[ETH_start]

>>If you do that, cryptocurrency benefits become moot: a Russian freelancer working overseas can legally TransferWise money to help her mom, but a Putin-connected oligarch can't wire money to help the regime

There are plenty of nationalities which are banned from TransferWise:

https://wise.com/help/articles/2813542/why-cant-i-open-a-wis...

Russians may one day join that list.

[throwaway290]

Maybe you misunderstood me. This year Russians got de facto banned from many services, cannot use paid features of Github (Copilot or sponsoring projects), are blocked by freelancer marketplaces, etc. I am not risking using TransferWise to transfer money home (to a non-sanctioned individual's account in a non-sanctioned bank) out of fear of losing my account forever. This is because Western companies interpret sanctions wider than strictly required to err on the side of caution due to the aforementioned reasons.

[ETH_start]

Yes, I totally misunderstood you, apologies.

I agree with everything you said, except this:

>>However, blanket financial anonymity at scale is not an acceptable workaround

Blanket financial anonymity is the only way to prevent circumstances like today's, where entire nationalities are locked out of the global financial system, and power becomes more concentrated over time.

[throwaway290]

It's not the answer, you may have missed the other part of what I wrote.

Implementing this anonymity to allow regular guys help their families in Russia, who are now dealing with 4x price hike on basic goods, will help kleptocrats (the very guys causing that hike in the first place) finance their wars and further entrench themselves in power. Don't you see how this ultimately hurts those it ostensibly aims to help?

Regular guys will send home hundreds of USD, kleptocrats will launder billions.

Financial anonymity at scale exacerbates these asymmetries by helping those with the most money/power the most. Thinking otherwise is hoping they are clueless and don't employ teams of savvy people specifically to figure out various financing workarounds.

[ETH_start]

Those with the most power can legalize everything they do. The monopoly on violence wielded by the government tends to concentrate power. Mass-surveillance of financial transactions, or conversely, lack of private money, extends the reach of the government, and with it, the ability of the most powerful to extract resources from the general population.

Those in the centers of power don't need to launder money. They write the laws, so their income is not illicit.

[throwaway290]

> Those in the centers of power don't need to launder money.

Oh yes they do. Read about all the ways dictators and their friends wash ill-gained riches in the West to buy real estate, enjoy lavish lifestyle, finance activities that undermine democracies and further their own agenda, etc. Sanctions exist for a reason.

You can't have anonymity without enabling crime and laundering. In a digital world where you need less to be physically present to profit from a crime, I want law enforcement to be able to seize criminal's funds.

If you think your government abuses that power try electing a different one, if you are in a democracy you can. If you want lawless anarchy I'm not with you, we had something like that in Russia in the 90s and it's not fun.

[ETH_start]

It's only the dictators of banana republics, which by definition are not great power states, which need to engage in that kind of corruption, and only because they don't wield government power within the largest economies, where they would prefer to park their wealth due to their centrality and stability.

Those at the top of the political order within the centers global economic power have no need to engage something as crude as money laundering, or at least not the kind that depends on clandestine exchanges of briefcases filled with cash. Everything is reported and ostensibly legal.

>>You can't have anonymity without enabling crime and laundering.

You can very much combat crime without warrantless mass-surveillance of private financial transactions. Real crime leaves huge numbers of evidence trails that can be followed. Private electronic cash can also be utilized by law enforcement to incentivize informants to come forward anonymously.

Warrantless mass-surveillance enables tyranny. It enables the kind of systemic repression that can harm billions of people.