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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

VPN hides activity.

Bitcoin makes it public record.

Regulating Bitcoin transactions is extremely easy due to the public ledger. You simply make it illegal for exchanges to transact with coins that are known to be stolen or otherwise flagged. Then all exchanges are forced to blacklist coins on that list, as well as descendant transactions from those blacklisted coins.

Now there are two classes of addresses on the blockchain: Those that are clean, and those that are tainted with illegal activity transactions. The tainted coins are worth less than untainted coins as fewer and fewer exchanges will touch them.

Ironically, Bitcoin speculators will support this move because it reduces the supply of Bitcoin. Reducing the supply of Bitcoin increases the relative value of their clean Bitcoin.

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I can exchange my coins on a DEX - No third party required.

Whether or not it's a DEX doesn't matter at all.

In this hypothetical world of regulation which has made some BTC "tainted" through surveillance, it will always be in the BTC receiver's best interest to verify the coins are "clean". Only a fool (or fellow criminal) would transact with tainted coins; most people would probably not use a DEX, or else use one which verified clean coins anyway without being regulated to do so.

Hmm, i think we have different thoughts about what a DEX is. Decentralized exchange allows me to conduct exchanges anonymously. I can convert back and forth between many different coins and wallets. Although it still goes on the ledger each time it's transacted, verifying who it went to, who is came from, and how it was traded is impossible. I can use a VPN to connect to the DEX, I can push my trade through a mining firm and many other ways. Any government 'Banning Bitcoin' is just a giant advertisement for bitcoin and will only lead to that nations fall as other nations take the cue to 'Stick it' to the nation that banned it by investing.

The point is, a government can make it illegal to sell goods for crypto. As well as making it illegal to transact crypto anonymously. So unless you find some black market for all your material goods, you will be FORCED to "exit" some of your crypto into fiat at some point. It is at this point that the design of BTC in particular makes it impossible to hide this "exit", because a government can easily surveil the blockchain and keep track of "verified" coins / addresses.

Any time a transaction is spotted between a registered and unregistered address, just send a friendly police van to the address on file and seize the registered wallet. Rinse and repeat until unregistered wallets can virtually only transact between each other.

Again, I don't think you understand crypto very well. I can buy coins on a DEX and transfer them to my hard wallet. There's no 'Verifying' or 'Knowing my address'.

Again, your government banning selling goods for crypto makes it a better investment opportunity for the world.

I'm not sure what you mean about "understanding" crypto, the concepts here are dead simple, there's not much to misunderstand.

In this scenario it doesn't matter that you can transfer some coins from a DEX to your "hard wallet". If you haven't registered your hard wallet's address with the government and linked it to your identity, you will be unable to use those coins for anything other than trading with other unverified wallets.

If you want to exchange the coins in your hard wallet for any valuable or material good whatsoever, without disclosing your actual identity to the government, you'd have to find someone willing to do so illegally i.e. a black market.

And the receiver of your "dirty" bitcoin, which is verifiably dirty because the transaction came from your (unverified) wallet, would then have to solve the same problem of laundering the BTC if he wanted to use it to pay for his costs / employees / etc.

And if we're talking about a large economic power, I'm not sure how banning crypto and making its transactions more difficult would help anyone; if anything it would negatively impact that crypto since it is less usable as a medium of exchange.

It may seem outlandish that a government would even go to these lengths, but I'd argue that wielding a centralized currency is too powerful for governments to give it up without a fight.

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