White House Wants Crypto Rules as a Matter of National Security

[dannno]

Bitcoin anonymity is nowhere near sufficient.

Monero anonymity is better from a technical standpoint but it still is far from sufficient in practice.

And yes there will never be a perfect "click button" solution for anonymity there is a huge gaping gap bigger than Cardi B's veejay, between the anonymity that is possible and the anonymity that exists today.

Full anonymity requires an ecosystem built around it. Everything from the acquisition of crypto to the spending of crypto.

So yes, monero allows you to transfer 0's and 1's anonymously.

But it doesn't allow you to live and work anonymously.

Not yet

Bigger magazines maybe?

 

[Okie RP fan]

I hope the US govt does try to stop crypto.

Crypto I think has largely forgotten why it was created.

It was created, in order to be able to conduct transactions without government approval.

Instead, almost every crypto startup these days is bending over backwards to figure out how to comply with state laws & regs.

It needs to go back to its beginnings. Back to its purpose:

Disobedience

This entire post is exactly it.
And now that every institutional investor and others have gotten into it, you better bet "compliance" will be sought after now.
I vividly recall people bragging about not paying taxes on their crypto gains and now everyone's like "nah man, you HAVE to!"

Defeats the entire purpose of crypto at this point.

 

[TheTexan]

Bigger magazines maybe?

Yes.

100 rounds should suffice

 

[ClaytonB]

Bitcoin anonymity is nowhere near sufficient.

I'll grant you that this is what all the cool kids are saying. But it simply ain't so.

Monero anonymity is better from a technical standpoint but it still is far from sufficient in practice.

For the ordinary person, it's more than enough for small-to-mid-scale holdings. I would define that somewhere in the $10-$100k range. For larger-scale assets, you're going to need to utilize specialized techniques, or employ professional services.

And yes there will never be a perfect "click button" solution for anonymity there is a huge gaping gap bigger than Cardi B's veejay, between the anonymity that is possible and the anonymity that exists today.

Full anonymity requires an ecosystem built around it. Everything from the acquisition of crypto to the spending of crypto.

Perhaps. There is a world of difference between the anonymity requirements of a non-whale cold-wallet HODLer and a Russian blackhat hacker living and operating in the US. To catch those in the former category, the US government will never implement measures any more costly than simple dragnets. In the latter case, there is no ceiling to the resources which may be brought to bear, depending on how great the threat. So yeah, if you're a Russian blackhat hacker living and operating in the US, good luck maintaining anonymity.

So yes, monero allows you to transfer 0's and 1's anonymously.

But it doesn't allow you to live and work anonymously.

Not yet

There is another way to look at the problem. The primary reason that there is such high demand for crypto-currency is because of fiat central banking. That means that most of the reasons that crypto-currency is so valuable are negative reasons. If those negatives disappear, so does most of the demand. That doesn't mean that crypto would be worthless, there are still use-cases it hits (such as micro-payments, lightning-payments, hand-to-hand digital payments, and so on) that standard banking cannot hit, and never will hit. From a political-philosophy standpoint, I don't care whether the price of crypto stays high and we just work around the central banks, or if they de-escalate the fiat inflation and we are able to see reduced crypto prices. Well, I care, but not in terms of the changes needed. Both paths are equally effective in achieving the desired end.

The same argument can be made for anonymity in general. The reason we need so much anonymity is the Big Brother state. We have two paths forward -- we can either scale back the spying, or we can just develop more and stronger tools for mooting the spying. Despite present appearances to the contrary, the cypherpunks really do win this war in the long-run. The reason is that, in the war over encryption, the defenders hold the nukes, that is, the defenders can always scale up the strength of encryption/camouflage vastly beyond anything that even nation-states can handle. While the defensive tools do not automatically solve the problem, in the right hands, they can. I guarantee you that Bitcoin is anonymous at a level well beyond the assets you would need to conceal. If the Feds knew where the whales were, they would have long since taken possession of their keys.

 

[ClaytonB]

The governments will not go after the people with Bitcoin. They will go after merchants and prosecute them for accepting BTC.

The problem is that goods and services are themselves becoming digitized. Governments are betting the farm this time. They are gambling the entire brick-and-mortar economy (brick-and-mortar, here, includes Google/Amazon... basically, anything that isn't crypto) in their war against crypto. A lot of people in urban areas are just using a food-delivery service to get their groceries. While the government is able to track and tax all of that activity because fiat dollars move any time there is an online transaction (100% traceable), this would not hold in a crypto-based economy. And it's an incredibly small change to just switch from taking payments in USD to taking payments in BTC. I call this the Concrete City versus the Digital City. In itself, switching to crypto doesn't automatically make those transactions anonymous, but they can certainly be made anonymous.

The next stage after that is the whole Party-informants on every street-corner game and, if American culture has already devolved to the point that this would just be passively accepted, then there surely is no hope for us. But I'm willing to bet that, despite the massive assault of Wokism, there is still a majority of Americans who will not tolerate full-on Marxism. The function of crypto in this great culture-war is that it is a tool that allows us to call the bluff of the crypto-Marxists (that is, secret Marxists) and force them to either do Marxism all the way, or GTFO.

 

[Pauls' Revere]

Pretty much the US govt has no way to technically stop crypto.

But all they need to do is create a law, make a huge example of the first person who violates it, and then it will have a chilling effect on people who use crypto so that it's pushed underground or largely stomped out of the mainstream.

The government cannot enforce a law on everyone, they just have to shape people's behavior so that they tend to comply with the law.

Yes, see El Salvador as an example. The IMF refused to help set up infrastructure and then urged them to abandon crypto. Also, I seriously think there will be a tipping point where it threatens the dollar.

 

[dannno]

This entire post is exactly it.
And now that every institutional investor and others have gotten into it, you better bet "compliance" will be sought after now.
I vividly recall people bragging about not paying taxes on their crypto gains and now everyone's like "nah man, you HAVE to!"

Defeats the entire purpose of crypto at this point.

It will still be there, ready, when we are..

 

[Matt Collins]

How to buy and store Bitcoin anonymously:


https://reason.com/2018/05/31/3-steps-to-buy-and-store-bitco/