Everyone cares about privacy until a crime is committed, and then we all want to know. And we leave it up to folks at companies like Kraken to tell us what they find.
This seems like a strawman to me. Are there any privacy advocates out there who don't believe investigations should happen after a crime has been committed, because investigations are anti-privacy?
I use encrypted messaging, but if I decide to commit a crime I'm under no delusion that encryption will save me. Why can't the same be true for money?
Typically the markets can afford to compensate people on a day-to-day basis for small crime, but the entire reason bizarre concepts like clearing houses exist is that, from time to time, once every 10-30 years, an entire market can be destroyed overnight because of liquidity or counter-party risk or a combination, or some other situation like fraud. These things happen, and will continue to happen, which is why we should always look to the past when designing markets, and not fall for the folks telling about the wonders of their utopian future.
2. You talk about markets "can afford to compensate people [...] for small crime", but I see no reason why that would be applicable to exchanges. Given that both sides of a trade has to put up money before they can make the trade, the risk that either side can commit any sort of fraud/crime is virtually zero. You can still get hacked/scammed by the exchange itself, I'm not aware of any crypto privacy advocates who think that centralized exchanges should have the right to be anonymous.
3. You talk as if the "utopian future" is vaporware or something, but it does exist in the form of decentralized exchanges. Sure, they're not as good as centralized exchanges when it comes to fees/spreads/execution time, but they do exist and allow you to transact anonymously.
You're describing fraud in a market.
>I see no reason why that would be applicable to exchanges
Anomalous and/or suspicious trades are regularly undone by exchanges.
That's addressed my be later in the comment:
>You can still get hacked/scammed by the exchange itself, I'm not aware of any crypto privacy advocates who think that centralized exchanges should have the right to be anonymous.
what planet do you come from? you ask questions that seem like you have an interest in finance but cant accept the emergent capital markets structures that follow from the practice of finance?
islamic banking may seem weird to you if you are even aware of it, but its a timeless archetype of a certain pattern of relationships and rules that arose in response to a certain envrionment at the time ( which persists into modern day ). this system has probably more in common superficially with crypto than some other ways of organizing economic activity.
using words like archaic shows ignorance of the subject and of humanity. maybe when AI is doing everything and new underlying dynamics exists for the way machines relate, we can have this discussion but even then scarcity and physics exist and some methods of resource allocation have to be negotiated or emerge organically.
Much of the crypto bros want "law is code" which basically means nothing is illegal.
As other commenters have mentioned, this isn't some DiFi smart contract hack, it's just a regular centralized exchange hack. "law is code" doesn't apply here, unless there's some other group of "crypto bros" that I'm not aware of who think that laws should only be enforced via the blockchain. The version of "law is code" that I'm aware of only applies insofar as smart contracts are concerned (eg. anything that a smart contract allows for is fair game).
It's a dower subject. When everyone was making money nobody will listen. When everyone is losing money it's uncouth to told-you-so to people in serious pain. You can't get through to most people, full stop.
I was lucky enough to come of age during the dot-com bust, with family that clearly broke down the concepts of accounting and the history of market crashes. Nobody wants to hear it no matter what part of the mania you're in. Focus on your friends (many of which I was able to influence), and focus on fundamentals. Any public discussion of a mania during a mania will fail, and is literally the archetype/moral of the Cassandra myth.
Can we please not No True Scotsman this? Crypto “the future of money” is completely unregulated and nothing but full of scams hitherto unseen since the days before banking regulations.
You’d be hard pressed find a bank that can execute a rug pull like this. While I’m no fan of Bank of America, I’ll keep my “dirty fiat” there and sleep soundly, just like I slept soundly in though the Great Recession.
Crypto isn't about privacy, it's actually the opposite. All transactions on the blockchain are transparent as it's literally a distributed ledger. There is absolutely no secrecy or privacy when it comes to how Bitcoin works for instance. And it's by design. Bitcoin inventor(s) goal was for people not to have to trust the secrecy of banks but essentially be their own bank. Whether that goal was achieved or not is anybody's guess...
So I'm not sure what pro-privacy stance you are talking about.
To pretend that this isn’t a feature — nay, THE feature — of crypto is absurd. There’s a reason why Tornado cash exists, and why bitcoin is the choice of online criminals everywhere.
Darknet markets use monero, not bitcoin. Monero is one of the few currencies that does offer privacy, but it makes up a very small part of the ecosystem, less than 1% by market cap.
Tell it to Satoshi Nakamoto
You are using words without understanding what they mean.
Who is Satoishi?
Or if that’s too hard to answer. Why do you call yourself after vomit instead of use your real name? (If you really are named after vomit, I apologize.)
You must be new at this.
Or are you trying to claim that because you have not verified my real-world identity, these are actually private messages?
Could it be, you desire gasp privacy?
These messages are not private. They are public, which is why you're able to read them.
I hope this has helped you understand the difference between pseudonymity and privacy. But if it hasn't, there's nothing more I can do to help you.
I’d like to think, you’d grow out of this, but we both know you won’t.
Privacy conscious people are against mass surveillance, where everybody privacy is invaded by default, even if they've done nothing wrong and aren't suspicious.
Privacy as we had before technology that allowed such things is what such group desire. Is there someone suspected of a crime? Sure, tailgate them, follow them, etc. This manual surveillance has a cost and max throughput that makes it you cant mass surveil.
Maybe I'm missing something, but what pro-privacy stance? Crypto is far easier to trace than cash. And US companies like Kraken follow KYC laws.
So can I assume that if you get mugged on the street you won't give police details for fear of identifying the criminal?
I can't think of any legitate reason to move hundreds of millions of $ anonymously.