Bitcoin Forum

The European Union is planning a database that will assign every cryptocurrency wallet to its holder’s identity. After recently being hit hard by Terrorist activities, the EU believes a lot of the funding for terrorism is done anonymously through bitcoin.

The current anonymity means you can send payments to a wallet without your identity being known. With the planned move of the EU, this won’t be the case. EU governments will be able to attach a user ID to every transaction done within the EU zone for incoming and outgoing transactions.

You can read the full article here: https://coinidol.com/eu-planning-a-database-to-link-user-ids-to-cryptocurrency-wallets/

They can plan, but it's going to be money down the drain. They will spend time and money tracking addresses and people will spend seconds and no money to create new ones and maybe some cash on mixers.
You can even mix coins yourself with minimum effort through a simple buy/sell order on an exchange. Exchanges usually don't require people to verify if their transactions don't involve fiat and those pricks from EU would have to force exchanges to submit logs every month to be able to track the mixed funds.

Why would a terrorist use a currency like Bitcoin that can be traced to the source with the correct procedures? Most services will willingly give information to governments when terrorism were involved in the transactions, and if they resist, the courts would deal with the matter. < A Subpoena will force them to hand over the information >

These terrorist must be the dumbest people on the planet, to use a technology that can be traced. You can give someone $10 to buy a knife and to stab 20 people in a public place, why would you use Bitcoin to fund that? You send him or her on a holiday, with a expensive watch <Rolex> and when he gets here, he sells the watch at a local Pawn shop or on the street and he has funding to do whatever he or she likes.

This is just another method being used to scare people and to protect Fiat reserve currencies. They know this is bullshit, but they still blame Bitcoin for everthing that they cannot stop.

So bitcoin user will only have on btc address?
That is not ideal for someone who is into ilegal stuff lol
Infact once a bitxoin address is being used just once, some of us already will dispose the addRess to leave no trace of identity.

Its a wasteful practice but yes most of us do it.

I think they will target exchanges. They will ask for customers' data and they will link fiat money to IDs (not crypto which they obviously can do).
1984 has always been here with us.
Do your own research guys

Fighting terrorism is a good thing, but if normal people affected more than the terrorists by this fighting, that's not good. Terrorists will always find a way to bypass those measures and then only normal citizens will be suffering from them.

I personally can't imagine how this can be done in reality since one person can have unlimited number of BTC wallets.

This is just wishful thinking. The best they would be able to do is impose regulations on companies involved in cryptocurrencies.
How are they going to link Jee Yung in China to his wallet, through legislation enacted in the EU?  :)

There's already a discussion on this subject here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1750191
Maybe closing this thread and redirecting to the other one would be a good option...

Yes, that's what they will do. The positive effect on security will be exactly zero, but the true motive is something different anyway: Preparing to extort more money from EU citizens to refinance the ever growing public debt.

P2P bitcoin users will not be affected by this. So the simple recommendation is: Stay away from exchanges that ask for private information.

I believe most of us know all that. Exchanges are the weakest link of the "blockchain"  ;D ;D ;D (sorry for this joke)
I've never used an exchange that ask my private information: I have my ways to escape giving away my data (I suppose that's a must for a true bitcoiner).
We'll see how this unfolds.

Most people are aware of the fact that exchanges know who you are as they have every bit of important information about you. That's why it's important to mix your coins before they get sent to your wallets. Other than that, I only know BTC-E as a decent and major exchange that doesn't require you to sign up with any personal details. Yes, there are exchanges like Bittrex that do the same but I don't trust them at all.

Authoritarians of all stripes - fascists, communists, socialists, cronys etc - are the same the world over. They don't like freedom because it threatens their power and wealth and so they'll use just about any excuse to "regulate it".  Their motto is to "never let a good crisis go to waste." The EU is no exception here.

FIY
https://bittrex.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/215282838--Draft-Frequently-asked-questions-about-account-verification

This means Bittrex is changing its way to deal with anonymous users. They are still moving forward to it. Personally I'm still keeping a legacy account opened long ago: but I know that new users already fall into the new verification policy (basic as the first level).
Things change soon in crypto.

Enhanced accounts require users to submit scans of their identification and selfies. A selfie? What's next? A medical record to verify you're sane?
I don't know about you but if all exchanges start doing it I'm not even going to consider buying fiat. I don't trust them enough to submit all my personal data to some private exchange with low security and then worry that it can get hacked or sold by the exchange itself.

Live streamed Colonoscopy will be next to verify you by DNA.

More BS will just discourage people from converting back into fiat making it more difficult to track. And will encourage better privacy protections in he network.

I dont think this is gonna be successful because bitcoin address is easy to generate. Plus the mixers. I dont think they are be able to trace the user when they use coin mixing service. I think its applicable only on exchange. Just like coinbase. They are able to collect every personal data of their customers. For that, they can be able to monitor every transactions of their customers. But not all exchange are centralised.

Oh, well, it shows that even tiny exchanges that don't seem to play a role of importance are adapting to these policies. If this continues, I wonder how long it will take before BTC-E is going to incorporate the same verification steps. It would be sad to see that such an exchange, that I am happily using for years now, forces people to send in copies and scans and stuff. I think it will cost them a lot customers/traders as they are there for a reason..

the problem is they can make it illegal to do otherwise, i.e. only certain "untainted" coins can be accepted by institutions and shops etc.
also there is not a big deal to install their own mixer and make it legit without you realising it is connected to the goverment,all it takes is some time,money and advertising
this is a bigger problem than you would think,bitcoin should never step into a grey legal area-it will affect adoption and price greatly

Who better to guard the chickens than the foxes?