Topic: [2022-12-16] Germany calls for global regulation of the cryptospace (Read 363 times)

They can only declare that those Defi tokens issued will not pass the howie test and charge them to be illegal securities. It has not discouraged the developers and project creators, however hehehe.

Also, you mention Monero and privacy. There will be more development on privacy 2nd layers on Ethereum that Defi developers can test and later use. Presently there is Loopring, ZKsync, ZKspace and Aztec. I reckon there are a few more others being developed.

The only people helped by these regulations are the people in power.  Look at the US (and the world) which has a large regulatory system in place - you had Madoff, Enron, WorldCom, Lehman, Tyco, Theranos, Shkreli, Allen Stanford, Tom Petters, Rothstein, Nicholas Cosmo, Wells Fargo.  Don't forget Wirecard, Volkswagen,  ZZZZ Best etc.

You can have as much regulation as you want and there will still be scammers.  The best choice is to keep your bitcoin in cold storage.

Global regulation is particularly bad because it will end competition between jurisdictions.  In all likelihood you'll end up with a terrible, global regime which will only entrench those in power and enrich them while stopping everyone else from getting out from under their thumb of the century+ long fiat disaster.   With global regulation you might as well completely shut down bitcoin and crypto and general and embrace a digital fiat where every move that every single person in the world makes will be tracked, analyzed and controlled.

regulate it tighter, requiring from crypto-assets service providers similar requirements

Unfortunately all these mentioned topics boarder around the politics of an individual country and what it's citizens believe is good for them...and the fact that we all have different beliefs and cultures as a people we can never agree on these topics....

Unlike the guns, drugs etc crypto does not boarder much on the politics as it exists in no man's land though we pretend this beast can be tamed.

Maybe global is far fetched, but a benchmark for a start should do.

I don't see it.  If various nation states can't agree amongst themselves on how to regulate other issues like drugs, abortion, euthanasia, gun controls or any other 'political football' you care to name, how will they ever agree on how to regulate crypto?  Particularly considering how they generally understand far less about our ecosystem than they do those other topics.  They won't find any unified agreement, because they'll all be trying to pursue their own agendas, just as they always do.

In the US alone, even the individual states can't agree on what regulation should look like.  So anything global sounds a little far-fetched in my mind.

As much as we hate a regulated crypto ecosystem, I think global regulation of the cryptospace will give investors the confidence and protection

to invest in the industry without having the fear of bad actors taking advantage of them.

But the million dollar question is , who will draft these laws? Will these laws be suited for every country that recognizes the existence of crypto?

Are politicians going to support this idea or it will be another opportunity for them to invest their selfish intentions by building crypto businesses that will make the most from such a development?

Is SBF likely to walk thought they have their man pinned...

I do not think that Germany fully understands the concept of decentralized finance. They are still thinking of crypto in terms of digital money, like Paypal. They are completely leaving out the issue of the unregulatable nature of smart contract swapping of crypto. Especially when it comes to DeFi.

How exactly do they think they can demand KYC from every single person with a self-custody wallet? How are they even going to find the people the wallets belong to? Do they just hope that everyone with a wallet makes themselves known? Or are they going to demand unreasonable and impossible KYC demands for service/goods providers who accept Bitcoin?

All these demands from unknowing politicians are just empty threats, because they cannot actually do anything. I am certain that they only demand more to be done as a way to make themselves look good (as in PR stunts) by pretending like they have found a solution of somehow centralizing a decentralized, anonymous money. Lets not forget, they have not even been able to control Bitcoin as they would a regular security. And Bitcoin has been unrestrained for over a decade now.

What chance do they think they have with DeFi? Not even mentioning privacy coins like Monero. At some point they will realize that they cannot attack the end points like crypto exchanges because there are always other ways to buy and sell crypto. Its over. The governments can only kick and scream now. We have won.

The fact that the oldest crypto, Bitcoin, has not been put on a leash by the government is the greatest proof of this.

Perhaps they should look in the mirror and have tighter regulation of fiat so that it doesn't lose 99% of its value over a century.  Perhaps they should regulate the corruption of government officials first.

Of course, SBF is a scammer who just happened to use crypto.  Just like there are plenty of scammers using the euro and dollar. 

You want stricter crypto regulations? That's great! Just put SBF in jail first and then we'll talk. No excuses.

Hehe yes, they want complete control over something that has begun to progress and that is trying to move on from their control over the question what is money? They can delay the social development of the cryptospace through spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt, however, they can never delay the technical developments happening around the cryptospace which is presently taking much quicker steps than a few years ago.

I also speculate that in the next few years, it might be NFTs that might help on the growth and the more universal adoption of the cryptospace. I am aware that many bitcoiners consider them a scam. I consider it to be another medium of cutural development. This will be very important if we want adoption.

Only if people keep using Bitcoin in an unintended fashion.  The real threat is that people keep handing their BTC over to total strangers.  That's the root cause.  Once someone deposits their funds to a custodian, they effectively stop being a crypto user.  They don't hold crypto, they hold IOUs representing crypto.  Submitting to KYC/AML and surrendering privacy is just the shitty icing on a shitty cake.

Call me a cold and unrelenting ideologue, but bring on the regulations for custodians, I say.  Make that shit uncomfortable, inconvenient and even dangerous for people to use.  Maybe they'll finally learn better habits.  

yes, the unspoken point about digital fiat is that there are huge numbers of people all over the world that use cash to avoid the tax office. It's really just to create a hard layer in society, below which it's impossible to avoid tax.

all the charities, NGOs, churches and politicians will of course continue to operate their electronic tax avoidance schemes using CDBCs entirely unaffected, I shouldn't wonder that these schemes are designed to make all of that less easy detect.

the strange issue here is that the exact same organizations above are often handling money used for street level crimes; people trafficking and drug dealing. How will the ultimate beneficiaries of large crime organizations accept money at street level if cash no longer exists? blanket drug legalization would seem a strange way to sell the concept to your average person, so I'm at a loss as to how this is really supposed to play out. It's likely that at least some high level figures of such enterprises also have political influence too. In a world where the gangsters are rapidly running out of marks, it seems all rather unlikely to me that they would simply pack up and quit the game, so what's really going on?

I'd just add that the crypto space is a threat to not just the banking system, but the political system since they depend on the laundering for their power.

This is why the are all in favor of things like digital fiat.  It buys nothing except no bills, but allows those in power to control everyone and everything, everywhere.  An Orwellian nightmare for people who are being controlled.

right, this is the typical almost wilful misunderstanding of what they are (incapable of) dealing with.

if there was any easy solution, it would have been floated by now, this is all just tacked onto the FTX whispering campaign, which is all rather pointless anyway as people are both ignoring and distrusting establishment figures more than ever before

Crypto can be a solution to prevent the people in power to steal from the working class by printing more money.
Of course they don't like it and will do everything to regulate it to death.

Are you implying that the people behind the government are never corrupt and have never lied to their people to move forward with their self interests and their agendas? Never?

It is head shaking that you gave Bukele as an example and made the argument that because he made an incorrect investment decision, you use this as proof that he is 100% not corrupt and that he is a 100% honest politician hehe. I would admit that some countries have better governance than others, however, you should live in reality.

I agree, your point is very valid because mixers can also help to get privacy because all Bitcoin transactions and balances are public. If we buy now some goods and send a Bitcoin transaction to a vendor or a trader, such vendors or traders can view our balances on our address and where we have sent Bitcoin previously.

Mixers can help to protect our funds from curious views. Mixing coins for such a purpose (privacy) is very legitimate.

While I agree with most of your statements especially regarding the "government-issue" is not a black-and-white thing and varies a ton from country to country, I need to jump in and with your statement about mixers. While it is ceraintly used by money laundering individuals, it is also the only possible way to create some strongly needed privacy in the transparent Bitcoin chain. I would argue that the majority using these services are doing so 100% legally just trying to protect their privacy and aiming for some fungability to Bitcoin.
Check out this discussion if interested: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/megathread-bitcoin-layer-1-privacy-concepts-ideas-research-discussion-5410526

@OP: Fails like FTX are just a happy excuse for tighter regulations. What would really work is proper (crypto) education. But I think we are still 5 - 10 years away from this becoming a reality in schools.

Your conspiracy BS doesn't make sense at all. No need to wear a tinfoil hat when we can apply easy common sense:

"Government" isn't as simple as you are trying to suggest to us. It's different from country to country, some politicians are indeed corrupt, some want more power and some are just clueless but quite a large number of politicians are honest people.
Even Bukele wants more power because he's trying to run for a second term. Is it good? - No! But are his intentions malicious? I don't believe it.
Quite a large number of politicians want to protect people and bring prosperity.
In my opinion, Bukele wants to protect people and bring prosperity, too.

But it's very difficult to be succesfull. For Bukele, he bought Bitcoin when it was very pricey. Now, it has lost tons of value. Would you say he has a personal agenda, backed by criminal El Salvador networks or similar conspiracy bullshit? I would not.
He's just trying to improve his country and many politicians are trying to improve her country as well.
Yes, it's different in dictatorships, like Kim Yong Un, China, Putin's Russia or Erdogan's Turkey, where officials don't need to be elected and can't be removed. Or take Iran, where so many people protested for more human rights.

I would not generalize it too much. Scammers and hackers need to be caught and regulation is necessary. Crypto is full of scam maybe even more like we have scam, money laundering and corruption in traditional markets. Just take Ripple, Ripple should be taken out by Gary Gensler! I hope it will happen soon!
Crypto is a heaven for money laundering enabled by mixers like WasabiWallet, ChipMixer or Sindbad.io.
Even if a group like "war of rugs" is prepared better to fight against rug pulls or shady Darknet operators get arrested is already a good sign.
It is not easy but after time, crypto will get rid of scams, fraud, hackers, unbacked stablecoins and similar abuse.

Agreed, the government has never wanted to protect the people. 99% of the politicians who run the government only want to act on their self interests and the personal agendas of their backers.

The cryptospace is a threat to the banking system because it will break their monopoly on the creation of money, moving money, laundering of money and many other things about money. It will also break the monopoly on the government's definition of money. If anyone has noticed, much of the people in the community has considered bitcoin to be a more authentic form of money than fiat.