Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by bulbosaur123 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

bulbosaur123

> The European Parliament wants to limit the amount you can deposit to a private wallet.

What? Source.

How do they plan on enforcing this?

View on HN

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/03/27/eu-lawmakers-to-v...

That's not what the link says. It says:

- traders would be forbidden from making or accepting anonymous crypto transfers over 1,000 euros unless the identity of the other party can be verified

- Businesses would be forbidden from accepting over 7000 Euros in cash

- transfers between private individuals would be allowed even if they are large

- They are seeking to ban anonymous accounts

- Mixers, tumblers and privacy coins should be taken into account as risk factors when assessing money-laundering risk

It's essentially the same outcome, Brussels politicians have no idea what they're doing in terms of smart contracts. Clearly it's an AML measure but they don't understand that what they call "unhosted wallets" (i.e. just random regular wallets) is as essential to decentralized applications as MAC addresses in legacy networks. Requiring KYC from every single wallet is insanity and will of course never work. So if that becomes law, it kills any dApps in the EU, only allowing centralized services to interact with known customers. Which defeats the entire point of blockchain tech. What would still be allowed would be some exchange like Coinbase offering services to KYC'd customers I guess. So at least they might be able to participate but they could do nothing on Web3 on their own. It would be a walled garden similar to the GFW of China vs the wider internet.

Again, I suspect this comes down to incompetency and isn't even intentional. They want to regulate the space but they don't understand what smart contracts are and how dApps work.

>If the customer's identity can be verified or if a regulated crypto provider is involved, the transaction would be allowed.

I'm not sure that's that bad. I've got some crypto wallets but the stuff has got there by me transfering fiat to Kraken, with KYC, passport scan etc and then the USDT or whatever to the wallet so it's easy enough to trace it to me.

If you allow fully anonymous stuff to interact with the regular financial system it does kind of leave it open to all sorts of tax evasion / illegal activities.

You mean anonymous like cash?

Do you want to make cash illegal and the government to trace every single financial transaction you do? Even worse, web3 is mostly not about money in the first place. Do you want them to track everything you do online, every app you interact with, every file you uploaded?

This. Anonymous interaction with the regulated system won't fly, regulation cannot be applied to unidentified entities. Anyone can have their blockchain, just don't expect police or courts to protect you, they may hunt you instead.

Seems connected to the other post in HN: "EU Commission doesn't understand what's written in its own chat control bill".

> How do they plan on enforcing this?

Tyranny. People make technology to get around their idiotic laws and control. Suddenly they must become more tyrannical than they were before just to maintain the same control they previously enjoyed. We'll either end up with anarchy enabled by subversive technology or totalitarian governments that regulate everything their citizens do online.

That answer is rather light on specifics.

AML/KYC is just the financial arm of global mass surveillance. They can just trace your withdrawals from an exchange. If you're not mining crypto, you're done.

Well you can always exchange it peer to peer, without a third-party (exchange/payment processor/etc.) as it is initially meant to be used, but it's true that mining rewards are generally the most anonymous way to acquire it.

> you can always exchange it peer to peer, without a third-party

Who's going to show up at some untrustworthy place with fat stacks of cash in order to trade crypto?

> as it is initially meant to be used

It was meant to replace the USD for everything including everyday transactions.

> Who's going to show up at some untrustworthy place with fat stacks of cash in order to trade crypto?

There are ways to transact P2P without meeting in person. Bisq is decentralized example.

> It was meant to replace the USD for everything including everyday transactions.

I did not read this chapter of the Bitcoin whitepaper

> Who's going to show up at some untrustworthy place with fat stacks of cash in order to trade crypto?

Lots of people, actually. Its more common than you would think!

The hardest part is matchmaking and (optionally) escrow.

LocalBitcoin originally did this for IRL but then stopped as they were slapped by a regulator. They were taking a cut from the escrow and acting as a custodial wallet, which made it easy to spank them.

They are now kaput.

There are other, less stupid, platforms that replace them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com