Hacker News Reader

Comment by ushakov | Hacker News Reader

i'm shocked how ignorant these lawmakers are, trying to gain control over a decentralised structure

nobody asked them for this and even if this change ends up in bitcoin's core, it will ultimately fail to reach consensus

our wallets are none of your business, EU, get out!

View on HN

I'm shocked how naive the DeFi industry was to think they could get away with little to no regulation.

Tech doesn't rule the world. Old power structures are still in place.

DeFi was built with censorship resistance in mind

EU can come up with new laws all day every day, but considering the technical detail, these laws will be impossible to enforce

The laws will be trivial to enforce. Expect to be unable to exchange cryptocurrency (that you own in your wallet) to fiat, which will almost kill the cryptocurrency market for anything other than speculation.

I expect a parallel, dark economy will still be around, where people transact with cryptocurrency and can only exchange it for cash.

It will kill the speculative market. Their native use cases in their own systems will still be 100% viable. If someone uses for example bitcoin cash or miner as money as they're intended nobody can do a thing about it. For those people uninterested in off ramps this means little.

I use it as money as it's intended, to get paid for my work. The supermarket doesn't accept BTC, does that still make it 100% viable?

You better believe I'm going to be paid in USD from now on.

For those people who use it, yes.

I'm not so sure. Unless an EU citizen wants to risk submitting a false tax return under penalty of perjury, any DeFi money that results in a profit has to be reported elsewhere. Your bank will probably also start to ask questions if you do enough DeFi activity. You can probably get away with small transactions, but is it honestly worth the risk?

I don't see this law as impossible to enforce, but rather, difficult to enforce. The government will still try, and most likely succeed in catching several institutions that don't comply. Governments don't actually need thorough enforcement for laws to be effective.

Being easily capable of breaking a law does not mean that the law is unenforceable.

Old power structures get replaced by new tech; politics is downstream from technology.

Banning exchanges may actually accelerate the transition to decentralized finance.

>nobody asked them for this

I very much support the policy. Anonymous money pretty much serves one thing uniquely well which is avoiding the law, sanctions, laundering money, buying drugs or funding crime and I don't think any society has interest in having these markets exist outside of the purview of the state.

would you also support banning words?

it's apparent, that money launderers, drug buyers, criminals communicate using words

What kind of strawman is that? I didn't say I want to get rid of all forms of digital payments, I'm perfectly fine with any form of digital payment system if it is able to comply with basic due diligence required by the law. Anonymous payments stand out in that their only distinguishing advantage is that they make that impossible.

I don't want to ban words and I don't want to ban money. But society very well can demand that there is no shadow financial system that avoids obligations everyone else has to comply with.

I'm not understanding your argument. You are against anonymous money? You realize what the alternative is? Credit cards. Ie you can only transact with visas permission, also they skim some cents off each transaction inflating all prices for all consumers. Have you heard about interest rates before? Because credit cards have the worst interest rate of any financial product. This is what centralized money gets us. The same problems exist in debit cards and fed digital coins as well fyi. Also skimming off the top and controlling how much your savings are worth via monetary policy. But at least little Billy cantbbuy drugs right? Also he has no spare change for the homeless either.

credit and debit cards are rate regulated in the EU to a 0.2% maximum fee and moving money between users these days is usually free completely with almost any payment service or bank account. Cryptocurrency fees are significantly more expensive, and process a fraction of the transactions.

The ability to have a monetary policy is a bonus and it's the reason centralized money is price stable. If you were paid your salary in bitcoin on May 1st this year you would've lost 50% of that at the end of the month, good luck paying your rent

In addition to the original crime and legibility discussion as a practical means of transaction crypto is volatile, expensive and slow.

>Cryptocurrency fees are significantly more expensive

That statement makes no sense. Crypto transfer fees are not a percentage of the transferred amount.

For bitcoin at the moment you have to move around $1300 before the fee is less than 0.2%

And around $2400 for etherium. Which means that in the common use as a payment it will be more expensive. On top of that you get into questionable situations if the shop owner wants to charge differently because of the fee as that is already disallowed for plastic cards.

I use a debit card, I pay zero interest because I hold a positive balance at all times.

Have you looked at fees on crypto "currencies" lately?

I can settle up to about 500k USD in stable coins on Solana for a fraction of a cent with minimal slippage on Orca.so or Saber.so.

The best price my friends could get sending fiat from country a to country b recently was 10 euros (with Wise) other options were 30+ euros. Keep in mind, this was for a few thousand. The fee would go up the higher the amount was.

society and the EU are welcome to demand whatever they want! :)

the ugly truth is that they have no power over the bitcoin network and their ideas will not reach consensus from miners

that's why they're to attacking the middlemen instead

Bitcoin has no power in the real world. For digital transactions is has some leverage as pure data is much harder to control. Unless people are spending their Bitcoin gainz on Second Life property and not real world assets then regulation targeting the "middle men" is simply common sense.

Crypto is trivial for a functioning government to regulate, until we all live in the Matrix.

Of course they will attack the problem at the weakest point. No one cares about the Bitcoin network itself. I care about my authorities being able to trace large financial transactions at the minimum impact to privacy. If given the terrible choice between no privacy and no transparency for any transactions - I’d vote for no privacy.

So, you're a third wave prohibitionist? How progressive!

From the bureaucrat's point of view, all of your assets are "yours" contingent only on the goodwill of the relevant regulations. Parable of the scorpion and turtle; expect neither more nor less.

You will own nothing, and be happy. What are you going to do, rebel against the EU? \s

They don’t need to go after the protocol they can simply put legislation to regulate how exchanges and other services that allow you to trade and easily transfer digital currency operate.

> nobody asked them for this

I'm in favour of regulating and tracing cryptocurrency. I don't think people should be able to sell kiddie porn, bribe officials, scam innocent people or launder money with impunity. I think lots of people would agree with me.

Criminals by definition do not care how many laws and regulations a honest person has to deal or wrongly go to prison for.

People should be able to transact business among themselves without the government knowing. The ugly comes with the good. It's part of life, personal responsibility.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com