Anonymous crypto wallets now illegal in the EU | Hacker News Reader

Anonymous crypto wallets now illegal in the EU

finbold.com

88 pointst0bia_s52 comments

What is great about these overreaches is how it keeps eroding the blind trust that many "rule of law" societies have towards their institutions and rules.

Extreme parties advocating extreme measures are on the rise, marginal groups having oversized exposure and influence in those societies, informalization of social relationships.

At some point Europeans need to feel comfortable living like many do in Asia, Africa an South America: at the edge of the law and "decency".

Clickbaity title. From the article:

> In a recent regulatory development, cryptocurrency payments of any size using unidentified self-custody crypto wallets are now illegal in the European Union (EU).

Payments are illegal (not wallets), and only if the sender/receivers are not identified (that is, you can ask for identification before transfers from those wallets are made).

Not really. What’s the point of a wallet if payments can’t be made to it? Effectively this forces a wallet to be 1) identified, or 2) be effectively lost.

Well payments can be made, just not anonymous. If you want to receive from those wallets, you have to identify the sender (i.e. ask for ID). There is no mention of a global database where you have to put the ID data, you just have to keep it on your own records.

You might have mis-parsed the article headline?

I think it should be read "(Anonymous crypto wallets) now illegal in the EU", not "(Anonymous crypto) wallets now illegal in the EU". Ie, you are probably agreeing with the headline.

Either way; although I'm sure the EU won't be the last governmental to do this it undermines the pro-EU argument. The upside is they stand up to Apple and force them to use the right sort of charging cable ... and the downside for that is they expect to monitor literally every payment you can make; setting up for some really nasty authoritarianism. One of these things is substantially more consequential than the other.

so you ask for ID from the sender, but how do you verify that it is a valid/real ID?

If someone wishes to use a fake ID, they could. And then the receiver of the crypto would now be on the hook for the legal repercussions. This makes a chilling effect on this payment method.

It also has not entered into force, and I don't think it has completed approvals yet - as far as I understand the EU Council still also need to approve it, but I might be wrong about that part.

> Payments are illegal (not wallets)

What exactly do you believe is the point of a crypto wallet?

> only if the sender/receivers are not identified

What do you think “anonymous” means?

I ask because I’m genuinely confused as to how anything you just said contradicts the title

> What exactly do you believe is the point of a crypto wallet?

For 99% of users? Speculative investment into pump-and-dump schemes.

Lots of people use wallets to interact with defi, but I'm not sure if that would count as a 'payment' in the EU.

Offline storage of private keys is one thing. If you want offramp crypto for FIAT you send it too a centrale exchange which has a KYC process (so not anonymous) from the wallet. The mantra "not your keys, not your coins" is related to this.

Weird because this guy said that hosted wallets are now banned so what now?

https://twitter.com/echo_pbreyer/status/1770853123633877233

Edit: I think this guy, which mind you is a member of parliament, just confused hosted with self-hosted. We're so fucked

Just do what the “elite” do - and use gold sovereigns, instead. Each “coin” has a “face value” of just £1 sterling - but worth approximately £402, at spot.

It really blows my mind that this would even been considered acceptable in a civilized society… the fundamental right to privacy should be inalienable. When are we as a people going to say “enough is enough”?

I really hope somebody sues and I am really curious how this plays out in court. To me Crypto can be abstracted, to anything that has a value and can be exchanged. Gold comes to mind, also art, anything really. Where is the difference in holding Bitcoin in a self hosted wallet vs storing gold under the bed?

> I really hope somebody sues

The EU is unfortunately not the US.

Suing governments there, much less the EU govt itself is not really something that is "done".

Thats not entirely true. For example: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/11/dutch-ca...

It's definitely possible, but it takes years to resolve.

Doesn't matter. There is no law preventing laws which are not 'fair'.

And the answer is simple: Gold can be controlled less and above 10k the law says you have to declare it.

It doesn't matter whether in some abstract way crypto is similar to gold.

In a practical way, crypto is super useful for extortion schemes, blackmail, money laundering, tax evasion, etc. It is way easier to use than gold.

At the same time, there are very few use cases where crypto is useful for law-abiding citizens. Using a commercial service like wise.com is way safer than using crypto for almost anybody.

So the authorities don't really have an incentive to allow crypto, and I've been wondering for years why nobody has forbidden it yet.

> In a practical way, crypto is super useful for extortion schemes, blackmail, money laundering, tax evasion, etc. It is way easier to use than gold.

All of this existed before crypto and will not disappear when crypto is banned.

> At the same time, there are very few use cases where crypto is useful for law-abiding citizens. Using a commercial service like wise.com is way safer than using crypto for almost anybody.

It's funny that you mentioned wise. They just kicked me out for no reason. I know they kick you out if you buy crypto through them, but I didn't do that.

So there is absolutely an usecase for a cash like currency for the internet. It's my money and I should be able to spent it however I want, without a private payment processor enforcing their beliefs on me. If I want to donate to WikiLeaks or buy crypto I should be able to do so since it is not illegal.

I don't disagree with you -- there are definitely nice things about cryptocurrency.

I just think that on a practical level, the "bad" use cases are 100x more common than the "good" use cases.

I even experimented with selling software licenses via crypto, it seemed like the perfect use case. It just turns out that nobody cared about using crypto for legal purposes.

Almost everyone who uses crypto seems to use it for tax fraud, speculation, fraud, get-rich-quick schemes or similar.

If you actually use crypto to transfer money to a friend or purchase legal things, you are part of a miniscule minority.

That's why I think it's a question of when, not if, it will get banned everywhere.

Do you even know what you are talking about? You can’t even buy crypto without verifying your id first it is not used for tax evasion at all. People don’t pay taxes on their crypto holdings because it is still a grey area. Every transaction is also traceable which makes it extremely uninteresting for criminals. You can not convert your crypto into cash without the government knowing. Cash is literally the best option for tax evasion and for criminals, crypto has nothing to do with criminals. Should we ban cash too?

So, If you receive an airdrop from someone and can't name their real name, you're a criminal?

Most funny things about this: You cannot prevent anyone from sending you anything (in most Cryptos).

This is a very real nail in Crypto's coffin.

Specifically, Mimblewimble based cryptocurrencies require the receiver to approve of any transfer.

Something I wonder about such attempts is, that as soon they push cryptocurrencies into the more and more shady terrain, the sooner people might start to use them for paying without converting them to normal currencies.

Like for example, someone does a thing for someone else (maybe helps them with some task or does some kind of commission, or even some real world thing) they give them a token of some crypto currency as payment. Then they take that token to the next person and pay them with that token for another service, item, whatever.

Everything without even paying a dime of real world tax. That might be really dangerous and could destroy societies if governments don't make money anymore to do stuff for their people.

Well this is already possible with cash (and some countries more than others have flourishing grey and black market economies where business is conducted with it)

So crypto only helps here if the service you're providing is over the internet, and not using an intermediary platform which is a legit business for payments, escrow, or service fulfillment tracking (so things like etsy, bandcamp, fiverr, and upwork are mostly out, though you sometimes can cut out the middleman on those platforms).

There are a few services people will still arrange outside of a platform, I think online sex work is a big one (also because people don't want things linked to their credit cards)

But it could also be useful in countries that are moving to ban cash

Just a naive thought, but wouldn't this cause the second order effects of cyber criminals/con artists having a database of targets?

So they're formalizing techno-feudalism in to law. Human beings cannot exchange value with each other. The only way to exchange value is if a third party (corporation) owns your currency and gives you conditional access to it. Big yikes.

I would like an European to weigh in here. Anonymity is becoming increasingly important in America because our government is constantly eroding our rights - especially in the past year. I suspect such a law in Europe will drag in significantly fewer legitimate uses of anonymous asset exchange because Europeans enjoy significantly more liberty.

Is there a list with responsoble parties, so we can vote the bastards out of the EP during this year's elections?

Yep only Patrick Breyer and Gunnar Beck voted against. So it’s fucked the rest are all puppets of the banks.

As a matter of practicality, what non anonymous wallets exist? It's always just a massive number.

Examples: running your own local copy of Bitcoin.app; paper wallets (not for casual users); trezor/ledger.

But even then, how is it not anonymous? Does it somehow publish my identity alongside wallet address?

I wonder if this includes pure donations. As far as I know (INAL, yada yada), you don't need to pay taxes on pure donations in Italy.

Would it be illegal for me to place a Monero address on my blog to receive small (anonymous) tips?

The headline seems confusing after reading this paragraph:

> Furthermore, the now-approved AML package will apply after three years from its entry into force, according to Dillon Eustace.

So it’s not illegal “now”, but will be after three years or longer?

> However, the Ireland law firm expects these laws to become fully operational before the usual enforcement timeline.

I wonder how far into the future the EU will ban paying with cash.

Zero chance of happening.

Impossible to happening. You cannot force people to have device and internet to make transaction. How would you give money to homeless or pay if you out of signal?

Traceable digital cash with cards.

I mean, they already did with this law, it’s just a “high” threshold of 10k. Get a few high profile instances of the law on the books “not being enough for current law enforcement to be able to do its job” and public indifference might allow you to go whole hog (or at least such a low threshold as to cover 95%+ of transactions).

Of course this is a slippery slope fallacy, but I have so little confidence in the surveillance state not to behave this way that thinking otherwise feels a bit pollyanna to me, but ymmv.

(Edited for spelling)

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39793842

[dupe]

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39793842

I mean, crypto payments are not anonymous anyways. They are pseudonymous. And no, this is not just pedantry on my side. If a government really wants, they figure out the pseudonym(s) - you basically just need to find one instance where you can connect the pseudoynm do a pesonal piece of information, and boom.

This doesn't mean I support the EU cracking down here, I do think anonymity and privacy are very important, but I also think it's good that there are ways to bring criminals to justice who engage in money laundering and other criminal activity.

I don’t think that’s universally true. Monero, for instance, doesn’t have this flaw.

I'm not familiar with how exactly Monero works. But as long as it uses a public blockchain, there must be traces of money coming into Monero and money going out - you can probably do it very smartly, but if you move big amounts of money, it will be very hard to hide it.

Monero is laundering embodied as a protocol. You mix your transactions in a series of "signature rings" - that gives me a pretty strong image of money in a laundry machine. It's definitely still possible to use it incorrectly (not enough laundering steps, converting ransoms to Bitcoin/fiat all at once).

> if you move big amounts of money

Most privacy enhanced coins hide the amounts with so-called confidential transactions, so only the parties involved know the amount being transferred. Huge amounts are no harder to hide than small ones.

Isn't one of the "advantages" of cryptocurrencies that all transactiosn can be verified decentrally and indpendently? How would you do that if people can hide the transaction details?

You do that with so-called Pedersen commitments [1] [2].

[1] https://elementsproject.org/features/confidential-transactio...

[2] https://mareknarozniak.com/2021/06/22/ct/

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