Topic: The absolute insanity Congress is writing now... - page 5. (Read 1486 times)

Can't help but notice it's usually the same predictable names attacking privacy.  The same ones who often seem to advocate restrictions on freedom in response to just about any subject.  Such people hate freedom and privacy in equal measure.  They feel compelled to attack what they cannot control.  They aren't like us.

Authoritarians will always lose here.  Pay them no mind.

The solution to only use P2P exchanges like @mindrust proposes is of course a valid strategy. However, I would warn about the mentality to simply think that "if I only use P2P, nothing will ever happen". P2P has its own challenges, for example dealing with exchange users selling "dirty" cryptocurrency, or "dirty" fiat. There are some strategies like trading only with old accounts with reputation (to prevent getting fiat coming from stolen bank accounts, for example), but liquidity on P2P can be quite low and thus the premium you pay for "good" coins or fiat can be quite high. And you have to educate yourself about the strategies. It simply isn't for everybody.

The big problem I see if such laws come through like the FinCEN proposal we discuss here is that Bitcoin becomes just less and less fungible, and this may also affect pure P2P users. If this becomes law in the US (there may be still hope it doesn't) then it is possible that it has consequences for Bitcoin user behaviour in general, even if only few people run really into legal trouble. For example, a lot of Americans will try to examine all their coins and try to exchange those which are even slightly tainted as fast as possible for "clean" coins, and even small American merchants will begin to use chain analysis to prevent to get tainted coins, or even may introduce KYC for their own safety (without being obliged to do so legally). The result could be that the premium you pay at P2P exchanges for "clean" coins from trustable users will become even higher. And other countries could follow the American example and push through similar laws.

So I think some political action isn't a bad idea, even if this involves only retweeting the HRF criticism, or pro-privacy content in general.

While there are relative few people affected directly by the use cases I listed (these are only examples), the current rise of authoritarism and populism means that a lot may be affected in the future. And thus I think it's a good idea to preventively not trust your authorities, at least not without some caution. I would thus recommend at least basic privacy strategies like using single-use-addresses for every transaction where this is possible. And of course there's also the danger of abuse by criminals if you talk or write too much about your crypto holdings and these are connected in some way to an address which was public, like @PrivacyG already wrote.

go cry that your income from mixing has disapeared in 2024
all you are interested in is promoting mixing for income.. even if it causes negative issues for others
you dont care about peoples actual privacy
and you definitely dont care about the consequences of people using mixing

yep mixing does not 100% guarantee privacy. nor does it absolve mixer users and coordinators of consequence
but you dont care, you will remain ignorant as long as you can advertise a scheme that pays you. you wont care about consequences to users nor how you pretend to promote it (with lies)

..

any way
this topics OP did not research what is actually being wrote by congress.. instead its a link to some click bait misrepresentation to cause controversy about somethings thats not even accurate..

tumbling has already been a red flag in fincen's/fatf's eyes of suspicious activity linked to suspicion of mixing.. which is a trigger rated event to highlight the possibility of mixing which is then a trigger of rating threshold of possibility of laundering

by combining a couple trigger events of lower certain suspicious rated activity that lead the mid level suspicion of mixing.
(by defining 2 separate events as equal to being the same as mixing.. is just formalising things they already did)

..

if people really want to learn the traps monitoring services use, its probably best to learn their tricks from actual sources to know how they operate to then know how to work around/avoid them.. instead of just crying that some mis representing blog poster said something that got you emotional thats not even accurate to the "privacy traps"

Hopefully, someone understood that nonsense. Fortunately, the person you were replying to didn't even try.

you dont NEED privacy. you can WANT and CHOOSE privacy but a NEED is different

much like people dont NEED the opposite. people dont NEED to tell you their full name and latest banking transactions
its not "privacy" to not reveal full name and latest bank statement, its just doing my own thing unintruded

you cant say one thing needs reinforcing due to the opposite will occur otherwise
even without layers of privacy people dont then need to reveal their biography

you pretending without "privacy" peoples whole lives are available is untrue
people without structured privacy still have the choice and desire of what they reveal or not reveal

mixing is not a 100% guarantee of privacy neither, infact it makes you more noticeable to the entities you wish to hide from, yes it may take them more time and effort to undo your efforts of hiding, but mixing is not a 100% guaranteed evasion method

i personally dont use mixers yet no one knows my real birth certified name or where my main stash of coin is.
so pretending people NEED a mixer, is different from those who CHOOSE or WANT to use a mixer for their personal reasons

i dont need a mixer to prevent revelations of my personal life. i choose what information i reveal

In small increments, they are building a world of fear.

Where you are not using Bitcoin or Cash out of induced fear of being flagged by the Authorities.  Where even if you DO end up using Bitcoin or Cash, you have so many restrictions it becomes virtually impossible to use them without messing up at LEAST once.  The alternative is handing out absolutely every single information about yourself and who your Addresses belonged to, what your Transactions have been used for et cetera.  Paper work over paper work just so you will give up the idea of using Bitcoin at all.  We are, I would say, about 30 to 40 percent there.

They do not care about the lost Tax Revenue.  They are onto pulling as many of us as possible out of Bitcoin.

Ridiculous.  Stupid.  But the people will take it and even start questioning why we are so repulsive to such news, as seen above.  The fact that my honesty is being questioned by default only because I want Privacy is outrageous.

Let’s just tell them to fuck off by not using any of the centralized services that pay taxes to the government. It seems they’ll overregulate crypto to the point to make it unusable. At this point not complying is the only way to move forward.

Do only p2p sales with crypto like it is 2012. The gov doesn’t need to know. These retards will lose so much tax revenue because of this.

well 1st the CPU/video card/fpga/asic cost time and money to design, build and power but disregarding that for now

approx cost basis in of mining one btc ~2011 was a couple dollars.

figure tax selling at $67000 USD with cost basis of $2

-then-

figure tax selling at $67000 USD with cost basis of zero

Why is financial Privacy a non accepted social norm to you?  I heard of so many people around me holding their stash in Cash instead of Banks for Privacy reasons, does this sound like a thing only Criminals do?  Should they be suspected of crime for that?

You do you.  But stop enforcing your thoughts against our lives and choices simply because we want to have Privacy, it is very ridiculous and frustrating.  I never accused you of doing any shit with your Card money or unmixed Bitcoin, why do you portray all Privacy oriented Bitcoin users into the same category of Money Launderers or Criminals?

In a world where Cyber attacks are at the highest recorded level of occurrence AND interest for Criminals, not having Privacy may prove crucial to your own safety.  If you do not use Mixers or other Privacy enhancing tools and you own a decent stash of Bitcoin, it is enough to not pay the right attention ONCE and it could expose information you may not want to be exposed.

You want to support a local store that accepts Bitcoin by ordering from their website and paying in Bitcoin.  You pay there and years later you simply forget about the Change from that Transaction.  You use the Change along a chunk of your stash.  Before you know, the local store had been attacked and their data base stolen.  Some stranger now has the data base of the customers, their Addresses and what they purchased too.  It is a matter of time before they link the change of your Transaction to your stash of Bitcoin.  By the time you realize that, it may be too late.  Some body knows the person living there likely has a lot of Money.  You could be wrench attacked at any given time.  You could be tortured for your stash, like others have been in the past years.

Now imagine how likely it is for some body who OFTEN pays in Bitcoin at multiple stores or Service providers.

Hell.  Pretty much every body who has used Bitcoin in the past ten years has been Dust Attacked at least once.  It could lead to that exact scenario.  Or, remember the Ledger data base leak?  Or the time when random Ledger users got a suspicious 'free Ledger' in their post box?

If you want to be the fool who gets wrench attacked, go ahead.  I am not going to be the one who has to fear for their life out of a stupid mistake.

Did you ever use a Password on your phone screen so others can not mess around with it?  Do you have any phone conversation you would rather keep Private?  Do you close the curtains when you walk around naked or when you are having sex?  Do you ever use Cash just because?  Do you lock the bathroom stall door when pooping so others would not accidentally open it?  Do you ever abstain from talking about health problems regarding any part of your body because you want that to stay Private?  Have you ever closed curtains due to Privacy invasive neighbors?

If you answered Yes to any of the above, why?  Are you hiding something from the world?  Maybe you are a Terrorist in the making even!

It's not surprising that you find franky1's replies reasonable and correct.

So, you don't see any reason why an honest person would need privacy when spending bitcoin. That's not a new perspective, so don't feel unique. If you don't mind, could you share your full name and the latest banking transactions you've made over the last 12 months? It should be fairly easy. Just log in to your bank account, go to the transactions section, and you should see a "Transaction Report" that can be viewed as a PDF. Upload it on a temporary file service like this, and share it with us in here.

Probably the most retarded bill against bitcoin, good luck monitoring all of the addresses here and there because there's bound to be millions of them and I don't think that they'll have the machine and the manpower to analyze all of this, they're basically creating some really weird legislation that doesn't really help anyone, it's probably going to make things much worse for everyone involved which are the US citizens that's also invested in bitcoin. I would love to know the reason behind the passing of this, I want to understand their thinking because right now, it's unhinged in my opinion, no drop of reason whatsoever.

This is like saying honest people don't need privacy. But hey, if you think you're honest, and if you think this is a good idea, feel free to post all Bitcoin addresses you've ever used. And from now on use only 1 Bitcoin address.

and thats the rub im talking about.. to declare a loss to legally avoid/lessen your tax exposure, you have to show the proof of the 'buy high' origins and the 'sell low' receipt to then declare that loss

if you cant declare the original "buy high" then you cant declare the sell as a loss

They only tax you if you convert your crypto to fiat and you get profit with your sale, conversion. If you buy high, sell low, you will not be taxed because you get loss, not profit. No individual income from buy high, sell low and it is the same for all countries in tax.

If in any country, government tax their citizens who have loss with trading or investment, it's funny and they are too greed.

bitcoin miners?   i bet some of them make up that stuff. even though technically their cost basis is zero since they didn't pay for it.

but yeah i can confirm they do that. like if someone is trading stocks, they can mistakenly recklessly carelessly treat your cost basis as 0, why i'm not exactly sure but it happens. and pretend like you owe them an ungodly amount of money in capital gains taxes. and send you a demand letter to pay it. imagine if someone paid it. the IRS wouldn't say a thing they would just collect the money and move on...

it doesnt matter how you move crypto
as soon as you convert to fiat.. the tax man rubs his fingers together and salivates

funny part is getting lump sum with no trace, the tax man can treat that as 100% profit/gain and tax you fully.. you then have to find proof of getting crypto at certain rate, reason, time to offset some of the profit/gains to reduce, avoid tax

because it is an accepted societal norm and not only a norm but an expectation and if you don't do it you can get in to trouble. it is not an accepted or expected societal norm that i am to hide my bitcoin transactions.

that's not how modern day society works. there would be a stigma about someone that kept the door open. and other people would think there is something wrong with them.

privacy in pooping is not the same basic human right as privacy in spending money though. big difference. if you dont understand that then i don't know... maybe read franky's reply



thanks for some interesting use cases i can certainly understand each one and yet somehow i think the vast majority of people mixing their bitcoin has nothing to do with any of those. what it has to do with i have no idea other than money laundering type things. that's just my own opinion. people trying to avoid paying taxes and things like that.

however when using things that are regulated as mixing, they become instances of people intently trying to hide for many many reasons.. the funny part is when people appear elusive and try to hide, they actually get spotted and scrutinised more..

its like a bunch of people walking down mainstreet in public, people walk normally, pass-by and no one looks twice..
however the guy jutting around, dodging other people, hiding behind bushes, crawling behind parked cars, looks odd and people start to take notice.. this makes people then look more intently at the guy trying to hide.. thus defeating his own purpose

people can have many legal and lawful reasons to hide, some are just to avoid the wife finding out about the sex doll he bought with money he should have used to pay for her medical bill.. there are many innocent reasons people want to hide their funds from family or business partners that are not illegal but just embarrassing.. however if they want to do it right they need to learn how to do it properly to not cause more problems or get spotted more easily than just the normal way

i have never used a mixer or done tumbling for my main stash. yet no one can link my forum profile name to my stash even after many many years, i hide in plain sight by not doing the stupid things that get me noticed.

...

the whole scheme that CRIMINALS do to promote that normal people should mix too, is simple..
criminals want normal peoples clean coins.. and the only way to get clean coins is con/scam normal people into thinking the normal people should use mixers.. and pretend that its ok for normal people to receive dirty coins..
however the hypocrisy of this is.. if its ok and not going to cause issues for handling dirty coins.. then why would criminals be trying so hard to offload their dirty coins

...

as for the whole classifications of definitions.. this is where money services regulated and delegated to monitor their customers funds movements, the businesses dont just have a yes/no of "illegal" they have a score chart of suspicion.. where certain events, features and actions are rated as a level of suspicion  which triggers internal investigation by the money service, which then they would be eyes-on looking closer if it reaches a threshold. and if they then find more info that raises the level then it escalates
coins from a dark market has a high threshold
just mixing has a lower level
just tumbling has a lower level
just single use address, by itself has a lower level.

however the culmination of different features can add up.
but just single use+tumbling wont result in a court order to allow authorities to request all customer data of a money services customer
its a culmination of lots of data and rating that raises things to a suspicion rating of a crime they can link the customer too, to then trigger authorities to investigate and if they have enough to suspect a crime then they ask the courts for a data access request order to get all info about a money service customer or/and freeze that customers assets and access to the service

..

bitcoin is a public ledger.. there is no expectation of privacy in public
money(traditional) has never been expected to be private, nor property of the bearer. its always been scrutinised by taxmen for centuries and traditional money was patent and licenced by the kingdoms/governments of the time

bitcoin for a short period had a experience of not being defined as money/currency, and instead treated as private property(2009-2013)
however since 2014 bitcoin was treated as a currency and as such countries governmental and law authorities started gaining jurisdiction on the use of bitcoin, mainly at the gateways back to fiat, such as money service businesses

Why do you need to close the door to the bathroom stalls when ever you go to a public toilet?  Is there any thing you are hiding or why are you so secretive?  It is not such a big deal for honest people, we all poop and we all have a butt too.  Why use the door?  Keep it open!

My answer to your silly question is very simple.  Privacy.  It is one very good cause.

1) You ask for donations for a project publishing a Bitcoin address somewhere (forum, blog etc.), for example for an open source software project, and then want to buy something with them. You don't want people to see to which merchant you bought (this can be sometimes done with chain analysis).

2) You live in a dictatorship and try to set up an opposition movement. There are people willing to donate to you. Both the donors and you as the movement leader will need a mixer or another privacy enhancing tech to stay undetected. More than 50% of the world population lives in countries where opposition activity can be dangerous, so this does not only apply to few people.

3) You are not living in a dictatorship, but are an activist for a group which does something which can be seen as controversial even if it's fully legal. For example, you could be part of a minority religious group, a LGBT activist group, a group fighting against excessive ecologism, a pro-israel or pro-palestine group, a Feminist or Masculist or Trans group, or even somebody fighting against some strange conspiracy etc. (you see I made an effort to not concentrate on a single "political current" here ) It's none of the business of anybody to know the money flows of the persons in these groups as long as they don't do anything illegal, but they are often confronted with doxxing, threats and hatred, so they have more reasons to care about privacy as much as possible.

4) You're living in a democracy which suddenly, e.g. due to an election where a populist wins, your authorities become much less trustable. Happened in a lot of countries (Venezuela, Tunisia, Russia 20 years ago, maybe even India ...). So everything in use case 2 is also valid for you, even if you're only slightly sympathysing with opposition movements.

I'm sure that there are many, many more use cases.

For 1) you could in theory also use a centralized exchange, for 2) it's not an option at all because you can't trust your authorities, and for 3) it may be not a good idea either, depending on the subject and the country. But what if you simply don't want to deal with KYC? KYC can be considered dangerous because it can enable criminals to steal your identity. Some, including me, are in some cases accepting that risk. But it's perfectly legitimate to outright reject it.

And don't forget that one of Bitcoin's USPs is censorship resistance. This is above all crucial for the use case 2, but for all other cases too. You can't have censorship resistance if Bitcoin becomes less fungible due to all the tainting.