4 ms·

> Normally, there'd be an aspect of plausible deniability If it was publicly known that you had exactly 1 ton of legally acquired gold in your house, would you

> Normally, there'd be an aspect of plausible deniability If it was publicly known that you had exactly 1 ton of legally acquired gold in your house, would you feel perfectly safe sleeping at night? Is there not 1 sicko out there that would be willing to torture your family to find the combination to your vault? Plausible deniability exists here. It's called wanting privacy, and there's perfectly valid and non-criminal reasons to want privacy, despite repeated false claims. Here is the problem. Many cryptos are not actually anonymous. If somebody has somebody's wallet address, they can look into tracing information about them like their net worth and their purchasing history. Even if you were smart enough to use a different wallet address for each transaction, you inevitably have to spend money to live or send money to others and then you can be traced. As tools grow more sophisticated and more data about wallet address ownership gets out there, the more at risk people will be. And once your identity gets out there, there's no shaking the ability to track it short of some form of mixing or obfuscation. In an of itself, mixing or trading to obfuscate your identity shouldn't be considered a crime or unreasonable in the slightest.

vkou 4y ago
If I had 45 million dollars in my house, I'd look into whatever the hell individuals of that net worth are doing to protect themselves. Which, as I understand it, mostly consists of not keeping it as a gold brick in their basement, and not living in a shitty neighbourhood. It's harder to rubber hose attack someone who isn't keeping all their wealth in a crypto wallet.
eropple 4y ago
> In an of itself, mixing or trading to obfuscate your identity shouldn't be considered a crime or unreasonable in the slightest. "Financial privacy" isn't a real thing, because you owe taxes on income and investments. Can you explain to me how your tax assessor is able, then, to properly identify your income and tax you on it as appropriate? (Money laundering and tax evasion do not always go hand-in-hand. Many launderers pay taxes as a cost of doing business. Cryptocurrency mixers seem to treat tax evasion as a feature.)
- hef19898 4y ago
  >> Cryptocurrency mixers seem to treat tax evasion as a feature Historically there is huge market for that.
- bruiseralmighty 4y ago
  Privacy exists even if the government violates it due to their tax schemes. A _right_ to privacy may even exist as a natural human right. If a country decides collectively that this is the case, then what ought to change is the tax policy, not every user service. We can argue over how easy it would be, but I would presume its possible for a government to switch over to taxing hard assets like land, machines, and shipments at ports rather than income and investment products if we decide those should be shielded by a right to privacy. Most of human history existed without a tax on income or loans (investments), an argument that a right cannot exists because of the present tax structure is like the ultimate status quo warrior-ing.
  - eropple 4y ago
    > If a country decides collectively that this is the case, then what ought to change is the tax policy, Your post is largely meaningless because, while this line is inarguably true, this also hasn't happened and so AML and KYC are still a thing--and there's precious little to indicate that anyone really cares about it aside from starve-the-beast conservatives and cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and that's not a majority. If a country does decide so collectively, great! We haven't. So yeah, it's illegal, and the currently-fictive right to financial privacy remains so.
    - landemva 4y ago
      USA had been like this: import duties, use taxes, no income tax. Now with USA fiat money there is no financial need to have personal income tax.
    - bruiseralmighty 4y ago
      I guess we differ on what rights are. I am arguing that a right to privacy including financial privacy could be a natural right and its recognition or lack thereof alone by the _current_ tax scheme cannot inform of of its existence or not. The legality under existing laws has nothing to do with whether the right exists or not if its a natural right. I also fail to see how one could construct a right to privacy that would include communications but not include financial transactions especially exchanges of value done over a btc-protocol (or one of its descendants) that exchange value with pure speech. If congress and/or the judiciary was full of privacy enthusiasts, then the tax law would be changed majority be damned.
sofixa 4y ago
Why don't you use the traditional banking system, which doesn't result in publicly listed transactions? I struggle to find a legitimate use case for hiding transactions from your bank and thus tax authority (assuming a developed country).
- welshwelsh 4y ago
  >assuming a developed country Bad assumption Anonymous fundraising for political dissidents is the biggest use case I can think of.
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  > Why don't you use the traditional banking system, which doesn't result in publicly listed transactions? You mean the banking system that freezes protesters' accounts when they do something doubleplusungood? Personal choices that don't violate the rights of others shouldn't require any explanation to retain your rights. But it's not hard to think of a lot of reasons for somebody to use crypto over banks besides the state not being able to trivially shut you out of your life. There's other good reasons to choose crypto over banks, but that's a good one in my book.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    Exchanges could freeze any crypto you deposit with them and seize any UTXOs originating from your wallet just as easily. That's another reason to avoid crypto, having to worry about where it came from.
- barnabee 4y ago
  And I struggle to find a legitimate use case for being required to share anything whatsoever with any authority without a court order. There is a huge difference between sharing the details of your finances with a tax or other authority by default and them being able to compel you to provide such information if they have good cause to believe (and convince a court) that you are evading taxes. The fact the government required six illegitimate things of me before breakfast does not make them legitimate, it just means the abuse has become normalised to the point that people start believing this shit is reasonable.

vkou 4y ago

If I had 45 million dollars in my house, I'd look into whatever the hell individuals of that net worth are doing to protect themselves. Which, as I understand it, mostly consists of not keeping it as a gold brick in their basement, and not living in a shitty neighbourhood. It's harder to rubber hose attack someone who isn't keeping all their wealth in a crypto wallet.

eropple 4y ago

> In an of itself, mixing or trading to obfuscate your identity shouldn't be considered a crime or unreasonable in the slightest. "Financial privacy" isn't a real thing, because you owe taxes on income and investments. Can you explain to me how your tax assessor is able, then, to properly identify your income and tax you on it as appropriate? (Money laundering and tax evasion do not always go hand-in-hand. Many launderers pay taxes as a cost of doing business. Cryptocurrency mixers seem to treat tax evasion as a feature.)

hef19898 4y ago
>> Cryptocurrency mixers seem to treat tax evasion as a feature Historically there is huge market for that.
bruiseralmighty 4y ago
Privacy exists even if the government violates it due to their tax schemes. A _right_ to privacy may even exist as a natural human right. If a country decides collectively that this is the case, then what ought to change is the tax policy, not every user service. We can argue over how easy it would be, but I would presume its possible for a government to switch over to taxing hard assets like land, machines, and shipments at ports rather than income and investment products if we decide those should be shielded by a right to privacy. Most of human history existed without a tax on income or loans (investments), an argument that a right cannot exists because of the present tax structure is like the ultimate status quo warrior-ing.
- eropple 4y ago
  > If a country decides collectively that this is the case, then what ought to change is the tax policy, Your post is largely meaningless because, while this line is inarguably true, this also hasn't happened and so AML and KYC are still a thing--and there's precious little to indicate that anyone really cares about it aside from starve-the-beast conservatives and cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and that's not a majority. If a country does decide so collectively, great! We haven't. So yeah, it's illegal, and the currently-fictive right to financial privacy remains so.
  - landemva 4y ago
    USA had been like this: import duties, use taxes, no income tax. Now with USA fiat money there is no financial need to have personal income tax.
  - bruiseralmighty 4y ago
    I guess we differ on what rights are. I am arguing that a right to privacy including financial privacy could be a natural right and its recognition or lack thereof alone by the _current_ tax scheme cannot inform of of its existence or not. The legality under existing laws has nothing to do with whether the right exists or not if its a natural right. I also fail to see how one could construct a right to privacy that would include communications but not include financial transactions especially exchanges of value done over a btc-protocol (or one of its descendants) that exchange value with pure speech. If congress and/or the judiciary was full of privacy enthusiasts, then the tax law would be changed majority be damned.

sofixa 4y ago

Why don't you use the traditional banking system, which doesn't result in publicly listed transactions? I struggle to find a legitimate use case for hiding transactions from your bank and thus tax authority (assuming a developed country).

welshwelsh 4y ago
>assuming a developed country Bad assumption Anonymous fundraising for political dissidents is the biggest use case I can think of.
logicalmonster 4y ago
> Why don't you use the traditional banking system, which doesn't result in publicly listed transactions? You mean the banking system that freezes protesters' accounts when they do something doubleplusungood? Personal choices that don't violate the rights of others shouldn't require any explanation to retain your rights. But it's not hard to think of a lot of reasons for somebody to use crypto over banks besides the state not being able to trivially shut you out of your life. There's other good reasons to choose crypto over banks, but that's a good one in my book.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  Exchanges could freeze any crypto you deposit with them and seize any UTXOs originating from your wallet just as easily. That's another reason to avoid crypto, having to worry about where it came from.
barnabee 4y ago
And I struggle to find a legitimate use case for being required to share anything whatsoever with any authority without a court order. There is a huge difference between sharing the details of your finances with a tax or other authority by default and them being able to compel you to provide such information if they have good cause to believe (and convince a court) that you are evading taxes. The fact the government required six illegitimate things of me before breakfast does not make them legitimate, it just means the abuse has become normalised to the point that people start believing this shit is reasonable.