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EU to ban anonymous crypto accounts and privacy coins by 2027
- vitarnixofntrnt 1y ago[dead]
- karel-3d 1y ago...on exchanges. They don't ban the coins and their private usages, they ban them on exchanges.
- JSR_FDED 1y agoWhat are the implications of that?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- RalfWausE 1y agoIf you stay within the crypto-economy (e.g. buy stuff with coins from places who also only deal with coins) nothing prevents you from doing so.
- alexey-salmin 1y agoRight, and laws like this slowly severe the ties between the crypto-economy and the real world. In the end you'll be able to exchange coins for other coins but by itself it's meaningless.
- crimsoneer 1y agoWasn't this essentially illegal already due to KYC regulations?
- actionfromafar 1y agoI believe it was this: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1114/oj/eng https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1114/oj/eng
- omeid2 1y agoNo, because KYC is about the customer, not product. In the same way that you're not required to sell only trackable microcontrollers for example, only that you can show who you sold them to, not where they went onwards.
- plsbenice34 1y agoBased on all the other comments it seems like nobody else understands this. Funny. People will just (legally) use decentalised exchanges to convert between monero and bitcoin so it won't have much impact
- out_of_protocol 1y agoHow do you do that on DEX?
- plsbenice34 1y agoThere are several models. Haveno already works by providing p2p multisignature escrow. With this design, you need to match with an individual and do a direct exchange. There is a Tor-based application BasicSwap has another model with noncustodial atomic swaps and some sort of decentralised orderbook. I expect that Serai will be much more effective than those. It will launch soon with a liquidity pool design, similar to Uniswap for Ethereum. With this model, other people can profit by providing liquidity for pools. It will be very easy for anyone to initiate a trade and do an exchange for a different currency from the pool. It will be incorporated into the most popular mobile app Cakewallet, so it should be accessible even for non-technical users and quickly gain adoption. I think this has the potential to provide an even more convenient, generally superior experience compared to centralised exchanges.
- 93po 1y agosoooo we need blockchain based exchanges now? haha
- jmcgough 1y ago[flagged]
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago[flagged]
- harperlee 1y ago[flagged]
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoWhat I think is that your argument is in bad faith and breaking HN rules. The governments, being useless and focusing on the wrong things, are banning objectively non-nefarious objects (ninja swords, anonymous coins) that can be use for good by good actors (cutting stuff in the garden, sending money in privacy) but are sometimes used for evil by bad actors (murder, money laundering), like many other things. How can rape and murder ever be used for good by the general public? Did you ever meet someone in need of a legit rape/murder in the name of good? How can you possibly make such a comparison? Honestly! Banning a tool doesn't stop the criminals from committing crimes that are already illegal, it's just removing a tool from the law abiding citizen.
- smallnix 1y agoMy best interpretation of their comment would be that to ban owning ninja swords or rape does not prevent either from happening 100% of the time. But it's still the 'right' thing to do and prevents it some of the time. But I am guessing here.
- delusional 1y agoThe argument would be that your "non-nefarious" use is just not that important. Cutting stuff in your garden with your ninja sword or sending money in privacy with your fake money is just not something anybody gives a shit about you being able to do.
- _ink_ 1y agoWhat does this mean for cold or hardware wallets?
- braiamp 1y agoLess than nothing. Only applies on exchanges. If you manage to transfer such things in the public ledger, then there's no problem.
- cedws 1y agoMonero in particular absolutely terrifies governments and financial institutions - you can tell because it's been banned and delisted practically everywhere. This gives me great confidence in it. Not as a speculative asset, but as a means of having truly private transactions.
- lawn 1y agoIn a way Monero is more a cryptocurrency than Bitcoin. A fast, cheap, global, and private currency; in contrast to the speculative asset that is Bitcoin.
- lordofgibbons 1y agoBitcoin advocates pivoted on Bitcoin being a currency after it, to be brutally honest, failed to function as a currency. Last few times I transacted BTC, the fees were anywhere between $5 and $15 and the transaction times were more than 1hr. Not to mention the whole world can see all of your transactions. So they pivoted the marketing to it being a "store of value".
- sshine 1y agoThe cost for a Bitcoin transaction today is $0.96. The lowest daily average cost per transaction in the last month was $0.81, and the highest was $2.52.
- delusional 1y agoFinally. It's a failed experiment by grifters and suckers. It had it's chance at being useful, time to get it out of public conscience so we can work on actual issues.
- soulofmischief 1y agoWhat is, exactly? Decentralized currency?
- denkmoon 1y agoMonero does -exactly- what it is designed to do and is used by plenty of people for real transactions not just speculation. Grifters always gonna grift.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bgwalter 1y agoThe fact that Bitcoin itself has never been banned strongly suggests that it was government approved from the beginning or even developed at the NSA. The tracking is a feature, and many governments want a CBDC. What does the CIA think? The CIA thinks Bitcoin is great: https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/bitcoin-price-million-cia-bitcoin-instutional-adoption-trends-ethereum-hodlers-digest/ https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/bitcoin-price-million-cia...
- bilekas 1y agoHave you read the article ? The currencies are not being BANNED, simply anonymous accounts are, this is standard practice in financial institutions where you're required to Know Your Customer (KYC) and provide Anti Money Laundering (AML) provisions.
- bgwalter 1y agoI have. Handling Monero, presumably for real currency conversions, is banned. If that were done for Bitcoin worldwide, the price would collapse, because it is no longer useful for, e.g., sanctions evasion. By the way, the article itself claims: "The European Union is set to impose sweeping Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules that will ban privacy-preserving tokens and anonymous cryptocurrency accounts from 2027." This statement is walked back later.
- plsbenice34 1y agoCointelegraph very often exaggerates and writes in an inaccurate way, it should never be used as a reliable source of information. You can see the real information here which makes it clear that it only applies to exchanges: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32024R1624 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
- perlgeek 1y agoI wonder what the impact will be on ransomware attacks. It'll probably make it harder for people who aren't in "bullet-proof" countries (i.e. without good cooperation with to receive ransom payment, which sounds like a good thing. It could also cause some decidedly negative effects during the transition, when companies that really want to pay a ransom (because they cannot recover otherwise) are unable to.
- amarcheschi 1y agoAs of now paying for a ransomware in btc is still quite hard, at least in europe. A person i know works in an art/craft company - so not tech - and the boss faced a hard time to pay 40k€ in btc for a ransomware a few months ago, since many of the transfers were blocked and had to pass through a middle man. the backup they had was last done months earlier, i don't know if its their fault or their security company's fault but i guess in the future they'll gladly pay more for working backups
- reginald78 1y agoMy understanding is most ransoms are already paid in bitcoin. (or some other public ledger coin?) Privacy coins would probably be preferable for criminals to receive but they aren't as easy to purchase as bitcoin which I'd imagine significantly reduces the likelihood they get paid at all. Since most of these ransomware groups are hosted in countries with uncooperative governments the public ledger isn't really an impediment anyway.
- BobaFloutist 1y ago)
- bilekas 1y ago> Under the new Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR), credit institutions, financial institutions and crypto asset service providers (CASPs) will be prohibited from maintaining anonymous accounts or handling privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies, such as Monero This isn't really an issue, AML exists for a reason, having had experience in countries where corruption was extremely bad, AML combined with solid privacy obligations of data from the exchanger is a net positive thing. People can complain about "I want fully private transactions" - Okay then use cash. Otherwise force your exchange provider to keep your data secure.
- giancarlostoro 1y ago> People can complain about "I want fully private transactions" - Okay then use cash. I want fully private transactions over the internet, cant use cash with someone a continent away.
- soco 1y agoI wonder, how private is hawala? Anyone knowing it enough to chime in?
- sshine 1y ago> I want fully private transactions over the internet The big problem seems to be that then you allow for arbitrary speculation, causing high volatility, and scarcity of reliable ways to exchange the money, because no organisation that could otherwise stabilise the exchange rate can put their name to fully private transactions.
- bilekas 1y ago> I want fully private transactions over the internet And you can still do this, the AML is related to the using the Exchanges themselves ?
- alexey-salmin 1y ago> People can complain about "I want fully private transactions" - Okay then use cash. Cash too is becoming more and more restricted over time. Large denominations are removed from circulation, transactions above certain threshold are made illegal, limits are put on cash withdrawals per day and per month. Realistically the current trajectory of the EU is "less and less private transactions until there are none in a couple of decades".
- neiman 1y agoI'm a foreigner living in the EU for many years, here's my 2 cents. For over a year, I was locked out of financial services due to my inability to pass KYC. The reason was that I had already left one country, but was still in the process of getting a residency visa in another. During the process, I'm allowed to live in this country, but I have no ability to prove it to any financial institutions. So, no wonder I'm bitter about KYC and AML. Regarding privacy, I appreciate the EU's effort, but I also feel they focus too much on the legal side and not enough on the implementation side of it. My ID was photocopied at almost every accommodation I visited in the last decade. I have no way to make private digital payments, and even offline cash is not being promoted. At least once, my private financial record was accessed by a 3rd party that used it against me. But I'm not the kind of person who would go into a legal battle. I'm the kind of person who uses technology to protect his privacy. And the EU, with decisions like this, makes it very difficult for me. I doubt banning Monero or Zcash would prevent criminals from tax evasion. They'll find other ways. So, as often happens, "Locks keep honest people honest".
- soco 1y agoI assume there will never be any implementation side to focus on, if there's no legal side to push for it. Because as we can clearly see around us, the tech boys don't give a zit on your accesses and privacy and rights, so they have to be pushed to care.
- neiman 1y agoThere are plenty of civil organizations and hackerspaces in Europe that focus on such things, not to mention academic groups.
- tpm 1y ago> I'm allowed to live in this country, but I have no ability to prove it to any financial institutions. That is very strange, because you should be able to get a temporary residence certificate (whatever it's called in your respective country) and thus get an account with if not all then at least most banks.
- lordofgibbons 1y agoThese are the real Cypherpunk coins. Specially Monero. The premise behind Cryptocurrencies, (before crypto-bros joined), were all about distributed control, privacy, and censorship avoidance. If there's a single company or "foundation" that is in charge of development decisions, then it's not a distributed currency. That's no different from Paypal. If a random country (that you don't even live in) can block your wallet-address/transactions then what you have is not a cryptocurrency worthy of its name (they can force miners and exchanges to not accept any funds that can easily be traced to your wallet address). Just use Venmo or Paypal at that point they have lower fees and faster transactions.
- xyzal 1y agoI wonder what benefit to society might having a shadow financial system bring? I can't think of any, except for financing entities operating outside lawful limits.
- 93po 1y agoi think the whole point for many is freedom from tyranny. just because there are laws around how you're allowed to store and move around things that you own doesn't mean those laws are morally or ethically well-founded.
- kreetx 1y ago"Tyranny" has a negative connotation to it, but cultures vary, laws are not universal, and also people have different values - if you live somewhere where you can't otherwise transact, a private cryptocurrency may be a way out for you.
- plsbenice34 1y agoHong Kong protestors were tracked by looking at their purchases of public transport tickets. Canada froze the bank accounts of those involved in protests also. Wikileaks had to rely on cryptocurrency for funding and donations could be tracked otherwise. From this I see a trend that shows it is critical for democracy, don't you?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- alexey-salmin 1y ago> I can't think of any, except for financing entities operating outside lawful limits. The idea is that "lawful limits", even if you wholeheartedly support them now, can change at a whim if a new government is elected or a war starts or some other major crisis happens. These things come and go every few decades, one is not improbable to occur within the frame of your lifetime and place of residence.
- 1y ago
- amriksohata 1y agoUS innovates CH replicates EU regulates On a side note good luck in regulating Crypto that doesn't require KYC when most people transfer to an anonymous wallet using a wallet address.
- surgical_fire 1y agoThis is such a bullshit take. Repeating it ad nauseam does not make it true.
- vizzah 1y agoAnd vitalik.eth was just essaying on how important privacy protocols are and how Ethereum must adopt them... Let EU ban ETH then and shift closer to the caveman era and be even more laughing stock for the (expectedly) more crypto-friendly US.
- Marthins1212 1y ago[flagged]
- Gazoche 1y agoLooks like the fake recovery scams have leaked out of X and into HN.
- Marry777 1y ago[flagged]
- sanzo 1y ago[dead]
- NatalieKrylova 1y ago[dead]
- BODO66 1y ago[dead]
- Lavia3 1y ago[flagged]
- normanboots544 1y ago[dead]