[motohagiography]

This asset forfeiture along blockchains seems like charging a restaurant for serving gangsters because their customer paid using the proceeds of crime. Except with a blockchain, it becomes like seizing assets as compensation from a vinyard that supplied the wine to the restaurant who served the gangsters, and maybe even garnishing the wages of the grape pickers to be sure.

It's stolen money, and how can anyone be against stopping crime, except the definition of crime always seems to expand. The trouble with "justice" is it is a good for which demand is infinite, with the false implication that the price paid for it is never too high. I'd be wary of these technologies.

[JumpCrisscross]

> like charging a restaurant for serving gangsters because their customer paid using the proceeds of crime

Money is fungible in a way tokens on a public blockchain are not.

Better analogy would be the DoJ seizing a stolen painting bought at auction. The auction was legitimate. The buyer whose asset has been seized did nothing wrong. But the property is identifiably illicit.

If one has significant assets in cryptocurrencies, it would seem necessary to do a certain level of due diligence on the provenance of incoming coins.

[vmception]

blockchain tokens are experiencing a flight to fungibility as we speak.

the state is aware and all of their actions have to be precise and large all at once because the antifragile nature of these networks makes them harden after every enforcement event.

right now, more private blockchain technologies are outliers that experience a threat of shunning and being crippled.

but existing networks are going to upgrade en masse, and will have strength in numbers against all existing exchanges and public policy discussions

basically what it comes down to is the observation that the government never had any rationale to surveil people's money and it found itself in the convenient position to do so over the last 30-40 years, leveraging financial institutions where it at least has to issue a subpoena to obtain information. Over the last 5 years it found itself in a more convenient position of embracing transparent public blockchains to surveil even more without needing a subpoena, alongside the capability of also issuing subpoenas to crypto financial institutions.

this power is simply going to be removed from the state, reverting its surveillance capabilities at or below what it can do with cash, with individuals themselves needing to be subpoena'd if it can identify them.

the governments will just have to find another way to curb whatever behavior it is actually trying to prevent.

(disclaimer, this isn't intended to be "edgy" and I would say any perturbation only highlights my point of how used to the idea of an omnipotent state you've become, but its not a prerequisite)

technologies to watch are:

Aztec implementing Zk-Zk Rollups. This will allow all existing erc20 tokens to inherit privacy on a highly scalable private system, unburdened by layer1 blockchain throughput limitations. It allows new erc20 tokens to be issued privately where no origin is know in a highly scalable private system.

RenVM implementing EdDSA, this allows isolated private cryptocurrencies like Monero to be swappable and transposed to an erc20 token. This removes liquidity limitations of cryptocurrencies like Monero, and removes the problem of exchanges removing liquidity routes of Monero. Aztec + RenVM would simply add a whole pipeline. Also provides exits for less private assets to swap out back to the Monero blockchain, which is currently not surveillable.

Taproot and Schnor on UXTO blockchains like Bitcoin. Adds levels of confidentiality.

There are quite a few other technologies as well.

[wmf]

You might be right if the money has already been spent and is in the hands of innocent people. But if those addresses are still controlled by the criminals then seizing them causes no collateral damage.