Binance exits Netherlands and faces France probe
bbc.com
bbc.com
It's inherit capability for money laundering and tax avoidance will never be fully fixed without scaring off it's most die hard fans.
Also this just happened: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-15/blackrock... which could be a game changer for adoption.
It's like saying that Linux 's inherent capability for copyright violation (cp tool) will never be fully fixed. Linux isn't "on the edge of legitimacy" as a result.
It's just that with AML there's a much much larger marketing budget on the part of the people pushing against financial freedom.
The "Linux" in this case is cryptography itself. It actually used to be restricted. In the 1990s the United States still placed export restrictions on computer cryptography software, but those were sensibly removed. (You couldn't even distribute a web browser with full-strength HTTPS support under those rules!)
Today nobody has a problem with the availability of cryptographic algorithms. It's the prevailing applications in cryptocurrency specifically that create the problem because they run counter to existing laws. Just like if you use Linux to run a piracy network, the problem isn't Linux but what you do with it.
Financial freedom is apparently a code word for tax evasion- not a surprise since the whole thing was embraced by American libertarians.
We never learn do we?
Binance is targeted by existing laws against money laundry, bank license etc.
TikTok is suggested spying on people.
Why would TikTok matter here at all?
And me and other people said it often enough: as soon as crypto is big enough to threaten countries control over money they will make it illegal and the loudly repeated benefit of uncontrolled money will be gone.
And it was also always clear that crypto is not solving this problem because it's by design and not a problem to solve.
There is no evidence crypto has threatened any country’s control over its money, let alone a developed country’s. And to the degree it might have, that influence is certainly lower today than it was two years ago.
And china did it before too.
The reason why the influence is lower because of all those crashes and regulations.
There is no substantial public backlash to turning crypto and its adherents into a whipping boy in America. The debate is largely as to the form.
TikTok, meanwhile, remains unbanned in America and Europe, as well as substantially in litigated. (There is also limited evidence they’ve broken existing law like Binance has.)