[mule1]

It is baffling how lawmakers who have so little understanding of the technology write these things into law.

Software should be protected with the same rights we have with speech. If the Wyden/Toomey/Loomis amendment doesn't pass today this will effectively censor and control the code that an American software dev would have to write to comply with proper reporting. This bill, if passed, should be taken to the courts.

[prirun]

"It is baffling how lawmakers who have so little understanding of the technology write these things into law."

It's actually easy to explain: lawmakers don't write laws; lobbyists write laws and lawmakers rubberstamp them. Lawmakers don't even read laws, eg, they routinely vote on legislation that is hundreds of pages long that was modified and printed the night before they voted on it.

[JumpCrisscross]

> lawmakers don't write laws; lobbyists write laws and lawmakers rubberstamp them

You don’t want generalist lawyers to write laws. You don’t want specialists to write laws and then have generalists debate them, since apparently the current multi-week unfinished legislative process is rubber stamping to you.

[pavlov]

> ”Software should be protected with the same rights we have with speech.”

And also regulated the same way as anything else. If you’re operating as an unlicensed money transmitter, you can’t pretend that it’s legit because your ledgers are printed and therefore protected by the First Amendment. Same applies to “but it’s just code”.

[Taek]

Agreed, but the current clause in the infrastructure bill is not about regulating unlicensed money transmitters, the wording of the bill is extremely broad and covers everyone who writes any type of software that handles digital assets, whether or not the author of that code is operating anything.

It's basically saying "if you've made a pull request to the bitcoin-core codebase, even just as a bugfix, you may be responsible for providing KYC'd information on all users of Bitcoin and on all Bitcoin transactions, regardless of where they happen or what your relationship to those people is".

Which is why the entire crypto ecosystem is up in arms. This bill is an extreme over-reach and would threaten the viability of essentially all crypto startups in the entire US.

[speeder]

The bill is also about "digital assets" and previously even in-game currency has been ruled as such (for example World of Warcraft gold, Second Life currency to buy land, etc...).

It also may apply to other non-crypto digital money, although that might be the point of the bill, since it would allow the US more easily to chase anyone evading its sanctions (for example: China is creating digital currency, Iran has some ideas too, they could use this to ignore SWIFT and thus ignore sanctions, this bill would allow US to sanction that thing too)

[brotherofsteel]

Why should the transmission of money require a license?

[otterley]

Because money laundering.

[brotherofsteel]

What about it?

[otterley]

See, e.g., https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R46486.pdf and https://www.goodwinlaw.com/~/media/Files/Publications/Attorn...

Money transfer fraud also goes all the way back to "steamship agents" in the early 20th century. See, e.g., https://digital.library.temple.edu/digital/collection/p16002...

[dosman33]

You're suggesting this is an accident. Lawmakers don't write any laws any more, that happens on K-Street by lobbyists. But the same idea applies to whoever is writing these horrific things. We're still living with the DMCA all these years later too.

[glenvdb]

> It is baffling how lawmakers who have so little understanding of the technology write these things into law.

And this happens constantly, on all types of things, not just technology.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

It’s baffling how people here continue to insist that anybody disagreeing with them must be stupid.

More specifically:

> this will effectively censor and control the code that an American software dev would have to write to comply with proper reporting

The idea that software today isn’t already, and has been from the times when bugs were actual insects, been the subject of (or had to account for) regulation is simply absurd.

As just the most obvious example, the financial sector is heavily regulated, and that includes the software, from KYC rules similar to those now proposed for cryptocurrencies, to endless requirements for documentation and archival or the exact prescription of the algorithm to be used to settle transactions.

The software in your car, plane, phone, or nuclear plant is required to follow a few dozen regulations, ISO standards, and best practice standards elevated to requirements. Every website accepting payments must implement some minimum of consumer and data protection. Your emails should respect the Oxford Dictionary and The New York Times Manual of Style, and the ADA may or may not include some requirements, although I’m not sure how binding they are.

What’s happening here is the collision of reality with two fundamental misunderstandings in the crypto community: first, they considered themselves valiant warriors challenging the FED/$/governments, certain to be immediately targeted by “the establishment” trying to defend its mighty power. Then, they expected to win that fight with superior technology. Or, as seems to be happening here, the idea that “it’s online” and thereby outside the jurisdiction of the law.

What happened was that for a decade or so, “the establishment” reacted with some mixture of mild interest, bemused looks, and just not giving a shit. Then, when cryptocurrencies had proven worthless except for scams, tax evasion, and CO_2 production, they started cutting it down to size, with maybe a few weeks’ effort at the SEC and probably half a dozen backbenchers’ amendments to the “Stuff We Should Do IDK Could Start To Get Annoying Act of 2022”.

I guess what will be most annoying, besides being the last fool sitting on a million $’ worth of random strings, is how maddeningly unspectacular the end will be.

[mule1]

Do you sincerely think these 70 year old politicians understand the technology and implications? There can be varying amounts of regulation and oversight for software, but the whole point of a decentralized crypto currency is it's ungovernable.

If you're for this increased regulation fine, just understand it will push innovation and capital elsewhere in the world. And despite what you may want, bitcoin will not die.

[pyrale]

> but the whole point of a decentralized crypto currency is it's ungovernable.

Why should governments care about opinions from the crypto industry, if the whole point is to evade legislation?

[bishoprook2]

>Do you sincerely think these 70 year old politicians understand the technology and implications?

Politicians of any age aren't domain experts and don't appear to be any smarter than they have to be to get and hold office. Judging from reading the writings from politicians of yore, I do have to say that the better minds in Congress can't compare to their 19th C. equivalents. It could simply be that a classical education served as a sort of filter.

As far as implications, humans are notably bad at that generally, whether it's tax law or something that involves those computer things. The laws of unintended consequences continue on, but that never stopped the writing (by Congressional staff) of more and more rules for us all.

[imtringued]

>If you're for this increased regulation fine, just understand it will push innovation and capital elsewhere in the world.

What does this even mean? What innovation did Bitcoin bring to the world other than an easy way to bypass government control? That cat and mouse game has existed as long as governments existed. This only helps if you are fleeing from a worse government to a better government. Completely avoiding governments is impossible. Even on El Salvador Bitcoin acceptance depends on the government.

Pushing capital doesn't even make any sense. What are you going to do with all your "Bitcoin" capital if nobody is trading their USD for BTC? Is the economy of El Salvador really powerful enough to counteract the loss of USA as your trading partner? USD and BTC are just numbers on a balance sheet. You still need to convince people in the real world to give up their real wealth in exchange for it. For the USD it's pretty obvious. People pay their taxes and debts in USD. If the number of people doing that is shrinking then the amount of real wealth you can extract will shrink. That also applies to BTC. It's not like moving BTC from USA to El Salvador will also move factories (you know, the capital in capitalism) there.

[mule1]

Bitcoin brought a trustless way of moving capital or digital property to any location throughout the world with no intermediary.

Today it might just be El Salvador but bet on more countries joining the network based off of the game theory of the network. This innovation is profound and will revolutionize economies in the 21st century leading to better allocation of capital and the world finally getting off of the petrodollar.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

Do you sincerely believe these 70 year old politicians write these amendments themselves, without any input from an army of underpaid graduates of Harvard Law and Caltech, or the ability to call Elon Musk whenever they are having trouble setting up their granddaughter’s bottle rocket?

[naasking]

Except they're not calling Elon Musk either, because Wall Street is sitting right next to them telling them what to type in order to protect their vested interests.

[jl2718]

Not true. With the notable exception of malware and an ambiguous thin line on cracking software, these regulations only apply to operational facilitation, usually requiring financial participation in the activity. Of course when the activity is associated with terrorism, treason, or ‘crimes against humanity’, almost anything goes. Admittedly this could be a very wide net, as we saw with crypto regulation in the 90s, although I don’t know that any open source contributors were prosecuted.

But, reality check, it will not be a matter of laws once the threat becomes existential.

[marcinzm]

>Software should be protected with the same rights we have with speech.

... you do realize just how many restrictions exist and have historically existed on speech, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_State...

[kktkti9]

It’s a shared planet and resources but unfortunately you don’t own any of it.

Political ownership calls the shots. Might look different if the politically detached organized against rent seeking and monopoly but you’re all busy building rent seeking startups, easily monopolized blockchains for pump and dumpers funded by nation states.

What a shock politics are going fascist.

Remember when taxes were high and people were politically engaged, America was held up as a haven.

Now it’s mocked as a shit hole.