Topic: Governs' oppression of bitcoiners may turn against them (Read 782 times)

This forum has been a great platform for beginners and experts alike to learn and grow in the crypto space. However what you are dreaming about is a little impossible unless we completely change the system.

Merits are given from member to another. Some people will agree with you and some will not, some will give you merits and some will not. Since this forum consists of diverse kinds of investors it might be difficult to set one standard of what or who should be given a merit.

I really see no harm in following these rules/principles as they are as simple as what you can explain to a 2-year-old. Sometimes, I think users of Bitcoin who know the true definition of privacy are the ones taking another route. I actually see no reason why someone who anticipates privacy would prefer to use more of CEX and neglect DEX.


And do you know that such actions can hurt those investors? You see, the government tends to punish a person or group of people based on things they've monitored or can refer to as evidence. By using a CEX, your privacy is certainly not secured, as matters can also arise from that angle while you are still busy facing another.

Most certainly,
Adopting full decentralization is a very good way to avoid being tracked by the governs as well as Centralized Exchange vulnerabilities.
Staying anonymous I believe is the hope of every Bitcoiner, being invisible and unseen by the government, and it's really not their true intentions to give up their privacy and anonymity by using a Centralized Exchange, knowing fully well they could be tracked via the information they relinquished to the exchange.

I think the reason why most investors consider the option of Centralized Exchanges is simply because they believe that's the most easy way  to spend their bitcoin because they do not really know or haven't considered better options to spend their bitcoin.

Someone who works 12+ hours per day hasn't really escaped the rat race... it's not like MEPs are sitting all day and doing nothing.

Whether they produce something useful or not is up for debate.

But I think they could escape the rat race for good if they worked 4-8 years, bought a nice amount of BTC and then retired. So far nobody has done it.

Democracy = Getting ruled by morons and weak people basically.

That's the problem.

Politicians are populists by default and it is because populism brings the most votes. Everybody loves free stuff. When a politician promise free healthcare, free education or hell even free money; everybody likes that person. Nobody asks how teh fuck that's gonna be free.

Massive FIAT printing is the result of that populism because they have to print to carry out their promises. That's how we are getting robbed by the governments.

Governments are the only corporations that never actually go bankrupt. They don't, even when they do. (they used to, but not anymore) Argentina went bankrupt but has Argentina disappeared and become some other country? Nope. It is still there.

I remember I read somewhere that banks used to print their own currencies during the first years of banking and it was backed by gold. I can't remember the details but it was something like that. So people were very careful with the bank where they kept their money. It is because if that bank was a fraud, nobody would bail it out. Nobody would come to the rescue.

It is the exact opposite now.

Now almost every bank is bankrupt but the gov rescues them by printing money massively. A few banks went down last year if I remember right they were small fries. How teh fck Deutcshe Bank is still floating?

The whole system has failed, long time ago.

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2030 will be the next stage of that stupidity/populism.

No privacy
No private property
Universal basic income (free monii)

There are several examples that sometimes it worked. For example, in Argentina in the early 2010s electronic voting was to be introduced, which would have been problematic in many ways (possible hacks, privacy problems, dependency on a complex technology which could be abused by corrupt politicians, etc.). But an open-source activist group called Via Libre lobbied against it, convinced influencers like journalists and politic parties, and until now it wasn't introduced (on federal level). In Germany, in the late 2000s the government planned to store all connection data from all phones in the country, also privacy groups were able to lobby against that, and while a part of the measures were implemented, they were much less invasive than the original plans.

Even in the Bitcoin space there are examples. Remember the idea in the European Parliament to ban crypto exchanges to list PoW coins, including Bitcoin? Well there was sufficient lobbying against that idea, in part from the Pirate movement (e.g. Patrick Breyer) I mentioned in the earlier post.

This is why I consider the "nihilism" or "pessimism" even dangerous, because it cuts support for such movements which are extremely important to limit governments' oppression.

The crucial thing is: If politicians fear to lose voters, they will often be willing to learn. That's why it's important to have an outreach to "normal" people, the masses of voters, and not only to "cypherpunk" or "anarchist" groups. Being an outlaw may sound nice but you will be always a minority and have to fear to be oppressed by the majorities. If normal people understand that for example the privacy restrictions are not necessary to fight criminals, and there are better possible alternatives, then populists promising authoritarian measures will have a more difficult job.

Definitely. I've had a talk with a friend of mine recently on that subject. He endorses the idea of a CBDC, because retail banks charge a lot in fees, whereas a CBDC would theoretically charge nothing, as with WeChat in China.

Everyone would adopt them for another reason: allowance. If people knew they would get "free money" from their gov-wallet app, they'd install it before tomorrow morning.

Here's the funny part. As long as crypto-swap services accept it, you can buy with Monero whatever you can buy with other "legal" cryptocurrencies.

Pardon me, but if you earn 5 digits per month, haven't you already escaped rat race?  

Some (math) facts:

99% of the people worldwide don't even hodl a single satoshi. They may have heard about BTC, but they've never used it.

Only 1% uses Bitcoin and even there, only 1% of the 1% cares enough about deeper issues...

Do you honestly expect governments to care about the subset of a minority?

Hell, most people don't even realize how exactly the fiat Ponzi works:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1clh38i/banking_system_visualized_watch_the_full_series/

The funny thing is, there are European elections coming up next month and most people will vote for politicians that can do absolutely nothing to change the financial system.

But even if they could, why would they change a financial system that rewards them at least 10000 EUR per month? (some get paid even more by bribes/lobbyists)

If they were smart, they would try to stack as many sats as possible (it's easy to become a wholecoiner when you earn 5 digits per month) and escape the rat race, but they won't even do that...

You're not alone thinking about this one, the only reason that I'm keeping on using CEXes now is because of the P2P feature that they give out and most of the DEX that I know of don't have that perfected yet but the moment that it happens, I'm going to jump at the first train metaphorically. It's too costly to move your bitcoin to these platforms too because they've got a fixed rate, sometimes you can't avoid paying the fees that they've set not to mention that they're more risky to use in terms of storage because you know that it's not your keys and not your coins anymore.

The oppression will only end once the people in government organization starts pruning and all the geriatric motherfuckers that have been only serving their own interests starts dying like flies, we would probably see some changes in the level of how stupid the government can be when it comes to technology especially with bitcoin. I guess, they just don't like the idea that they're not in control that they're doing their best to oppress and ostracize those people that uses bitcoin.

Oh well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

And those who are not in the crypto world will adopt CBDCs as soon as they are launched. No questions asked. I can already imagine everyone talking about how they've been using them, me dissimulating and when someone asks me, perplexed faces like: 'BUT... you haven't been using them?' As if I said I don't use a mobile phone or something.


The problem I see is that it will be prosecuted legally. I don't think you will eventually be able to buy a lot of goods and services with it.

Gazeta, things are currently worse than ever in Bitcoin. Governs continue with the oppression, and they're taking down privacy-enhancing services, one after the other. I cannot foresee sufficient resistance. They are taking a portion of your monthly income and use it to fund blockchain analysis. And people... just don't care, you know? They only care about finding the next memecoin. It's sad that we're a small minority.

I hate altcoin shilling, but you should check Monero. It's closer to the cypherpunk's cryptocurrency principles and ideals. Private by default. Untraceable. Just as peer-to-peer cash should be.

Governments don't care what has worse consequences, as long as they get their votes. And since the overwhelming majority doesn't care about privacy and the dangers of KYC, then governments have no incentives to loosen regulations. Pretty much the opposite; KYC is extremely effective measure for them to know who owns what.

And this leads us, again, to Phil Zimmermann's famous quote -- "If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy"...


Feel free to make any suggestion


This is, in fact, an ideology adopted by Cypherpunks, before bitcoiners existed... And Cypherpunks' ideology was inspired by Austrian economists (such as Hayek of Murray Rothbard), or by other libertarians, such as Albert Jay Nock, which is the author of Our Enemy, the State.


That is thoughtful thinking and, of course, 1miau's essay is a very valuable piece of art... But what I believe about governments is that they don't want to be educated... Or they act like that... Since they can oppress people even more, which leads to collecting more taxes, applying more fines and using all this money for their personal interests -- this is what they care about...

In general terms I agree with the OP, even if I would formulate some parts of the text differently

But I often see Bitcoiners being a bit too "nihilistic" or too pessimistic in general -- i.e. they believe that "governments" will always be enemies and they will never change.

What about educating governments too that, for example, too strict KYC regulations may have even worse consequences regarding crime than all so-called "money laundering" through cryptocurrencies? (KYC services open up a whole new field of crime, with identity theft being now a real threat for billions of people. 1miau's text has been an eye-opener for me too, because before I considered that while KYC is a hassle it could bring some advantages, but I now am convinced it is not the case.)

Or if they don't want to hear, participate in political movements which propose alternatives? For example, about ten years ago, in Europe there was a quite big privacy movement called the "Pirate" movement (derived from the movement to support Pirate Bay). They even entered some parliaments, like in the Czech Republic and Iceland. But it seems these movements are currently quite weak, at least they are not much talked about in the media, besides perhaps some few regions. They could need all support from Bitcoiners and crypto enthusiasts. Also Anarchist movements in general seem to have weakened in the last 10 years.

I think also that the crypto community should propose some alternatives to the FATF-influenced AML rules. Because if we can convince the majorities that there are better measures than KYC in every corner, then the authorities would have to react, or they lose support by voters.

1) We could first educate lawmakers that even the strictest KYC policy for crypto services will not be effective because the real "bottleneck" to launder money is the creation of "clean" fiat. This means that, it doesn't matter how much you try to obfuscate a transaction history, you will never be able to "launder" big sums of money if you can't demonstrate a legitimate origin. And that's what money laundering usually is about: funding some fake companies which can create a "legitime" income from illegitimate sources. You don't need crypto for that. In other words: Crypto mixing is often a really minor step in the money laundering process.

2) Second, there could be measures for non-KYC crypto services and mixers which would be more effective against crime than KYC in many cases. I could imagine something like a preventive chain analysis for larger deposits to such services, and in case of it being connected with a recent known hack, a wallet which was emptied by a thief, or a wallet connected with terrorism, simply delay the accreditation of the funds -- that all without having to store any KYC data! And if then an order from a court reaches the service, then the funds can perhaps still be frozen and returned to the legitimate owner.

AFAIK the Security Alliance is offering such services, e.g. tracking of hacked funds. We should promote this kind of measures as alternatives to traditional AML, and educate people that they exist and are often more effective than surveillance and storage of personal data.

The government will do anything to strip control away from our hands. Obviously they want the control all for themselves and their citizens having the ability to conceal that control makes them crazy. It’s not just about whether you are doing something illegal but more of are you plotting something against the government?

If you are an enemy of the state and you are able to enjoy privacy of course they would not like that and instead of hand picking who’s the enemy they just generally restrict everyone.

The government could make laws that requires mining firms to report, deny, or block transactions from flagged addresses. Transactions from mixers can be flagged as tainted funds and OFAC can mandate minners to report such transactions. Mixers can be banned and seized by the government claiming that they are used by criminals to promote crimes like terror financing, and drug and arms trafficking. The government can also cook up allegations against decentralized exchanges thereby restricting or criminalizing their services. There are many moves the government can take to fight privacy. Let's just enjoy privacy as it lasts.

Only a natural reaction of the government. They cannot really do anything against decentralization so they try to act as lowly saboteurs. It is a desperate, impotent flail against Bitcoin and decentralization. And it won't work.

All attack vectors are centralized.  One could avoid them by simply not using centralized platforms. A bit of technical know-how on how to use decentralized services like BisQ or how to obfuscate your digital fingerprints with Monero or mixers couldn't hurt, either.

I wouldn't say that I've seen this happening a mile away but I'm aware that this is what's going to happen the moment that bitcoin reached a thousand dollars back then, the p2p feature is what a lot of Youtubers have emphasized back then when bitcoin is still at its infancy meaning that they wanted to created a currency that you trade in like fiat but this purpose didn't last long because bitcoin increased in value. Maybe if the people that got introduced into bitcoin knows how to trade p2p, we could've kept the idea of getting rid of the middle man. The sad thing is that we forgot our roots, even a lot of old bitcoiners that have been hodling for a really long time just chose to make a profit because it's the most logical thing to do when everyone's taking profit. @laszlo's story also contributed to the increase of people that see bitcoin hodling their bitcoins to death, they don't want to make the same thing that he did with his bitcoins.

Dear GazetaBitcoin I want to translate this topic in my local language Urdu. If you allow me so confirm it I will start my work. Thanks.

True. As I said in my earlier post, we are lucky to have a context offering some hands of help to those looking for anonymity and those which want to keep govern's eyes away from them:

- centralized exchanges should be avoided no matter what, for all the reasons I mentioned in OP
- decentralized exchanges are more and more; they started to become also more user friendly
- private wallets are a must, in order to be the owner of your private keys; preferably, users should choose those with open source code
- exchanges between a coin and another one should be made either through peer-to-peer transfers between users or through atomic swaps
- bank accounts should never be associated with crypto
- cash-in / cash-out anonymous crypto ATMs should be also used; they can be found through www.coinatmradar.com.

By following these easy steps we can maintain our privacy. The important part, though, is to have users willing to follow these steps and to leave behind all their unhealthy habits (using centralized exchanges, associating bank accounts with crypto accounts, giving personal information to third parties, using custodial wallets or wallets with closed source code etc.).

This is actually happening but i think there's a way it can get mitigated to an extent, if the user learn to go on full decentralization with handling his bitcoin by avoiding the use of the centralized exchanges through which the government can use to track him, here the asset is meant to be secured with more guaranteed safety on a decentralized exchange than a centralized one, you can run a bitvoin full node using bitcoincore, you can as well get yourself a hardware wallet to privately secure your asset and you make use of a decentralized p2p when in need for an exchange to fiat, if you can avoid centralized exchange, then you're almost close to being privately secured and don't announce yourself of your involvement in bitcoin to the public.