US plans to criminalize Bitcoin use without sender's SSN

So, the House of Representatives is set to vote on the 27th about a new rule that would force anyone receiving Bitcoin (and other crypto) to report the sender’s social security number, name, birth date, address, and job if the total exceeds $10,000 from a single source (like Binance, CoinBase, PayPal, etc.). If you don’t comply, it’s a FELONY! This basically puts a ban on cryptocurrencies in the US unless they go through these big companies. You should reach out to your House representative and urge them to vote against this "infrastructure bill". And there’s more terrible stuff in this bill, like banning crypto mining and limiting software development. Things are looking grim for the crypto scene with this bill getting worse and worse, and it seems like no one is raising a fuss about it... Check out this detailed explanation in a reddit post (shoutout to dkbit98):

Funnily enough, these fossils in the government actually think they're helping the United States. If anything, they're pushing demand and innovation towards other countries. We really need people in the board who actually knows this stuff, rather than these guys that I wouldn't even be surprised if some of them couldn't operate a modern computer properly.

This is a very weak move from congress that could easily be bypassed by the thing they are trying to prohibit with this law: Money Laundering. Since this bill only applies to transactions that exceed the $10,000 threshold per OP's post. This means people could just launder the transfer even more making this law even harder to impose. Sometimes the efforts won't count especially if a lot of money will be used to mobilize this if it ever getsthe chance to be passed as a full-fledged law. What transpired during their court discussion last 2018 with Mark Zuckerberg is enough evidence that the guys some of us had allowed to be on the Senate don't know jackshit about anything regarding the internet. Even the simple process of logging into an account seemed so complex that they can't wrap their measly brains around. How can we trust these people to impose such a bold move and effectively execute it?

They are trying so hard to bar people from entering the cryptospace, and leaving their dear fiat in the dust. Such a bill would only force people to find ways and avoid the repercussions as hard as they could rather than do this crazy stuff that the lawmakers are trying to impose. The more they restrict people into doing something, the more the people try hard and get what they want. The US should be the ones leading the charge towards innovation and crypto development but no, they just want to lag behind other countries and focus on other mundane things that will just make things hard for their people.

crypto companies will move out of US if they continue to grip. social security number sent to some is danger. these men didnt think of what this could do. surely this will not be approved. the government is having a hard time coming up with solutions because obviously they don't control BTC.

My first thought was how to determine if the recipient was a citizen. Is it naïve of me to think that bitcoin’s anonymity plays an important role in being asked to police it, that I think it’s easy to get away with it

Unfortunately, I could not really sense that there is a united and solid voice of crypto holders, enthusiasts and supporters in the USA. I am suggesting that there should be more coherence in fighting and standing to this attempt to make the USA another police state and now controlling Bitcoin as if taxing is not enough. I am hoping this bill will not be approved as is. This is already an intrusion into people's freedom and privacy.

That would be excellent news if it came true. In fact a much better news would be if US outright banned bitcoin and prevented everyone from going near it. That simply means more of this scarce currency for the rest of the world, specially those fast developing countries that are growing their economy. More importantly this would be keeping bitcoin out of the pockets of corrupt American corporations and billionaires that have been trying to accumulate it, and possibly corrupt the ecosystem in the near future. In a decade from now when the balance of power (in all aspects including economical) is shifted, America will be left behind.

Privacy concern of course, but this is probably aimed at trying to target money launderers or tax evaders. Now that USD is failing miserably with high inflation rates, they want to target those that are relying on Bitcoin to protect their wealth, or day to day users as a currency. US politicians couldn't spell bitcoin so expect them to vote on whatever would stagnate crypto growth so they can milk it for every ounce of revenue possible.

That is indeed true. I don't know how the tech giant and modernised country like USA is not accepting the bitcoin with full fledge and what can I say wholeheartedly? They should be the one putting an example of modern country around the world but they are just going in the old deep shit and making the world laugh at them. Government of US can make miracles if they invent proper use of blockchain and bitcoin. They are the richest of all yet do not want their peeps to use the bitcoin and bring more money into the country. Considering that biggest employers of tech giants are in the USA, they should start the informal payment system via bitcoin wallets and let peep use it so that they can bring more investors to the crypto space and develop their country to higher dimensions. But all they wanna do is keep it away from the rich of "americans".

I am not surprised by this. They want to control Bitcoin in the same way they control banking transactions, whether they can is another thing. Don't be surprised if they lower it to $600, as they want to do with bank transactions: The IRS would know more about our bank accounts with new legislation. What's strange to me is that these two pieces of news came out at the same time and have the $10k threshold for Bitcoin.

And people still stupidly believe America is the home of the free. That is an absolute joke. There is already mass economic surveillance and it continues to get worse. How many terrorists and money launderers have they caught after enacting all these KYC/AML regulations? How many people are they protecting by limiting their access to cryptocurrency?

There were speculations about how the Biden government is going to be more friendly towards the cryptocurrencies like bitcoins and we do see that now, that it's not going to happen. This is stripping the freedom away from people, exact opposite of what the US might portray itself to be. They do worse in the papers but they do know how to keep up the appearances therefore at the end of the day all this political drama is only bad for the people living there and also the people it would affect in the long term. - people have to protest / safe protest with regards to covid - voice their opinions - make sure they involve political leaders who are + for Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies Might be hard to do but I do believe it can be done. Hopefully the government will consider for real what they are doing. -

Deliberately transacting specific amounts in an attempt to evade the threshold is known as "structuring". This is a crime in the fiat system, and will presumably also be a crime for bitcoin with this new legislation. Harder to sneak things through in an unrelated bill when they make more major changes. Easier for them to sneak this through under the pretense of "just making it the same as fiat", and then sneak through lowering the threshold in some healthcare bill or something further down the line. What the US tells people it is and what is actually is are two very different things. The US has been rapidly falling down the global rankings for individual freedom and civil liberties for years now.

I don't think no one believes that BS anymore, probably the brainwashed and ignorant people are still believing that stuff, George Carlin has predicted this a long time ago, that the government is going to go after the social security.

One thing that I wonder is how will the US government track the bitcoin payments and transactions if the sender never transacts with an exchange where KYC might have been done? tracking a user might be very difficult.. Am i missing something?

There are lots of ways to de-anonymize someone who is using bitcoin. It you use any centralized exchange, even without completing KYC, then you should assume they will report your email address, IP address, and other identifying information to the government. If you pay anyone using a centralized payment processor such as BitPay, then they will also report the same information along with details of any transactions you make. Perhaps you gave out your real name and address as part of buying some goods online, and that bitcoin address can now be linked to your and then linked in turn to other addresses which you use. Perhaps you used your email address to sign up for a gambling site. Perhaps you left a bitcoin address somewhere on your social media profiles. Perhaps you shared a bitcoin address via a non-encrypted email provider. Perhaps you used a web wallet. The list is endless. The US government also spend a lot of money hiring services such as Coinbase Analytics, CipherTrace, and Chainalysis, whose sole purpose is to use blockchain analysis combined with data obtained from other sources including exchange reporting, social media, database leaks, etc., to deanonymize users and addresses.

It's common knowledge that Bitcoin isn't really anonymous, but pseudonymous. And "getting away with it" is probably not as easy as you think, especially for the common folk who frequently interacts with centralized KYC exchanges. Have you sent bitcoin to/from a centralized KYC exchange? Yep, your non-custodial wallet is automatically affiliated with your personal info.

Yes USA, we already know from day 1 your bankers want to ban crypto around the world... For now they are successful on forcing global trading to be held in $ so they can collect their taxes. You can bend the laws to ban crypto trading in US, but sooner or later swallowed by China and EU if you dont start accepting cryptocurrency.

I assume you are from the US so you have first-hand information - but I have read in some media that some people like EM, Saylor, Dorsey, and other prominent business people and investors are publicly protesting against such measures. Still, I'm surprised that people in the US who are very familiar with cryptocurrencies (and many studies claim that's exactly the case) don't really make more noise - although it's hard to expect people to protest in public on the street. I may be wrong, but ES has discovered that three-letter agencies have been obsessed with blockchain monitoring and user identification long before Bitcoin became known to the general public, and that their tools are far more advanced than those developed by private companies. I may be missing something, but why hire someone if you have something that has already been paid for with taxpayers' money - or are such tools still reserved only for some sophisticated spying?