Europe mulls anonymous crypto-wallet ban, rules to make transfers more traceable The European Commission has put forward legislation requiring cryptocurrency exchanges and other companies to ensure crypto-asset transfers include the personal details of the customers involved. That information is set to include the sender's name, address, and date of birth, and the name of the receiver. Anonymous crypto- …
"Money laundering poses a clear and present threat to citizens, democratic institutions, and the financial system,”
Nice of them to think of us citizens first, although I am not that clear presently on how laundering crypto currencies is a threat to a pensioner.
Mostly, I think it's threatening revenue gathering and the profits of financial institutions who are not getting a look in and therefore a cut.
As with most things cui bono, you must offer offer a few (large) crumbs to the establishment or they will make laws against you.
That doesn't break this system unless you mined or bartered for all the crypto you have. If you wanted to exchange some cash into crypto without being known to this proposed system, you would have to go to an exchange that's outside the area where you live (or is willing to break the law). Therefore, for most users who got the crypto by exchanging local currency, they and their wallet public keys would already be known and stored.
"Nigeria, that is outside of the EU's juristiction."
Switzerland used to say something along those lines, and then the US started to get a keen interest in what kind of money they were playing with and then suddenly, being outside their jurisdiction didn't matter as much as staying on friendly terms with them.
I love the term "due diligence". In practice it essentially means "follow some formal process". In essence, the term "due" means "sufficient", and sufficiency can only be judged by results, not by tick box conformance with a procedure. In several decades of both engieering and business consulting, I've hardly ever seen a "due diligence" process that reliably delivered sufficient results.
It's a farce, or perhaps a tragicomedy.
I moved to Ireland to work there for a while in the early 2000s, and of course had to set up a bank account, for which I had to show my passport and some utility bills with my address on them (to prove I wasn't a money launderer, I guess they don't have utility bills)... for a house which I had arranged to move into but couldn't start renting until I'd got a bank account there that my employer could pay into. Catch-22.
But, there was fortunately a loophole. As my employer was a large organization (a university) the bank would accept a letter from them (their HR department) stating that I worked for them, and confirming my address. The university didn't need to know my address, and I could have given any address, because if they wrote to me it would be by email, or if they really needed snail mail, they would use my pigeonhole in my department.
So HR wrote to the bank, who said that the letter didn't meet the requirements... after three or four attempts at HR getting the right wording, the bank rang them up and dictated the letter they required. Using the arbitrary address I had given them (it was actually the real address where I was going to live, but they never would have noticed if it hadn't been).
Yay for due diligence!
You keep making this argument. What makes you think they're not? It's literally the resolution they highlighted from the recent G7, although it's fair to debate how effective that resolution will be - unlike bitcoin, large corporations have decades of experience in avoiding tax, so clawing it back is going to be harder. But it's clear it's being worked on.
"Money laundering, like tax evasion is effectively theft from tax payers."
Money laundering was, I thought, the change of illegally obtained money into what passes for legitimate money. The payment or not of taxes is a small part of the harm done to society by, for example, forced prostitution and slavery, drug smuggling, software/DVD/CD piracy (yes, I'm old enough to remember those), extortion rackets and theft.
Anything that denies society the money it is due is theft from all of society, most especially the people who would have directly benefitted from those funds, like deprived children* etc.
*(One of the messages Marcus Rashford received after suffering racist abuse for missing a penalty in the Euros final reads: "Thank you for all our dinner" from Reggie aged 6. From the Guardian Newspaper, page 3, 22nd July 2021.)
"Market capitalisation" is not the same as transaction volume.
Also, the other main use is speculating.
Some people apparently use them to buy pizzas. None of my local pizza shops take bitcoin. I always use Apple Pay to get my pizza supplies.
while I don't trust ANY research from anybody who's got a finger in a specific pie, I always consider it disingenuous when authorities use FUD of 'terrorists! pedophiles! darknet!' to try to get control, rather than [cynical mode on] to concoct their own 'research' to prove their FUD case. Yes, even skewed research takes time and money, so why bother, when 'terrorists! pedophiles! darknet!' is just as effective, because people will believe such nonsense, mission accomplished. Still, a stinky way.
So majority of money laundering comes from illegal drug trade. Instead of legalising and regulating those markets, they get themselves busy playing whack-a-mole while having a legislative diarrhea.
Yet, they are totally oblivious to giant companies avoiding billions and billions in taxes. Where is regulation for that?
Lets say it all once again - Tax Avoidance is not illegal. Tax evasion is illegal. And when firms cross that line they get hit hard. That's why they pay large sums of money to accountants to go as far up to that line as they can without crossing it.
Should the tax laws be better written to reduce the amount of tax avoidance that goes on, abso-f%&kin-lutely, but is that not just "playing whack-a-mole while having a legislative diarrhea"?
Illegal drugs are illegal, why shouldnt the governments go after them? If the collective will of a nation decides certain drugs should be made legal (e.g. Marijuana in the Netherlands), then it will happen. But what do you suggest? Make all drugs legal? You really want a world where Ice (Crystal Meth for Americans) is legal and available to everyone? I certainly dont. Should some drugs be made legal and restricted like alcohol and cigarettes, in my opinion yes (Marijuana, and Ecstacy would be my first two legal choices). But I dont think for a minute that would solve all our crime problems.
Tax Avoidance is not illegal
I think everyone knows that, that's not the point. They want everyone to disclose their assets, even though only a fraction get themselves involved in money laundering. Why don't they apply the same principles to companies?
(e.g. Marijuana in the Netherlands)
Not sure why are you using this racist term in 2021. It's called cannabis and it's not legal in Netherlands. It's decriminalised for personal use and the trade in coffee shops is "tolerated", however they don't receive a legal supply as far as I remember. However, medical cannabis is legal in many countries, including UK.
You really want a world where Ice (Crystal Meth for Americans) is legal and available to everyone?
Let me break something out to you - it's already available to everyone. The fact that it is illegal, however, attracts youth looking for quick money and judges are more merciful when sentencing 16 year old selling drugs than let's say 30 year old. Then you have the whole conundrum with dealers trying to cheat on weight and adding whatever they have to make that extra few dollars. Many drug users end up in hospital or dead, not because of the drugs they thought they were ingesting, but what was added to them. Classic example is when dealers mix cheap Fentanyl from China with poor quality heroin. Many many people accidentally overdosed and died because of that.
People should have access to inexpensive and medical grade drugs if they want to. It's part of human nature, and no amount of whinging will change that.
Criminals follow the money. For example, Mexican drug cartels have moved heavily into human smuggling, (and human trafficking), particularly smuggling people into the USA. This is primarily due to the pandemic making it harder to get supplies from China needed to make methamphetamine and fentanyl, but also due to lockdowns. Idle hands and all that. The blood money has to be laundered too, you know!
You probably missed the memo on all the illegal tax loopholes that have been prosecuted by the EC, like Apple in Ireland.
So, "totally oblivious" is rather more than a slight exaggeration here, more like an alternate fact.
They do what they can while having to deal with not always cooperative national governments.
fanboys
Someone who spend money, they couldn't afford, for a product that is supposed to raise their status on their estate, will be defending it to death. It's not really about the brand, but those people just protect their insecurities and "investment". This is why Apple keeps their pricing way above the actual value of their products.
Cryptocurrencies have always been a solution in search of a problem. On the back of get rich quick speculation thanks to the notional rise in value versus the dollar the market became an opportunity for regulatory arbitrage – they could be used in unregulated situations (ride hailing services are another example, though Silicon Valley types prefer to call it disruption), which money launderers quickly spotted. Effectively, exchanges became mules for the money launderers and people with normal accounts for fraud. Sounds like good enough reasons to want to regulate to me…
Just because you want to do something a certain way doesn't mean you will always be allowed too, especially in something emergent where regulations haven't caught up. Crypto is like early motoring, at this point speed limits haven't been created, and a man walks in front with a flag warning people car is coming, the philosophy behind crypto is irrelevant now, real money and plebs are involved, if ransomware is the hammer used to crack the nut so be it, cryptos growing up, time to consign the poster of Che and unread communist manifesto to a box in the loft...
Too many vested interests, too many scams, too much ability to launder (even if that's an over or understated problem), too much potential for aunty Doris to get fleeced..., regulation is inevitable.
if ransomware is the hammer used to crack the nut so be it
When I was hit by ransomware in the early noughties, the text file with instructions how to get my files back stated that I should put a certain amount of cash in a bag and leave it at a location.
By the sound of it, ransomware will be used to remove cash and who knows what else...
We need to keep our doors locked when we leave, organisations should be investing in security. Some, however, prefer to live in a nanny state.
Too much bad press, too much obvious public impact, fact that ransomware had a minor impact on price at pump and access to nominal meat products for the US, and big issues for hospitals in EU and UK means its going to happen
Saying you should lock the door means nothing if its not a crime to steal
Simple you wouldn't be able to transfer to an anon wallet so ummm how would they collect the ransom?
Sure could compromise a legit wallet but you would still have 100% more paper trail than before, extracting funds with a 10k cap on daily xfer would slow the process down enough that account/wallet freezes would be effective, and as mentioned paper trail so existing well established processes for dealing with illegal funds can be repurposed
All would make significant speedbumps for them enough to hurt the cash flow and viability of current scam model
I know many people scammed where they sent money to a bank account. It was not possible to get the money back and the fraudsters were never caught.
Maybe for high profile cases when the "hackers" shut down some important infrastructure, they would use marked cash or whatever else at their disposal, but in case of a small or medium business hit by this, I have my doubts anybody would lift a finger.
2 things, ransomware is done on an industrial scale many orders of magnitude more prolific than old wire fraud, the transfer limit would mean that assume an average of a 1k ransom, then 10 "customers" could be directed to a given wallet a day, having to create many hundereds of legit wallets a day would lead to throttling and easy detection (it would be a mechanical turk solution for the scammers, and quite easy to spot at the institutional level), so that alone would seriously harm the profitability of the enterprise
2 the internet is ultimately answerable and licensed for operations by governments, if they say no they its a no, freedom online is an illusion at best a blind eye is turned, dont kid your self, icann answers to the US govt, RIPE to the eu and uk govts, sure you can pull on an invisibility cloak and encrypt end to end, so then they target the ends (pegasus, anom phone etc. [i would be very unsurprised if something like that was the main source of recovered funds by the fbi for example for the pipeline ransom]), this is the polite way of them telling you how it will be
I'm sorry, but what?
"the transfer limit would mean that assume an average of a 1k ransom, then 10 "customers" could be directed to a given wallet a day, having to create many hundereds of legit wallets a day would lead to throttling and easy detection"
No, it wouldn't. They don't need to set up legitimate wallets to receive payments if they can exchange somewhere other than the EU. They can even live in the EU and exchange elsewhere. The people who need to set up registered wallets would be those paying the ransom, and they would only need to set up one. The creation of unregistered wallets is easy.
"2 the internet is ultimately answerable and licensed for operations by governments, if they say no they its a no, freedom online is an illusion"
Well, sort of, yes.
"icann answers to the US govt, RIPE to the eu and uk govts,"
So what? So the ransomware operators can have domain names taken off them (and it wouldn't be ICANN doing that anyway). And if they registered their own IP blocks, those could be taken away too, although they never do that. How would this affect them at all? They mostly use Tor hidden service domains, which ICANN cannot take away, and they'll operate on anonymous hosting accounts or compromised computers which can be shredded whenever they're concerned. How does the regulation of basic internet operations impact this and if so, why hasn't it been used before?
I'm afraid this isn't correct. The regulations require tracking of people setting up wallets and moving money inside the EU, but don't have control over the technical systems of any cryptocurrency. Without a regulation making the payment of ransoms illegal, this would do nothing--user identifies themselves, exchanges cash for crypto, pays crypto to anonymous wallet, ransomware operators exchange that crypto somewhere outside the EU without identifying themselves (which they're already mostly doing).
The only thing this gives you unless you make payment of ransoms illegal is a list of people who paid the ransoms. They would still be able to do so easily.
And Crypto and Blockchain ONLY "solves" the issue of a bad government controlling a Fiat Currency. In every other respect it's worse:
1) Environmentally damaging
2) Unstable
3) No sensible control of supply, the "Mining" is the stupidest part.
4) Transactions don't scale.
5) Transactions are 1000s of times more costly in time and computers and energy than IBAN.
6) The only reason for Blockchain is to decentralise, have no control and enable a degree of anonymity. All naive and stupid design decisions.
7) It looks like a Pyramid scam
8) It is purely speculative in value.
9) Not actually a currency.
Most existing currencies are also digital.
This is tough for me, because some of your points are great and some are very wrong. I suppose I'll just have to go down the list:
"1) Environmentally damaging": Yes, very much this.
"2) Unstable": Correct and important.
"3) No sensible control of supply, the "Mining" is the stupidest part.": Incorrect. The supply control is built into the specification of the currency in the first place. There is a finite number of Bitcoins that can ever exist, for example. Most proof of work ones have difficulty levels which act to restrict supply. This is one of the things the designers intended right at the start.
"4) Transactions don't scale.": Probably the most important point you brought up and one I've had to explain to cryptocurrency fans for years.
"5) Transactions are 1000s of times more costly in time and computers and energy than IBAN.": Yes, this too, although it's kind of a necessary corelary to 1 and 4.
"6) The only reason for Blockchain is to decentralise, have no control and enable a degree of anonymity. All naive and stupid design decisions.": Why are those naive or stupid? The users don't trust central control, so they remove it. They also value privacy. I can see not caring about those yourself, but is there a reason it's stupid for others to care about them? I'm not an adherent of cryptocurrencies and yet I think those points have value.
"7) It looks like a Pyramid scam": Other than having a central controller, using others' money to pay back previous investors, or the person who is going to walk off with the money. It's missing most aspects of a classic pyramid scam. You can scam with it, and it's a very risky investment, but it is not nor does it look like a pyramid.
"8) It is purely speculative in value.": A lot of things are speculative in value. Avoid investment, if you will, but many others don't view this as a deadly fault.
"9) Not actually a currency.": Not a good currency by any means, but you can have it and pay people with it, it is fungible and can be exchanged. Functions like a currency.
Cash is the most prevalent and simple way to exchange currency anonymously. There is no easy way to track a £20 note or use it to ascertain the identity of the person who gave or received it. It is the most common method of paying for illegal goods & services, be that the sale of illicit drugs, guns or jobs carried out by people working illegally. It is the preferred method of exchange adopted by people who consider themselves law-abiding but who are not averse to committing a bit of tax fraud - e.g. "It'll cost you £100 to fix your boiler, but I'll take £80 cash-in-hand."
Perhaps it would therefore make more sense to ban cash than worry about the far smaller number of illicit transactions that take place using crypto currencies?
$80 in cash is fine.
Now try paying $1000 in cash, you have to go to the ATM to get it and it might take a couple of transactions. You are on record doing that.
Any more and the cash bundle gets very bulky. Most countries have withdrawn the higher value notes making a suitcase of money actually not that much. Actually spending high value notes is a pain as everyone is scared of forgeries. Go on a flight with more than $10000 on you and you are guilty until proved innocent of laundering
Savvy people keep their Bitcoin wallets solely on their own devices and should they wish to transfer elsewhere they connect a node, let the blocklist update, and then do as they please.
That is sustainable for persons holding already acquired Bitcoin as a long term speculative investment i.e. those who would not tangibly suffer should their Bitcoin drop to zero fiat value. Analogy to a lottery ticket.
People seeking to 'invest', regularly to engage with the market, or to use Bitcoin as means to purchase goods and services, have little choice other than using open markets. Europeans, regardless of location of exchanges holding their asset would sooner or later be caught in any net the EU (and other jurisdictions) set in place. Even so, nothing stops them transferring gains to an anonymous wallet kept solely in their own possession. Officialdom would know who transmitted the coinage but not anything about recipient wallets. It wouldn't be easy to tell whether recipient wallets were caught in the supervisory net and thereby subject to follow-up surveillance.
Single large transfers might attract attention. Authorities may enact regulations deeming for tax purposes the coinage as still held by the recorded owner. Onus would be on the titular owner to establish nothing nefarious had taken place. However, it's unlikely frequent but irregular small transfers will attract attention given that careless 'big fish' swim in the pond. When the owner ceases transfers to one or more private wallets and is able to sit tight for months, perhaps years, the heat will be off. Also, until such time as there is full international agreement with enforcement a private wallet is easily 'cashed in' when visiting a non-compliant nation.
No sensible advocate for Bitcoin ever suggested that Bitcoin transactions and their histories are completely untraceable. However, degree of obfuscation makes them preferable to transferring money via banks and similar regulated agencies.
I possess a handful of Bitcoinage. This bought circa 2013. Upon Bitcoin collapsing my notional losses would be trivial.
My intention is to pass my coinage wallet onto my children. It won't figure in the value of my estate. They can decide how to use it and how to avoid attention.
Is actually a thing:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/22/magacoin-pro-trump-cryptocurrency-attracts-over-1000-people-to-sign-up
“More than 1,000 people have so far signed up to the pro-Trump cryptocurrency magacoin, including conservative media personalities and Republican figures, the Guardian can reveal.
The news comes after poor security configuration in a website associated with magacoin exposed the email addresses, passwords, cryptocurrency wallet addresses and IP addresses of users who have bought in to what its promoters describe as the “digital currency for the MAGA community”.”
So, not much chance of anonymous wallets there.
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