Bitcoin Forum

Europe wants end to anonymous Bitcoin transactions

Money-laundering powers seen as crimp on terror funds if virtual currencies offer (unlikely) help
3 Feb 2016 at 07:18, Simon Sharwood

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/03/ec_virtual_currency_regulation_suggestion/

It is hypocrisy at its finest, let's castrate bitcoin - it is the root of all evil! EU fucked up with refugee crisis and years of pure bureaucracy dulled their minds.
It is the another idiotic idea, they think that taming bitcoin will gonna change something with Islamic terrorism and money laundering? This is not the way, gentlemen.

That should be easy then, as bitcoin is not anonymous anyway: http://www.bitcoinisnotanonymous.com/

What is anonymous, is cash. I wonder if EU is also planning to ban cash?

You shouldn't worry about this. How are they going to end the pseudo-anonymity of something that they don't even understand? Besides, the most that they can do is request more information from companies.

i think that they are not understanding that you can not stop a decentalized system

old generation is still not well aware how a decentralization work, yes they can hinder adoption, but adoption currently it's a joke anyway, only geek people are using bitcoin basically...

Exactly! Hilarious read, yeah good luck trying to enforce that. I always have a little laugh when I read about banks, governments, offical bodies etc threatening to clamp down on certain aspects of bitcoin. How exactly.....

There is nothing wrong with this tbh, they want companies to keep track of who is buying/selling bitcoins, coinbase and other similar exchanges around the world already do this.

If they are going to protect the customers of such companies then there is nothing wrong. Nobody who uses Bitcoin is forced to use those companies and can retain their pseudo-anonymity.

Maybe if they understood it, I'd take them seriously.

Pseudo, they forgot to append pseudo in the term anonymous to describe bitcoin. Also, more UNLIKELY help to terrorism came from cash/fiat, and I wonder how they are not seeing this one and tend to look at bitcoins instead. :/

What they should first solve is making sure their ladies are safe from the raping refugees instead. Sooner they'd all be invaded if very event in their cities includes rape scenes.
Thats a bigger problem than stopping making bitcoin transactions anonymous  when in fact it isn't at all.

so all the problems with fiat is solved and there is no more money laundering and numerous criminal acts being done using fiat?! they ended those and now starting on bitcoin!!!

everyone CHILL OUT

its not about bitcoin.
its about unregulated exchanges that handle FIAT

they are not going after bitcoin-core to start demanding users hand over ID, its purely exchanges that handle FIAT unregulated.

so chill out, its not an attack on bitcoin

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178336.msg13762899 :(

@franky1: you do understand that Bitcoin is pretty much useless once you take away its money-laundering potential ($$$ -> BTC -> $$$), right?

Well, they can sure try, but I don't see how that could work in the practical world. The monitoring of transactions could lead to something, but not the identity of such money launderes or terrorists

My vision about this high interest at bitcoin is to being able to taxe the companies who offer their service at bitcoin,soo i believe they wanna to know how many coins being traded,as they should realise they cant stop bitcoin and even control it.

I think Europe has more important problems than Bitcoin.
Immigration second wave is going to begin.
Political instability.
Terrorism.
US with much stronger centralized government didn't try to ban bitcoin..

Know a bitcoiner who loves and stands behind his government? Me neither.
Bitcoin funded. Because can't be controlled by statist pigs, not like their filthy fiat.
Some claim Bitcoin's a NSA honeypot...

Bitcoin transactions are public, Blockchain transactions you can see very easy. So everything is very clear - BTC anonymity do not exist.  ;D

Of course it exists at some level. How do you link a transaction to a specific person's identity??

The immigrants need to smuggle their money in Europe using bitcoins obviously imagine what will happen if they get caught red-handed.

When they link Bitcoin with Terrorism you can expect they will try atleast.

Thats why Bitcoin is called pseudo anonymous. As long as you dont reveal identity, your transactions are anonymous.

This is quite funny in my opinion because this is like if a person is doing murder with knife , you put a ban on selling of knives.
When they can't stop the criminals and terrorism why do they think they can stop Bitcoins ? I think its funny if hackers and terrorists start using USD , they will demand USD ban too.

No one is banning Bitcoin. They're not letting you sell it, for their filthy fiat, anonymously. Or, rather, they're not letting exchanges facilitate such transactions.

Majority of users are against this and I do understand them but the problem here is, them trying to find a way to improve security of everyone and therefor are limiting ways that criminals could fund each other and by doing those, criminals won't be tempted to use it since if they do, then chances of them being caught will be high (not that this alone will solve the problem). I'm in a country that is considered a restricted country and We even have a harder situation on this matter but looking how secure this country is as compared to all the neighboring countries in the region, I could say it's only because of those restricted rules that help so far to have a safe environment around here.

Today it is unregulated FIAT exchanges and tomorrow they decide to close down regulated exchanges that allows for Bitcoin trading. We will have to

find a way for these services to survive, no matter what these organizations decide to do. Let's say, they want to advance their own Blockchain

technology and then regulate these exchanges to deny Bitcoin... It can happen, and it will happen as soon as their technology are completed.

Seems normal to me this point of view having in mind their aim in asking this kind of action regarding virtual currencies. According to me if this mean regulation and full legalization of bitcoin and the other digital currencies and the give of those the full status of a legal currency, this can be named a important achievement of bitcoin and the other cryptos in their road to be more strong and more widespread. But there is something very important that must be clarified clearly by the regulation and the legalization acts. Cannot be touched the privacy of everyone. It is one thing the anonymity and a totally other thing the privacy. The anonymity have to do with the criminals while the privacy have to do with the right that have every normal person to make its life like he do and the right (only by him) to make known to the others that he want from this life. This second thing cannot be touched. Otherwise we can tell with full mouth: we are at the beginning of an hidden dictatorship.

I'm afraid the day of reckoning is upon you, criminal.
Turn yourself in to your local authorities, and try to show some remorse for what you've done..

http://s18.postimg.org/d3hdy9qbt/repent.jpg

But they could try to control fiat-BTC exchanges - it would be not that hard and quite effective from the EU point of view. Ironically it could help BTC to become payment mean, not speculation asset, as spme people could feel discouraged to convert BTC to fiat and conversely.

regulation = end of Bitcoin.
BTC was not created to have regulated exchangers.  BTC market is 90% black market and the people who are using it, are not interested in a regulated e-currency which brings STRONG AML, KYC and so on.It's like they will use their own bank accounts.

The black market will create or move to other e-currency like they did it in the past. I.e: E-gold or LibertyReserve.

Europe ending the use of bitcoin is not an easy thing to do. Bitcoin is anonymous, they know nothing about it, surely they won’t know how bitcoin works, this is just a total waste of time for them. How do they think it’s possible to prevent the world from the use of Bitcoin?.

Europe is scared of more terrorists pouring in among the immigrants carrying invisible money with them. Why the need for a bank account if you can cash out your coins and buy some stuff on the black market?

Just like my old house with water leakage- when you try to seal the leak, the water will find another crack/gap to leak out.

No matter how hard you try, bitcoin will find the way to penetrate...

but the people who are still not interested in bitcoin, are more interested in regulation, the so called average joe

so regulating it, may kill the small user base a little, but it may help the adoption of another type of user base

just one question is this realy such a big deal? i mean i have a coinbase acount and they know i own it i had to verify my identity , so is it not easy to find out what person send what money? most people that use bitcoins have to have some kind of online wallet i guess. right me if im wrong.

People will just adapt to all new regulations and will continue to use BTC!
And once bitcoin go mainstream will be adopted widely in every possible business on internet..
Every scenario for btc is good right now!

Most of the exchanges are already taking IDs from it's customers.Don't see the big difference here.
Furthermore I will still have the option to buy local if I want.
And how they wanna track someones transactions and it's value when you use CoinJoin/other mixers and hopefully sooner than later confidential transactions is implemented?!

Lauda simply likes to emphatically state opinions on shit he simply doesn't understand. For instance:

>pseudo-anonymity of something that they don't even understand
It's pseudonymity, Lauda.  Pseudonymity != pseudo-anonymity.

"Pseudonymity, a word derived from pseudonym, meaning 'false name', is a state of disguised identity. The pseudonym identifies a holder, that is, one or more human beings who possess but do not disclose their true names (that is, legal identities)." --Wikipedia

I think franky1 is too optimistic and you're too pessimistic.

If their goal was to delegalize Bitcoin, this EC proposal would be the stupid thing to start with. Because once there's no anonymity they'll have no good reason to ban Bitcoin.

The main reason behind this is not to eliminate anonymity, it is to eliminate the competition. They will come up with some sort of excuse to just ban

Bitcoin and not other Crypto currencies that adhere to their criteria. The government backed Crypto currencies will get the edge and they would get

a good advantage. The reason why they stalling with regulation is, because the currencies they want to support are not fully developed yet. Once these

"private ledgers" are ready, you can bet your bottom dollar, they will try to ban all the other Crypto currencies that does not adhere to their

requirements.  >:(

Well, nothing to do there.
Bitcoin transactions are not (fully) anonymous.

aww shit:D But nonetheless, i like Bitcoin even if it wouldnt offer anonymity. It is just easy to pay with low fees.

I think the average transaction will stay as it is, just if you sell your coins, they want to have some ID system.
Probably tax related.

But that's my point, if there's no annonymity (and you can't use BTC for anything illegal + you pay taxes on trading etc) there's no excuses left to ban BTC. Therefore, if that was the goal - they'd be trying to ban it now alltogether, rather than just trying to take out the annynimity.

There will be no 'government backed cryptos' (in the form as we know it). No government would voluntarily restrict itself from being able to create money at will. It would require changing the current financial/money issuance system. The best/worst you can expect is governments using private, closed "blockchains" for managing and distribution fiat money. But that's far from 'government cryptocurrencies'.

Europe to end bitcoin? I think that is highly impossible, since the introduction of bitcoin, it has been under Governments surveillance. But bitcoin grow in it's own way. Many European countries have already approved Bitcoin with Asset status. So, there wont be any problem I believe.

I too don’t believe that Europe can stop the use of bitcoin, no matter what, they just have to learn to live with it.
Bitcoin has come into existence, and there is no going back for it. Bitcoin will continue to exist, trying to end it, is just a impossible task for them......

When they talk about banning banks I'll start to believe.

All wars are banksters wars, and in times of peace there's always fraud, money laundering,
and corruption.

It's not a bad thing because all the Bitcoin scammers rampaging around now will be hit the hardest and they won't be able to hide behind the anonymity any more.

We seen many times Banks just pay fines when getting caught with money laundering or finnancing terrorism themselves. Try this yourselves and let see if you get just fine  ::) Obviously there is something rotten here when all are not treated equeally...

And the money they use to pay those fines? They either steal it from us, or print it out of thin air!
This is SO UNFAIR!

I dont see how Bitcoin ruins integrity of Eu?
Why they even bother with this minor thing, when they have immigration catastrophe.

because they can not deal with immigration, problem but they can problably deal with this

they are avoiding on purpose big problem, but remember that this is not for private user, private user can sell how many coins they want with another private, no one will ever know about it

Yes, I agree. As long as we are not going to transfer millions dollars' worth in Bitcoin we shouldn't worry about their intentions. Wait ... Actually we shouldn't worry in any case because there is always a way to do something if you have brains ... and money.

good luck trying to enforce that one you pack of tyrants....... >:(

Who is going to want govt crytpo? its CENTRALIZED! Same as fiat.

Most people want an end to anonymous Bitcoin transactions, but Bitcoin is all about anonymity so that is just impossible.

I think you have it backwards. Bitcoin is not anonymous (http://www.bitcoinisnotanonymous.com/), it is pseudo-anonymous. For many, this is a problem, as it leads to issues with bitcoin tracking, blacklists, weak fungibility, etc. Thus, many would like to see this problem solved, or at least minimized, for example with confidential transactions added to bitcoin.

Today's world is very much against anonymous transactions and everyone is against it at least countries view, I don't think they will be able to though.

not impossible,but also not eaasy as long there was many people who use bitcoin for illegl thing,i guess Europe will against some people who dont want this happen,they must regulate some exchange and wallet about personal identification.

stupid eu .. they are falling out with each other over refrugee crisis ..they are attacking bitcoin for hiding this.. but they wont succeed in this.. bitcoin is unstoppable..

the entire world will try to squeeze out bitcoin to try stop its growth. let them do whatever they want, and let them implement as many new anti bitcoin rules as they want. as you say, bitcoin won't stop. it will continue to grow. i only wonder what will happen if bitcoin becomes really mainstream. the goverments will surely go insane.

You're the guy in the passenger seat who starts mouthing off to a cop that pulled me over. Trust me, there's plenty they can do.

im just wondering how long they try to refusing btc?instead of btc is grwoing quite fast..and many people is trying to using btc althought not that much..i see some people using btc and feel comfort and happy with it..
let see what will happend..

I can't see anything about stopping anonymous transactions, here it is:

......
The plan therefore calls for virtual currency exchange platforms to be brought under the scope of the European Anti-Money Laundering Directive, which would mean exchanges would have to report just who used their services and when they were used. The Action Plan says “The Commission will also examine whether to include virtual currency 'wallet providers'.”
......

Reputable exchanges have KYC anyway and about wallet providers... even if they will be super-over-regulated there would be solutions like bitcoin core etc. So IMO all this changes nothing

Russia is trying. Its not working.

another bad news for bitcoin,just see that russia start to prevent bitcoin for payment,and now europe will disturbing bitcoin,but i think virtul currency not easy like that to be regulated.

Its enough they regulate exchanges, or put some ridiculous taxes or rules on them. This can easily drive ppl out of exchanges.

Nothing to see here people.  Whats new? First, Bitcoin transactions are not totally anonymous and second, Coinbase knows more about me than my bank does.  More press to cause panic - doesn't mean jack.

the only thing they can do about bitcoin anonymous transactions is to force businesses like exchangers and such to report their transactions. they can't to this to regular people. besides i am sure part of it is because they want to take taxes from these businesses which they could not control if it was anonymous.


then stop using coinbase and set a bitcoin wallet yourself!

Right, it's much safer to use one website/app/software as wallet + other ones just for buying, selling trading etc. Don't store all of your eggs in one basket - and this is not about regulation etc it's just a common sense

There is already a law for electronic money institutions which apply to all the exchangers from EU but they don't respect it. In short, they are out of law.

The EU will enforce this law properly and done. Each exchanger from European Union MUST have a financial license because they are dealing with money. What the exchangers are doing(that KYC or AML) is nothing. You are giving your personal details to some companies you know nothing about and which are not supervised by anybody.

Each financial license company have strict rules(according to law) regarding to where they store your information, who can access this information( from their staff ), etc.
Do you think BTC-e or Bitstamp has these rules? :)  NO!

A financial licensed company has the same rules as a bank. They must comply with a lot of things. Can someone tell me where is the BTC-e office? :)

 A real financial company must have a real office, external auditor, accounting, compliance officer and so on. BTC will remain as a tinny shit as long the exchangers will not be financial licensed.

This should be a given.  Any nation-state will want to restrict anonymous currency transactions.  It is not in their interest to be in the business of having no information on how currency (power) is transacting. 

With that said, they can "want" to end Bitcoin all it wants... I'm sure most nations "wanted" to end Bitcoin at one point or another of Bitcoins life.

It's not about ending something, it's about regulation. Nobody is against Bitcoin itself. They are against unregulated exchangers.  Also, it's about a FAIR competition.

If "you" would own a company who is a financial electronic money institutions with a real license, you have a lot of staff, you have to pay a lot of money to cover their salaries, taxes, costs for maintaining the financial license, rent, accounting, auditors and so on...wound't you mind that a company like BTC-e, Bitstamp is doing financial transactions (exactly like your company) and they put all the money they earn in their pocket without paying taxes, without having any rules, without complying with anything?

A small financial licensed company can have expenses of + 30,000 Euro per month. So, each month, firstly, you have to cover the expenses and then to think about you.
You = a person with bills, with a family..with a real life...so you need money as well. Wouldn't you be pissed off because an unfair competitor? YOU WOULD, for sure! :)

It's VERY hard to make +30.000 Euro monthly from the fees you get from exchanges. Don't look to Coinbase which is sustained by their investors. Coinbase will be bankrupted without them. That company cannot sustain itself by making profit from the fees it gets from exchanges.
 

This whole thing of trying to control BTC is pretty hilarious but it's a big concern. BTC is a powerful tool that can give us financial freedom from TPTB and that is what the big guys in suit don't want.

I don't understand the problem with anonymous because anonymous people interested with bitcoin. it's so funny

Sounds disruptive...
http://s17.postimg.org/sr02tb4xb/Capture.png

Stay Wild, Rebels!

To me anonymous nature of bitcoin transaction is not the plus point or the reason of my using bitcoin.Bitcoin has many more benefits like decentralized,fast,no chargeback etc so I am fine if bitcoin anonymity is taken away and I hope I am not the only one with this view

fast? come on! Bitcoin is fast?   ;D ;D

Is it not? Does it take ages for you to send and receive bitcoin? I send and receive almost instantly.How long does it takes at your end?

15-20 minutes.

I'm in asia so I'm save right?

But there's a positive side of this, and that thing is that europe countries could know who used btc for buying illegal things.

Seems that you are) BTW this will not make regulators know who've spent BTC for drugs etc. I don't think that sellers at dark web are making such reports  ;D))))

I have said this before, for bitcoin to go mainstream it will have to lose some part if its anonymity, at-least on the buying/selling part, the rest cannot be regulated.

good idea,but not easy,as long they not consider bitcoin as serious currency,they will not able to relize that,need more company like blockchain to work together.

first of all such illegalities are done with BIG quantities of money. They should look at transactions over 10 or 100 BTC... not at pennies  ::)

OK and how will every micro transaction be filtered? you would need super computers doing that... sounds like Science Fiction to me

The wonderful thing about BTC is that the cost of transacting is really low (up til now it has been, at least. All is subject to change).
So, if I needed to launder a few million Euros, I could do it via multiple sub-10BTC transactions. For less than the price of a latte :)

Lolno.
The Bitcoin network is capable of ~3 (sustained rate) transactions per second, max. Keeping track of that requires the crunch power of a Raspberry Pi. Not the new RasPi, the old RasPi.
Supercomputer :D

well... everything is transparent anyway, more than any fiat will ever be

"Transactions are verified by network nodes and recorded in a public distributed ledger called the block chain." - can you go more transparent than that?

No one should have the power/voice to do that to bitcoin. I dont understand why this is even put under discussion. Bitcoin is everything we need to get rid of our governments and hopefully one day even go over what we now call countries, but by even allowing us to think to eliminate the points of bitcoin we will end up in failure. Remember why BTC was created. "They" should not have an opinion, any of their opinions will drive us to their benefit, we must stay strong if we really want to change shit, if we go lick their asses and accept their petitions just because they do them we are doomed.

No, I can't. If I cared which binary string (bitcoin addy) did business with which other binary string.
If, OTOH, I care about *who* did business with *whom* (as in human meatspace entities), I think I can do a bit better :)

@andulolika: it's rhetoric like yours ("Bitcoin is everything we need to get rid of our governments") that makes government come down hard on BTC.
Don't poke sleeping bears, or don't be surprised when you get mauled :)

I do know that, but i see no hidden way to communicate between ourselves. Its just a matter of time till it cannot be stopped.

Ah don't poke the government may be O.K. as an approach (though i don't agree with that) but don't fear its ridiculous attempts either,
this is the best example that our state will have to learn, the first regulate then understand approach,
is always a shot into their own foot since finace has gone technical. i wonder how they think to get rid of all those privacy centric cons, there is simply no chance. Other then bitcoin,bitcoin
IS transparent by default and in times of Big Data, you will also be able to always track down AVERAGE users. But thats nothing new, everybody should be aware of that.


So there is really nothing to talk about on that relevation, the state like tgo make a transparent  coin transparent, maybe UNDERSTANDING the coin would bring plenty of transparece for our gov, lol.
But if sombody thinks to make a post about this claim , there will be of course someone speak up and say that this is pointless, that's nothing to complain about.
And its not something that pokes our government ...


And anyway state will get tough on crypto sooner or later - untill that happens, i am happy about any scammer around here to challenge us,
i love this training they are providing here. ;) we will have to be prepared for some tough  lessons for both sides.

have fun
Matthias


.

Hahaha you made me laugh hard, in my opinion you right there, there is not much they can do if bitcoin pass on POS, i mean  we wouldnt depend on miners hence we wouldnt depend on legal stuff either.

Regarding the scammers meh, it is true that the more you deal with them the easier is to recon them after, but they done much damage to crypto, yet i believe its peoples fault, bitcoin is about security, but all that bitcoin teach its users at the beginning is bitcoin. There should be a more conciouss group of people that would set up new users to be safe.

Rethink the idea of POS, you are not able to get POS to generate the same unbeatable computing power like the current POW does. I am a fan of POS I am running a VPOS coin myself and i am proud of this coin (see it in my sig), but for Bitcoin its different:One CORE CRYPTO has to have an unbeatable network and that is bitcoin. Altcoins in general are not secure from that pespective anyway, because of lag of computing power, Altcoin are alive because no one decided to kill them. We will need at least another one or two years to get a reasonable network strenth. But time will provide it for those who survive and that will be a tiny fraction of those coins we
we too often consider as established.

have fun
Matthias

So what about Monero? It is anonymous coins. You cannot track the trasaction without a viewing key. That should be banned more than bitcoin.

You cannot regulate it. How will they implement anything against bitcoin to bitcoin transaction? And if so, if they somehow find a way. There will be another altcoin without public accessible ledger. Not possible. They might either ban it or good luck regulating it.

Please understand that it's not the technology that's being regulated, but the movement of real, what folks here call "fiat toilet paper" money, into it.
You can send bitcoins to each other all you want, AFAIK. Even trade them for other shitcoins.
It's when you want to exchange them for *real money* -- that's what they want to regulate. They probably will, too :)

I understand. I made a post about it (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1362191.0). You can regulate the beginning or the end - either the exchange or the person in possession of BTC. But with money laundering and anonymity its very hard. You can just buy bitcoins in dark alley using hard cash and there is no trace of it.

You can also have BTC that you know that comes from a shady deal so you go on the exchange sell them. Use the money you got from the deal and buy bitcoins again using a different valet. Technically clean BTC.

But how will you regulate the exchanges? I mean the owner of the exchange cannot do a background check on the btc incoming from the internet, when someone is selling them. So all they can do is to ask you where did you get the money you are using to buy bitcoin? And that is already done by the company that owns your debit/credit. The place for regulation is very little. But every bitcoin exchange is under reasonable doubt that it helps to mediate a money laundering.

And as you correctly said the technology cannot be regulated.

>You can just buy bitcoins in dark alley using hard cash and there is no trace of it.
Yeah, you could. Rather illiquid, and then you're stuck with BTC that you have to *sell in a dark alley*. Nowhere as convenient as doing it at an exchange that doesn't require any ID, amirite?

>Technically clean BTC
Or use a dice site/tumbler/btc2shitcoin exchange. Cleaning BTC ain't a problem, unless we're talking massive amounts.

>And that is already done by the company that owns your debit/credit.
Exchanges (well, unless you call Circle an exchange) don't do debit/credit cards, afaik.

>cannot do a background check on the btc incoming from the internet
Has your ID. Banks don't do background checks on garbage bags of bills you bring in either, but I'd advise against doing so.

>The place for regulation is very little
The most important bit is your BTC transactions will suddenly not only be linked to a BTC addy, but to your IRL identity. Along with your money transactions. And, of course, the exchanges will be held accountable/heavily audited, so shit like Sherm will be much more likely to happen.

Sure, nothing is perfect--murder and child porn are illegal, but they do exist. Regulation will simply make shit more difficult. Although not altogether impossible.

Merchants that accept Bitcoin transactions mostly know who the customer is.  However, it's much harder to track the identity of individuals making private transactions.  That will always be mostly anonymous (unless Bitcoin is completely changed).