Today I was sent an email from Binance demanding that I verify my identity or lose the ability to trade on their platform.<p>Here's a list of what they want:<p>* full name
* date of birth
* current residential address
* scans of ID's / passport
* separate picture of my face
* facial recognition / verification (I'm guessing via a custom app or process)<p>Binance has entirely betrayed one of the pillars of the cryptocurrency movement - anonymity. Sure, you can track every transaction on the blockchain, but unless you know what wallet address corresponds to which identity, you ain't got bubkess.<p>As a result, I am leaving Binance, and I would encourage others to consider doing the same.<p>And just before anyone reaches for the age-old argument that "they are a private corporation and can do what they want", I will preemptively respond: if too many big corps engage in bad behaviour, then you are left with no place to turn to and essentially lose your digital rights, so I find that argument to be naive, short sighted, and entirely unacceptable.<p>We must demand more of the businesses that we depend on. We must hold them to a higher standard so that we are not left in the end without alternatives.<p>Fight for your rights now, or risk being controlled and silenced forever.
If their platform allows you to trade from one crypto to another or from a crypto into legal tender you begin to fall under the vast banking regulations. This requires that any movement of monies to be tracked and identified. Every country has slightly different laws around this but they are not all that different from each other. In the United States it used to be transactions of $10,000 or greater but that amount is ever shrinking and there's all kinds of caveats and addendums to make transfers of even a small amounts of money something that must be tracked with personally identifiable information.<p>If you wish to avail yourself of the privacy that cryptocurrency provides you must also avoid engaging with entities that are regulated. This regulation is quite likely entirely out of their control. They either comply or they are closed down as a company and potentially charged with criminal actions.<p>I agree that we should not support companies that willfully engage in bad behavior but in this case this behavior is legislated. Therefore if you do not support this behavior it needs to be changed through legislation. The problem is the government has for the most part given themselves unlimited ability to track and seize anything that's converted as currency under the guise of preventing criminal action and preventing money laundering. As if there is no other way to deter or catch criminal activity. But until you can convince the masses that this is a guise to track the financial transactions of individuals and has limited benefits in criminal investigations, these regulations will remain on the books.<p>People forget that the police statementality says the best way to prevent crime is to interrogate everyone as if they are a criminal until they can prove they are not.
I don't think this is specific to Binance. The SEC and Treasury are really looking at cracking down on crypto-reporting across the board. It's very unfortunate because, I agree, crypto's strongest appeals were in it's decentralization and it's anonymity. But I know that the current administration is trying to "crack down" on tax "evasion" and is proposing and implementing quite a few things that will likely make a majority of those involved unhappy. I don't think Binance is going to be the only doing this.
>Binance has betrayed the crytocurrency movement<p>I don't know about crytocurrency but cryocurrency would be some cold cash for sure.<p>Can't get much colder than that.
While anonymity may be something to strive for (I’m not going to argue that) there’s a cold reality here. They need to comply with laws to operate, and that means knowing this stuff (look up KYC, usually related to banks).<p>All the exchanges are in the same boat.
Anonymity is not and has never been "one of the pillars of the cryptocurrency movement". Privacy and Anonymity are not the same thing. And Anonymity is certainly not the same thing as De-centralization.