This is why we need a decentralized Internet payment system, like email.
This was a non-controversial opinion not long ago.
This was a non-controversial opinion not long ago.
This isn't a hard problem for technical reasons, it's all political. It's about preventing money laundering and trying to fight crime via financial instruments. But it also means any payment system that doesn't implement these restrictions will almost instantly be overrun by criminals because they are highly motivated to find ways of moving money.
Great, then let's change those laws.
Democratic systems won't change these laws because there is no popular support for change - there is a reasonably large 'law-and-order' and 'corruption-as-main-concern' voter demographic who strongly support these laws, and the niche of HN techies and libertarians who'd oppose them is insignificantly small in comparison; and authoritarian systems won't change these laws because their leadership supports them even more.
I understand the idealistic benefits of freedom of payments, however, the KYC/AML restrictions are there for valid reasons that simply have much more magnitude of importance (for example, the scale of corruption and its social harm is so big that even a slight decrease in that due to KYC/AML enforcement far outweighs all the current social costs of KYC/AML) and removing them would mean that in aggregate the bad guys have won. I'm not saying that you're a bad guy, but you are an "ally of convenience" to them as achieving your position would let the bad guys win and I would consider it immoral to allow that.
We definitely should strive for better, more accurate AML/KYC implementations that have less impact on legitimate trade. But arguing for removing AML/KYC just because of that is effectively throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
There's definitely a space for 'digital cash', for sure, but consumers will prefer the former.
When it comes to money, there are just deeply inherent issues of dealing with fraud, spam, goods not delivered etc. etc.. which adds significant overhead to the whole system.
Most people playing above-above board don't have a problem.
Usually in these cases, it's because something semi-shady is being sold, and it usually contravenes one of the T&Cs of Stripe.
The OP here didn't tell us what line of business they were in.
However, that’s different than a singular actor, but more importantly, nothing is stopping a counterforce from coming in and correcting that regime. It’s possible we may see email revert to a less centralized form over time as various people choose to prioritize working that problem (and can make headway, because of how email works.)
What people forget is interfacing with systems designed to operate in the real world is at best an abstraction over this difficulty and eventually it gets exposed for the mess it actually is.
We have many such systems being developed, but you get downvoted on HN for promoting them, since people assume you are a scammer, a criminal, etc.
In the real world, there is no anonymous e-money that doesn't end up having to be laundered back into good old cash.