So, Elizabeth Warren just dropped a new bipartisan bill aimed at hitting crypto money laundering hard. Here are some key points from the legislation:
- The bill would prevent banks and financial institutions from using or dealing with anonymity-boosting tech like crypto mixers. They can't handle any digital assets that have gone through those processes.
- It expands Bank Secrecy Rules to cover digital assets. If Americans are dealing with more than $10,000 in crypto through offshore accounts, they’ll need to report that to the IRS.
- The bill pushes regulators to step up enforcement of compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act. They’ll create a process to review and check on money service businesses.
- Lastly, there’s a move to regulate digital asset ATMs more closely, requiring operators to submit and keep their kiosk addresses updated.
This is probably one of the biggest attacks in freedom of bitcoin users in the USA. So, in a nutshell, there cannot be anonymous developers, neither usage of privacy preserving cryptocurrencies (e.g., Monero, ZCash). Instead, developers must register officially and have license to operate.
Wait, there's more bureaucratic, dystopian nonsense. As written in the bill, owners of digital kiosks (lol) shall report who they are every once in a while. Running a node (Bitcoin full node, LN node etc.) is illegal otherwise. Specifically, according to the 6th page, you must submit your name, phone number, physical address and date of birth to the provided government-issued form every once in 3 months. A year after this bill is approved, the FINCEN ought to identify unlicensed node operators, and the DEA shall issue a report identifying recommendations to node operators to reduce drug trafficking.
Absolutely ridiculously oppressive. I hope the rest politicians disapprove this. I'm not in the USA, but I'm feeling that a sufficient part of the republican party won't pass this on, even though republicans are fine with government spending and other such nonsense nowadays. Ironically, one of the authors of this bill, Roger Marshall, is a republican.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/g20-wants-build-policy-consensus-crypto-assets-2022-12-14/
"The grouping comprises 19 countries and the European Union, and represents in total around 85% of the world's GDP"
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This problem is not only in the US. All countries of the world will regulate cryptocurrency payments, and the laws will be written by American legislators.
Lol. I have been saying it for a long time. I am preparing for a future where 99% of transactions are KYC.
This is going to happen at the same time as CBDC implementations. Does anyone think many people are going to protest this? I don't. This forum is not representative of society. Those of us who prefer a world with Bitcoin transactions with a good degree of privacy are few. Most people are going to applaud CBDCs and pay with them from their cell phone, while their friend/partner/whatever records them doing it to upload the video to TikTok/Instagram/whatever with the caption "My first CBDC payment WOW!". And obviously it will get a lot of likes.
It wouldn't make much sense, if it ever happened. But, a completely surveilled state neither makes sense, and we're heading towards that path.
Protesting in the streets isn't effective, and I doubt it ever was. I think we already have the tool to protest effectively, and it's this very tool they're trying to take away. I rely on the easiness of accomplishing an electronic transaction without borders, peer-to-peer. Nobody ever stopped this, even pessimistically I don't see it going extinct.
Sometimes people just naturally take the situation to their hands-- with or without restrictions.
It depends on how people's brains are polluted with propaganda. In Nigeria, with a population of almost 250 million, less than 10% have tried CBDC, the rest use cryptocurrencies or stablecoins.
In Russia, there is a shadow exchange market in almost every major city. I think that the Europeans and Americans will not obey the bankers either.