Bitcoin Forum

https://www.dlnews.com/articles/regulation/why-the-eu-is-about-to-outlaw-and-curb-key-crypto-features/
The EU is taking aim at privacy coins and self-custody wallets under new anti-money laundering regime.
The changes, including a ban on crypto mixers, are expected this week.
DeFi, DAOs, NFT platforms, among others, will need to increase their due diligence on users.

Comments by lawyer Ksenia Oshurko(C)
" Key changes:
🔹 Restriction of anonymous payments from non-custodial wallets (i.e. those where the owner has full control over private keys) - no more than €1,000 per transaction.
🔹 Enhanced monitoring of cryptocurrency transactions - exchanges and payment services will have to monitor transfers more strictly.
🔹 Ban on anonymous instruments: cryptomixers (services for anonymising transactions) and private coins like Monero (XMR) and Zcash (ZEC) are under attack.
🔹 Mandatory KYC (identity authentication) for DeFi platforms, DAOs and NFT marketplaces.

💭 What does this mean for the crypto market?
1️⃣ Cryptocurrency anonymity under threat - private transactions and confidential coins could be outlawed in the EU.
2️⃣ Pressure on DeFi - platforms may be obliged to collect user data, which contradicts the very idea of decentralisation.
3️⃣ Exchanges will have to tighten rules - increasing the burden on projects working with EU users."

We have discussed about this before on some threads. Bitmover posted (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5537017.msg65234098#msg65234098) recently that Bitstamp sent him email about the Mica Regulations which has began.

If you click on the link that you posted up there, the news was published on the 16th of January which was almost 3 months ago.

I agree with you that this is not new news, but there is a lot of information noise right now.

"On February 1, 2025, the DAC8 directive came into force in the European Union, fundamentally changing the rules for crypto asset holders and international businesses. Financial authorities now have expanded powers to monitor digital assets, offshore accounts, and international transactions. Let’s break down how this affects businesses."
https://fbs-tax.com/en/mediacenter/news-en/eu-tightens-control-over-cryptocurrencies-and-offshore-assets-what-businesses-and-investors-need-to-know/

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If this thread is redundant here, request that it be deleted or moved.

This is what me and other real crypto adopters have been saying for so many years but no one listens. No one understand anything about bitcoin. Everyone just says "bitcoin is decentralized and can't be controlled" then they continue saying "bitcoin will be regulated and controlled, it's going to be great then investors will come". It's so stupid to listen to general bitcoiner population, not all are stupid but if you understand what I'm saying then congrats, you are one of the smart people.

If it's regulated then it's not decentralized because regulation is centralized.

Bitcoin should have been censorship resistant but to be censorship resistant it needs to have strong privacy like Monero. Very sad how bitcoin turned out. But we have to do our best and not lose hope. Keep fighting for freedom! Teach others the truth and maybe we can turn around everything and save bitcoin.

I don't think it is redundant. This is a very relevant fact and regulation which is impacting users of many countries and exchanges.

There are too many things to discuss, such as how to verify those addresses, how effective this can be to AML policies , how invasive it is to innocent investors, etc . All that can't fit in one topic

Mandotary KYC for Defi platforms? LOL that's a joke? They will just kill crypto innovation in Europe. Because crypto platforms can incorporate them in a country at the opposite side of Earth, in just few days, or even hours. We are seeing that with crypto casinos. And some platforms are not even incorporated anywhere actually. In the end many services will just go hide on TOR or I2P to escape legal persecutions, and it will be even more difficult for authorities to monitor them.

They will NOT 'just kill crypto innovation in Europe'. It will allow innovation that has to have a viable business use case and is based on a (fairly) sound and legal basis as opposed to the early scam and scandal ridden Wild West days of ICO's and their later variants such as Ordinals, Runes, meme coins, etc.

Yes it will require records of who owns and runs the businesses. ALL legitimate businesses no matter what they are need that. DeFi projects have people behind the scenes running and maintaining them. Even if just to boost customer confidence in them, those people must be known. You view that as a 'problem' why?

Setting up a platform in a country that does not regulate it will be of zero use to users in the EU (and USA) unless you intend to ONLY use crypto to pay for all of your needs. As soon as you (try to) exchange your crypto into fiat you will be screwed because your assets have no proof of origin.

Come to think of it, even just using crypto for your expenses will not work unless you only deal through the black markets because all reputable vendors will also want 'clean and verifiable' coins/tokens/etc as payment.

Unfortunately, not. What do you expect? They are pushing CBDCs, they are trying to put fear into people with the survival kit to spend a lot on armaments that people are going to pay for through inflation and worse public services, they are pushing digital identity for total control worthy of 1984, that they want to control everything that is done in the DEX is just a logical consequence of the totalitarian state we are heading towards.


No, because it was already dead. You can't kill what is dead. And not only in cryptocurrencies. In technology in general, when a startup succeeds in Europe in its beginnings, it ends up moving to the USA due to the huge amount of regulations and the difficulty to raise money that they have in the EU.


Well, they want to ban VPNs, so I imagine Tor will be in the same package. Let's see if we realize that the EU is heading towards a 21st century USSR (https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/vpn-services-may-soon-become-a-new-target-of-eu-lawmakers-after-being-deemed-a-key-challenge).

Alright so, I always heard Bitcoin mixers aren't get banned because the government didn't publicizing if they really ban of Bitcoin mixers usage, except they use to laundering illegal coins. But now, the EU already take the lead to ban Bitcoin mixers, which mean regardless what the motives, they restrict all the coins came from mixers.

Bye bye privacy or EU citizen, let's start to use Coinbase exchange to buy, sell and hold coins, Coinbase exchange is very safe. :P

This is insane, as it forces users to hold their coins in centralized entities, and then there is no guarantee that those central entities will safeguard their assets. It is like rebuilding banks within cryptocurrencies.

AML politicians absolutely don't care about cryptocurrency exchange users and investors. According to the usage agreement, customers will always be in an unequal position and will not be able to challenge their rights in court.

Another problem with DeFi is that already all the stablecoins are centralised and have a freeze function. You can lose your assets at any time.

Well when your neighbor is threatening with invading countries and then your main partner cozies up with this neighbor then you are forced to rush into an arms race to protect yourself just in case, so I can see how EU wants to build their own army. Nobody believed Russia would actually invade Ukraine and start bombing the country until it happened, so you have to be ready for these things before it becomes a reality so you have more leverage in both protection and further negotiations (EU is being ignored because they don't have a bunch of nukes, unfortunately it's the truth). So basically, they have to improve their defense.

Of course the problem is the absurd regulation that thinks everyone using a mixer is automatically a criminal. How are you supposed to get any privacy in Bitcoin if you dont use a mixer? if you send a transaction then eveyone can see your account balances on that address, so it's only normal to use mixers. But it's clear EU doesn't understand how Bitcoin works.

This issue with Monero has been going on for some time now and, if I'm not mistaken, many exchanges have already delisted it. These regulations end up becoming very restrictive and prevent cryptocurrencies and the freedom they have offered since their creation from thriving, driving away users and investors.

Um what part of BTC being from its inception a public ledger don't you get? Satoshi never ever said anything about it having privacy features. It was designed to be a trustless yet verifiable system that does not rely on middle-men. Others can not only see balances on that address but also easily track all inputs and outputs associated with it. From there they can step through those addresses as well.

Of course, finding out who owns those addresses is a different story and much harder to do if none of the addresses have been KYC'd or are previously linked to known entities.

That said, if folks want to try and obscure their Tx's - that's their problem. I for 1 cannot think of a legitimate reason to do that. I'm perfectly fine with mine being a public record.

As for the bureaucrats in the EU not understanding Bitcoin much less other crypto - can't argue with that...

I don't really understand what ICOs have to do with Dex and Defi platforms to be honest? Dapps are designed to be trustless in order to avoid being scammed by custodial platforms, it's the opposite of all those shady ICO projects.

Maybe you don't know it because you're a bitcoin maximalist(it would explain why you don't care about Defi and Dapps) but currently most crypto wallets are offering swap features using Dex services without any KYC. So if those coins will be rejected by fiat exchanges and merchants, 90% of circulating coins are going to be worthless. In addition I don't think EU authorities will be able to stop p2p exchanges, that is to say marketplaces where people are exchanging fiat and cryptos each other. On top of that Switzerland still allows to exchange cryptos for fiat without KYC when transactions are under 1000€.

While the United States is moving toward cryptocurrencies and becoming more open to third-party privacy-related services like mixers, Europe is unfortunately moving in the opposite direction, imposing more restrictions and restrictions.

The bad news for regular users is the "Mandatory KYC for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Platforms, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), and Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Marketplaces" law, as KYC has become mandatory for users when using these decentralized services.

However, the somewhat good news is that the limit on anonymous payments from non-custodial wallets is limited to €1,000 per transaction. I believe this provision will not be an obstacle for regular users, as most of their transactions are less than €1,000.

You have a public address accepting donations for example, then if you send money to someone from that address, that someone can google your address and find out that you participate here, they will be able to browse your posting history, see if you have been making money on sig campaigns, see if you are an interesting target or not ("oh look, this guy has been posting for 10 years, he may have a lot of bitcoin...") and so on, so this sucks to anyone that likes privacy. This is a fact, I don't care what satoshi said or didn't say. So if you want to avoid this, you have to send your balances to another address, and send from there, but that is only one layer of privacy, real privacy is obtained through mixing the coins. Thinking that mixing coins is inherently bad is the same as thinking any privacy tool is inherently bad, same concept and same conclusions that leads to laws like this.

Who says you can't figure out a way to prove how the assets have been earned? No sane country will say no to recognizing income it can tax.

Privacy solves everything. Bitcoin barely has any.
Every bitcoiner with intelligence is crying now because of evil regulations destroying bitcoin.
Everyone in monero has been attacked by regulations for a long time but no one cares because government can't do anything to stop monero, monero can't be regulated and can't be tracked. Privacy solves all problems.

Bitcoin is like Windows OS. Microsoft is government and windows updates are regulations. Every time microsoft has a new update, all windows users are crying. Every time government makes more regulations, every bitcoiner is crying.

Monero is like Linux. It can't be regulated. It is freedom.

Bitcoin has to change. If it doesn't add strong privacy then it's only a matter of time until monero flips bitcoin.

All totalitarian states so far have either crumbled under their own weight or have been destroyed from the outside. I think that will be the fate of EU as well.


If they decide to ban Tor/I2P they will most likely go for some variant of DPI (deep packet inspection). However I think it is relatively easy to modify these protocol so that they won't be easily recognizable by the DPI firewalls that they will be using. But yeah, this will not stop them from trying to put everything under total control.

I did not say you could not prove where the assets came from. Of course you can (or should be able to) and it will have to be done for tax reasons - but you will have to do what amounts to KYC procedures to do it. I meant that your attempts at 'privacy' are screwed once you do that.

You can't hide that you use tor. Only temporarily with bridges. But it's just temporary for weeks or a few months, then they will detect that you have been using tor and then you will go to prison or whatever the punishment is going to be.

EU is already worse than china, and this is going to make EU 1 million times worse. I really would prefer living in china instead of EU. China has more freedom.

There will be no privacy in EU. No defi. And there will be absolute control. And the people will not do anything about it.

The usual ways to detect Tor are

• 1. Monitoring the network traffic for connections to known Tor relays/bridges
• 2. Inspecting the SSL certificate(s) used by the suspected Tor clients
• 3. Portscanning suspected Tor relays for listening connections on standard Tor ports

1 can be fixed care by renting a VPS outside of EU and running a non-public bridge.
2 and 3 can be fixed too by modifying the Tor software and the VPS firewall.
There are quite a few other tricks that can be used to prevent the EU Gestapo from detecting that one is using Tor, but this forum and thread are not the best place to discuss this.

EU has always been leaning towards totalitarianism, but in the recent years things have really gone downhill. Frankly I don't care about China, Russia or any other other totalitarian states. Too bad EU takes example from them.

However I think that blocking Tor and VPN are not their main objectives. Most likely they will just remove physical cash (in fact they are already phasing it out), thus removing all crypto on/off ramps they don't control. Once the cash is gone the totalitarian state will be complete and we will be living in the Fourth Reich.

Worse than that. The project is to link digital identity to the use of CBDCs, so politicians will have all your information at the click of a button.

Some retards say that it's all the same, that nowadays when you use a cell phone you no longer have privacy. What they do not understand is that it is not the same that a company has my data and that to access them a judicial authorization is required, than a politician can access everything in an instant if he wants. Apart from the problem of hacks. Having medical data, employment, studies, economic behavior and behavior in general in the same centralized database is going to be a very juicy booty for hackers.

Fuck them.

No wonder why my CoinGate payments stopped working all of a sudden.

I am not clear if you are located in the EU or not but in any case CoinGate is, and therefore subject to the MiCA law, the last snippets of which will come into force in September this year, some have already come into force, and some companies are implementing what the law requires for September. For example, the MiCA allows 1 transaction per day without KYC in cryptocurrency ATMs as long as it is less than €1,000 but the vast majority of ATMs have gone ahead and already apply it. I understand that they have done it to coincide with the fiscal year.

Welcome to Big Brother Union.

Hide from who? If you don't want your ISP to know that you use Tor, then find a good VPN and connect to it first, then to Tor. Besides, no one can forbid you from using Tor, even in countries that are obsessed with surveillance of their citizens. Where public bridges are blocked, you can request private ones through the browser itself.


Comparing China and the EU in the context of human rights really doesn't make sense - and if you really think China is better, maybe you should go there and feel communism on your own skin. Cryptocurrency trading and mining are banned in China, as are many popular websites, and what do you think happens to those who break these bans?

I'm not a European nor do I live there.

They are based in Lithuania, an EU country, which sucks for this kind of thing but it is what it is. Coinpayments still works great. Maybe Bitpay too but I haven't used it recently.

Now it's going to be a chance to not be an European citizen for crypto and cypher users. It seems USA are gladly taking the exact opposite direction of EU(SSR), by stop prosecuting and almost prohibiting to do it, exchanges, wallet and mixing services. So it's going to be very difficult for european companies to work with american ones using cryptocurrencies, because the rules they have to follow seem to be antinomic now.

You left out page 2 of that - the 'except in cases of' bit... So the mixers et al are NOT entirely off the hook. In return for that Get Out of Jail Free card I bet many will be happy to provide the needed tracking information (to whatever extent they can) in the above cases. ;D

That's a very personal interpretation of this text IMO. And I'm a bit surprised you didn't post it in the quoted thread despite meriting Theymos' statement or you didn't open a new topic to defend this point of view, at least. Personally I think the most important part of this quote is the last sentence. In addition you should notice the title of this memorandum intended for all DOJ employees is "Ending regulation by prosecution". So for me, it is what it is, they've decided to stop prosecution until more specific regulations on the matter come into force, if it ever happens .


https://talkimg.com/images/2025/04/09/xCNtZ.png

I'm with Saint-loup on this. The direction the Trump administration is taking is the complete opposite of the European one. The European one consists of regulating beforehand, controlling, prohibiting (as happens with USDT), while Trump's gives freedom and only pursues the crime a posteriori, plus it focuses on the offender and not on the means, because focusing on the means is like pursuing the knife maker because there are stabbings.

This quote can be understood as governments beginning to understand the nature of cryptocurrencies, but in any case, I don't think the majority of new cryptocurrency users care about privacy.

In short, they focus their efforts on cartels, considering this technology users less vulnerable to dark activities.

There's a lot of noise out there and it's not easy to find a reliable source with the actual legislation.
Have the EU even published the DAC8 directive in one, comprehensive document? Is this it?:
https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-10215-2023-INIT/en/pdf (I found this link in some PWC publication but it's from 2023 so it could be outdated).

Nevertheless, the EU tightening the screw on any remaining privacy is not a surprise to anyone. Restrictions and overregulations is all they have to offer.

EU coming in hard now. They’re basically trying to kill off privacy in crypto — banning mixers, targeting Monero and Zcash, and forcing DeFi to act like banks with full KYC. This goes completely against what the space was built for. Looks like they’re trying to fence off innovation instead of embracing it. It’ll push real crypto development further underground or offshore. Let’s see how the market reacts. ???

You want to know what I think?

They do not actually believe they will be able to implement many of these new regulations on truly decentralised services. What they are really doing is testing the waters on how far they can succeed with tightening and enforcing regulations on decentralised money before they start forcing CBDCs on everyone. DeFi can fork, use privacy tools, or migrate to non-EU jurisdictions. No problem. So this is likely more about setting an infrastructure for CBDCs rather than actually regulating Defi.

Fear only works in the short term. They want to find long term ways of keeping everyone in a decentralised future under control. I am not worried about these new measures but I am sceptical of what they actually mean.

I have been since long registered on this forum as a reader. Now I have to say that with the new EU law that is acted now since 01.07.25, what we can expect is sometime the ban of self-custody wallets. By now, there is a question about the kind of wallet: self-custody or hoster and if so which one. I bet it is a transitional step in order to accustom users to a level of fencing, then 2d step will feel less repressive.

So it is exactly what you tell about encapsulating users digitally 100%. Basically if BTC is not centralized by state banks,  the other way for EU regime is to centralize the users... At the same time, exchangers/traders get swallowed inside the financial state controlled grid. Money and people digitalized and tracked real time, where it comes from, where it goes to, what they do, what they write, what they think.

I live in Norway and sometime I use a local highly controlled trading platform, Firi, because it is a simple way to convert BTC to NOK and get wired to bank account.
Yesterday evening I connected in order to send some BTC to my account there. There was the warning about additional checks, it says we will have to tell what is the source of the BTC:

https://i.imgur.com/XIi4iC0.jpeg

 I sent some BTC from a wallet of mine friday evening, and the status by now early sunday is on "incoming":

https://i.imgur.com/lCdggeJ.jpeg

you will laugh: it is stuck in "incoming" long after transaction was tens of times confirmed, because we are ... week-end. Here in Norway even bank computers don't work week-end. Ie. if you do a payment online in your bank, after friday 15:00 it doesn't arrive to recipient until monday from 05:00.
In the case of Firi, then, you can't wire ie. withdraw from your wallet to your bank week-ends. And now since 01.07, when you send BTC to your bitcoin address there, it is also stuck until monday, then operators will check, ask questions and what not.   If exchange rates goes down significantly in the week-end ... Before 01.07, you could put BTC in your wallet and do a "sale" to NOK, so you had your money credited a bit after BTC incoming was confirmed. Now the BTC are also in week-end limbo until what will be the exchange rate of monday morning. Silly.

Anyway, back to the "Matrix" build by EU.
The way to escape it requires to travel,, so to have a bank profile outside EU, which means in fact outside the whole "West". Once you have this, you can use hops across digital systems. There are still countries where cash is required. Inside EU, cash is either almost banned or strongly limited (few ATMs, capping + questions, at bank's discretion), but outside EU, say some of Asia, Africa, some South America, you will need cash, so VISA cards can be used to get cash. EU politburo has still some level of digital repression, and these days the whole West is criminally hysterical, it is going to be very grim.
Last year there was a massive USA-EU combined attack that also criminalized developers, the case of Samourai for instance, and the ban of VISA/Mastercard/SWIFT/SEPA for buying Monero.

https://decrypt.co/330410/eu-anti-money-laundering-warns-crypto-firms

EU Anti-Money Laundering Authority Warns Crypto Firms of New Regulations
The chair of the EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) noted the ‘fragmented’ EU crypto markets, and the risk of the ‘diverging application’ of rules.

"EU's new Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) issues warning to crypto exchanges and service providers about stricter compliance requirements starting this month.
Regulators must now assess beneficial owners and shareholders of crypto companies to ensure they're not involved in money laundering or terrorist financing.
New AML rules prohibit anonymous wallets and privacy coins, requiring crypto firms to provide direct government access to account data by July 2027."

With how badly the EU's elephantine bureaucracy works, with a bit of luck this will be delayed for another year or two.The bad thing is that I don't see a possible political change that could reverse this. The only possibility would be that they would make fools of themselves compared to what the USA is doing and they would have to think again.