4 ms·

Yes, if you actively and knowing break the law, you might get punished for it. Not sure what's new here? If you don't want to connect to North Korea, block conn

Yes, if you actively and knowing break the law, you might get punished for it. Not sure what's new here? If you don't want to connect to North Korea, block connections coming from North Korea, it's like one or two commands of iptables.

bluGill 4y ago
Ignorance of the law is not a valid defense. It might get you a lighter sentience, but don't count on that. You are expected to know all the laws that apply to all the activities you do.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  *Except if you happen to work for the government, then it's totally ok.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    *Or if you're sufficiently rich
SilverBirch 4y ago
What I'm saying here is that this system is designed to tax your staked ETH if you do that. So you have three choices: 1: Run a validator blocking NK transactions, safe in the knowledge it's probably legal, but your staked ETH is slowly going to taxed by the network costing you money. 2: Run a validator including the NK transactions, your staked ETH is safe, but you are violating your countries money laundering laws most likely. 3: Don't run a validator, now the only people running ETH validator nodes are those who work with North Korean money launderers, which doesn't seem like a particularly stable footing for Ethereum.
- bluGill 4y ago
  if ETH is really targeting money laundering like that, then just using it for otherwise legal transactions is participating in criminal activity.
- danaris 4y ago
  Sounds like the conclusion of your #3 also applies to #2...
WJW 4y ago
The sanctions go a little bit further than that though. Financial institutions are not merely blocked from accepting transactions from the IP region of North Korea, but actually from doing business with a whole list of companies and individuals with ties to NK. To comply with the sanctions regulation you would need to have a lookup service listing the owner of every wallet and for every transaction you validate, check if any of the wallets involved belongs to a sanctioned company or individual. I don't think "but I didn't know that it was a NK wallet!" is going to hold up in court either. There are laws regulating the minimum Know-Your-Customer a money transmitting company needs to perform and when the regulators come knocking you need to be able to show your procedures for that and how they lead to compliance with the law. The real question is whether courts will rule that POS validators are "money transmitters" in a legal sense. To me it's kinda obvious that they are, since without the action of the validators no money would get transmitted. No doubt there will be much water under the bridge before that gets settled though.
- olalonde 4y ago
  It was actually ruled in 2014 that virtual currency miners are not money transmitters[0]. [0] https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/news_release/20140130.pdf https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/news_release/2014...
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    Regulations can and do change. Cryptocurrency fanatics are expanding their regulatory capture with various senators and state governments friendly to the 'movement.' I worry about the next crypto crash tanking the economy after this crypto crash.
  - WJW 4y ago
    From the link you posted: > The first ruling states that, to the extent a user creates or “mines” a > convertible virtual currency solely for a user’s own purposes, the user > is not a money transmitter under the BSA. That seems to leave rather a lot of open space IMO. For example, does a POS validator create convertible virtual currency? Clearly. But is it solely for their own purposes? Do they become a money transmitter as soon as they sell their crypto? Also, only part of miner income is the block reward; there are transaction fees as well. Is a miner allowed to accept fees from sanctioned individuals for providing payment validation services? 2014 was forever ago in crypto terms of course, so I can imagine that the viewpoints of regulators have evolved together with the technology.

bluGill 4y ago

Ignorance of the law is not a valid defense. It might get you a lighter sentience, but don't count on that. You are expected to know all the laws that apply to all the activities you do.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wing-_-nuts 4y ago
*Except if you happen to work for the government, then it's totally ok.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  *Or if you're sufficiently rich

SilverBirch 4y ago

What I'm saying here is that this system is designed to tax your staked ETH if you do that. So you have three choices: 1: Run a validator blocking NK transactions, safe in the knowledge it's probably legal, but your staked ETH is slowly going to taxed by the network costing you money. 2: Run a validator including the NK transactions, your staked ETH is safe, but you are violating your countries money laundering laws most likely. 3: Don't run a validator, now the only people running ETH validator nodes are those who work with North Korean money launderers, which doesn't seem like a particularly stable footing for Ethereum.

bluGill 4y ago
if ETH is really targeting money laundering like that, then just using it for otherwise legal transactions is participating in criminal activity.
danaris 4y ago
Sounds like the conclusion of your #3 also applies to #2...

WJW 4y ago

The sanctions go a little bit further than that though. Financial institutions are not merely blocked from accepting transactions from the IP region of North Korea, but actually from doing business with a whole list of companies and individuals with ties to NK. To comply with the sanctions regulation you would need to have a lookup service listing the owner of every wallet and for every transaction you validate, check if any of the wallets involved belongs to a sanctioned company or individual. I don't think "but I didn't know that it was a NK wallet!" is going to hold up in court either. There are laws regulating the minimum Know-Your-Customer a money transmitting company needs to perform and when the regulators come knocking you need to be able to show your procedures for that and how they lead to compliance with the law. The real question is whether courts will rule that POS validators are "money transmitters" in a legal sense. To me it's kinda obvious that they are, since without the action of the validators no money would get transmitted. No doubt there will be much water under the bridge before that gets settled though.

olalonde 4y ago
It was actually ruled in 2014 that virtual currency miners are not money transmitters[0]. [0] https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/news_release/20140130.pdf https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/news_release/2014...
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  Regulations can and do change. Cryptocurrency fanatics are expanding their regulatory capture with various senators and state governments friendly to the 'movement.' I worry about the next crypto crash tanking the economy after this crypto crash.
- WJW 4y ago
  From the link you posted: > The first ruling states that, to the extent a user creates or “mines” a > convertible virtual currency solely for a user’s own purposes, the user > is not a money transmitter under the BSA. That seems to leave rather a lot of open space IMO. For example, does a POS validator create convertible virtual currency? Clearly. But is it solely for their own purposes? Do they become a money transmitter as soon as they sell their crypto? Also, only part of miner income is the block reward; there are transaction fees as well. Is a miner allowed to accept fees from sanctioned individuals for providing payment validation services? 2014 was forever ago in crypto terms of course, so I can imagine that the viewpoints of regulators have evolved together with the technology.