New EU Proposals Seek to End Anonymous Bitcoin Trading
news.bitcoin.com
news.bitcoin.com
So if you want Bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency) to have wide legitimate adoption, you have to play by the rules. Governments basically exist for the purpose of enacting economic regulation; so to pretend they don't have a right to do so is a little silly.
No company within the EU perhaps, but that doesn't mean you can't just send the money to a russian exchange like BTC-e who really doesn't care what the source is and accepts things like webmoney, libertyreserve, etc. Which are trivial to get into if you know what you're doing.
And have very few protections for consumers, and the percentage of the population that "know what [they]'re doing" is actually pretty low.
So yeah, if you're into criminal activity it's still pretty easy to do. But it also means it's easier for law enforcement to watch those avenues of access to catch criminal activity in the act.
Unless you succeed to make them ship "some products" to you in some other country where BTC is "legitimate" such a transfer would be one-way only.
That's not a point that bothers me. I understand that I can easily get my money into a Russian or other such exchange.
What bothers me is being a UK citizen, what can I do with that money?
>>Just trade it and draw it to your bitcoin wallet.
What to trade? How to purchase physical goods? e.g. a TV or something else?
Can I at least get my money back in the form of other tradable currency in the UK?
I don't see a way to use bitcoins outside the drugs market as far as purchasing physical goods are concerned unless the government approves bitcoins. Please correct me if I am wrong.
edit: typo, clarification
Using BTC-e is essentially rolling the dice. The Russian/Bulgarian operators can disappear at anytime they like with the entire current volume they are anonymous and also not insured, existing on rep only which doesn't mean very much. They could easily put up a million worth of bitcoin as insurance somewhere held in a trust and refuse to daily trade over that insured amount, that they don't says they plan to just disappear one day.
Sorry, I meant PerfectMoney. Are they at risk of disappearing? Probably, but it's essentially an exchange medium to you.
> Using BTC-e is essentially rolling the dice. The Russian/Bulgarian operators can disappear at anytime they like with the entire current volume they are anonymous and also not insured, existing on rep only which doesn't mean very much. They could easily put up a million worth of bitcoin as insurance somewhere held in a trust and refuse to daily trade over that insured amount, that they don't says they plan to just disappear one day.
You don't need to have money in the exchange for that long, just move it in and out. Yes, it's a risk, but a fairly small one as long as you don't store money in the exchange long term.
Out to where? Your EU bank account? Oh wait..
You can compare this to most laws - people have the capability to break the law, but sufficient enforcement reduces the incentives to do so to the extent that for many classes of crime the number of people who commit them is pretty small.
In particular, if all businesses dealing with bitcoins are required to KYC and large transfers are tracked and prosecuted where possible, then there probably would not be a huge amount of anonymous transfer.
Or, more likely, a huge number of bitcoin businesses will go where these laws don't exist and interact with other services to get in.
I've managed to avoid any exchange that follows KYC practices with no issue so far.
That's because no-one has made a serious effort to regulate this so far. I'm not arguing that there wouldn't be grey market bitcoin exchanges operating on a pirate-bay like basis, just that a serious attempt at regulating would have a serious effect on how bitcoin is used.
This is even leaving aside ideas where a government could declare particular bitcoins to have been involved in illegal trading and claim the right to confiscate them from anyone under their jurisdiction.
I imagine that this would take the same form as money laundering regulation, which while not perfect still has a massive effect on how easy it is to launder money.
Some places certainly have, it's just that you'd basically need a global effort between many countries to do so to have any real effect. Until then most of these regulations are just a joke.
That didn't stop them to start the war on drugs and spending trillions on it.
For IRC/forum trades they would do periodic crackdowns posing as phony buyers and arresting/fining the seller to scare away enough casuals that only a handful continue to offer it, effectively shutting down any threat of mass bitcoin adoption to their tax cartel.
This idea that the future will consist of everyone using tax havens is ridiculous. Most ordinary people are scared of the taxation impacts of using them (and rightly so).
I.e. the success of the OECD "grey list" thing, the amendment of banking secrecy laws in Switzerland and the closing of at least some tax loopholes like the one Apple used to use in Eire.
Where are you getting this from? You don't have to be particularly wealthy to offshore your income.
That to one side - why do you want strict regulation on cryptos? What are your concerns?
Bitcoin has been around for YEARS. It is not going to gain broad acceptance.
Bitcoin right now is like the stock market before the Securities and Exchange Commission was created in 1934, due to the fallout from all the fraud that led to the Great Depression.
A regulated currency market has both pros and cons; no question about it. But consider this:
- A decree comes down: "From this point forward, bitcoin users can no longer use any other currency. All transactions, savings accounts, etc. will have to be bitcoin-based."
Assume, hypothetically, that this could be enforced.
Would you agree to stop using any non-bitcoin store of value?
If you say "no, I'd still want to be able to use non-bitcoin currencies"
.....then you need to take a look at that. Because it proves that bitcoin fails to perform some type of monetary function for you.
Can someone tell me a legitimate reason why I need anonymous cryptocurrency? Or what is used for?
You know - for your safety.
Replace anonymous crypto-currencies with cash, and realize how ridiculous you sound.
TLDR: Bitcoin makes it easy for sellers to obtain payment without the fear of PayPal account freezes or chargebacks.
The EU can still suck taxes from the transactions of Taler but at least they have no idea what you bought. Why should the payment middleman have a complete itemized dossier of your personal purchasing history just you and the merchant should share the details of the purchase beyond the total amount paid.
Because the government has a legitimate interest in taxing different goods at different rates.
For most online marketplaces protecting the buyers at the expense of the sellers may be necessary. There are usually a lot of buyers, they are reluctant about buying things they cannot see or touch from people they don't know, and most are not in a position to absorb the fraud. Meanwhile the sellers are usually companies that can absorb some reasonable amount of fraud because they can spread the cost of the fraud over the much larger number of transactions.
That's not always the case, such as in situations where individuals are trying to occasionally sell items of value and they are not in a position to absorb the fraud. For those situations it may make sense to use an escrow mechanism, because non-reversible payment methods like Bitcoin may spook the buyers (and insufficient buyers may lower the overall prices, potentially beyond the cost of escrow).
None of this requires anonymous payments.
The assumption that anonymity is inherently an indicator of criminality is toxic to an open society.
The moment I suspect there is a group of people that get paid and purchase goods outside the tax system I have lost that trust. Full transparency in my opinion is the lesser evil. Completely anonymous currency and transactions solves a problem but creates a bigger one.
Because police does not need to know that I pay for and run an anonymizer.
Because my bank does not need to know that I bought a butt-plug.
Because I don't want my house raided just because I bought potting soil from a gardener that was later busted for growing weed.
Also... you get your cash from CC and transfer it to BTC, you pay someone else, you encourage money laundering because that seller doesn't have to pay any tax for that.
For me the most important factor is where the cash is going. IF we all switch to bitcoin and government can't keep track of the money, big criminals, bit corps will never pay any taxes, and how we are going to have free schools, free medical care, police, etc? Am I over thinking this?
Privacy is important but either we have to find a way to change the economy as it is, or regulate BTC properly.
Just because someone has a fetish and wants to keep it "anonymous" is not enough for me.
Yes you are, you're missing the addition of a trusted party. I may trust someone I'm trading with to keep me anonymous, mail my order out, etc.
But what if I do not trust my bank to destroy the transaction and keep me anonymous if someone comes looking later.
You trust the first out of necessity, but you only trust the second out of convenience.
This of course only applies to physical products as electronic products can be delivered completely anonymously.
> and how we are going to have free schools, free medical care, police, etc? Am I over thinking this?
Well it isn't free if you have to pay for it. Here in France we pay 80% taxes and then we like to brag about having free school, free healthcare etc. It's not free if 80% of your hard earned money goes to these institutions and the bureaucracies that manage them. Worst thing is that we still need a private insurance on top of that because our welfare system is going broke and can't even pay for anything despite the 80% taxation. So yeah, it is not free after all, it is even super expensive.
Here is the thing that people do not understand: quality healthcare or quality education are expensive, there is no way around that, no magic welfare taxes will fix it. Whether private or public, it will cost you an arm and a leg. Only thing that could fix it would be innovation but unfortunately these sectors are highly regulated and this is a barrier to innovation so things will progress very slowly.
It's 44.2% tax burden and 56.1% government spending. Percentages are fractions of GDP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending
It's not atypical for a western country. You still pay less than the Danes.
Everyone complains about regulation in health care until you get faulty medical equipment or contaminated pills and a couple dozen people die.
It is a tired and irrelevant complaint.
As usual there are the deaths you see and those you don't. How many people died because a new medical equipment required years to get approved and many people who could have benefited did not and died? It is very shortsighted to only mention and count deaths caused by approved medicines and not by unapproved yet working ones.
The biggest companies do not pay much taxes already; while I get your point, I consider it invalid until everyone who is doing legal business is paying taxes. The mafia will never pay taxes on illegal business, but it is irrelevant as long as big corporations can get around paying taxes by constructing legal international constructs.
> Privacy is important but either we have to find a way to change the economy as it is, or regulate BTC properly.
So let's go for the easy thing and regulate BTC even though it promises the smallest of all gains for society? Can you point me to any reports about BTC being used for terrorism? If there are any, do they really warrant a regulation?
> Just because someone has a fetish and wants to keep it "anonymous" is not enough for me.
Tell that to gay people in societies in which they face, at best, discrimination or, at worst, prison or death penalty.
Just because you don't have anything to be concerned about yourself right now, does not mean you should devalue privacy and anonymity for others: You can still be the next deviant who is hunted down. Or how Niemoeller put it:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.But this is the eternal debate about free speech, what's illegal in a certain country might not be illegal in other countries and is not necessarily unethical.
(1) Because not all masters are benevolent
(2) Because it removes the possibility of charge backs
(3) Because not everyone enjoys being monitored by companies and/or governments (foreign or otherwise)
(4) Underground markets are only "underground" because of laws. If a society outlaws birth control and abortions, but a women wants an abortion she probably wants an alternative (I.e. something an underground market with provide). An anonymous crypocurrancy (or cash) is the easiest way to do this. If it's not a crypocurrancy or cash, they can always trade goods. So in all honesty, there's no way to stop it.
There may even be other reasons, but it seems pretty obvious it can inherently good to have.
So the solution to that is publishing all your transactions to a public ledger?
(yes I know there are "tumblers" etc, but these come with operational and practical issues)
The bank isn't authorised to provide that information to third parties.
http://www.cardlytics.com/technology/
Despite the "firewall" between the bank and the marketers, information is being sold - it just requires an extra step on the part of the marketers (leaving the banks legally in the clear).
The rest are just ideological and/or about facilitating illegal activity and irrelevant to most people. This is the problem with Bitcoin and other digital currencies. There is just not enough focus on making something better and simpler than the existing system.
You mean mainstream disadvantage.
I think most people using VISA are happy that they won't lose all their assets to fraud or theft of their credit card. Mainstream retailers accept a certain amount of fraud as a cost of doing business, only disruptive or greymarket vendors face significant risk from chargebacks.
Removing chargebacks is a positive benefit to a tiny fraction of the participants in legitimate financial services.
Being able to host web pages for a causes you believe in, but getting fired for them if your names pops up (lets call it the Internet Mob Protection).
If you need to send a bunch of money to someone in the Philippines, your only easy choice is an expensive wire transfer through Western Union or similar. My bank will do it for a small fixed-fee, but only because I've had an account with them for almost a decade. You don't need a verified history and strong identity to use bitcoin.
If you don't give out your personal information when buying something, then when their site later gets hacked by the Chinese your name and address won't be sold on underground trading sites. That is, even if you trust the government and banks with your personal information, you don't necessarily trust every little ecommerce site.
If you go to a clinic specializing in mental health, cancer, abortion, or substance abuse, your medical treatment is nobody's business but you and your doctor's.
You ate at restaurants and bought gas at gas stations along a multi-state route leading to a city where there's a big protest about race relations, or income equality, or a convention where a controversial politician is going to be nominated. The government, or particular people inside it, might care -- and not in a way that's good for you or for the democratic process.
Your aggregate purchase history reveals a great deal about your personality, relationships, political activism, physical/mental state, sexual activity and many other aspects of your life.
Bitcoin is the primary source of payment.
It's starting to grow, there are listings of physical goods, electronic goods and now even rental listings, they are calling it OBNB lol.
I'm sure as time goes on, more and more types of listings will emerge.
People are finally coming around to the idea that middlemen don't have to tell you what you can and can't do.
I cannot wait until things like TOR and Integrated wallets are included.
Version 2 of OB is soon and there is a hangout on the 7th [2].
One last thing. Sure there may eventually be "bad" listings and also customers may not be fully protected. But with everything in life. Caveat Emptor.
[1] - http://openbazaar.org
[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenBazaar/comments/4qmsan/openbaza...
Situations like this are why we have an independent judicial system. And even if we didn't who is thinking that credit cards are the only way to buy things ?
Tell this to the legal porn producers (or legal marijuana sellers/producers) who get their accounts frozen and shut out of the banking system.
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/news/a24813/porn-star-b...
No - we have an outsourced judicial system, where Facebook and Google will spy on you more than the USGov, the bank will control your money more than the Government, and the insurance company will have you in an autonomous car faster than a mandate will. That's modern neoliberalism.
To preserve your possessions against confiscation when power abuses the people.
One of my family members lived and worked in Cuba before Fidel Castro got into power. He had a house and a three people company. He actually supported Fidel because he talked a lot about democracy and himself(Castro) not being communist.
Once Fidel got into power, he established himself as a dictator, killing anybody on their own side that was against a new dictatorship, like Cienfuegos.
Fidel nationalized everything. My family member and his family leaved the country with money from my family overseas. All his possessions were stolen by Castro.
The people in power should not have the power to easily confiscate your wealth.
Today with negative interest rates, those in power are stealing from the people, but only a little. Central banks want to ban cash so they can steal 20 to 30 per cent of every single deposit as the system is totally bankrupted.
With physical cash, gold confiscation, they have a harder time. Some people will not be happy to give the police their hard earned money.