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by hudon 2753 days ago
> OFAC can say what they want, no one is technically barred from sending funds to that account

Are you saying there is a difference between "censorship" and "technical censorship"? You are demonstrating the obfuscation I called out in my post. Suppressing content is suppressing content. If you believe that Bitcoin will allow you to freely send money to OFAC-sanctioned addresses, please prove it by sending a transaction there and providing us with a verified signature. Until then, my point stands.

1 comments

There are big differences: how easy is it to censor a transaction, who can censor the transaction, on what basis, how far does the censor's power go, etc.

If you rely on VISA/Mastercard, you could be "censored" for any number of arbitrary reasons -- go google the number of legitimate businesses that have had issues using those platforms.

With Bitcoin, sure, a government can use its criminal laws to ban certain transactions, but keep in mind that: (1) they need to use valid legal process, (2) the reach of their laws only go so far, etc.

Also, the OFAC banned addresses were easily tracked since they re-used addresses. Today, best practices dictate a new address for each transaction. You also have Monero, Zcash and others working on further privacy enhancements, as well as wallets like Wasabi that mix Bitcoin transactions.