[AnthonyMouse]

> Then banks invade my privacy, the DMV invades my privacy, etc.

That is a reasonable and factually accurate statement.

> There's always tradeoffs, I respect people's concern about them, and I wish there was a gentler to say it.

The tradeoff here is astonishingly bad. Studies have shown that AML/KYC have an effectiveness of less than a fraction of one percent. They continue to proliferate because their largest costs fall on the users rather than the companies, so they're the thing that large corporations suggest as a "solution" when they're being pressured to do something. Because people have the perception that it will do some good, even though that perception is inaccurate.

In reality what they do is provide a means to satisfy "something must be done" in a way that dumps the costs on marginalized users instead of politicians and corporations.

[refulgentis]

I had to look up what "effective" means in this context, found a couple crypto blogs using it as a talking point citing a 2011 UN study, the study says less than <1% of money laundering proceeds are confiscated worldwide, nothing about the laws. Money laundering is defined as an estimate of any money from illegal activity, including tax evasion.

[AnthonyMouse]

There have been more than one study and some of them more recent, e.g.:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25741292.2020.1...

AML laws are completely ineffective. People can write long papers about why, but the underlying reason is simple. Money is fungible.

If Alice is selling heroin to Bob and the government knows this, they don't need AML laws to arrest them. If they don't know this, even if all of the financial records were 100% transparent and tied to the name on their birth certificates, they still wouldn't know this, because Alice and Bob would just claim the payment is for software licensing or personal grooming services or whatever they want to make up, and neither the bank nor the government has any way to know otherwise until they independently prove the underlying crime. Worse, Alice and Bob don't even have to pay each other. Bob can just buy whatever Alice asks him to with his money and then give that to Alice in exchange for the contraband. Then there is no financial transaction linking them at all.

The entire concept of it simply doesn't work. It's all cost and no benefit.

[webspinner]

Yeah like me. I will not be able to use the internet anymore, litterally.