I’m amazed by how short sighted most of the comments here are.<p>When it comes to large financial operations, society has clearly chosen transparency over privacy. Cause guess what, tax evasion, money laundering, political fixing, terrorism financing are things that exist and really are hurtful to our economies.<p>Stop fantasizing that the government cares about the shit you buy. This is not about you.<p>And Bitcoin’s anonymity is not a feature of blockchain and never has been. There is the wallet, but who holds the wallet is not part of the protocol.<p>You can’t show up in a bank with a bucket load of $100 bills and open an anonymous bank account. Well you shouldn’t be able to with bitcoins either.
That's why the move to decentralized everything.<p>This total control nonsense will eventually end and these dinosaur idiots will stuck with their own destructive ideas
<i>"The new rules would also prohibit providing anonymous crypto-asset wallets."</i><p>That's awful. Hosted wallets are an invitation for "exchanges" to steal.
Its worth reading the original press release[1]<p>Relevant section:<p>"At present, only certain categories of crypto-asset service providers are included in the scope of EU AML/CFT rules. The proposed reform will extend these rules to the entire crypto sector, obliging all service providers to conduct due diligence on their customers. Today's amendments will ensure full traceability of crypto-asset transfers, such as Bitcoin, and will allow for prevention and detection of their possible use for money laundering or terrorism financing. In addition, anonymous crypto asset wallets will be prohibited, fully applying EU AML/CFT rules to the crypto sector."<p>"In addition, providing anonymous crypto-asset wallets will be prohibited, just as anonymous bank accounts are already prohibited by EU AML/CFT rules."<p><a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_3690" rel="nofollow">https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_...</a><p>Edit: More content.
I am a little shocked at the policy and coalition building blindness here:<p>1) The KYC/AML/CFT burden is high for financial institutions, too, it is not like they want to spend all that money.<p>2) The efficacy of the measures is not uncontested by academia, regulators, and financial actors.<p>3) The CBDC discussions tend to have a thread on anonymous wallets, so why not for other things, too? Not like every low value artwork is government registered.<p>What does not work is open defiance, because if policy wants it can come for "you". Usually easier to go for the person but do not underestimate the effect of committing billions to software disruption either.<p>There are valid policy and regulatory points to made about what exchanges people should have anonymously and the pendulum on financial regulation is probably just at one of its peaks...
>> The new rules would also prohibit providing anonymous crypto-asset wallets.<p>Where should I send my Ledger to so i can be a good, obedient citizen and be compliant with this law?
>The new rules would also prohibit providing anonymous crypto-asset wallets.<p>As a business/service, or in general? If the latter, then it's literally a ban on cryptography.
I recently tried to figure out how to transfer some GBP in to a crypto asset and couldn't find a way to do so without losing 3% or more.<p>Direct GBP pairings didn't exist, so choices were either go through a USD denominated service or through multiple pairings, losing a high % each time and/or gas fees in uniswap etc.<p>None of the forex efficient services like Wise or Revolut will wire money to US crypto exchanges.<p>In the end I didn't bother. People really underestimate how quickly regulators can snuff out mainstream crypto.
I suspect very few American crypto enthusiasts are reporting their gains to the IRS. Who wants to pay taxes right? I guess someone else can pay for the roads and bridges we drive on.
Hmm the whole way bitcoin is set up is tailored to making this impossible. Anyone can write a wallet program and create a private key.<p>Of course when converting to Fiat money they have a chance to ask for ID but I don't see this happening with bitcoin to bitcoin transactions unless the whole protocol is changed around.
If anybody wants to read the fine-print for this proposal: <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/finance/docs/law/210720-proposal-funds-transfers_en.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://ec.europa.eu/finance/docs/law/210720-proposal-funds-...</a>
I think total traceability would be fair, if it was truly total. But the state is gonna scramble all their addresses and transactions, leaving only the citizens unprotected in the open. Otherwise they (the state) themself would become transparent and suddenly people could find out where their tax money actually went.<p>Corruption anyone?
I guess free promotion for Monero[1]. It's a shame they don't support anonymous smart contracts and don't even plan to.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/monero-project/monero" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/monero-project/monero</a>
> The new rules would also prohibit providing anonymous crypto-asset wallets.<p>Does that include open source wallets that you can run in your own computer, like Electrum?
> a company transferring crypto-assets for a customer would be obliged to include their name, address, date of birth and account number, and the name of the recipient<p>guess what, Mr. Commissionaire? Bitcoin isn't a company and you don't need to ask companies to transfer crypto assets<p>edit: this just shows how little power they have over the network, so they will tyrannise the middlemen instead
Bitcoins are not really fungible. There are already services that provide "fresh, minted straight to your wallet with no history" bitcoins, which cost more than normal "used" bitcoins.
So this is just going to apply to exchanges operating inside the EU right? This will only make bitcoin transfers to and from custodians more traceable.
I'm ok with this. Ideally private persons should have an allowance of around 5.000€ (or so) per month in privacy coin usage, where an invoice is the only traceable thing, and everything above that amount should be fully transparent to the authorities (IRS), and pseudoanonymously visible to the public, for journalists to be detectable.<p>Buy a car? -> IRS can see it. Buy a home? -> IRS can see it. Buy a Smartphone? -> None of anyone's business.<p>Companies on the other hand should have no such privacy allowance, unless they request and register it with the government and are forced to report any transaction made by them, where the level of detail of the transaction may vary (ie to hide the recipient of a weapons transaction, governments wouldn't approve otherwise, since they like to do shady stuff). The more detail is hidden, the more suspect the transaction will become, but will not appear anywhere public.<p>I'm not sure how feasible this is, but this would be somewhat similar to the distinction of cash and electronic transactions, with far better control on the amount of spendable cash and a good visibility of the transactions to the IRS.
Cryptocurrency financial crimes are often masked as a technical issue inherent to decentralized, trustless networks rather than the truth; they are issues inherent to centralized, trustful systems.[a] Transfers within the blockchain are already perfectly traceable. Perfect traceability is the reason for the blockchains being. It is the interface between the blockchains and traditional finance where this problem lies.<p>[a] The history of finance is the history of financial crime. Jews starting banks because of Christian usury laws, the Medici sidestepping the monetary power of the church and kingdoms, etc.
What about central banks themselves sending bitcoin to each other. Maybe they don’t want to announce to the rest of the world which country they are sending money to. What about dictators of sovereign nations wanting to embezzle money out of their country ? unless there is already a global order, but one with eu running the show instead of the us ? Questionable !
I traced the definitions a bit and it applies to:<p>" (8)‘crypto-asset service provider’ means any person whose occupation or business is the provision of one or more crypto-asset services to third parties on a professional basis; "<p>"‘crypto-asset service’ means any of the services and activities listed below relating to any crypto-asset:<p>(a)the custody and administration of crypto-assets on behalf of third parties;
(b)the operation of a trading platform for crypto-assets;
(c)the exchange of crypto-assets for fiat currency that is legal tender;
(d)the exchange of crypto-assets for other crypto-assets;
(e)the execution of orders for crypto-assets on behalf of third parties;
(f)placing of crypto-assets;
(g)the reception and transmission of orders for crypto-assets on behalf of third parties
(h)providing advice on crypto-assets; "<p>which is extremely broad. In particular<p>'" (14)‘the execution of orders for crypto-assets on behalf of third parties’ means concluding agreements to buy or to sell one or more crypto-assets or to subscribe for one or more crypto-assets on behalf of third parties; "<p>is the most worrying - it appears to make block generation itself illegal (because of the kyc requirements) on any blockchain that can do anything more than simple transfers (which includes even bitcoin), because every transaction could be a dex swap of some type, knowingly or unknowingly to the block generator.<p>On the other hand, the additional point is<p>"Crypto-asset service providers that are authorised to execute orders for crypto-assets on behalf of third parties shall take all necessary steps to obtain, when executing orders, the best possible result for their clients taking into account the best execution factors of price, costs, speed, likelihood of execution and settlement, size, nature or any other consideration relevant to the execution of the order, unless the crypto-asset service provider concerned executes orders for crypto-assets following specific instructions given by its clients."<p>so clearly the intention was to regulate cexes, but the definition language is dangerously broad. If interpreted in the most strict way, it would basically make all blockchains that can't run on anonymous home nodes force every user to kyc - while anonymous home nodes would break the law, it would be unenforceable without China-style network filtering at least.<p><a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52020PC0593&from=EN" rel="nofollow">https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...</a>
This is actually a great idea because the lack of KYC in cryptocurrency is holding the technology back a lot as no serious financial service company can adopt it
i'm shocked how ignorant these lawmakers are, trying to gain control over a <i>decentralised</i> structure<p>nobody asked them for this and even if this change ends up in bitcoin's core, it will ultimately fail to reach consensus<p>our wallets are none of your business, EU, get out!
The only thing stunning about this, is how anyone ever could've believed that cryptocurrencies would not end in the dystopian future of a government knowing every single transaction of yours plus being able to confiscate every single e-penny at will.
> The new rules would also prohibit providing anonymous crypto-asset wallets.<p>When you drill this down, it seems they are really outlawing certain math.
The regulators still think they can regulate this stuff. They can regulate <i>you</i>, but only if you let them. What this stuff allows for is that if you want to be unregulated, you can.
Well, Bitcoin and other crypto garbage should be banned. It’s already obvious that it’s mostly used for money laundering and price gambling. It’s very environmentally unfriendly, and non efficient piece of technology.