Citing Hamas, US Wants to Treat Crypto Services as Suspected Money Launderers | Hacker News Reader

Citing Hamas, US Wants to Treat Crypto Services as Suspected Money Launderers

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38 pointsgeox20 comments

Dangerous to continue to give power to the government. They literally wait for an emergency, that attempt to convince you that the only way you'll be safe is if you give up another freedom.

We never had the freedom (to trade with embargoed powers) to begin with.

It's also an attack on everyone's right to privacy.

It's true the tyrannical unaccountable government waits until it's plainly obvious something is a problem and enough people are fed up with it before moving on it.

I don’t follow what freedom is being given away.

Full title: Citing Hamas, the US Wants to Officially Treat Crypto Anonymity Services as Suspected Money Launderers

Lol I had a girl steal my crypto and the cops literally did nothing about it.

Personally, I feel pretty suspect about this. Even if you try to "wash" crypto you can trace it. The university next to me has a team of people who do that.

If washing the crypto doesn't properly anonymize it, then it's a useless service that we should get rid of.

If it does properly anonymize it, it's a vector for money laundering, and we should get rid of it.

I suppose that depends on who the "we" in your sentence is meant to be.

As to if it doesn't work correctly, the "we" is the crypto community, because what's the point of an anonymizer that doesn't anonymize?

As to if it does work correctly, the US government should make it illegal to use as it's a money laundering service.

And it seems a lot of people don't understand individuals fleeing countries tend to bring bills.

That's OK.

I treat all politicians as suspected criminals.

That’s dumb

It’s eventually just going to give a monopoly to a domestically deployed mixer that the creators walk away from, or that one of the United States states or agencies deploy and walks away from, even the exchanges that are expected to provide scrutiny will be able to say the monopoly mixer is fine

onchain mixers are autonomous

"onchain mixers" = provable intent of money laundering.

money laundering requires an illicit source

obfuscation isn’t enough

ironically it means that successful money laundering can never be prosecuted, and it has to be a tacked on charge to unsuccessful money laundering

unlinking your transaction history from pocket watchers uses the same techniques

"I didn't know the money-laundering system I designed and implemented would be used by actual criminals" doesn't sound like a defense that would hold up in court.

> It’s eventually just going to give a monopoly to a domestically deployed mixer that the creators walk away from, or that one of the United States states or agencies deploy and walks away from

for domestic sovereign deployers: there will be no prosecution because of immunity

for users: there will be no prosecution because prosecutors haven't proved the source was something illegal to begin with

for sanctions: OFAC can't apply to domestic properties, and as we've already seen, onchain mixers don't stop working just because of the sanction, they are autonomous

crypto asset concepts get more resilient the more they get attacked, these are the paths that are just a matter of time after that kind of attack

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