Bitcoin Forum

This I believe may affect Bitcoin, at least as we know it so far:

"In particular, the EU would ban anonymous crypto asset wallets, according to an EU fact sheet, with the European Commission saying that systems like Bitcoin should be governed by the same rules as regular bank wire transfers." (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-20/eu-proposes-ban-on-anonymous-cryptocurrency-transactions)

In other words, for each transaction they want to identify the user who sends and the user who receives the transaction, which is easy if one of the parties is a registered exchange user. If the other party is not identified, the transaction is blocked.

I don't know how those who have their funds in hardware wallets and don't want to identify themselves would be. I suppose that at least they would be very limited in their ability to send funds. And then banning anonymous wallets is another blow to privacy.

I don't know what you think about how this could end up.

Same old, same old. "Money laundering and terrorism" is always used as an excuse to gain more control over the people.

I agree.

But what I would be interested to know especially from more knowledgeable people like you is if you think this will be implemented and if it will indeed greatly limit the privacy and ability to transact for users who have their funds in hardware or paper wallets and don't want to identify themselves.

Fiat is a serious problem, then, because most money laundering is carried out using cash. And don't think that abolishing cash would help either. Large amounts of electronic money are laundered via corporate networks and international transfers through tax havens.

I guess what that means is that they want people's real name to be attached to all of their transactions. It does not work that way in decentralized public and trustless cryptocurrency. Refusing users from using the anonymity feature will leave them vulnerable to attacks/risks. It's not a good thing to expose innocent people to danger.

I guess this can solved in a way that benefits both parties (users & governments). People could simply have their real identities verified, thoroughly encrypted and stored in decentralized manner. Verified users can have tiny Blue checkmark close to their crypto addresses while they remain anonymous. Whenever a verified user commits serious crime, his/her identity can be unmasked... Problem solved without violating People's right to privacy and anonymity.
By the way,  where I'm from, we don't usually tell people our names when we want to buy things from them

I'm required to submit my holdings to taxes anyway, but they don't ask for addresses. It's going to be a lot more work though.

I'm pretty sure none of them believes terrorists who want to buy AK-47s are going to be stopped by this, so the real motives must be towards gaining more power for themselves. And that's the part I dislike most.

That's cute. I also want world peace and end world hunger, but since I'm not running for Miss World, I know it won't happen.

I'm required to pay taxes only on the fiat I withdraw from exchanges, so the agencies may not know certainly the amount of my holdings.
If in 5 years I want to cash in all my crypto, will they consider me a terrorist? I hope that the legislation will not be that bad.

My guess is the burden of proof will be on you. My bank already wants to know far more than I'm comfortable with, but: "cooperate or lose your account".
All that did was make me realize even more how much we need Bitcoin!

They can not do it when terrorists are buying AK47 using cash but now they are going to because blockchain is traceable, but the kind of authority they will acquire is something we can't trust.  But they will try, it's interesting to see how they will do this.  Limiting transactions below 10,000 euros ($11,800) i guess are not required.

Do they mean that wallets like Bitcoin Core or Electrum?

This is how banking works. They are private businesses and only care about themselves.
And I guess that hoping that politicians will give better laws is rather stupid from my side.
So yeah, maybe there will be enough businesses accepting bitcoin directly (and hopefully they won't be too picky about the source wallets also).

Yea I guess, try fixing the current system which is riddled with the problems you're "trying" to fix before actually entering the decentralized system. Sheesh, it's like putting the cart before the horse. It wouldn't end up well imo, bans have always been there and yet people always find a way to bypass it if they really want to. If it was only a single person or two, then maybe it could be stopped, but the entire community wanting to use it? They'd end up finding a hole sooner or later. Might as well help in managing it properly and attacking the right area instead of a front like this imo.

That's just laughable. What are they going to do: charge criminals for smuggling €100 million worth of cocaine, with an additional charge for accepting cash money?

Maybe in the past but right now, I think that launderers are trying their luck with cryptocurrency because of the advent rise of privacy coins so I don't think that it's not just fiat anymore but also cryptocurrencies and we have to be really proactive when it comes to this kind of thing. I mean no matter how we don't like it, terrorism is much more problem.

Does anyone remember the facial recognition technology London had that could only pick up white men so it got scrapped (due to having only 30% accuracy of the people it saw). That was a recent development the UK went ahead with and the EU banned from the start... This'll probably go like that.


Realistically, most EU countries have terratories outside of the EU so I think that's going to cause a bit of a problem (they're normally implemented as tax havens or with looser laws too). People will just go there if they want to money launder, a return flight - at most - is €2400 i dont think that's a deterrent (unless you're one of the nordics then it's probably a €30 ferry ticket). It looks weird if you do it too often but if you don't or you buy a house there...

If they meant it, then they're really stupider than they seem - but I believe no one is so naive as to think they can control Bitcoin to the point that they can know who is behind every transaction, no matter how public all transactions are. There is already a thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5350420.0) in which some things are clarified, there is no need to panic - while bureaucrats in the EU agree on something, it usually becomes less relevant - in some member states AML5 is not implemented yet, and they are talking about the new AML6 ::)

Why would they worry about this one though, have a better intelligence network if you want to stop this terrorists, don't do some regulatory shit that doesn't benefit anyone but the people in power. Train your staffs and pawns to be more smarter and have an integrity if you want to infiltrate these rings of crime.

What a load of BS? How we are supposed to remove the anonymity from our transactions? Are they saying that everyone should register whatever cryptocurrency addresses they have with some central authority and then undergo KYC process? All the best with such draconian moves. Let me see how successful they are. I have no words to describe those guys who put these stupid proposals. These are just retarded suggestions. These guys don't have enough information about cryptocurrency and think that it is something similar to fiat/banking system.

As the article says, it's still at a stage of a proposal, and will require approval from two major institutions of the EU. So let's not panic about it just yet. It's interesting they should mention bank wire transfers because I wonder when they're going to ban all cash or enforce KYC on it, since it's also a great deal of money that goes all around without any IDs. Before this is done, it's hypocritical to impose restrictions on cryptos. Also, for once, I'm glad my country is not in the EU, and we don't have any legislation that imposes such a strong form of control over one's money.

I think it will be only for exchanges which are pretty common these days, where you have to give your identity (KYC). I don't think this will affect hardware wallet or electrum, as there is no 3rd party involved. If you want to cash out via exchanges, yeah you cannot be anonymous. BTC differs from Monero et al., no hope for EU to accept privacy coins.

Anyway, 2nd interpretation (wild imagination) is to require all wallets including electrum et al. to provide KYC service, which is unlikely IMO.

This one really made me laugh.
Unfortunately, there's not much to laugh at though. I hope it's one of those classic moves that then end up as bubbles punctured by needles. Like Marathon filtering transactions first and then saying, oops, we made a mistake we don't filter anymore.
It's different here though since these bureaucrats really want to set up a coercive system in multiple areas. Everything is being channeled well into an authoritarian drift.
The panopticon is progressing well, it seems.

This is something that I certainly have very much feared, as a huge Monero supporter especially.  This is really why I have stressed over and over again that bitcoin should never become fully anonymous.  Would I love for bitcoin to be fully anonymous? Of course! However if you think about it, many countries don't allow freedom of religion, or freedom of sexual preference, disallowing women to vote or drive.. if these type of restriction are in place, then how on earth are they going to allow exchanges to operate allowing an on and off ramp for a currency they can't control..could get messy.

I am not shocked that a power that controls everyone's movement would want to ban something that gives people to move money around. They will always hide behind "money laundering" but their banks literally launder money from the cartel, look at Deutsche Bank, they are known to launder money from the mafia and Russian oligarchs, how did all those bad people in the world laundered money when there were no crypto? Did we have zero money laundering before 2008? Of course we had it, and it was done via fiat as well, now they are saying bitcoin needs to be banned in certain ways so that they could ban money laundering which is not even 1% of what crypto is used for.

This is simply a tactic to make sure they have huge control over bitcoin and that's it, we are not talking about something that is actually risky for the world, the worst we could do with it is avoid taxes and that is really not that hard in fiat neither.

On the upside: if governments want to ban or control something, that can only mean they expect it to become really big :)

If the government fails to find out the holders and the number of bitcoins in their wallets, they reinvent the other side. "You can keep your cryptocurrencies for a very long time while remaining anonymous, but someday you will tell us about yourself anyway, since there will be a reason for the movement of these cryptocurrencies" Regulators will come up with more and more ways to control cryptocurrencies.
In Russia, it is also proposed not only to recognize the owners of the transactions but also to confiscate the cryptocurrency, "which has become a source of income from crimes."
And of course, all governments create laws only for the benefit and protection of the population.  :)

That's why there's KYC for banks.  Transacting in large amounts of cash is an obvious sign of money laundering, and at least in the US, banks have to verify identities and also report large cash transactions to the government specifically to combat money laundering.  There are two ways this is done, through Currency Transaction Reports and Suspicious Activity Reports.  Fiat actually has a lot of regulations surrounding its use, so in analogizing crypto to fiat, you're implicitly agreeing that the same KYC efforts undertaken with cash should also apply to crypto.

Different approaches, same reasoning. Central governing bodies cannot seem to grasp the idea behind decentralization and anonymity, and are constantly prying things open for their own sake and not for the citizens'. Sure, money laundering and fraud is a serious problem, though it does not exclusively happen in cryptocurrencies which they are focusing highly on. Heck, even in banks wherein security checks and systems are high, these illicit activities are still widespread, and are not really going to disappear any time soon.

how are they going to prevent a wallet from sending to another wallet?  if they mean miners won't be able to verify their tx then this is getting very centralized.

there is nothing yet in the article so we'd have to wait for an update of this fud. but it is probably just within their LN channel, outside it, you still can do send how much you want. the proposal seems worse than the communist party.

Let them try, as far as you got your private keys and recovery seeds no one can stop you, this action can only affect centralised wallets like coinbase and others not trust wallet and coinomi wallet likes

Terrorists, if they want to buy weapons from someone using cryptocurrency, will do so without hindrance, since the transfer of funds between two cryptocurrency wallets cannot be controlled. In the banking system, to control banks, there are cash and settlement centers. That is, if a transaction is made between two banks, the payment all the same first goes to the cash settlement center, is fixed there, and then after a short time goes further to the bank of the payment destination. Will states be able to change the blockchain enough to make such control? If so, then cryptocurrency will not differ much from regular fiat money.
In addition, according to the FATF decision of June 21, 2019, transactions in the amount of less than 1,000 euros, and not 10,000 euros, are not subject to identification.

This was announced even earlier so I am not surprised but people should understand that we have the power and not regulators.
EU, all other governments and big tech are trying hard to centralize everything and make some weird fourth reich totalitarian control of everything we do and think both online and offline.
Just imagine if nobody would follow their stupid rules, I knows it's hard but just try it, they could not enforce anything on us, and we don't even need majority of people.
I think it's time for our own people's reset of bureaucracy and crooked political system, or we may wake up in great digital gulag soon.

Criminals can fund terrorists account using dark web I heard and that's even before crypto became a thing, if this is the problem there shouldn't have been past terrorists funding through out the world, this is a lame excuse honestly

I might affect bitcoin if you decide to use your coins anonymously but it will definitely affect monero/grin and the other privacy coins.

Soon you'll have to report how much crypto you got and in which wallets.  If you don't report your coins, they'll assume you don't have any and if you were found to be have some, that will cause problems.

I think this has to do with platforms who deals directly with verified users and they want to know their every move.
I like my country here where the financial institutions are forbidden to run Cryptocurrency payments and transfer between clients through banks. They have close down deposits and withdrawals through many exchanges we have been using as means of making swift deposit and withdrawal.
The only option we have been given is p2p, where even the banks wouldn't know the particular transactions are for crypto settlement.
I think EU citizens should go fully on p2p and shun the silly Government.

Good luck trying to actually implement that, it is obvious they want this market to bend to their will, this is nothing new, can they do it? And the answer is no, people that have their coins in exchanges will just sen their coins to an address they control and notify the exchange and then do whatever they want with their coins, let them think they can do it, this in fact plays on our favor as this is better than an outright ban and once they realize this is never going to work a few years would have passed already and we will have even more users on the network.

But bitcoin is not governed by anyone so there is no central authority or controlling agent which means the EU also don't have any control over the transactions so they can't block the actual transaction no matter what.

Blockchain technology gives an upper hand to the users and the people who are ruling can only manipulate but can't order!

That’s a little disappointing, what happened to the whole alleged value of freedom by the EU?

But I don’t see that becoming a big problem, how can they possibly influence the transactions that are done off the exchange? People with hardware should be fine, the only problem will be withdrawal. But I guess those regulations will just lead to the emergence of unlicensed and underground exchanges.

It was to be expected that we get to this point with the forthcoming bitcoin regulations.
We cannot break the laws. It is obvious that privacy is at stake. But if we are not doing something wrong we must accept the regulations.

The main objective we want is to allow us to include bitcoin and crypto transactions without hindrance.
When incorporating bitcoin into banking of course we must go through the KYC and AML process.
We have won freedom now the governments should not prohibit it because they would be violating our rights.

What makes you think that will happen?  Bitcoin was outlawed in China and did we see a bunch of underground exchanges open up, or did we see a mass exodus of bitcoin leaving China while people could still exchange it legally before the crackdown?  We saw the latter, so there's no reason to think that there's going to be a bunch of illegal exchanges popping up to try and get around the law when it becomes illegal to operate one.

Therein lies the beauty of bitcoin - you simply cannot do that.

There is no centralised point of failure as there is for traditional wire transfers, which is what makes BTC so unique and useful in the first place. No central entity can control transaction validation, money supply, or even censor transactions. It's simply not possible unless they somehow shut down all of the nodes worldwide.

They could always formulate regulation, but whether or not they'll be able to enforce it is another issue altogether.

There is no need for any new "illegal" exchange. Here in India, less than half of the trading volume is nowadays done through the mainstream exchanges. Hostile government actions since 2018 has made many of the users move to P2P platforms and DEX exchanges. I guess this is the case with China as well. When the legal exchanges closed down, many of the users might have moved to P2P platforms (although doing this in a dictatorship like China is much more than doing the same in India).

Its too easy to attack crypto for terrorism and money laundry side. Meanwhile, they dont define that crypto just a tool of them, before crypto exist USD is a tool for the bad activity too. There is no different between fiat or crypto as transaction use. When they propose the plan to ban annonymous transaction, I think that means peer to peer transaction will be forbidden and the only transactions accepted come from exchangers. This will change the characteristic of crypto which is desentralize.

Hmm.  Seems like it'd take far more manpower than that to supervise all the financial transactions taking place in Europe, but I suppose if they have enough technology it'd be possible.  However, they have to be talking about electronic transactions, because there's no way in hell a staff of 250 is going to be able to even track transactions in cold, hard cash above their arbitrary threshold.  I'd wish them luck even trying it, but fuck them.

What they take for granted--and shouldn't--is that there aren't too many laws on the books regarding what the average citizen can do with his/her own money.  There are far too many ways for the government to stick their money-grubbing hands into the pockets of the citizens they're supposed to represent.  No threat posed by terrorists and/or money launderers justifies this kind of bullshit.

But I'm glad to read this:

Hopefully this proposal is just posturing and will die in the crib.  I also hope the European crypto community doesn't take shit like this lying down and that they make their voices heard.

Ideologies go out of the window when they see their monopoly that they took for granted is under threat by a bunch of code, so it is obvious they are trying to regulate this to the best of their ability but they cannot do it, even if they are successful in passing this then exchanges will just move to other jurisdictions and if they try to force them to follow these same rules then decentralized exchanges will take over, so I am not worried about it as they have no way to win this battle.

I think if this is turns out to be right and they approve a law on such thing, bitcoin and crypto would take a massive hit and a lot of people would stop using it, because the whole concept of using bitcoin is to make transactions without having to go through the government and the bank's law and having to identify the source and the purpose of it, and by this it will defy the whole concept of using it

They are not really attacking "crypto" they are attacking how it's used. Same goes for euro or dollars as well, it is something very valid and allowed even in Cuba you can use dollars in some places, it is not really about the currency and which one it is, it is about how you use it. For example lets imagine you buy a car washing business, and the whole purpose is to launder money, if you are not too powerful of a person neither, when that's found out you will be put to jail even if you are using fiat for all of it.

This is why I am pretty sure it is not the difference between fiat or crypto, sure governments do not see crypto as a great thing but they are trying to ban anonymous transactions and wallets here, they are not trying to ban crypto, which is a huge difference. I am personally fine with banning anonymous transactions and wallets tbf, would make things easier for rest of us.

Hmm ... how interesting - on the one hand, cryptocurrency is not recognized as a means of payment and an asset that has real value, but they want to control the movement of "virtual tokens that are not secured by anything", so that they can then take taxes from a full-fledged market transaction with a profit :) in thinking and approach ...

Another typical scenario which screams manipulation and control by the government. Banning anonymous transactions defeats the purpose of cryptocurrency. Some people are here in crypto because of its decentralized nature. Having the government be part and involved in private transactions of the users who opted to make their transactions anonymous is just absurd. Why can't the government let their people enjoy things? I can't help but think that they are just using the reasons such as filtering illegal transactions as a front to be concerned to their citizens, when in fact all they want is to take over them.

It's really hard to be sandwiched in a situation wherein crypto is legalized but with reservations. I just hope the officials will be open-minded about crypto's nature. Hopefully, the government will not try to do things that will be a disadvantage to their constituents. This kind of scenario is totally not new in crypto but I hope there would come a time that situations like these will no longer be rampant.

Price jumped from 30K to 40K after such negative news which shows how much people are against the government amd they really wam9to achieve freedom for that bitcoin can help a lot.

What I don't get is how would they even enforce their plans? Am I missing something? How would they ban Monero wallets from being downloaded and then block transactions? This is bogus, seriously. They can't do shit about it. The only thing they can do is prohibit merchants and other official / registered entities from accepting unidentifiable transactions. That's about as much as they can do.

It will be the same as almost any other law: law abiding citizens will follow the law, while criminals don't care. It's the same as for instance gun laws: where I live normal people don't have them, but it doesn't stop criminals.

I wish you were right, but unfortunately you are not :(. The reality is that all exchanges will force KYC and will give every single transaction you do to authorities and will force you to accept this fact, if it is the law then they will have to follow the law after all. However at the same time if you are looking for way to avoid it? You can do that as long as you stay in the crypto world without ever moving to fiat world, this would require you to earn crypto and spend crypto without ever using fiat, which is quite harsh and difficult but it could be done if you so choose.

At the end of the day, if you want to deal with "companies" that are obliged by law to do something, could be exchange, could be casino, could be ecommerce, could be anything that deals with laws, then you will be forced to accept their situation as well and that's all there is to it.

I honestly don't think they will be able to this, I see it as an empty threat to scare people away from using crypto, but I doubt anyone with some experience will believe all this, they can only be successful with this through the help of centralize exchanges otherwise they will fail in their attempt.

As if the ledger isn't already public, people can follow what's happening there, crypto is already pseudonymous so making some sort of regulation and mask it as a way to deter crimes or stuff is just an excuse so they can have a control over their population.

That wasn't what pumped bitcoin, first it all started when Elon made a statement in Bword event and then another one came after some rumours about Amazon accepting Cryptocurrency which they later debunked, the price corrected after that's but with technical analysis, some whales are bullish about bitcoin as the their is potential crossing of 200 moving average and 50 moving average.
We will definitely see some bullish moves if that eventually happens.

Can this be achievable for accounts that are not linked to exchanges because I understand that government can mandate all exchanges to implement kyc for all customers just with binance is attracting customers to do in phases of registration but for private wallets not tied to any exchange? How will that be implemented? Or the apps are going to introduce that during registration.

Governments and banks are the biggest criminals, do you really think they will punish themselves?

I agree with one thing, I am not surprised either! It's what some of us expected, the game is rigged and they are creating laws in their favor, for known purpose, to keep the control and power in their hands!

It will be interesting to see how they plan to enforce their rules on crypto... I think they are too late to do anything, this train can not be stopped, too many people are involved and connected in some new way, crypto way! And it's spreading, new things arise, new ways and possibilities... whatever they do crypto will find a way to do it better! Now when we learned how to do it, it will be hard to stop us!

I personally don't see a problem with this. Now we have most of all these Big investors from Banks and Billionaires and other organizations coming out to say they have invested such and such amount in Bitcoin and I believe that every cryptocurrency investor wants to continue to hear news like that because we believe it is bullish news for Bitcoin, why then is it difficult for the rest of the people and still wants to make transactions anonymous or private? I wish that was the case in my country and not the Ban on crypto trade transactions in all financial institutions because, with the ban, I am making half of the profits I would have if the financial institutions were not banned from crypto transactions via P2P.

Just my opinion.
   

How long do I know large companies that buy BTC report to the SEC, in any case there was such information. I think they are doing this for a reason, but most likely the regulation is already taking place. But in this case, it is for large companies that can be one with the system. But this law can lure ordinary BTC holders out of the shadows and, as it were, push them to sell their coins. In this case, it may look like a way to take Bitcoin away from ordinary investors in favor of large companies or even the system itself.

You know, the harder they push..... the harder the hardcore supporters of "privacy" push back. They are going to open up a whole can of worms with this, because the developers pushing for full anonymity are just going to create more anonymous platforms, if it gets banned.

Pseudo anonymity was the primary goal and using FIAT currencies, gives you that freedom. (If a friend gives you $100 for watching his dog and you use that $100 to buy something ....then that transaction is pseudo anonymous, because authorities needs to have the serial number of that note ..to track it's movement)

The Pandora's box has been opened.... getting it back into the box is almost impossible now... everyone had a taste of it.  ;)

I don't see why you think this is going to be the case, this is going to affect exchanges but this is not going to affect the people that use wallets that only they can control, this could affect businesses as well that are located in Europe if they are forced to do this and try to identify their clients but when that happens you can be sure that people are just going to forget about those businesses and use other options that provide the same service but that do not force them to identify themselves.

LOL.. look at the person who made the statement. Mairead McGuinness (European Union financial srevices commissioner), who is originally from Ireland. She comes from a country that is regarded as a safe haven for financial criminals and used as a base by corporate firms such as Amazon and Microsoft to evade EU taxes (Ireland is one of the 9 countries, that have refused to sign the OECD proposal for minimum corporate tax). I guess Ms. McGuinness is concerned that Ireland will lose its inflow of shady funds, if Bitcoin becomes more popular. I hope McGuinness will soon be kicked out of office and replaced by someone who is mentally stable.

I wonder if the person who launched that project had any experience with BTC, because I really can't see how they could ban "anonymous crypto asset wallets"... Anyway, if this goes through, and that's a big if, it's a fantastic opportunity for Switzerland and some other neighboring countries.

Mairead McGuinness (European Commissioner for Financial Stability, Financial Services and the Capital Markets Union) is behind the proposal, and she is known to be a very controversial politician. And just because she has proposed something, there is no guarantee that the EU will implement it. There are saner members in EU and they will understand that such stupid proposals are impossible to implement. Hopefully next time, they will select someone who is more competent in important posts such as this one. 

This is freaking ridiculous! Why would they ban something that cannot be prevented or controlled? Anonymous crypto transactions doesn’t have any third party control or whatsoever because it’s completely decentralized. Do they honestly believe that Bitcoin has a “central core” that would make them fully control everything? Absolutely not.

Although they are stopping financial institutions or banks from engaging into crypto (especially the Binance drama), but they can’t prevent P2Ps while we are using non-custodial wallets

They simply wanted to be left behind in this phenomenon.

What's the business with the government, the authorities and wanting to know what we are doing with our money?

The sooner they know that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin came about to avoid prying eyes of the government and restore full control of of our money in crypto.

Btw what the EU wants is as good as trying to ban the blockchain technology, this mission they are on is a failed one already,  someone advise them to deal with the effects of brexit and not crypto which they don't understand.

This! Btw would love to hear from them that the bitcoin that is used for "terrorism and laundering" is then converted into fiat and finally, this fiat is used for that purpose. Also, I am waiting for the moment when they'll ban the internet because this is the place where people receive money digitally, where people create black markets, where people fund terrorism and make some meetings / spread the word via the internet, etc.

All I can say is that this will turn against them, they'll stop the massive usage but there is nothing they can do against it. If something fails, a better solution is always built. This is a non-stop circle that no one can stop and hope they know that humans develop without limits.

The action that EU wants to take is actually against Bitcoin's structure. The anonymity is one of the most important features that Bitcoin users have. But on the other hand, there will be many people who will continue to launder money very easily if the governments don't want people to indicate which wallet belongs to whom. There is a big dilemma here.

If they want to track money laundering, then they can add additional KYC filters for the exchanges where cryptocurrency is being converted to fiat currency. Instead of that, they want to flag all the cryptocurrency transactions as suspicious. First of all, they need to understand that it is impossible to find out whether a particular cryptocurrency transaction was done by someone residing in the EU, or outside the jurisdiction. These people are still unable to comprehend the basic technology behind cryptocurrency. They are just thinking that it is similar to fiat currency in all aspects.

This is just another pointless proposal submitted by a group of idiots who plan on trying to increase their power over the common citizens of the EU which will most likely not get approved in my opinion.

Some investors need to improve their brain-power and realise the fact that these proposals are usually submitted and rejected on a regular basis by governments around the world.

Wrong. People will continue to launder money regardless of whether cryptocurrencies get banned or not.

Europe covers a lot of powerful countries that makes up huge impact towards crypto for the past years. If ever this is made possible and gets accepted as a law, it will make a significant change towards bitcoin's value which will more likely be detrimental. Though that's the case, there is no guarantee yet that it will be passed by the government but we should stay updated so that we may know what trend might occur as it takes place. Always make sure that you are well aware of the happenings with regards to crypto, it is a very important task of an investor specially when it is dealing with huge and rich countries.

It was just a proposal from one of the officials (Mairead McGuinness). There is no support for this move from anyone else. At this point, I am surprised that so many people took it seriously in the first place. And even if someone wants to convert this proposal in to a law, it is going to take many years of lobbying and consultations. For start, it needs to be approved by the European Council as well as the European Parliament. This step alone can take many years. And by that time, Bitcoin will be recognized as legal tender in multiple countries and no one will be stupid enough to support such regressive moves.

I don't see anything wrong in using money/crypto without revealing your name. Part of the problem is that they made the word Anonymous look bad and foreign whereas humans have be transacting anonymously for thousands of years. It's actually going very risky to have people transact with their names on the internet.
I recommended the use of safe Anonymity instead ... with that, anyone can choose to reveal their name to who they find trustworthy.

Fundamentally, this is a critical question: Who should make laws and why should citizens trust them?

In fact, the people that make laws are no better than average Joe on street, and they just happened to sit in that position due to their ancestors or some other opportunities, which brought them power. And many of the laws are just a joke if you look at it at grand scale: US put a sanction on Iran for its international wire transfer. This is no difference than child fighting each other on the street, using different means. It is still very primitive and beast-like humanity

Crypto has given an answer to this problem and give back the control to each individual. However, it will be utilized by criminals and politicians as well, so some kind of regulation is needed, but we might not trust those primitive kids that make laws. We need better laws, maybe in forms of smart contract, that linked to oracle

For example, how do you know this specific transaction has nothing to do with money laundering or terrorist financing? We need a smart contract that gives the answer based on the data from oracle, without involvement of human regulators. This is a huge framework and once it is done, we no longer need human regulators any more

BTW, lots of economy activities are happening on blockchain and has no connection with current physical world, this is much more difficult to regulate since today's regulators definitely have no idea what is going on there

is not clear and seems to just make up for an uncertain story . anonymous transactions? So what ? As long as they don't use third parties and have nothing to do with the government, what's their business? it is very possible if there is an official bank that is legally running in their country using anonymous wallet and transaction this might be implemented.

Maybe they hope for the countries or the EU to turn into an area where denunciation becomes a thing again. If I know somebody who owns Monero and I denigrate that somebody, I might even benefit from it in some way. Otherwise I don't get the point. The only way to catch every single thing that you as a state deem criminal is to give up freedom as a concept and turn your area into a full police state. Even then you will have criminals. The death penalty doesn't even keep freaks from raping and killing others.

Instead of that, what we need is that only the authorities can have access to our information online for crypto stuffs that we are dealing with. In a way we can be sure that it won't go down to the wrong hands because you're assured that your government is going to keep your information safe. Also, is there really any true anonymity anymore, pretty sure that's non-existent anymore.

I'm in no way supporting this draft, but most people here in the thread got the news wrong (so far, mainly mu_enrico got it right). Before the thread degenerates entirely:

The EU is not planning to ban anonymous "transactions", but anonymous "centralized wallet services"!

The planned legislation is based on the FATF travel rule. It is directed to companies who control cryptocurrency on behalf of their users, i.e. exchanges, web wallets, brokerage services and so on, and some other companies (e.g. in the real estate business). Most of them in several EU states are already forced to do KYC, so in these countries there would be only minor policy changes. These would have to record the data of the transaction sender and receiver if they participate in one (i.e. a deposit on a centrally managed wallet, or a transaction to a real estate agent affected by the law). It's affecting entities that are already obliged to record these data when they receive bank wires or other fiat-based transactions.

So no, your Bitcoin Core, Electrum etc. are not affected.

This may however affect services like the providers of smartphone wallet software, maybe also blockchain.com or Blockstream's Green Wallet (although at least in the latter two cases I think they could rebrand the service as a kind of "backup service for keys" or so). In any case the keys have to be managed by a central entity.

I don't blame the thread participants, the Bloomberg article isn't "wrong" but pretty poorly written so it can be misinterpreted.

Anyway, I consider this planned legislation extremely harmful. It would place the KYC burden on more companies than now, also potentially on smaller companies; this would mean more targets to hacker attacks, and potentially more danger of identity theft. So the EU is trying to combat one type of crime (money laundering) making other, potentially more threatening types of crime (identity theft) easier.  >:(

Thanks for the clarification. This is one of the biggest worries I had for long. Very soon we will be ordered to do KYC on the web-wallets. If I am not wrong, some of them (such as Blockchain.com) have already initiated the KYC process, but till now it was purely optional. Now this reduces the options that we are having right now. If the web wallets need to be backed up with KYC, then we need to store our coins in lite wallets or full wallets that are installed in our laptop or mobile phone. And that will increase the chances of losing the coins, in case the wallet is not backed up and the laptop crashes or gets stolen.

The key is to find a way to reduce the risk without doing KYC, I find out that keep the tx volume small is the most effective way to filter out fraudulent transactions, but a better solution might be needed for larger txs. And to be honest, the larger the tx, the more you need privacy: You don't want an unknown wallet operator to know about your million dollar worth trades, so that they can arrange a robbery with gunman

An interesting question: If KYC is not possible for open source wallets like electrum, would they be banned in future from github? And in future you might need p2p software to download a bitcoin node, since they won't be allowed on any webserver that government can identify the owner and give them KYC responsibility ::)

We aren't even as private anymore, I mean we haven't had that kind of thing ever since the towers in 2001 fell, they've been listening to our phone calls after that even though they don't admit it because they don't want that kind of tragedy from ever happening again. I think that the total removal of anonymity isn't going to be the best thing to do for this one, probably being able to access the information of a certain address only by the authorities should be the way to go as a compromise.

I have no idea how EU authorities want to control and reprogram blockchain. I think it is impossible, because it is decentralised (I talk about Bitcoin and Ethereum), so you can’t come to the head and order to ban anonymous transactions.
They can do so with centralised exchanges, but when it comes to transfer of assets, they can’t ban such transactions.

The main reason for creation of bitcoin was not to include any third-party intervention in fund transfer globally but that is what government fears because they don't want anything to go off the radars and we all are being under supervision each time.But with the bitcoin gaining now popularity government don't want to ban them due to tax revenue and economy boost and on the same side want to control it also and that's why coming up with shitty reasons and lame excuses.If both the parties indentity is known the government and banks will intervene asking for some more details about the transaction and impose certain restrictions.But bitcoin is being decentralised and you can't control it anyway so any such regulations won't work but yes they can try it with their CDBC yet to be launched and impose as many restrictions they want.But bitcoin comes with freedom of your funds.

I just wonder why no government is taking any step to prohibit the usage of VPN but they are concerning only about the anonymous transactions in crypto space. If all the governments look for regulating anonymous transactions and then they will realize their failure later from achieving that hence they will simply move on by agreeing with evolution of technology along with individuals' privacy.

Governments cannot do anything about barter system and similarly they cannot do anything about anonymous transactions and individual's privacy.

I think that LoyceV is right, they are just trying to scare people away from cryptocurrencies and this is because politicians themselves are scared about the concept of a form of money that they cannot control so they are using everything that they have in the form of laws and misinformation being spread by the media to try to hinder the development of this market, so laws like this one are not really meant to be effective but rather are a message to the population that the government is not going to tolerate this and most citizens will just obey as always.

Individual privacy is much concerned. In the name of governance there are very big restrictions on different nations which we could've never thought. Recently read an article in which a government itself have used a software named Pegasus to record the communication made by the people, particularly the political people. This is how the governments working, in such situation people want freedom and for that people prefer anonymity. Governments weren't able to disturb the anonymity of the network that's a big suffering for them.

These measures are applicable only for the European Union, right? So how can GitHub ban open source wallets, in case they don't conform with the EU regulations? At the most, they can issue a geo-block for the IPs from the EU region (I don't know whether that is even possible with GitHub). But even if such a block is there, anyone can download the software using a torrent website or a VPN. But we need to be prepared for such challenges posed by the government authorities, as many of the governments are increasingly turning hostile to cryptocurrency.

Some of that might be happening on an extremely small scale if anyone wants to risk prison time over holding bitcoin and having to transact under the radar forever.  The tradeoffs there seem way out of whack so I don't know how common that's gonna be, but I'd guess not at all.  What we know is much more common is people just selling out of bitcoin, which is why the price tanked below $30k.  There was a flood of people in China rushing to get out to comply with the law, which created a ton of new supply and crushed the price.

Thanks d5000 for the explanation. Although it is an obvious one, I didn't really think about KYC that way, but you are of course right. Legislators' goal to fight money laundering leads to more KYC burdens, which in turn makes any of the companies suffering from more KYC requirements an even more attractive goal to hackers. That in turn leads to more investment in security measures, that again hits the bottom line of those companies and rather leads to larger corporations who can afford security requirements financially, which again leads to further centralization of the industry... That are a lot of in turns, I know, but isn't that the way it will ultimately work out?

Obviously the majority want to comply with the law and that is the reason why there was mass-selloff in China. Even in India, when the bill on cryptocurrency was first proposed in 2018, a lot of the users sold their holdings. But here the users are more rebellious and a large section went vocal in social media. As a result of the campaign, the government relented and shelved the cryptocurrency bill. But the status of cryptocurrency in India is still in suspended animation. It is still not 100% legal. This creates issues while filing tax returns.

Which is precisely why they do this, they know that people want to comply with the law because they do not want to have problems with the government, however there are scenarios in which this is not true, for example if the fiat currency in your country is crashing and losing value almost every single minute then people are going to try to find ways to protect their capital and one of those options is bitcoin, that is when governments are going to get harsher with the laws and the measures that they take against people holding cryptocurrencies but in that scenario people will choose to actively disobey the law because they have no other option, they either disobey the law or they go hungry.

This is one possible outcome - a rat race between the security systems of service providers and hackers.

Higher KYC burdens can also have indirect, positive side-effects. They could strengthen completely decentralized services without middlemen, like atomic-swap-based exchanges. This would be of course positive because it strengthens the decentralized nature of Bitcoin, and injects liquidity in Atomic-swap exchanges and services like the (currently struggling) OpenBazaar, which are currently not really popular.

But the problem is that there are companies which are required to do KYC which cannot be circunvented or "decentralized" that easily. For example, real estate services, or "officially recognized" notaries. For these, the centralization effect may have exclusively negative effects.

Also there are people who simply need (or "think to need") a custodial service, because of lacking technical knowledge. These would have no way to get these services without KYC and transaction recording, and thus be even more exposed to identity theft than today.

States will always strive to control cryptocurrencies as much as possible. Therefore, it will be a long-term confrontation between the people and the government. Of course, if funds in cryptocurrency are transferred through the exchange, then the states have the opportunity to control this process. However, they cannot control transactions between citizens. Yes, states justify such control by the need to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. However, an Interpol report in January showed that criminals use cryptocurrencies very little in committing crimes and that cash traditionally holds the primacy here.

They should realized that stuff that even cryptocurrency market is already progressing but still criminals do much still prefer on making use of fiat.It is just crypto do really took the blame which it had

been accused that criminality rate had risen up because of its existence which isn't still proven out but its safe to presume that because of decentralization plus having that anonymity then I couldn't really

blame on why people do really have that kind of impression.Government would be having always on the hunt on whatever possible transactions that they could trace on.

All under the guise of protecting against terrorism and fighting money laundering again. More likely, they'll just hit someone trying to make a living out of crypto, if they haven't already.

This is disappointing news since EU policies can affect systems even outside their borders. The question is, what do we do once these restrictions are in place?

the media is one culprit why they have negative outlook towards crypto. they should dig deeper if they want true information on what's going on with this technology. because it is true, that up until now, fiat is still the leading currency when it comes to money laundering and other illegal activities.
if they will not change their outlook on this matter, they will be left behind by other countries when it comes to crypto-related businesses.

This is really bad news. I don’t like such news. right from time the government has been doing whatever they could to stop people from using cryptocurrency, and they have seen that there isn’t a way that they will be able to do that, So, what they have done now is to accept it and look for a way to regulate it and also stop the privacy.

I’ve been seeing such news since last year, where they kept saying that centralized exchanges would be used as a way for the government to fully regulate cryptocurrency and remove every sort of privacy involved. And the article I read last year clearly explained that the same way that you have said it here that the verified addresses would be used as a way to get the ones that are unverified.

Control and control and that will continue to be desired by the government for its people. The government will not give absolute freedom to the people to manage themselves and their money independently for any reason.

Usually the classic reason put forward is preventing money laundering and other crimes with bitcoin but KYC on bitcoin will only kill user privacy. I can think that governments are actually displeased with financial freedom they can't control like bitcoin, so there's always a reason why they should regulate it. Regardless of their reasons then user control is the obvious reason they want for all bitcoin users in their country.

I am not sure whether this is going to work out, and I am really not wishing that it works out because I am not going to like the idea of the government regulating cryptocurrency especially bitcoin. But in a situation, whereby this happens to be a success for them to carry it out, then we would all be left with no other option than to accept the regulation or we just have to forget about our assets, which I don’t think a lot of us would like to do.

At the end, we are all still going to choose to accept the regulation rather than forfeit what we have. But, I think where the problem would be starting from is from people who are making use of centralized exchanges.

So, if it would be possible for everyone to switch to wallets and exchanges that are decentralized, I believe that the government wouldn’t have any single control over this market. But that wouldn’t be possible, because we know there are lots of people who wouldn’t want to leave all these centralized exchanges, and they would continue making use of them which would be the access that the government would have into this community.

There are already countries that do accept bitcoin/crypto and there are some who had already banned it but most of them are still in neutral phase or simply on observation mode which neither they would be accepting it
or not and they would be waiting for a particular time for them to get in thats why its really hard to make out some conclusion on where this market would be going.They wouldnt really be minding if they would get behind
on the industry as long they would not really able to step out government regulations.They would really be keen on dealing on something which is totally opposing centralization.

Yes, people would just find ways to use their crypto outside the system that the government controls, for example P2P. Might be a bit more inconvenient than what we are used to using certain wallets but it affords a better degree of freedom.

To just "forget" assets is ridiculous although it might be necessary if for some reason it have made it impossible to transfer the crypto.