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You can list features all day and not convince me of the existence of applications. Privacy that is obtained by obscuring signatories or blending assets is jus

You can list features all day and not convince me of the existence of applications. Privacy that is obtained by obscuring signatories or blending assets is just laundering.

matheusmoreira 3y ago
That's like saying effective cryptography is destruction of evidence. "Laundering" is a bullshit concept invented to legitimize total surveillance of financial transactions. This KYC/AML stuff is just the financial arm of global mass surveillance. We must resist it vigorously for the exact same reasons we resist warrantless dragnet data collection.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  I see the misunderstanding: I used "laundering" to describe a method of obscuring a trail of exchanges, not a crime. I can exchange gold, or textiles or something, and not expect surveillance of those transactions. I do live in a country that requires some reporting of those for tax purposes, but not tracking of the assets the way crypto does. The moment I pick up a monetized piece of paper that the government printed with a serial number and all that, which is guaranteed by the full faith of the government, and is standardized by the government in a global financial system, I accept some side effects, such as the government's expectation of tracking and standardization. Similarly, the moment I pick up a crypto currency, I accept all the technical limitations / requirements of complete ledger accessibility, and methods of circumventing that are no more sophisticated than laundering. In effect, with gov-backed money and crypto, you are forced into a system of surveillance. I don't see the privacy angle one bit.
  - GoblinSlayer 3y ago
    You clearly did mean crime: >Where are these mystical things that function because of crypto that wouldn't function with regular money, and which also are not fraud?
    - jvanderbot 3y ago
      I was asking for examples of applications that are enabled by crypto in the first message that you quote. Next message someone listed features, not example applications. I had two responses: that's not an application, and in addition I somewhat sloppily said that even that feature (privacy) does not exist (because it's just laundering which is defeatable).

You can list features all day and not convince me of the existence of applications. Privacy that is obtained by obscuring signatories or blending assets is just laundering.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

That's like saying effective cryptography is destruction of evidence. "Laundering" is a bullshit concept invented to legitimize total surveillance of financial transactions. This KYC/AML stuff is just the financial arm of global mass surveillance. We must resist it vigorously for the exact same reasons we resist warrantless dragnet data collection.

jvanderbot 3y ago
I see the misunderstanding: I used "laundering" to describe a method of obscuring a trail of exchanges, not a crime. I can exchange gold, or textiles or something, and not expect surveillance of those transactions. I do live in a country that requires some reporting of those for tax purposes, but not tracking of the assets the way crypto does. The moment I pick up a monetized piece of paper that the government printed with a serial number and all that, which is guaranteed by the full faith of the government, and is standardized by the government in a global financial system, I accept some side effects, such as the government's expectation of tracking and standardization. Similarly, the moment I pick up a crypto currency, I accept all the technical limitations / requirements of complete ledger accessibility, and methods of circumventing that are no more sophisticated than laundering. In effect, with gov-backed money and crypto, you are forced into a system of surveillance. I don't see the privacy angle one bit.
- GoblinSlayer 3y ago
  You clearly did mean crime: >Where are these mystical things that function because of crypto that wouldn't function with regular money, and which also are not fraud?
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    I was asking for examples of applications that are enabled by crypto in the first message that you quote. Next message someone listed features, not example applications. I had two responses: that's not an application, and in addition I somewhat sloppily said that even that feature (privacy) does not exist (because it's just laundering which is defeatable).