Comment by 8organicbits

Comment by 8organicbits 18 hours ago

22 replies

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There's a conflict between Bitcoin as a public ledger, privacy, and money laundering.

With a bank you can have anti-money laundering and bank secrecy. Transaction are known by the bank, can be subject to subpoena or automatic reporting, but are non-public.

If you want privacy on Bitcoin you need to do things that look a lot like money laundering. Governments banning money laundering isn't a surprise. The value of Bitcoin, if transactions are fully public and attributable to pseudonyms, is questionable.

In some ways, the problem Bitcoin has is that it is inflexible. Governments want to change the rules in finance from time to time, traditional finance adapts.

JumpCrisscross 16 hours ago

> There's a conflict between Bitcoin as a public ledger, privacy, and money laundering

There is, to be fair, a legitimate debate to be had about dismantling our anti-money laundering infrastructure.

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  • Arainach 14 hours ago

    No, there really isn't. Money laundering has been a huge problem enabling all sorts of crimes and issues. There is no debate to be had on the benefits of prohibiting it, and you have to be very deep in the Silicon Valley rabbit hole to think even 5% of the population of any nation would support doing away with those rules.

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    • JumpCrisscross 13 hours ago

      > there really isn't. Money laundering has been a huge problem enabling all sorts of crimes and issues

      To be clear, I think there should be limits. I also think a lot of AML is theatrical.

      Where it’s not is where large volumes can be moved. Less emphasis on cash. More on offshore accounts, tumblers and high-volume wallets.

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    • ethanwillis 8 hours ago

      Except that money laundering is allowable for some, but not all.

      Don't pretend the AML rules are enforced fairly and evenly.

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skeezyboy 16 hours ago

>If you want privacy on Bitcoin

its like html being using for full blown applications.... its the wrong application of the tech. If you dont want people to see where you send stuff why would you pick a technology designed to do that?

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chain030 18 hours ago

Essentially decentralisation sounds nice, but doesnt work in practice.

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  • ddtaylor 17 hours ago

    Most governments aren't decentralized in their structure, which causes the "problem". If you have private entities that coordinate with each other it works quite well, but the world is very used to big centralized governments that "solve" all their problems.

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    • chain030 17 hours ago

      And, so what? You've posted a whole load of nothing.

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      • ddtaylor 15 hours ago

        It's a pretty direct response to your claim that "decentralisation sounds nice, but doesn't work in practice". Decentralization has worked in practice many times in many ways.

        Also, you can have reputability AND decentralization, that's actually a fundamental component of how any Blockchain system works. When you mine a block you sign it to ensure nobody else can resubmit your work and take credit.

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  • fsflover 17 hours ago

    Did you hear about the Internet?

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    • lokar 16 hours ago

      Crime is pretty heavily regulated on the Internet, has been for years. If that regulation had been impossible, it would not have been allowed to grow, and would have been shut down / banned.

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    • chain030 17 hours ago

      The internet for the average person has converged to a handful of products and services.

      Your point being?

      People prefer centralised stuff since it takes care a lot of stuff for them. They dont actually care all that much about technology that yield decentralised outcomes. I know that may be difficult for many here to comperehend.

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      • fsflover 16 hours ago

        People prefer centralized services until they enshittify, after which people move to the next thing, thanks to the decentralization.

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  • eof 17 hours ago

    Bitcoin, tor, bittorrent are all perfect examples of decentralization simply not working in practice

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    • ddtaylor 15 hours ago

      It's been terrible that BitTorrent doesn't work anymore. I can only download 10TB of all the movies and TV shows our family has ever wanted spanning 60 years. It has to run off this massive server in the closest as big as our cat! Sucks our grandma can't access it from across the country via Tailscale and a bit of DNS abuse.

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    • atomic128 15 hours ago

      I can't tell if you are being sarcastic. Obviously Bitcoin doesn't "work" for any purpose. But in contrast, Tor obviously works. Here are constantly updating HTTP response dumps from the Tor hidden service ecosystem: https://rnsaffn.com/zg4/ (NSFW) There is a lot happening inside the Tor network.

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