In my opinion, it's fine if a business doesn't want funds that come straight from an online casino for example, as long as they don't call a coin 'forever tainted' if it once came from such a casino.
If you withdraw to your personal wallet and then send the funds to cex.io, they should absolutely be accepted.
But then the casino could do the same and just transfer their funds to a new wallet and then use them again. Just trying to taint a coin for whatever reason creates a whole lot of unnecessary problems.
In my opinion, it's fine if a business doesn't want funds that come straight from an online casino for example, as long as they don't call a coin 'forever tainted' if it once came from such a casino.
If you withdraw to your personal wallet and then send the funds to cex.io, they should absolutely be accepted.
But then the casino could do the same and just transfer their funds to a new wallet and then use them again. Just trying to taint a coin for whatever reason creates a whole lot of unnecessary problems.
Agreed. Coinbase's "you're not allowed to send coins to or from a casino" demands are the oldest form of "taint" I've seen, and somehow the Bitcoin community largely accepted that. As if Coinbase has any business checking how people spend their money.
I've never used Coinbase for many reasons, but this adds to the list.In my opinion, there is a difference between receiving a payment directly from a casino's address or receiving a coin that
in the past has been withdrawn from a casino.
The former is normal business procedure: some businesses are simply not allowed to receive a payment from a casino, be it in crypto or fiat. That's nothing new.
The latter is what's really the problem. Why should a business deny working with me because the coins I hold, I received e.g. for working from someone online, who themself got it by cashing out their casino account? This is not 'making business with casinos', since I'm obviously not one. I just received coins for my honest work, from someone who gambles. This is the 'taint problematic'.
In the end its about protecting individuals fundamental right to transact. Blacklists are always subjective, not transparent and ultimately dont prevent crimes from happening. But they violate fundamental rights of individuals, and open the door to abuse and a dysfunctional economy. Money launderers and criminals will always find a way to evade them.
So we should try to reach more social consensus about that its absolutely essential for Bitcoins success to not accept any kind of taint being introduced by anyone. We gotta be completely stubborn here. Innocent until proven guilty, companies can still report criminals to law enforcement and it will be handled in court where it should be. Individuals fundamental rights are essential for a functional society and it starts with the freedom to transact. Even when not personally affected yet this is absolutely crucial for everyone. Privacy solutions can only help, but we also need awareness by many, to really push against it.
I absolutely agree with this. If you don't directly refuse to do business with an
individual or other
business because of whatever reason, that's your right. But marking coins 'tainted' and banning them forever is bullshit and a bad excuse for stealing coins.
Yup definitely. Im just trying to make a case for, that if we look at all these measures in a result oriented way, we gotta acknowledge that they don’t achieve anything they’re trying to achieve. Not even something simple as blocking a casino really works, without affecting innocent users. In the end casino money will still reach the service, so nothing was prevented. So why have it in the first place. There’s many good reasons to try to fight illicit activity and it might not even always be ill-intended by businesses. But we have more and more consequences creeping in, without even having solved anything.
There can also be many different views and one person might be ok with something that someone else isn’t, but everyone who uses Bitcoin has certain goals that are aligned with each other. We want Bitcoin to succeed, we want the freedom to transact. Businesses don’t wanna get crushed by regulators and Bitcoiners want businesses to adopt Bitcoin. I think if we agree to one strategy here, that is no coin taint at all(is probably the most efficient solution), then we can achieve our goals much easier and withstand much more pressure together. If Businesses keep going against their customers and get more and pressure from regulators, it will be much easier to crush them. And it makes it harder for Bitcoiners to use Bitcoin. So im thinking that maybe we could use one clear shared strategy in this case, even when there’s differing opinions.
Of course they aren't achieving anything in terms of 'protecting' people or anything like that. My suspicion is honestly that these businesses are routinely stealing some people's funds. Look back at PayPal: in the beginning, they stole customers' money by closing their accounts at will, too. Nowadays it's well known that they went specifically after smaller accounts because they knew people wouldn't bother reporting it or pursuing the issue any further for a few bucks. But do that to hundreds of thousands of accounts and you got yourself some nice cash to work with.
Rearding casinos, it's kind of a special case. Ever since they existed (in physical form) it was an easy way to launder money: buy chips, play a bit, return them, and get new cash, unlinked to your deposit. Therefore, some businesses refuse to get payments directly from a casino, since in case of a money laundering investigation, they would get in the spotlight, too. However money I got in my personal wallet, should be accepted by everyone. After all, if I withdraw money from the casino and then do a bank transfer or spend fiat at a store, nobody cares either.
I got my coins,I told them I get the coins from my mining activity,I provided them all the related screenshots and they agreed to release funds then.However the problem is with a lot of friends of mine,they have also earnings from mining,working online and a couple of other normal places (not gambling,not war related and not a mixer for sure),they even were asked if a wallet is yours by asking to sign a message,they did sign a message and since one week no nothing at all.They Cex got all the data needed,how much time do they need to verify further.
So you wanted to deposit coins from mining to cex.io and they froze them, asking for proof. But proof of what? Also with your friends - what are they claiming is the reason for freezing their funds?
Are they claiming that your coins come from illicit activities or what exactly?