The headline is misleading. This is a Reuters reporter reporting that some ministers are planning to discuss non-bank methods of money transfer at the upcoming emergency meeting. The report seems to get it's information from a "draft conclusion" document, but does not reference it.<p>The headline suggests the EU has already decided to clamp down on Bitcoin, but it is far from clear to me that it will even be discussed. All we know is that some unnamed officials want to talk about it (together with transfers of precious metals, etc).
Good timing. Yesterday, the UK Treasury released an official document stating that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have the lowest risk and lowest likelihood of money laundering amongst the areas of finance they studied. Guess who came first, Banks. Good job HSBC! You have laundered more money ever then the entire cryptocurrency industry is worth... 10x over<p><a href="http://www.coindesk.com/uk-treasury-digital-currencies-low-money-laundering-risk/" rel="nofollow">http://www.coindesk.com/uk-treasury-digital-currencies-low-m...</a><p>HM Treasury link to the National Risk Assessment carried out by the Home Office:
<a href="https://www.scribd.com/doc/290214176/UK-NRA-October-2015-Final-Web" rel="nofollow">https://www.scribd.com/doc/290214176/UK-NRA-October-2015-Fin...</a>
Given how extremely traceable bitcoin payments are, I'm pretty surprised that they're not <i>trying</i> to get Bad People to use Bitcoin, whether publicly or behind-the-scenes.<p>I mean, in a way, maybe this is what this story is all about: a great big advertisement saying "Come use this <i>completely anonymous</i> payment system," with a sly nudge and a wink because bitcoin's nothing of the sort.<p>Just imagine: a plot is discovered, payment details made via bitcoin stumbled upon - and now you have a long list of <i>every transaction</i> those people have ever made using Bitcoin!<p>(for the inevitable bitcoin cult members wanting to chime in about "tumbling" or "fog" services, aka bitcoin money launderers, 1. they're still traceable and 2. there's not enough money going through them to successfully launder a four-digit amount, let alone anything greater.)
I didn't see in this article where they actually gave a valid reason for the crack down. Is there evidence that the funds for these attacks, or any others, originated from bitcoins?<p>The initial reaction of my inner knee-jerk skeptic says this is another example of those in power, this time banksters, not letting a good crisis go to waste.
<i>sigh</i> this /feels/ like it's in the same vein as "ban encryption". As in "we have no proof this is happening but the Paris attacks give us a window where we can push through whatever BS we want and silence any critics with 'Do you want this to happen again?'"
So is this a case of <i>"never let a serious crisis go to waste"</i>, or <i>"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this"</i>?
Check out the book "Money: The Unauthorized Biography". It does an excellent job making an argument that a sovereign that loses control of the primary currency loses control of political primacy. This isn't just about terrorism or money laundering. It's very much about political power.<p>review 1: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/books/review/money-by-felix-martin.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/books/review/money-by-feli...</a><p>review 2: <a href="http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/book-review-money-unauthorized-biography" rel="nofollow">http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/book-review-mone...</a><p>review 3: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/08/money-the-unauthorised-biography-by-felix-martin-review" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/08/money-the-unaut...</a>
More importantly than their intent, exactly how do they expect to enforce this new "policy"? It seems to me to be as enforceable as banning individual to individual cash transactions. Good luck with that.
Will they also clamp down on Transferwise?<p>The fallacy here is, Bitcoin doesn't actually <i>move</i> money. It can only move <i>ownership</i> of money. If I want to finance terrorism, there must already be someone with e.g. $1M where I want it (in Islamic State), so that I can trade 3000 BTC with him/her.
It looks to me more like this was something that was already planned and now they're using the Paris attacks as an excuse. Bitcoin is a lot less anonymous than cash, since everyone can follow who pays what to whom, and it's often possible to tie a wallet to an identity.
Before they had the "pedonazis", now they have the terrorists to justify whatever they want to ban.<p>Since the terrorists used cars for their attacks (there was even mention of a Volkswagen Polo involvement) I propose we ban cars for our collective safety.<p>I wonder, did the terrorists ever used cash, a debit or credit card ? Maybe we should ban this too then.
Perhaps we should be looking at GNU Taler (<a href="https://taler.net/" rel="nofollow">https://taler.net/</a>) instead. They're supposed to provide personal liberty and many of the other benefits of crypto currencies, but without criminal security.
So it goes. Terror attacks provide opportunities for special interest groups to advance their agenda while public is frightened and irrational. Makes you think about the implicit beneficiaries of terrorism, doesn't it?
EU should be focusing on the funders, but social repercussions would be negative towards certain groups.<p>I mean, if the payment process was the problem, they should ban money.
How much funding is really needed? They talked about this after Sept 11, but that always seemed like a rather cheap thing to pull off. Certainly "bootstrappable" given a few dedicated people. Some flight sim time, perhaps a few lessons to get some insight into ops, and uh, go? Really, the creative spark and meeting of a few collaborators was the only hard part.<p>How much funding did Breivik need?
So we shouldn't let refugees in, even though no refugees were part of recent terrorist events.<p>We should outlaw encryption, even though the attack was planned with unencrypted off the shelf technology.<p>We should crack down on bitcoin, even though the attack wasn't funded with bitcoin.<p>Do lobbying groups just wait for this kind of thing to happen? It seems completely ridiculous to me.<p>Then again, I'm not afraid.
Terrorists have traditionally raised their own local funds through organized crime. They kidnap for ransom, extort businesses and target drug dealers and other black markets in their neighbourhoods to jack and tax for money. Al Qaeda in Iraq started as highwaymen robbing commercial trucks and assassins for hire, the realIRA group robs and kills dealers, 70s terrorists robbed armored cars and banks, ect. One of the Boston bombers jacked and murdered some local drug dealers and cops wrote it off as common gang crime.<p>Since they already are criminals doesn't seem that any money laundering crackdown will make any difference, they will just extort somebody else to receive their money through all these regulation hoops they specialize in being thugs.
I don't think it's about money laundering, which isn't even mentioned in the article. With Bitcoin, governments can't order anyone to freeze the accounts like they can with a bank. That makes it harder to prevent terrorists from accessing funds.
What is the evidence here. If i were a terrorist i would avoid any online / electronic "anonymous" transfer method like the plague. Good old print oil money is the best.
I assume this is because they found the vast majority of terrorism funding is done through Bitcoin, and not just another knee-jerk reaction to "crypto" - right?!
Never underestimate the money laundering "bandwidth" of a shipping container full of cash crossing the oceans[1]<p>[1]<a href="http://people.exeter.ac.uk/watupman/undergrad/ron/methods%20and%20stages.htm" rel="nofollow">http://people.exeter.ac.uk/watupman/undergrad/ron/methods%20...</a>
This is so stupid do they really think that terrorists care about their own privacy when they know that they are not going to come out of the attack alive.<p>And if they believe that they are going to catch the activity before the attack happens they are smoking crack.<p>They signal to noise ratio is just too high.<p>Plus they can always just use cash.
Here's the non mobile link<p><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/19/us-france-shoooting-eu-terrorism-funding-idUSKCN0T81BW20151119" rel="nofollow">http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/19/us-france-shoootin...</a>
What can we do to counter this and teach them a lesson so this does not happen again?<p>Where is our community long term planning?<p>They (people that nobody voted for doing what they do) are engaged in this unrightful activity without no punishment in sight. This is wrong.
Bitcoin is not anonymous. Something must be done to disabuse journalists of this notion!<p>It's misinformation and particularly dangerous for people who need actually anonymous payments like dissidents living under oppressive regimes.
RIP localbitcoin.com?<p>As of right now individuals can trade bitcoin through via personal bank transfers thanks to sites like this. I see this being squeezed to death eventually, which is a real shame.
Quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever read on here. I hate to be cliche, but to quote Chomsky, "Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it". Regardless, the CIA and Mossad didn't use bitcoin to finance ISIS.