this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2021
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Privacy
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The analogy between "crypto-asset wallets" and "bank accounts" is a bit infuriating.
If you have a non-anonymous bank account, you can still withdraw your funds to CASH and store that in a safe. Is the safe "already" banned?
Are they proposing to ban, say, use of Electrum style wallets? Or only banning things like monero?
On the other hand, have you tried moving, say, 100m EUR in cash across a border?
Cash has friction that dramatically increases with the amount being spent/moved.
The same is not true for cryptocurrencies. And that's a problem, since as much as we all agree that privacy is important (hi, a digital human rights activist with a decade of experience in the field here, AMA), so is accountability for those who do have 100m EUR to move and would like to do so in an untraceable way...
This law would be like copyright: impossible or expensive to enforce and a joke to most people who really need to transfer money, because there is no other way. And what about the money that already circulates in there? When a market gets regulated, for example, anonymized crypto, the black market thrives. I doubt this money will circulate in the clear..
The question is who decides what small is. And when large amount are involved are they necessarily morally corrupt? Using it to evade sanctions seems like a valid use. Tbh the only reason this scrutiny is applied is because it's a cryptocurrency. You can't make privacy limited by an arbitrary/subjective idea of what is and isn't big because any reduction of privacy kills all privacy. And while I agree crypto is easier to send there a lot of friction selling large amounts and getting cash.
More crimes are done with fiat anyway. And do we really want the government deciding the legitimacy of a purchase? I mean the drug war is the obvious example, but I think I have a much better one. Lets examine a marginalized group. For a lot of Trans people the government gets to control access to their body, doctors are hesitant due to a narrative that pushes the smallest fraction of transitions that were regretful to the top of the news cycle we marginalize a community even more. The payment processors shut down side channels, the governments slowly trying to restrict the movement of life saving hormones to comfort cis people. I've had trans people in the EU tell me doctors asked them how they masturbated to "prove"they were trans. Doctors bragging they could detrans people.
Authority abuses people, and the good out weighing the bad is subjective. For many the only way might be grey/black market or suicide.
If we want to use the classic drug war example the cartel violence might go down. The drugs that people use to explore themselves more accessible than ever. I would be dead without microdosing. I would be dead without a way to heal from my ptsd (MDMA). So I really want people to have a real understanding of what they are advocating for. It's easy to hate crypto when every one is hating on it. Hard to fight for it when it would help marginalized people. What is a crime is a social construct. Do we really value stomping out crime? Stopping crypto doesn't stop the bourgeoisie from ruling us.
Most fiat on/of ramps are monitored. So the laundering is really overblown. Like it's really fucking hard.