4 ms·

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

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.
    - jollybean 4y ago
      It's not 'semantics', it's the opposite of 'semantics'. It's not mostly 'terrorism and protect the children' - it's tax evasion, wire fraud, bribery, insider trading, financial fraud, scams etc. Without fairly consistent regulations up and down the financial spectrum, civil society basically would not exist. We mostly derive our protections from 'government overreach' via the constitution, not anonymity.
      - Shatnerz 4y ago
        > It's not 'semantics', it's the opposite of 'semantics'. Is there an opposite of "semantics"? Isn't semantics just the topic around the meaning of words and communication? Is the opposite just everything else? Anyways the point was that Coinbase is likely acting not because it extends the "practical usefulness" of their products, i.e. it adds no new features or functionality. They are likely acting out of regulatory necessity. The semantic argument is whether regulatory necessity falls under "practical usefulness". I'd argue no, as the usefulness of their product as it applies to users either doesn't change or actually goes down as a result of this, but one can similarly argue that not satisfying regulators likely results in the loss of the product altogether. > It's not mostly 'terrorism and protect the children' - it's tax evasion, wire fraud, bribery, insider trading, financial fraud, scams etc. Can you elaborate on this a bit? Collecting beneficiary data is useful for things like redundant checks against sanction lists such as OFAC (terrorism, organized crime, and human trafficking falls under here). I don't see how tax evasion, insider trading, and bribery even apply here. - Tax evasion would likely deal with the exchange reporting both trades and received funds for a user, neither of which applies to beneficiary data on outgoing funds afaik - How is insider trading relevant here? Would that not be dependent on trading and not the transferring of assets. Does providing beneficiary data do anything to shed light on trading with privileged data? - Bribery? Maybe, but seeing as this still happens fairly regularly with traditional finance, I doubt that this will curb much behavior. > We mostly derive our protections from 'government overreach' via the constitution, not anonymity. I assume you are talking about the US constitution which doesn't much apply to non-US persons. The US Constitution doesn't provide much context or protection around the financial system either. In Section 8 we have > "Congress shall have Power [...] to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin." And in Section 10, > "no state [...] shall make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts."
jokethrowaway 4y ago
These are just the application of normal anti money laundering regulations which are useful only to regulators. I don't care if someone is not paying taxes, good for them if they can avoid having the government steal their profits and stay out of jail. I don't even care if they're doing something the government deems illegal, especially if it's a victimless crime. Regardless, I'd rather have the victims pursue the offenders through legal means (which, in a world without a government with monopoly on violence, will likely take the shape of multiple competing protection agencies) and victimless crimes not to be considered crimes at all. I agree for some transactions you may want to exchange data and legal jurisdictions or setup a contract so that goods / services (+ future support) and money are exchanged safely and without scams - but that's irrespective from the means of payment.
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  > I don't care if someone is not paying taxes, good for them if they can avoid having the government steal their profits and stay out of jail. Out of curiosity, what percentage of the population could skip paying taxes before you would care? Are you okay with the government having no funds whatsoever?
  - arlcode 4y ago
    And: Would they be ok with their government having no funds but other governments being still funded by taxes. Publicly funded armies replaced hired mercenary forces for a reason.
  - michaelscott 4y ago
    This is heavily dependent, probably even correlated, with the way the government currently uses taxes. For developed nations this is a no-brainer, of course they need the taxes to supply services to the population. For developing nations? I know a few countries were the government having little to no funding would make very little material difference to daily life, since they already steal so much public funding that private services have long since filled the gap. In this case the percentage for caring about tax payment is zero, or close to it

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.
  - jollybean 4y ago
    It's not 'semantics', it's the opposite of 'semantics'. It's not mostly 'terrorism and protect the children' - it's tax evasion, wire fraud, bribery, insider trading, financial fraud, scams etc. Without fairly consistent regulations up and down the financial spectrum, civil society basically would not exist. We mostly derive our protections from 'government overreach' via the constitution, not anonymity.
    - Shatnerz 4y ago
      > It's not 'semantics', it's the opposite of 'semantics'. Is there an opposite of "semantics"? Isn't semantics just the topic around the meaning of words and communication? Is the opposite just everything else? Anyways the point was that Coinbase is likely acting not because it extends the "practical usefulness" of their products, i.e. it adds no new features or functionality. They are likely acting out of regulatory necessity. The semantic argument is whether regulatory necessity falls under "practical usefulness". I'd argue no, as the usefulness of their product as it applies to users either doesn't change or actually goes down as a result of this, but one can similarly argue that not satisfying regulators likely results in the loss of the product altogether. > It's not mostly 'terrorism and protect the children' - it's tax evasion, wire fraud, bribery, insider trading, financial fraud, scams etc. Can you elaborate on this a bit? Collecting beneficiary data is useful for things like redundant checks against sanction lists such as OFAC (terrorism, organized crime, and human trafficking falls under here). I don't see how tax evasion, insider trading, and bribery even apply here. - Tax evasion would likely deal with the exchange reporting both trades and received funds for a user, neither of which applies to beneficiary data on outgoing funds afaik - How is insider trading relevant here? Would that not be dependent on trading and not the transferring of assets. Does providing beneficiary data do anything to shed light on trading with privileged data? - Bribery? Maybe, but seeing as this still happens fairly regularly with traditional finance, I doubt that this will curb much behavior. > We mostly derive our protections from 'government overreach' via the constitution, not anonymity. I assume you are talking about the US constitution which doesn't much apply to non-US persons. The US Constitution doesn't provide much context or protection around the financial system either. In Section 8 we have > "Congress shall have Power [...] to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin." And in Section 10, > "no state [...] shall make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts."

jokethrowaway 4y ago

These are just the application of normal anti money laundering regulations which are useful only to regulators. I don't care if someone is not paying taxes, good for them if they can avoid having the government steal their profits and stay out of jail. I don't even care if they're doing something the government deems illegal, especially if it's a victimless crime. Regardless, I'd rather have the victims pursue the offenders through legal means (which, in a world without a government with monopoly on violence, will likely take the shape of multiple competing protection agencies) and victimless crimes not to be considered crimes at all. I agree for some transactions you may want to exchange data and legal jurisdictions or setup a contract so that goods / services (+ future support) and money are exchanged safely and without scams - but that's irrespective from the means of payment.

CoastalCoder 4y ago
> I don't care if someone is not paying taxes, good for them if they can avoid having the government steal their profits and stay out of jail. Out of curiosity, what percentage of the population could skip paying taxes before you would care? Are you okay with the government having no funds whatsoever?
- arlcode 4y ago
  And: Would they be ok with their government having no funds but other governments being still funded by taxes. Publicly funded armies replaced hired mercenary forces for a reason.
- michaelscott 4y ago
  This is heavily dependent, probably even correlated, with the way the government currently uses taxes. For developed nations this is a no-brainer, of course they need the taxes to supply services to the population. For developing nations? I know a few countries were the government having little to no funding would make very little material difference to daily life, since they already steal so much public funding that private services have long since filled the gap. In this case the percentage for caring about tax payment is zero, or close to it