all the associated government bureaucracy but none of the benefits.

SN76477 4y ago

Im pulling out of coinbase. They are more difficult to use than my local bank at this point. No thanks.

rib3ye 4y ago

You’re still not getting it. Crypto isn’t meant to be converted to fiat, it’s meant to replace fiat.

dpedu 4y ago

I got banned from Coinbase years ago because they think I'm a decade younger than I actually and because they don't serve minors. But I was 18+ before Coinbase existed. If memory serves, I got banned after they first implemented identity verification, or at least a form of it that required me to upload a photo of my ID, which I did. They must have misread the birthyear on the ID but I don't understand how that's possible since the mistake would require replacing 19xx with 20xx. A handful of support tickets never got anywhere. I had already bought and sold hundreds of dollars worth of crypto at that point, linked a bank account, etc. I had already exited crypto at that point so it didn't really matter to me, so I let it be. I thought it was amusing at that point, because of where crypto appeared to be headed. I've always thought poorly of Coinbase since then.

vbezhenar 4y ago

You should use P2P transfers to exchange bitcoins. You should avoid any kind of centralized exchanges. That defeats the whole idea of crypto currency.

honestduane 4y ago

Yes and a group of us are doing everything we can to make it worse because electronic currency is a grift. https://concerned.tech/ https://concerned.tech/

anotherrandom 4y ago

So what I'm getting from this is buy a bunch of stuff now and get it off the platform before it's too late?

t0mmyb0y 4y ago

smokey_circles 4y ago

Coinbase is a representative of crypto as much as China is a representative of the USD. It exists only to exchange crypto for fiat. That means it _must_ be subject to regulation. Only yourself to blame if you thought otherwise. Inb4 anonymity in crypto: says who? Monero is an actually private chain, and as a result you can't trust the claims it makes. "Just believe us" nah, I won't. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a publicly auditable chain. It's not anonymous or private. You can tie identity to a wallet if you know how (nation states for example, or just knowing your friend's address). It's really not that hard to wrap your head around, but if all you do is meme trade well then someone thanks you for their Lamborghini.

bluetidepro 4y ago

> ...it seems one by one the promises of crypto of the last several years are evaporating... Did you even read it? > Starting on June 27, Coinbase will introduce some changes required by local regulations... How is this hardly Coinbase or crypto's fault? Sounds like local regulations made by local people who don't understand it at all.

anony999 4y ago

why would you keep your crypto on "Coinbase" wallet? People deserve to have their funds frozen indefinitely a'la PayPal mode. "crypto" currency was about "owning" your money not handing it into a paypal-like walled garden.

etaioinshrdlu 4y ago

Can you work around this by sending it to your own wallet first?

upupandup 4y ago

I no longer care about crypto. It's finally in its last cyclical stage. Although I'm curious what the next "crypto" will be. In the 90s it was e-gold, early 2000s, it was liberty reserve, then bitcoin and crypto derivatives. This is perhaps the most destructive wave. Some countries that went thru a ponzi frenzy did not recover: Albania.

elevenoh 4y ago
open source finance = ded rite? check back in 20 yrs. doubt it.

mise_en_place 4y ago

Why are you leaving your crypto on an exchange wallet? There's something called counterparty risk, that these crypto folks need to read up on.

cmeacham98 4y ago
Most people obtain cryptocurrency for the purpose of speculating on its value. "Investing" is by far the most popular use of crypto (excluding criminal activity).
- mise_en_place 4y ago
  The instrument used to speculate on the price of cryptocurrency is a CFD, in which case you take gains in stablecoins like Tether. It's foolish to leave any cryptocurrency long-term on an exchange wallet. If you're trading the spot market directly, you should take the cryptocurrency off the exchange immediately, as soon as you buy it.

seydor 4y ago

I can only laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Cryptocurrency was invented specifically to liberate people from the allseeing eyes of governments.

randomhodler84 4y ago

“Wow, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are getting a lot of withdrawals lately!”

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