Ironically this does not prevent technologies like Monero from becoming the next big platform; nor will it really prevent people from evacuating their coins to a more private and self-custodial wallet.
In general it really only puts a few more onerous steps into the equation where there will be fences and people who are expected to digitally mule bitcoin around.
In the same manner that organized criminals work around modern financial regulations aimed at capturing them; they can also work around regulations surrounding Bitcoin itself; and once the Bitcoin itself is fenced off into a Monero or other privacy preserving coin; it will remain there ‘burned’ or get ‘laundered’ by a group of gang members a few hundred times to re-mint coins clean enough to be re-deposited and re-used in the same manner.
It won’t matter in the long run that they are tracking the provenance of every satoshi. Especially not if it’s far too common that anyone making a suspicious move turns out to be a privacy conscious, law-abiding, yet innocent citizen.
It’s the equivalent of farmers voting for trump and getting screwed over, Bitcoin bros are next in line
I think most Bitcoin bros just care about the line going up; not about privacy/freedom. Trump and those around him are getting insanely wealthy from crypto in general.
“bitcoin bros” who use custodial wallets and “bitcoin bros” who do high-frequency trading on Coinbase are not the same people. This is not good news any way you spin it, just further consolidation of power.
As reminder crypto are being centralized so it is looking more like traditional finance. Coinbase holds over 12% of all Bitcoin and 11% of staked Ether.
That’s everything of value. All a well decentralized ledger could do is make it incredibly hard to block transactions, change the parameters for total coin supply and dispersion rate. Don’t know why anyone expected anything in terms of more even wealth distribution. Wealth distribution is determined by off chain factors. Factors no different than any other value store
it’s never lupus lookin ass
To be fair, the author has a good point, but we knew this was coming, and Bitcoin did nothing to prevent it. Monero, however, did.
what did Monero do to prevent it?
It doesn’t need mixing because the protocol itself hides the sender, the receiver, and the amount as due course.
This stuff is basically banning any privacy-preserving technology on a public blockchain, like Bitcoin, since it has no privacy by default.
but we do use self custody wallets, which is actually a good thing. and we do churn, because the anonymity set of the sender (right?) is pretty limited as of now. and churning is almost like mixing between wallets.
Monero does not “churn” it uses ring signatures. And that is done by default and enforced by the protocol. Any transaction that attempted not to do it would be considered invalid.
monero does not, but it’s users do manually. at least not too long ago it was recommended in the community
I have not seen that recommendation. In fact, from everything I’ve heard, it’s better not to attempt churning because it could reduce your anonymity, especially if you fuck up and do it in a predictable manner, like during a certain set of hours that might indicate your time zone.
Surveillance state adds suveillance🙃
I know right! I’m in shock. /s
It’s my understanding that Monero actually provide anonymous transactions.
Yes? But who own monero? And it’s verification nodes? Might end up centralized like btc and eth
big deal, and fascism. NATO colonies copying the fascism is to be expected. Spirit of 2nd amendment is spirit of right to resist.
Patriot Act’s name is meant to distract from fascist powers within it, and while bitcoin is not super anonymous if you use techniques that are now recommended to “crackdown”, there is improvement.
Bitcoin’s superiority over gold is the ability to move to a more welcoming jurisdiction without border confiscation, or luggage weight, concerns, and so US/Colonies crackdown on “definancialization rights” may well lead to wealth drain from the empire.
What the blunt
Only centralized entities are affected by it. This isn’t a blanket ban on self-custody, as Lola Leetz puts it in a Nostr comment about it.
…yet. Authoritarianism creeps, it crawls silently, strategically, meticulously, knowing that far too few will notice or care until it’s too late.
I’m sorry, but WHAT?
The US has been detaining citizens to foreign countries without due process.
Supreme court validated ICE raids in cities.
This is not ‘authoritarianism creeping’, it’s just doing a victory lap.
Yes, but that didn’t happen overnight. The authoritarian creep had been happening long before, but it’s important to remember that they don’t yet have total control; they can do a lot of horrible things with impunity, certainly, but they need to keep up appearances and move more slowly with other things so they have less resistance from whatever remains of the judiciary.
It kinda did.
Like people voting in a felon in a day.
The people saying it’s a blanket ban is just spreading FUD about it right now. While it’s a valid concern, it’s highly unlikely the blanket ban will be seeping to DEX’s.
