Topic: New EU AML ban bitcoin anonymous payment (Read 690 times)

Is it now safe to conclude that technology is a hindrance to financial freedom, seeing how badly the government of many countries want to ensure any new initiative for crypto currency be made useless and regulated, so as to frustrate it from being a top currency of choice and out shining the regular controlled fiat ?

The ban certainly didn't come as a shock to me because since last year, any and almost all anonymous tools created to facilitate the ease of using BTC like the banned mixrs have been way more shunned.
KYC verification as well as taxes in most cases have become a necessity to allow cryptocurrency to be used and acceptable for payments and transactions across borders.
It seems the governments would keep scrutinizing cryptocurrencies nonetheless, but am sure they won't deny that cryptocurrency is a genius idea that is sufficient to say the least in itself and is a currency of the future that is a success and has done good to reveal deficiencies in the fiat monetary system.

I'm technically a noob but I always believed that the entire point of crypto was self custody and being able to pay other people without the interference of any exchange. Similar to sending an other person a file via bluetooth

I always expected banks and government to fight against crypto with enormous taxes and regulations. And I said that they would go after the exchanges 10 years ago when BTC was 100 bucks. Hence why I never bought BTC at low prices.
It seems that my fears are only becoming reality now. But it's interesting to see who will end up winning this fight. The little people or big government

They are planning a centralized crypto currency, common, how funny is that:

A guy from the Keepyourmouthshutoryoujumpoutofthewindow is telling us bedtime stories about a currency created by Russia that will be free of "politics".

BRICS hate cryptos, just go over the list, China banned eveything about Bitcoin, China and Russia are when friendly when talking about banning it, Egypt has also declared it illegal, out of the BRICS and their new addition only brazil has a positive view, the rest are the worse in the world.

I am no expert on this topic but in my opinion it seems clear the EU will be trying to put obstacles in the way of their citizens crypto adoption but I cannot state the same for BRICS. From what I understand, the BRICS nations are interested in developing their own crypto to remove settlement of trade in $USD.

I actually agree. I think anyone moving around that much money must be subject to greater good reasoning. Yes, privacy, I know, but my liberal side doth argue that the benefit of accountability for the wealthy outweigh their need for privacy -- besides they can afford much more privacy than the little guy who can only access some tools. I mean, if I were lucky enough to be transacting 10k often, I'd be happy for them to KYC me on each (here, have my ID you already have anyway, f you very much).

Thank god for Bitcoin.

Twitter isn't a trustworthy source of information, unless it's a tweet by someone or an entity with a high reputation. This article analyses the rumours and says that it's a misinterpretation of words by one European MP, and that self-custody won't be illegal. Cash payments will indeed be limited to EUR 10,000. However, that doesn't mean that the limit applies to self-custodial wallets. And also, to be honest, I think EUR 10,000 is a fair limit per transaction to impose some sort of KYC.

Sorry, I must've slipped. I wrote this in a fit of rage.

It is true that BRICS countries don't like crypto, and now for some reason the EU wants to follow their lead too. Why? It's not like they are going to accomplish anything useful with this, all it's going to do is get them more hate on Twitter and these parts of the internet.

Maybe they have an ace up their sleeves:

https://www.eetimes.com/euro-bank-notes-to-embed-rfid-chips-by-2005/
https://www.fleur-de-coin.com/eurocoins/banknote-rfid

They plan to release a new (3rd) series of banknotes...

Unfortunately the EU governments already know too much about Bitcoin and Crypto transactions
when it goes through KYC exchanges and bank accounts. This new ruling is another step in them
trying to identify more and more who is doing what.

Its about reducing anonymity and increasing control.

We can still do mini transactions and still do P2P trades for cash. As long as there is Cash then
transactions can still be untraceable.

The powers that control financial channels and transactions will want to trace every transaction that does not involve a cash payments and they will find ways to do it.

It has given every government (including the EU) a headache as they are trying to find ways to control crypto. The US has been busy with XRP, Binance, FTX, BTC ETF and now Ethereum. The EU is getting busy with their own agenda and I think it is clear they will regulate it.

Good luck if it's true (it is true, just precisely how they want to regulate that will be anyone's guess).

I can still pay anonymously for my shopping and food delivery, if they want to start enforcing people to use custodial, KYC'd wallets, they need only look at the debacle of El Salvador.

Plus, as stompix says above, each country will apply a national comprehension of what this means. AMLD4 and AMLD5 already did see the death of Bitcoin ATMs where I live, I doubt they will want to kill off further payment innovations (Bitcoin 3rd party processors and even lightning merchants popular in niche cities).

No, there is one thing about the EU, as long as this is not a directive then it's not a binding rule for all the states.
There was never a cash limit imposed by the EU
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-001048-ASW_EN.html
but every country has either enforced its own limits or has decided to not do a thing, France had 10k, Spain had 1k, and Germany had no limit (in theory).

If this goes as regulation every country would be again able to request either delays on its own policies, which are worse in most cases, if it's a directive then for a lot of the EU population not much will change.


To be honest you lost me at the limit for anonymous payments, because if somebody can stack those up then you're not anonymous at all, more like bitcoin pseudo-anonymous!
If somebody thinks they are after the little guy who will split the 10 000 in 5 sums and just be done with it they are mistaken, avoiding taxes and undeclared cross-border payments as well as revenues have gone up like mad since the COVID era. You're talking about a guy purchasing $100  worth of metals I've seen 10 years of business partners offering us cash payments per truck, 5% of if we sell without a receipt, and those are 30-45k euros of food per truck, I haven't seen these things happening like this since the 90's.

The EU has acted stupidly with all that freedom before and now that they want to plug in the whole they have created themselves there will be of course collateral victims!
But, at the end of the line, everyone wanted crypto to be legal, to use crypto as fiat, so why the surprise when it's treated the same way?

Wait, what?

I thought you had said BRICs are against crypto:


https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.63852510

First of all: Fuck them.

Second of all: They can't censor the bitcoin network.

It's as big of a strawman as Nigeria, Russia or Bangladesh banning crypto.

Stupid laws like this make everyone put aside their differences and unite. CSW too.

As long as you pays bills worth a few hundred dollars that include tax, no one cares about anonymity or not. Try to buy something bigger, a house for example, especially if the reported trade is significantly different from the market price.

Governments often pass laws that are impossible to put into practice, while the law seems harsh, the number of people making transactions that large in a consistent basis which live in Europe should be very low, and the few that could be subject to that law could avoid it if they take the appropriate measures, which will make way more difficult to identify who they are, so while such law can create some headlines, most of those living at Europe are completely unaffected by this.

I remember the limit was around 10 thousand until years ago.  Or am I wrong?

The issue is that they are slowly restricting more and more of the amount until they will finally impose a restriction on every Anonymous Cash payment or put a very low threshold.  Hopefully not.  But it is what it looks like.

Then there is one more thing.  Is it for payments over 3,000 Euros as in you can spend 30 Euros 100 times in an year, or is it a cumulative limit?  The Anonymous payment limit on Precious Metals in Europe is cumulative.  As in, back when the limit was 10,000 Euros you could have placed 100 different orders in the time span of years, worth 100 Dollars each.  Then you are considered to have passed the 10,000 Euros Anonymous limit and are therefore required to send Know Your Customer information if you want to order again.

Of course, this cumulative limit is mostly for Online orders where you can particularly request and Anonymous invoice, or for physical purchases.  And of course, this limit is easy to pass for physical purchases.  The point I am trying to make is that it is still a harsh limit and they are still slowly restricting every now and then until the threshold becomes so low you will not be able to purchase any thing besides a few cans of soda without having to provide information.

Well, what you state is true in multiple ways. All the signs that are being sent out seem to amount them wanting to have a hold or control over citizens financial transactions as it helps monitor their activities. I find those restrictions counterproductive and would view them as taking steps backwards rather than embrace evolving (crypto) technology.

The sad part about the legislation is that is will be covering the whole of the EU therefore the number of countries affected will be 27 with a combined population (as of 2020) of 450 million. Was it necessary for them to implement this law? I would say it was not.

Alot is happening in the cryptocurrency landscape lately and government are beginning to build crossed blocks along the growing path of the cryptocurrency Industry with the so called regulatory procedures that are aimed.ed at controlling the cryptocurrency market and also enforcing a killer mode method which are tool of anti bitcoin crusaders.

Many of the countries that made attempts at regulating bitcoin have gotten alit of things wrong and at that can lead to a resistance and more privacy consciousness among crypto communities,  since with such laws bitcoin users will know how to act and when to handout their privacy,  this is not only happening in the EU, but even in my country,  there have been similar anti cryptocurrency driven laws which up till now have no provable effects on the market.

Also you must use Tor and not IP address. Also if you do not buy bitcoin on exchanges like as we are paid in signature campaigns on this forum and if you use Tor for access this forum, such transactions are anonymous without mixers or conjoins.

Even if they track it and not link to any illegal activities, what will they do? They can only go for transactions with big amount of coins, not just small amount of coins. These governments do not even want people to take breath at all, they are getting worse day by day in a way they even prefer to track peoples activities at their home.

From here:
https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-6220-2024-REV-1/en/pdf
Both articles 31b and 58 are about " crypto-asset service providers", the EU doesn't regulate and doesn't care about anything that is not a contract between two persons in the EU,  if it's personal finances, each country on its own.

Also this:
https://twitter.com/paddi_hansen/status/1771929859704389954

Far more detailed analysis that I could ever do and obviously moar than what screaming guys on twitter have to say!
Especially this line:
https://twitter.com/paddi_hansen/status/1771929885184844115


It was just an example for the stupidity of the bravado, I sent a tx the CIA didn't stop me, such hero, but I made it a bit to simple!
Stores will be limited at above value x (again each country can amend these values), to some restricted way of payments, so when you purchase over the sum the customer won't be able to pay unless he uses pre-approved methods, card, wire, but if some crypto provider regulated in the said country manages to do that it will be again accepted, taking into account it's a payment provide who goes through all KYC/AML regulations just like a bank!

And no as long as a store accepts crypto it comes to its own "due diligence" .

Where did you read this upper limit? In here, I read that any payment from an "anonymous source" is proposed to become illegal. And what's an anonymous source exactly? Am I supposed to identify my UTXO to the government? Otherwise, how is it supposed to work?

I don't think this is how it works. As far as I understand, the store is forbidden from accepting a crypto transaction whose source is not reported to the government, therefore accept only KYC, "clean" coins directly from exchanges.

Please convince me you're right, because I would absolutely rather be wrong in here.

Gov want to know and control everything, as usual. World is becoming worse place

One of the striking things about the ban (which is scheduled to be enforced after three years) is that they are banning self custody wallets. How can they even enforce a ban on any citizen of the EU if they wish to download a wallet on their computer or phone? It will not even be practical.

It seems to be another unnecessary obstacle put in the way of the crypto community which is designed to stifle the way it is growing: https://beincrypto.com/eu-bans-unidentified-self-hosted-crypto/

The EU is still friendly to crypto, they just treat crypto as money! See how simple this is, we have had limits on spending cash for years, even decades, and nobody here knew or didn't care about it, now that crypto payments are legal, what a surprise, they must follow the same rule as fiat! Pickachu face!

I mean common people, what government in what world would allow unrestricted anonymous payments with no limits?  Let's be real here!


I got this from a monero sub on reddit, obviously downvoted into oblivion but the guy was right:


The proposal was public and voted and amended since 2021:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:0a4db7d6-eace-11eb-93a8-01aa75ed71a1.0001.02/DOC_1&format=PDF

Most nations especially developing ones always copy the policies of the European Union nations. I don't know where you live but the law might come to your country sooner or later. Bitcoin I not just a threat to Europe but the entire world government.

To avoid these restrictions one can also split payments that are above the €3000 threshold. Only crypto-to-crypto transaction that uses a non-custodial wallet are pseudonymous and they can be traced if these coins are later moved to centralised platforms. I doubt if this law will lead to FUD which can affect the price of Bitcoin.

I guess that I'm gonna just "fly under the radar" since most of my payments are way below 3,000 euro.
Crypto to fiat transaction(and vice versa) aren't anonymous because the crypto seller knows your bank account info such as name, address, IBAN, etc. Only crypto-to-crypto transactions can be truly anonymous and I don't know how the European regulators are going to track and ban transactions, which are happening on the blockchain. We've seen this before. Bitcoin is having a bull run and the regulators and governments start creating FUD via proposals for mindless crypto regulation. Nothing new here. I guess that Switzerland is the best country in Europe when it comes to crypto regulations.

There are more documents to read about this problem in future, not now. If nothing changes, this will come into force after 3 years, in 2027.

We are fine just now but I believe there will be many things to be changed and this legislation is very hard to execute practically. It's impossible to control cryptocurrency flow if people use non custodial wallet.

Can governments and their agencies, ban all websites to accept Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies from non custodial wallets, no KYC?
I doubt they will be able to do this. Citizens will stand up and fight back.

EU Lawmakers to Vote on Limited Ban on Self-Hosted Crypto Payments
EU committees approve ban on anonymous crypto transactions via hosted wallets
Patrick Breyer's post on X
His website.

PROVISIONAL AGREEMENT RESULTING FROM INTERINSTITUTIONAL NEGOTIATIONS

I think in some countries they already do this. Some exchanges are already complying and if you want to withdraw you need to prove that the wallet you are sending it to is yours.

Basically a huge headache for the exchanges to do this. Because before they can process withdraws to an address not held by you, you need to provide proof who you are sending it to.

You also can easily just send it to yourself and then send it to whomever you wish.

The one alt that I've been a big fan of is Monero, but I knew that it would have very limited upside  price wise as governments would eventually shut down the allowance of exchanges to to transact it (buy/sell), and that's exactly whats happening.  It's also why I've been dead set against bitcoin ever being anonymous (cracks me up so many articles to this day claim that it is smh).  Because it would never get to where it's gotten had it been. I find it interesting that so many still don't see this or argue against it not being anonymous.  If you want that, buy/use monero. 

I think there will always be ways to make btc transactions much more difficult to follow/track.  I dont have the expertise to say this with any confidence but would imagine so.

Banning transactions of over 10k cash...the EU...eastern world dictator type bs there.  If you have a transaction over 3k, you have to report it.  No one one will.

.

A confusing decision, I thought the EU was a friendly environment for crypto when they already had the MiCA law. I understand that the EU wants to track the flow of money in crypto to detect money laundering, but this law is not good for crypto because it almost goes against the core values related to decentralization and the need for self-custody of assets in the crypto market. Perhaps its sole purpose is to discourage users from self-custody and paying with crypto, I worry that this will be learned by other governments in the future.

I myself don't like this, but to be honest, if I were a member of the government, I haven't found the best solution to balance the freedom of crypto with the government's responsibility to manage. Perhaps a politician with experience with the crypto market can come up with a better solution for this new legal framework.

Exactly. Personally I have zero use for a cojoin service and cannot think of a single reason to use them.
Aside from a minuscule amount from the contributions address in my sig, every Satoshi I have are from mining at Kanopool over the past decade and are new, fully traceable coins that have never left my ownership. When needed I have no problem paying the taxes due on them and if questions arise regarding their source, I can easily prove their history. Worse, coins from known cojoin services quite rightly often raise red flags with exchanges.

The thing about purchasing durable goods is that the creation and at least 1st-tier distribution of said goods requires fiat so the companies can pay their suppliers and lenders. That means it behooves the final seller accepting BTC or other crypto as payment to have confidence there is no legal questions about the coins because without doubt that final seller has to pay their suppliers in fiat gained from exchanging the crypto they receive into fiat. Receiving the coins from a registered exchange or crypto bank makes them good as gold or any fiat-based credit card because source of the funds is known.

If you insist on paying cash where do you get it from? For most folks - from an ATM & their bank accounts. How does the money get into the accounts? From your job or otherwise traceable means. So, even fiat is traceable unless it comes from um, questionable means.

Don't worry it's already in my list, government crocs in my area already discusses this things already but doesn't have enough concrete plan and guidelines. Idk when it will be implemented but as long it's not that this absurd its good.

Those of us who have been using centralised exchanges or wallets will have trouble using any kind of coin-mixing service. I am encountering an issue with Binance when one of my clients sent BNB by using a mixer. I am not sure whether Binance will resolve my issue or not; they temporarily suspended my account. However, the government strictly wants to control Bitcoin. It will become very hard to spend anonymous coins since all the CEX requires KYC and does not accept funds from the mixers. Very soon, we will have to use only P2P exchanges without KYC or avoid any coin-mixing services. 

You don't understand what this ban is about, it's not about stopping you from sending a tx!
It's a about any company not allowed to receive a payment of over 3000 euros from an anonymous source!

So your bravado is...empty slogan!

You are free to enter a store and, buy a 5000 euro tv and try to pay with crypto, but the store will simply refuse your payment unless you id yourself! So?
What does any mixing, conjoin or anything else solve here?

As for the all caps breaking news...


I doubt more than 5% of the forum does more than 2 payments over 3000 euros for goods a year that can be split into two or three.

BTC tx's are pseudonymous and the only way to carry out anonymous tx's using BTC is if you create CoinJoin tx's or send your coins through a mixer. I find it hard to understand how they would implement this law; centralized exchanges already require kyc, so it is either they are going to target privacy solutions, just like the u.s. is doing with BTC mixers. But then again people who use CoinJoin implementations should also use p2p exchanges, so i don't know how the government is going to track such paymemts or tx's.

You would be surprised knowing how easy it is for them to find out who is using Bitcoin and who is not.  Considering the majority of the world does not care about Privacy and even those who do care about it still use the Internet improperly, it is pretty easy to check who is 'the bad guy'.

More over.  How many of us all would continue using Bitcoin the 'illegal' way if that is the case?  I doubt many would risk it.  Most of them would obey unfortunately.

I would be very ironic and funny if in the end these kinds of laws being applied in the European Union and in the United States, in the end convinced people to move most of their money to non-custodial wallets, instead using their exchanges to manage their money and carry out transactions. If so, what would the European Union and the USA do? Since we are talking about free software/open source, it would be very difficult for anyone to police people downloading wallets of their phones and computers. I still believe this could be about preparing the path for the incoming Digital Euro to be launched and becoming widespread with little resistance from Bitcoin and alternative currencies. Afterall, if they are all about replacing paper with electronic money, the restrictions on electronic money will be lighter than those applied to crypto.

Also, it is easy to say that those who live in the EU and happen to be holders of Bitcoin are unfortunate, but living in Europa has other advantages which may or may not be related to Bitcoin and alternative currencies.

This isn't the case, you are completely anonymous when you coinjoin. Participants in a group transaction can't be distinguished from each other since there's multiple clones created with the exact same value -

Do not celebrate too early because this is coming world wide soon.  I thought United States law about Cryptocurrencies was very diabolic years ago.  Now it is coming to Europe.  Maybe in an even worse version.

It will be like this in big countries at least.  Smaller countries will make an effort to profit off this by letting us continue paying anonymously and making Know Your Customer NON mandatory.

-----

Unfortunately this is very real and very true.  Who ever thinks this is just imaginary should take three steps back and look at the picture of the world again.

Wrong. BTC has never been totally anonymous. What part of it being an open public ledger does not make that clear?

Only people who truly have no idea of what a public blockchain ledger is think that it is anonymous.

The only anonymous bit about it is that finding who owns any given wallet/address is very hard to do until it is either used to buy physical items or is converted to fiat. That said, every single Tx in & out is a fully traceable open record.

Getting back on topic, several months ago the EU passed laws restricting fiat transactions. All the new EU regulations do is treat all crypto Tx's the same as fiat Tx's. In either case -- THEY SUCK! If I have the cash on hand to say, buy a car or high end TV I damn well should be able to do it

This is looking more and more like 1984 scenario.
I said it before but they are going to make more and more crazy rules and regulations in the next few years, and you all need to realize that we are in the middle of the war, and they are trying to make us fight each other.

Good thing i don't live in EU, unfortunately to those. But it looks like useless to me if transacting using non-custodial wallets. Not unless there's only a required wallet to use in every transaction which will be a fuck up to every EU citizen. But if not, this is just absurd law.

But does this mean ANY amount is now banned if it's done through a private self custody wallet? because they are talking about limits on cash transactions (which they lowered from 3k to 1k as far as I can tell) but they do not talk about any limits on crypto transactions, so the way I see it is that ANY amount is now banned, and only basically institutions and registered businesses can legally transact?

Wouldn't this basically mean that people with crypto that have it in self custody cannot sell? since the transaction to the exchange would be illegal. Now that's funny.

You can make your Bitcoins fully anonymous with coinjoins. Wasabi Wallet, BTCPay Server's coinjoin plugin, and Trezor's coinjoin account prevent the addresses in your wallet from becoming linked to each other.

See how you can't determine where the funds for this transaction came from, or where the change from this transaction went to?

yes, they can target centralized, public elements. But they cannot really target the decentralized, anonymous ones. How would they stop a decentralized p2p marketplace, for example? Or even a DEX? There is no core control element for them to target and intimidate into following their orders.



Bitcoin is not anonymous (by its nature of being a literal public ledger). It is private. People tend to confuse anonymity with privacy, and it is not the same thing. However there exist ways of making Bitcoin anonymous, if need be.

Good question: I read that years ago there was many people calling BTC anonymous when it really isn't. Sounds like the early users pulled off a huge scam on the world? I still love crypto for small payments, but you need to be careful going forward.

They target stores, digital stores, exchanges, and decentralized exchanges.
I don't know if the wallets will be in the same category, meaning that you need to complete identity verification to get a $10,000 transaction for your wallet, but their current focus will be on banning decentralized exchanges.

All these will only be effective on users who have refused to desist from the use of a custodial wallet and think their privacy is nothing in anyway to affect them, until they are been banned from using any of the exchanges by the government regulation and their asset frozen along with these centralized exchanges before learning their lessons, if we could only realized that bitcoin is not what is expected of us to hold on centralized exchanges, instead on our personal non custodial wallets.

Have cryptocurrency payments ever been anonymous? This now means that I will not be able to pay for a sandwich and a coffee with Bitcoin until the seller checks me in the system, because actually the geniuses in power want to say that we are some kind of criminals, I guess?

However, Bitcoin exists to bypass such nonsense, because all their bans are worthless if you have a non-custodial wallet and send coins to someone who has the same wallet. First they fought against crypto mining, then they discovered that there is practically no such thing in the EU, and now they want to scare people from using Bitcoin - what's next, hunting Bitcoiners and burning them like witches in the Middle Ages?

This is absolutely insane and I am very outraged at this. Their intent is clearly in some ways to crush crypto which is terrifying. My understanding of this is that for example if you want to take 1K Euros according to the press release out of your Coinbase account and send it to someone, Coinbase will be required to collect store and verify information of the other party which is not their customer that is before the transfer is even allowed. So even people who are not Coinbase customers, Coinbase will now have to store all kinds of KYC documents on them before the transaction is even allowed. This is the stupidest thing and very ridiculous. Businesses based in the EU will just have to move out.

So, OP what are you expecting their motive with the ETF's they just want to accumulate the maximum supply here in my view to suppress the market and eliminate the concept of self-custody again with their shity tactics.

I'm super curious why retail investors trust ETFs to buy Bitcoins for them when they can interact with the market themselves and can have a better value compared to the ETF's so-called service.

At the same time, it's sad to hear but fortunately, we are not facing any such situations for now except for the corrupt officers of the FBR, they demand data from the centralized exchanges and track down the users to take advantage of them by using that data to blackmail them, as still there's no clear stand of Paksitani government on the crypto market.

And how exactly are they going to stop people? It is an anonymous deal, lol.

The press was release on January 18, 2024, but it's become popular recently.

In this press, they're put attention with cryptocurrency transactions that only worth 1K Euros instead of 3K Euros. It's really a problem for people who have a lot Bitcoins and want to protect their privacy.

It is still good that stores can accept payments in cryptocurrencies without KYC that are less than €3000.
Does this include coinJoin transactions? Daily transactions are less than €10k, as I can use P2P to exchange €9999 several times a day.

I just sent an anonymous payment for my phone bill that confirmed 15 minutes ago - https://mempool.space/tx/bc1d47736e2c9cecff996efb191406ac40c96b858170941c0f9b40cb5e04875b

AND I'M GONNA DO IT AGAIN NEXT MONTH TOO 

It is not only bitcoin payment but other cryptocurrencies.

I have just seen this on X. I think it will be true.



https://twitter.com/Ashcryptoreal/status/1771470306848170399?t=Mos0R80oSD44bjinonMJww&s=1

Government just want control when there paper fiat is anonymous. But this is rubbish because some people will still use noncustodial wallet for transactions.

Stupid law.