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by JumpCrisscross 779 days ago
> Cash was a private, p2p currency

Cash is still currency.

> Obfuscating bitcoin to prevent 3rd parties from seeing your balance is not money laundering

No, but it's reasonably suspicious. And if whatever service you use to "mix" your money is connected to crime, it's not unreasonable for you to have costs involved with defending yourself.
2 comments
xur17 779 days ago
> No, but it's reasonably suspicious. And if whatever service you use to "mix" your money is connected to crime, it's not unreasonable for you to have costs involved with defending yourself.

If I'm sending crypto to a friend, they can see my account balance, and my entire account history. It's perfectly reasonable for me to want to hide this.

I ran into this exact use case a few years ago, and ended up depositing into a centralized exchange, immediately withdrawing it to my friend's account, essentially using the exchange as a "mixer".

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saalweachter 779 days ago
> If I'm sending crypto to a friend, they can see my account balance, and my entire account history.

"I've created a public ledger, only to realize it's a public ledger."

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unboxingelf 779 days ago
Albiet a KYC mixer whose database will inevitably be leaked.

But I digress.

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JumpCrisscross 779 days ago
> If I'm sending crypto to a friend, they can see my account balance, and my entire account history. It's perfectly reasonable for me to want to hide this

I never said there aren't reasonable reasons to want to mix. Just that it's also reasonable to cast that activity as suspicious.

It's not an enforcement priority to parse through just yet, but both bank compliance departments and law enforcement are buying Chainalysis et al's mixer decloaking data for a reason.

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xur17 779 days ago
> I never said there aren't reasonable reasons to want to mix. Just that it's also reasonable to cast that activity as suspicious.

I agree. The problem I have is that the federal government is making it illegal to obfuscate the source of funds, in this case by going after mixers, the most reasonable way to obfuscate your identity when making transactions.

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unboxingelf 779 days ago
> No, but it's reasonably suspicious

So you agree there may be valid, legal, usecases for this technology for Americans?

The fact of the matter is Americans used to have a degree of financial privacy and the state is in the late stages of revoking it. Far more crime is done with USD than Bitcoin.

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talldayo 779 days ago
> Far more crime is done with USD than Bitcoin.

Duh? It would make sense that the de-facto currency for the IMF and state-level actors is more widely-used/abused than a nerdy toy network.

The volume of crime will always be larger on volumemetrically larger markets. Imagine the criminal-per-1000-users ratio of Bitcoin or Monero; now you're talking about something that no state-controlled fiat can match. That's why the government wants KYC, and they make a damn good case for it all things considered.

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eimrine 779 days ago
> That's why the government wants KYC, and they make a damn good case for it all things considered.

The government considers a man with cash as an enemy because bureucrates loves to see all your transactions on his computer and especially his favourite milestone is an ability to block some transactions. Government is just a stationary thug and it has no other goal except of collecting as much taxes as possible.

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talldayo 779 days ago
> Government is just a stationary thug and it has no other goal except of collecting as much taxes as possible.

You were speaking the truth, right up until you got to this line. Governments are beholden to the people, you wouldn't be able to adjust taxation legislatively if taxation was an authoritarian function of the state. Don't accuse the government of being a "stationary thug" when it's the politicians you elect that vote on these issues. If you legitimately believe what you said, you've bought into a defeatist ruse.

In reality, a government's greatest plausible obligation is to protect it's people, and that's what crypto regulations do. You can be as sardonic about it as you want, but tax and sanctions evasion is a crime and crypto exchanges will be treated as aides and abettors as long as they choose to deal in crypto.

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eimrine 779 days ago
> Governments are beholden to the people

I have not observed any example of this anywhere. I suppose you have bought into etatism ruse.

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