Bitcoin Forum

There are several threads in the forum commenting on the loss of privacy with respect to Bitcoin that is occurring with some measures, such as more regulations (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5392457.msg59712803#msg59712803), or the blacklisting of coins (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5389567.0) by some institutions.

Regarding this, I see two basic positions:

1) We must act as much as possible to defend our privacy, discontinuing the use of use of institutions (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5401468.0) (mixers, exchanges, etc.) that actively collaborate against it and making sure that we take the utmost care of privacy in the transactions we make.

2) The loss of privacy is inevitable. Governments were not going to allow Bitcoin to reach the degree of adoption it has today as conceived by Satoshi (as a person-to-person electronic cash in which centralized institutions had little or no influence). What we must do is resign ourselves and prepare for a future with little to no privacy.

My wishful thinking says 1) but more realistically I am for option 2).

I would like to be convinced otherwise, not based on ideals but on facts.

I created a 30-day poll because I would like to know what the community thinks today. The results will be shown when it is over.

Actually i see privacy as a thing we must go for even though it's enviable by the government but since we know what we want then any further steps in pursuit for this should be encouraged, we can't act to loose privacy because one of the major aims of Satoshi was to help us achieved it, then why should we act negligence to securing and maintaining it, also there's more need to emphasize on the areas and how we can maintain and achieve our privacy, using a decentralized exchange is one of the means, marking use of a hardware wallets is another option, running a full node on the blockchain is yet another means.

And in doing all these we must be careful of not handling our private keys with levity hands and keeping away from all forms of malicious attacks for maximum security, centralized exchanges is one of the first means we can jeopardize with our privacy, any form of hot storage should be avoided and use of cold storage should be encouraged, if we truly understand and adhere to the main initiative of p2p then we will all agreed that its all about privacy and such in only guaranteed in bitcoin and not other cryptocurrencies.

In my opinion, we should go for the first option but keeping in mind the context of the cypto market nowadays. Exchanges are centralized, carry out the whim on regulators and track our funds, nonetheless we cannot deny they play an important role by providing an important percentage of liquidity within the market, so finding a way to replace them would not so easy, I think.
Preserving our privacy is difficult but not impossible and we should not forget that having privacy does not mean we are commiting a crime, that's why I believe that the second option is not the suitable for us as crypto-user and perhaps as society as a whole.

One of the things I find most appealing and interesting about cryptography is the fact it provides protection to our identity and data, not matter whether it is a single person or a big company which is trying to break into to take whatever they want, the mathematics treats us equality to all of us, this means we do have the tools to protect ourselves from an authoritarian eye looking over us, we just need to get out our comfort zone, learn good practices and do not allow politicians to make the term "privacy" a synonim of "crime".

Maybe it’s somewhere in the middle, option 2 will be inevitable for the majority, because they won’t care about privacy enough or will relativise it.

But for the individual there will probably always be tools and possibilities to atleast have a private stash somewhere.

I think the only way for the masses would be privacy by default solutions, because they won’t go out there way now, to go trough the process to gain privacy themselves.

It sucks to see Wasabi succumb to regulatory pressure. They made a name selling privacy and anonymity then they start blocking transactions hehe.

Can you explain how this is no longer true today? Yes they can regulate centralize exchanges and wallets or services that are centralized in some way but they still have little or no influence if I send you BTC using my electrum wallet.

There's no "we" in Bitcoin. Everyone decides for themselves how they want to use their coins. You can follow regulations, pass the KYC on exchanges, pay your taxes, or you can use privacy tools, practice coin control, trade in p2p way. The only time when "we" could come into play is deciding to rewokd Bitcoin protocol to be more like Monero, but this isn't even theorized.

the way i see it.
governments dont care about the general adoption of bitcoin.. and who is using bitcoin and why, whilst people are using bitcoin.. but

they do care about the adoption of the gateways/exits/offramps to and from fiat(their jurisdiction)
of course they will protect the borders of their jurisdiction(converting to fiat)

which then requires the ask people at those borders why they are coming in and out of the FAIT border(exchanging) and where the sources of the funds are coming from

the main option/solution
its the scenario of:(analogy for those still too young to drink alcohol)
its the difference between having the age-check at a licenced alcohol retail store. vs a group of people passing around alcohol in a backyard barbeque or a private party.
changing the scenario from regularly buying alcohol from a licenced retailer, to only getting your alcohol from your friends/neighbours

methods to alleviate the use of these institutional gateways to/from fiat(gateways that are required to border guard the fiat jurisdiction), is by users doing more local face to face trades.

issues remain though. (alcohol trade analogy) if your caught selling alcohol privately and not following the alcohol rules.. you can be fined and banned from doing it again or worse

EG if doing to much fiat transactions on a personal account to complete strangers via wire transfer, the banks will want to question if you are a business and if that business is in facilitating 'money'(currency) transfers for customers.
(this is still a problem for the altnet and de-fi people running small exchange businesses locally but not declaring themselves as a business.. banks dont like a business being run on the terms of service of personal accounts)

again this requires to avoid central exchanges. and avoid the bank questioning wire transfers privately.. having to have local towns people do local face-to-face meetups/conventions/ community outreach, coffee/lunch parties to trade 'off the grid'

.. here is the thing though. (message to all forum readers the "you" is not just the topic creator but all readers)
bitcoin is not a business that can set up offices in YOUR town to do meetups.
it has no arms or legs to organise things for YOU, there is no central lobby group or central consultancy  team to fly into YOUR town and organise how a meet-up should work in YOUR town.. if YOU want off the grid transfers. YOU in YOUR area need to play YOUR part.

so find out all the people in YOUR area that are interested in bitcoin, find out who are the regular bitcoin buyers.. and who are the bitcoin holders regularly wanting to sell.. and let them meet up
to buy and sell between each other over a beer or coffee

First and foremost, regardless of reality, ideals are always important. Ideals make us go forward no matter the odds. They inspire us. They make us think outside the box, dream. They make us imagine, innovate, think and do beyond the limit. What used to be unimaginable and unbelievable were conquered, discovered, even surpassed because of ideals. Bitcoin itself is made out of ideals. Privacy, just like liberty, freedom, independence, equality, and so on are ideals that make us live and fight. Without which, we are no different from soulless automatons.

It's going to be a struggle, but, last I heard, privacy is still a fundamental human right recognized by the UN, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and countless other declarations. It is still defended by constitutions. Acts impinging on privacy are still frowned upon and remain appalling to majority of the people. So I believe there's no giving up on this.

This is more like a personal choice, rather than a decision that we should take as a community.
If you want to keep maximum privacy, just don't use centralized crypto exchanges and online wallets. The problem is that, eventually you will have to deal with centralized services, when spending or selling your Bitcoins-crypto exchanges and the payment gateways, like Bitpay, are pretty much centralized, so the avoidance of such services in the crypto world is questionable.
80-90% of the Bitcoiners never truly cared about privacy, all they care is the price. Complying with the rules and regulations means less privacy, but more adoption, which might lead to a higher price in the future.
Privacy is important, if you have something to hide, mostly the criminals/scammers care about achieving almost complete online anonymity(which is close to impossible). The "average Joe" doesn't have anything to hide, so he isn't obsessed with privacy and anonymity.

As long as we dependent on the centralized services then we will be forced to lose the privacy but we can make our own choices, I am not really in need of anonymity but privacy is our right? When we can't allow someone to look into our house without proper search warrant then why we have to. Governments will never going to do anything which is good for the people but its decentralized so we can make our own choices and since it's not controllable no one can control until we allow them to do.

Many think it is a personal choice but in reality if each individual with personal choices decides to protect their privacy it still becomes a community decision because it will bring together people of like minds pursuing similar interest. Centralized exchanges are inevitable. How about generating new address for newer transactions won't it be a way of securing your privacy and using different exchange for each transaction

We must think about this from a strategic point of view.

If we lose the privacy (and specifically the fungbility) that Bitcoin provides us, then what is going to stop the precedent that it starts?

What will happen if police start arresting individual BTC users because of suspicions of "tained coin posession"?

What will happen if entire countries start banning the "possession of Bitcoin wallets, and the running of Bitcoin software" because of tainted coins?

What will happen if Microsoft, Apple and Google decide to proactively block the installation of Bitcoin software because they believe it is going to be outlawed?

What will happen if ISPs are required by law to block port 8333, the Bitcoin P2P communication port, because it believes that bitcoin software is dangerous and should not be used by normal users?

Is the BTC community really going to succumb to all these measures without a fight? And I mean put up a genuine fight, not a "phony war" or half-hearted struggle.


Do you guys remember when the US government tried to outlaw PGP by classifying it as "export-restricted software"? And then droves of people came out and copied the source code of PGP into books, other pieces of media, even on T-shirts. It was something we'd classify as a "popular movement" - a mass protest by ordinary people against the restrictions imposed by Big Brother and his henchmen (the corporations who dilligently enforce those policies).

So you want to save BTC's functionality? Then everyone should run CoinJoin nodes en masse. Replace zkSNACKs with 3rd party coinjoin nodes and share them on reddit, bitcointalk, and other places.

Want to accomplish big things? Then decompose it to small steps and accomplish those. Wasabi's, and specifically zkSNACKs, initiative can be thwarted by the community by running independent CoinJoin services on random leased servers.

But it will *only* work if dozens of people do this. Perhaps even one person running multiple nodes. So people must symbolically take back their privacy (to use Wasabi's words) by running their own CJ nodes and putting them inside Wasabi.

And if they try to change the source code to forbid this, then we shall fork it to preserve or enable that functionality.

Privacy is a fundamental right, and we can't allow govs and corps to take BTC from us by making it more restrictive than cash and bank accounts.

I think it's important to point out that they are not being pressured, and are now voluntarily anti-privacy:

You are implying here that being interested in privacy means you are trying to evade taxes and therefore commit a crime. This is absolutely not the case.

A stupid argument (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5214200.msg53499357#msg53499357) which I loathe every time I see it mindlessly repeated. Since you have nothing to hide, I'm sure you'll have absolutely no problem posting in this thread your real name, address, a selfie, all your social media profiles, all your emails, all your chat logs, all your WhatsApp/Telegram/Discord/etc. conversations, all your bank statements, all your credit card transactions, all your browsing history, and all your bitcoin addresses. No? Didn't think so.

After each major event, they take away our rights and freedoms little by little. 9/11, the fight against terrorism, money laundering, COVID-19. Those rights will never be reclaimed again because they were taken away due to "national security" and "the needs of the many".

The created environment will be such (or is such) that if you are fighting for your privacy you are an enemy of the state. They like you more if you obey and listen. Very few will keep trying to preserve their privacy, but the majority will just go with the flow.

When you own bitcoins, it's completely up to you whether you want to use them via CEX/DEX, mixers, or directly to your local/online store. If you know that other people, especially the government, can track your bitcoin usage, you already know what to do when using bitcoins. This is all to protect your privacy and only you will know while others will have their own way of using bitcoin.

I'm not against what the government is doing because they see great potential to get extra tax from the cryptocurrency side. Therefore, the government is trying to pressure local or foreign exchanges to cooperate with them to monitor the illegal use of cryptocurrencies.

Thus, it all depends on how we will use your bitcoins. If you're looking to step down and prepare for the future with little to no privacy, you already know what to prepare for.

if your "fighting" the government. then yes. they see it as an attack.

but if you are doing nothing wrong and just want to limit strangers knowing too much.. just avoid the strangers and stop telling strangers things.

EG if your on facebook but want privacy.. then simply stop posting on facebook images of every meal you eat and what you bought at the retail store at the weekend. stop telling facebook that you went on vacation.

its not a blanket 'be open' and tell everyone on the street your life history. nor is it hide in a cave and wear black and sneak in the shadows your whole life.
its not a binary option

if you are 30+years old but lucky to look 20, and a retailer asks for some ID to buy alcohol. dont fight the retailer and get angry and claim they are government spies trying to chase you.. you will get banned from that shop.. plus you look like a paranoid idiot or at minimum a 'karen'
just find somewhere else that sells you alcohol without the headache(purchase, not hangover)

my old regular rebuttal when asked for ID when buying alcohol was...
.. i dont drive(i do but shhh), i dont have a driving licence(i do but shh), and if im buying alcohol im not even suppose to be driving anyway as its illegal to drink and drive.. , so why ask for a driving licence to buy alcohol.
how come only drivers get to buy alcohol?

i then just leave them with that thought before giving them chance to answer. and go buy elsewhere
.. now i just go elsewhere just saying i dont have id on me, and they usually take a second glance, see that im not a teenager and sell it to me

I would like to say that I would opt for option 2. The unnecesary rush towards mass adoption has for some reason become the onky thing this community is advocating for, and it just feels to soon and not what all of this was ment to be in the first place. KLet's take it down a notch and see where it takes us.

I think you forgot a third option: 1 and 2 combined.

We have to admit it, we are going to have no more privacy if things continue the way they do right now.  But we have to change our own behavior and try our best to preserve our privacy as long as we still can.

I am confident there will be less and less privacy over the next few years.  It is what it is.  But you still do have a freedom of choice.  Of choice between Linux and Windows.  Between Fiat and Bitcoin.  Between Android and De-Googled or Graphene OS.  Between being Smart phone dependent or just not carrying a phone with you around.  Meanwhile there is an inevitable modernization of things that makes it less and less possible to stay more private.  So yes, you can take action and defend privacy.  But if the majority does not do this, you will stay only as private as they let you be.  Sometimes you will have no choice, sometimes you will have one.

So my vote is for a third option, a combination of 1 and 2.  We will have less and less privacy but I will always hold on to it.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

There are things that some countries are doing that's even tracking down their gambling usage and they have to use specific IDs on the sites to access it, what I do think is that Privacy is not exactly something that we can expect when the whole society is governed by a conservative Government. Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are now largely controlled by not just the whales but the government as well, tracking is something that they always did so for me personally, I don't mind as long as it's not affecting my life as a whole and as a person who does not hold a lot of coins I won't be a good target at all. Other than that you can always use things like VPN, SPECIFIC wallets like samourai so that you don't have to connect your ID's, you can also use sites like blender.io if necessary, there are enough tools.

I'm used to seeing poll results immediately, so I was surprised that this time we need to wait for a month to get them.
I think that compromising with the authorities is a way forward. Not using exchanges doesn't seem like an option, especially not for all those people who trade cryptos. Exchanges of some sort are also required if you can't use Bitcoin directly and need to sell it for something like fiat first. By compromising I mean lobbying for reasonable legislation: for example, for low income taxes and no VAT, for KYC only after a certain threshold ($5k, for instance), for environmental legislation to not target crypto miners specifically. It is more realistic to work together with the institutions and find ways of reaching some agreement that is acceptable that to somehow go against the institutions (and lose).

I don't know what we can do to preserve privacy because, in the end, it's still the government who can control use with their regulations. Bitcoin's purpose is for decentralization, we don't need a 3rd party to transact but sadly the government intervened when they saw that bitcoin is getting a massive adoption already.

We are living in a centralized world where there's a leader in a certain country, and some countries are allies with others that follow a certain set of standards, therefore it's really hard to fight for privacy when in the end it will only make the government ban bitcoin since we don't want it to be regulated.

Doesn't that also mean they are thinking in advance that regulators will eventually come after them in the future? I don't get why they have to prevent users from leveraging their wallet for privacy. Did they not create it for that very reason?

This move by Wasabi reminds of what some privacy coins did before. They became "compliant" when they made the privacy feature optional.

I would like to ask, why is it that our loss of privacy is inevitable? There are things that are designed to be private even in the middle of law enforcement operations. Privacy is considered sacred. Even in our current banking laws, there is such a thing as bank secrecy law in which a person's bank account cannot just be divulged, even to government authorities. So I think there will be a meeting point on this. Privacy will remain, but in favor of the government it will also be limited. There's always a healthy compromise on this. And it has already been implemented.

We live in a world dominated and controlled by the government, to be honest, I don't think we can stand against them. Maybe they can't control bitcoin but they can obviously ban it and interfere with our privacy through centralized exchanges and moreover they can issue a bitcoin ban if we try antipathy against them. Government power comes from centralization so not only bitcoin but anything that compromises their power they will find a way to manage or destroy it.

I say, grant "Bitcoin" users the same level of pseudo anonymity, that all users of "Cash" is getting.  ;)

If they do not want to give Bitcoin users pseudo anonymity, then we as voters should make sure that we do not support them in the next election.

They will eventually close all the loopholes for people who wants to be pseudo anonymous, but developers will find ways to circumvent that, by creating something that cannot be tracked and also something that cannot be traced back to them.  ::)

That is wishful thinking. Bitcoin isn't designed to provide privacy, though the nature of it does provide some privacy.

The reality is that majority of the Bitcoin users actually doesn't care about privacy. Even if you do, there is nothing much you can actually do. Regulations, as it stands currently is sufficient and palatable for most Bitcoin users because there is no such thing as going dark or leave no actual digital trace in the internet. This is moreso with Bitcoin, perhaps you can get more privacy with privacy coins, but that is it. People who cares about privacy wouldn't really be using Bitcoin when there are alternatives.

These policies (AML/KYC) as it stands act as a relatively okay deterrent against illegal activities provided that sufficient screening is done. I'm all for a suitable compromise with government policies and this "intrusion" of privacy, because after all, if you're using an exchange then you probably don't care about privacy. I'd very much rather have the government reaching this compromise and the middle ground rather than clamping down hard on crypto because they cannot fulfill the basic social obligations and these illicit activities start running rampant.

Yeah, think most people here got it. There is no ultimatum with many of the choices we make in our lives. There is a more conscious way to ensure there's check and balance in the various governments that try to govern us -- not just with privacy (though that's probably the most important aspect they need to maintain surveillance and exert control over all other aspects).

I admit in the last 5/6 years I've definitely been more lax with privacy, due to relocation to Europe, where everything almost requires identification for the rights to reside. Lived and worked about 15 years prior in the global south and have managed to largely get by without so much as an email address.

Now I've willingly, even eagerly KYC'd on certain services, if only for ease of daily life, and those who depend on me. Crypto exchanges. Tax. But as soon as I'm done with the service, or their retention period is over, I request to be forgotten. Can't verify they forget me, but at least if it should come to a point later I discover they haven't, I have legal recourse.

Where possible, I make it very difficult to ID, or give an old document or wrong address etc.

So it's not one choice or the other. As long as everything you do in either direction is conscious, deliberate, and weighed in on cost-benefit, then you've done your part. No need to resign yourself, and no need to fight tooth and nail.

It is pointless to even think of the first option honestly because as much as we try majority already gone through different forms of identity verification et all at some point.
For you to be completely private there are multiple of things to do or avoid and that is not an easy task or normal way of living imo, but it is up to an individual to decide the level of privacy they want to maintain. Personally, option two is more appropriate at this stage.
The government will always have the power of control and implement regulations whenever they feel the need to.
Try to maintain complete privacy in the crypto space is one thing, applying it to the rest of everyday life is another, except you are ready to forgone certain important things because you want to maintain a complete private lifestyle.

The problem with that is that every Wasabi coordinator is a separate instance. If everyone fires up their own one, then each one will have a tiny amount of liquidity and therefore be useless. If we all agree on the same one to use, then we are back to using a single centralized coordinator which can decide to start censoring users. Better instead to encourage people to move to a decentralized coinjoin implementation such as JoinMarket.

Probably. Which means that they have plenty of time to consider their options and move to a model which prevents regulators from impacting the operations of their coordinator or the coinjoin process, such as by setting up decentralized coordinators which are not under their control. But they chose not to do that, and instead to spy on and censor their users.

Profits.

KYC is fine. I will never complete it, but if you want to accept the risks it brings to make your life easier then go ahead. Makes no difference to me. But taint analysis is something different entirely. Trying to dictate that some bitcoin are clean and some are not is an attack on the very fundamentals of bitcoin, and should be opposed by everyone in this space.

That's the reality, at first, during the early stage of bitcoin, I thought it would be untouchable by the government because it's the opposite of what the government is practicing, bitcoin promotes decentralization, but how can we enjoy it when anonymity will become a crime every time we transact bitcoin.

The privacy we are fighting is not legal, so anything not legal is punishable by the law.  

Some great points made by many on the thread. My take is similar to others. ATM privacy
is becoming more and more inconvenient, divulging personal information makes it
easier to conform.

I personally am becoming more and more conscious of my privacy, that I have learned
from this forum. I have started removing profiles from various sites, forums and exchanges,
back tracking.

Regards Bitcoin we have to fight to hold on to what privacy we still have by trading
peer-to-peer and using trusted escrow's for example.

Even if we have gone through KYC/AML policies we xan abandon the services which
they are attached to and opt for the alternatives above

I'm reasonably confident about the preservation of our privacy (for those who are determined to keep it, at least).  As a general rule, technology currently develops at a faster pace than regulators can react to it.  They'll always be a few steps behind the cutting edge.  But it does require a fairly strong will to avoid using all those services on the regulators' leash. 

The main issue is the readiness of those who are willing to relinquish their privacy in exchange for convenience.  Once you hand it over, you may find it difficult to get it back.

Banking laws that talk about privacy are just clichés that don't apply in some situations at all.
I have a bank account and personal data and only the bank knows, but in reality there are many insurance calls that come in so that my data must be leaked and sold to other parties. don't really believe about privacy being guarded. Government interests have no limits, they have control and have the power to do anything even if it's about our privacy. Expected privacy will not exist. Loss of privacy is inevitable.

Privacy is the part of crypto that government is fighting, the financial part is not. It could stay decentralized and definitely be in the asset market as a whole, literally could have ETF soon, all of that is fine as long as government knows who is investing and how much.

They do not see crypto as a threat, there are a billion other fiat currencies outside of your own currency as well, wherever you live, your fiat needs to be strong against others, not just strong because mainly all fiat devalued in the recent 3 years, but just be stronger compared to others, this now includes bitcoin as well. As long as there is no privacy, governments are fine with it.

Exactly and on point thats why whenever i do make out some fill-ups that in related with some personal information whether it is attached with  some casual day to day living kind of transaction then i do already

anticipate that those informations would really leak out.I dont really believe into those privacy laws that we do have on the country as of this moment which it is indeed true that government does always have

the power and whenever they do prefer on doing something then there's no way in hell that you could stop them and as a citizen then there's nothing you can do.

Overall I think all of us are more lax with privacy in some situations.  It is nowadays just impossible to stay fully private because at the end of the day that means fully isolating yourself out of society.  This can go from basic things like ordering something online on a fake name and address to extreme situations like not willing to go out without covering your face or using these anti surveillance eyewear to make sure cameras do not catch you.

The reality is, the more paranoid and extreme you are, the more isolated you will end up from the society.  And just like you say, there are places where you simply can not go through the daily life as a normal citizen without having to show your ID somewhere, pay with card or whatever else.  Maybe 30 years ago it was different.  But with technology, it becomes just so hard to be fully free and private and some situations require you giving up this paranoia or you will not be able to do usual stuff like taxes and all of that.  Sucks, but it is what it is.

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Regards,
PrivacyG

Some parts of the world still possible to maintain privacy more than others, today, as much as 30 years ago. I wasn't really paranoid or extreme in my pre-Europe life (circa 2016). It was simply that it was either possible to live without social media or smartphone (very successfully even without television or much internet for me up until 2013), or impossible to connect to them (no internet infrastructure).

And just simple practices made necessary by living conditions as a foreigner in impoverished places -- never take the same route same time, never let a taxi drop you off exactly at your address, never wear any branded clothes etc. As you say simple things like using a fake name/phone even persona.

Wasn't paranoid or extreme, just the way things are to be safe and mindful. Everyone did it =)

Europe and the added levels of security and state responsibility and welfare made it not only a necessity to be identified and verified constantly -- it also lulls you into a sense of comfort and safety, so you're always getting more lax. I now don't think twice about taking the same routes. Taking uber directly to my door. Signing in with my name.

I'm definitely less careful these days about Bitcoin use. Don't really know why, also the same laxness from this feeling of safety and comfort? Used to be always a new address, always separating wallets, no satoshi parked at an exchange even for a minute longer than necessary.

Now I reuse addresses. I label addresses for different uses rather than separate wallets. I do leave BTC in exchanges for days and weeks without active trades (Localbitcoin but it still counts).