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Comment by dogwater | Hacker News Reader

What exactly is this scary crime that is supposively happening with money? They didn't need much money to do 9/11 besides some airline tickets and box cutters, I'm sure it wouldn't trip any bank report flag that would have allowed them to stop it from happening. Organized crime, is that even a thing? If no one is even going after obvious ico scams that have defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and other similar things operating out in the open then what exactly are they so scared of that they want to track every transaction? It's just money, what's wrong with someone buying something?

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To put it more succinctly, no part of the Patriot Act would have flagged the 9/11 terrorists.

The Bank Secrecy Act and every expansion of it (like the Patriot Act) is just some data broker's pet project to fill some lucrative government contract.

So much of this feels like someone invented a teleporter and now reactionaries are condemning teleporters because they can be used by smugglers to evade customs enforcement.

But the cat is out of the bag. The smugglers are going to keep using it regardless of what rules you impose on law biding citizens.

and otherwise law abiding citizens are the only ones ensnared by this.

most of the time its because they are paranoid about triggering government reporting requirements that they don't understand, and avoiding that is a crime too!

its always the people without money trying to act sketchy about $10,000 so they can avoid being seen as sketchy

they really do get thrown in prison for this

Terrorist acts are only part of it though. Sure 9/11 was cheap but implementing punitive sanctions across countries hundreds officials requires an awful lot of tracking and monitoring.

As regulators catch up you can expect same forms and reporting for any crypto account as a regular account. If you ignore the rules expect big penalties until you comply- just like how banks have been paying billions in fines and are now tarpits of paperwork.

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