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Comment by hudon | Hacker News Reader

Same drawback applies to Bitcoin. Send BTC from Coinbase to a blacklisted entity and see how quickly CB, Gemini, etc. shut down your accounts. Then you’re left with your local client but you can’t trade anywhere... and speculation is crypto’s only use case today.

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At least according to this document, when your USDC account is blacklisted you may no longer send or receive tokens from it. With Bitcoin, even if Coinbase blacklists you, you can still send your Bitcoin to other accounts and exchange it for things. I'm sure it's a huge pain but your Bitcoin will not just be lost forever.

> With Bitcoin, even if Coinbase blacklists you, you can still send your Bitcoin to other accounts and exchange it for things

This is not so. Coinbase and Gemini (I haven't checked others but I'm sure they're the same) will freeze your assets entirely if required by law or if you violate the user agreements in some flagrant way [0] [1].

[0] https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/190...

[1] https://gemini.com/user-agreement/#account-closure

I think they mean if you are using your own wallet to store your bitcoin, then coinbase and gemini have no control over what you do with it, except not using their own services

Then back to my original point: If no exchanges allow you to deposit BTC, what are you doing with it?

Once you've shamir-secret-split your multi-sig cold-storage private keys, laminated them, placed them in fireproof envelopes and dug them deep in the ground in 5 different continents... what exactly do you DO with your BTC?

Your original point was that _Coinbase and Gemeni_ had prevented you from exchanging your BTC for fiat currency. There's nothing preventing you from taking your BTC to some other exchange, or just some guy that accepts BTC for goods or services. That's the beauty of this whole decentralized thing.

No, you misread. "et cetera" is latin for "and the rest"... I put that there because exchanges are all tied. A ban on one leads to a ban on another, depending on the severity of your crime.

> There's nothing preventing you from taking your BTC to some other exchange

I've already showed you that exchanges can freeze your assets, so yes they can prevent you from sending to other exchanges.

> some guy that accepts BTC for goods or services. That's the beauty of this whole decentralized thing.

If your marker for decentralization is currency adoption, then USD is the most decentralized.

I thought we were passed this whole "Bitcoin is not created by humans" meme...

> "I've already showed you that exchanges can freeze your assets"

Your point is well taken, however it needs to be made clear: exchanges can only freeze those assets which you yourself have placed in their control.

Can’t you just do a private transfer to a fresh wallet?

It doesn't work that way, every transaction is fully traceable all the way back to the block the coin was mined in.

> Can’t you just do a private transfer to a fresh wallet?

Isn’t the point of Bitcoin not to have private transfers?

You might have to tumble it first.

Washing your coins through monero / Zcash is a simple option (With enough splits and spread over time so amount correlation is harder).

If you have some time, rent mining power with BTC, and get freshly minted totally clean bitcoin in return.

You can exchange your bitcoin for stuff outside of those exchanges. Lot of ways to spend bitcoin without having to use an exchange ;)

p2p trades

That's not actually true. If you attempt to send a transaction from Coinbase to an address they have blacklisted they will immediately suspend your account. You will be allowed to withdraw your funds before the account is closed.

How effective do you suppose that is, when best practice for some time has been to use a new receiving address for every transaction?

> but you can’t trade anywhere

Just trade on all the other less regulated exchanges. Or localbitcoin. Or, you know, buy stuff.

> and speculation is crypto’s only use case today.

Or you buy stuff... For example:

* Webhallen (huge Swedish online shop)

* scan.co.uk (uk based computer online shop)

* purse.io (buy stuff from amazon)

* fastmail (emails)

* VPN/VPS/domains from various providers

* darknetmarkets

Why the hell would I buy Bitcoin to buy stuff on Amazon through a proxy site that sells my BTC for me instead of just... buying on Amazon like a normal person? BTC will be way slower and more expensive than just using my credit card... Plus Visa will refund me in the case of fraud.

Like I side, speculation is the only thing you buy BTC for (moon!!!111), and the exchanges will prevent you from doing this if you are related to blacklisted accounts.

> Why the hell would I buy Bitcoin to buy stuff on Amazon through a proxy site

Because they give discounts up to 15%.

I'm sorry it doesn't fit your narrative but there are reasons to prefer cryptocurrencies.

Like a lot of the crypto currency space purse.io is shady and likely promoting thinly veiled money laundering.

Ask yourself if the discount is worth the risk of experiences like this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4zczow/my_experien...

15% sounds about right to offset the fraud risk, volatility risk, exchange fees, network fees, network congestion, transfer delays, fork risk, catastrophic bugs, and theft risk :)

We all have narratives, buddy. Mine just doesn't hinge on gambling and crypto-anarchic utopia.

Why are they giving such a big discount? The transaction fees are nowhere near that high. Could it be that they're reselling fraudulent giftcards?

> Like I side, speculation is the only thing you buy BTC for

You've ignored the rest of the list in the comment you’re replying to.

If they don't use the blacklist, will they get added to the blacklist? (Is it viral?)

Yes. This is what Chainalysis does, among many other things — track tainted coins that people are intentionally obscuring the origin of.

You can avoid gemini and coinbase if you use bitcoin. You cannot avoid them if you use USDC/GUSD.

When you say "use bitcoin", what do you mean?

edit: Perhaps the lesson here is the more useful something is, the less freedom you have in using it. After all, why would regulators care if you can "use bitcoin" when "use" means "play with my private keys".

Transfer the bitcoin from your wallet to any other non Gemini/Coinbase wallet. Most crypto people have private wallets. You can also use something like localbitcoins or Bitcoin ATM. Or you can literally meet with a person selling something for a coffee, transfer BTC to their wallet, they wait few minutes for on chain confirmation, give you stuff you bought, done.

Coinbase and Gemini aren't the only places that accept Bitcoin.

Coinbase is not a wallet.

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