Bitcoin Forum

Hey there, so i came across a report from a regtech company about the latest sanctions on 2 Iran-related addresses.
Does that mean governments might start marking all dangerous addresses? How will BTC still be censorship resistant if govts would prosecute people for transacting with certain addresses?
I know there can be a lot of addresses, that's not the point. If blockchain analysis keep on improving, this might be a big threat.

UST press release: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm556 (https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm556)

My source: https://www.coinfirm.com/blog/iran-sanctions-more-in-high-risk-addresses-of-the-month-series-by-amlt

This is only applicable on the US though, and other countries don't necessarily need to comply with the US sanctions as they have their own say and entirely different jurisdiction for the said matter. This just goes to show how bully the US can be on anything that they think they can get their hands on, and bitcoin is no exception. They can mark any potential 'dangerous' addresses there are but it will make no difference given that at a certain point, the sphere of addresses that can transact with the marked address will only grow, and that might cause problems for people who aren't involved in the case.

this seems to me like more of a drama and a political move rather than being an actual thing. and the reason for it is most probably due to the fact that usage of bitcoin has been growing in Iran despite this country being under heavy sanctions.
I seriously doubt that US government is dumb enough to think listing 2 bitcoin addresses as "sanctioned" can change anything or even prevent these 2 users from continuing their usage of bitcoin.

Illegal activities make law enforcement go after people doing illegal things.... go figure.

This is the third thread about this suggesting it means bitcoin has a problem.

People breaking the law and getting chased by authorities isn't a flaw in bitcoins protocol.

the protocol is still censorship resistant. ;)

the U.S. government might be able to punish you after the fact for transacting with sanctioned persons, but they can't stop the transactions from occurring. that's what censorship resistance is about!

This has the effect that for people/companies that disclose bitcoin addresses, they may be subject to sanctions. But for undisclosed bitcoin addresses, underground transactions can’t be blocked.

Bitcoin protocol is censorship proof - yet, no worries.

Nothing's stopping governments from doing this, but this should be fairly easy to bypass for the people involved as they can always generate new addresses. A marked address is essentially useless though, as authorities are likely willing to burn through resources to trace transactions with blockchain analysis.


It has always been bad practice to reuse addresses, so if you have reason to worry about this, you can simply use a different address for each transaction. It's very unlikely for them to tag addresses with very few transactions.

Other countries have regulations, not all countries apply the same law to Bitcoin.
So far there has been no violation of Bitcoin transactions that are burdensome to the government, essentially while you can invest in Bitcoin do it, complaining that the solution is not good,
the news circulated variously, the point: Bitcoin is still running today.

It doesn't have a big impact as far as I know. Those Iranians addresses have been identified as being used to scams or addresses used for criminal activities. If you yourself hasn't done anything so why bother?

I believe that if the owner of these addresses thinks this address is blocked, they will definitely create a new address, and this new address is also difficult to verify.
I actually think that it is impossible to prevent bitcoin transactions by legal means, which is the biggest difference between Bitcoin and traditional currency.

Government sanctions on Bitcoin - What impact will they have?
All return to the rules applied in their respective governments, because each government must provide a different application, some do not recognize only to not be used as a main transaction other than money already in existence and other things that can still be done, but there are countries that have already been blocked. so you can't do anything.

They are impossible to prevent. It's one of the reasons why Bitcoin is being described as uncensorable. It can't be stopped unless you bring the entire network down, which is virtually impossible. They can be penalized after the fact though, which this case clearly demonstrates. But we'll see, I suppose. Sanctioning a Bitcoin address is unprecedented so we don't know its exact effects yet.

I wonder if they'd come up with "proximity" sanctions. I can't wait for stuff like coinjoin, because today's Bitcoin analytics is already reaching too far. We have to take our privacy back...

Bitcoin has come a long way. It can only get better. As a matter of fact, the coin has endured various censorship campaigns bouncing back stronger.

But it has never warranted such attention from the government. I'm aware that they can't stop people from using it, but bouncing it into the grey area won't help at all.

And also the tracking is really improving, Bitcoin isn't anonymous after all...

I do not think government have the capability of outrightly sanctioning bitcoin.
The reason why I arrived at that thought process is that bitcoin is decentralized structure devoid of any government control or  under any regulatory body, so sanctioning it outrightly would be difficult.

America doesn't own bitcoin and sanctioning addresses will achieve nothing but they can press a button and create a new adrdress. One day they will learn what decentralisation means

bitcoin has never been anonymous so you can not say that it has  changed because tracking was improved! in fact the focus of bitcoin has never been anonymity to begin with although it can provide you with enough anonymity that can sever your purposes as a regular user (meaning if you are not a big criminal). all the tracking techniques aren't reliable either. they only can come up with a good guess unless you have actually tightly linked your bitcoin addresses with your own identity.

The users of those addresses have multiple options to hide their tracks, they can push the coins on those addresses through multiple mixer services and nobody would be able to track those coins or they can simple push it through some shady services that mix those coins within the service with other people's coins. <Gambling sites created for money laundering>  ::)

Bitcoin is pseudo anonymous, so blocking or banning addresses will not be affective at all.  ;D

The problem is that if your address is "sanctioned", then you can change to a new address. It's easy to do because of the anonymity of crypto, and it's hard for others to trace it, you can even change it every transaction.
If want to solve this problem by legal means, then the premise is that you must publish your bitcoin address, but this is simply impossible. Who is so stupid?

As a political news, this probably doesn't have a positive impact on BTC but I don't think that it will drastically make any change or influence it anyway. Bitcoin protocol is censorship proof, this is a benefit. But in a way, I believe that it is one of the reasons why BTC is not globally governmental accepted and it will probably never be. They will not take chances with anything they cannot control and look into at any point.

The US government's intention was not just for coins to be blocked from the published addresses. It was to get exchange services to block coins tainted by those addresses. Basically, they want exchange services to do their work for them -- follow the money, confiscate it, then inform them after the fact.

If you want to remove -- or rather, swap -- taint, you need someone else's coins. Changing to new addresses isn't good enough.

As of the reason why the US government decided to sanction those accounts could probably be a good one as those accounts could probably be used by scammers to scam people or have been used to carry out cladestine deals in the past.
But as for bitcoin being any less uncensored or decentralized,thats not possible as pseudo anonymity still makes it possible for users of those accounts to easily bypass this sanctions and cover up all their tracks
Bitcoin is never losing this privilege to the government

Government sanctions can be both good and bad.

Good in the sense that people who were scared that bitcoin transaction might get them sued would not fear any more about it and transact/trade without any apprehension. This could improve the overall health of the situation in the market.

Bad in the sense that banking system and no-coiners would blame the government about accepting something that is potentially a ponzi or a scam or simply FUDing about it. We all know how far these people can go to brainwash the common people. This will have a negative impact on the market - however it will not be sustained.

Hence I believe overall it will be a good thing. Still we are narrowing down to few conditions and not looking at it from a broad perspective.

A government as the highest authority of any country has the right to sanction any thing within it jurisdiction and at that the sanction on certain bitcoin address does not necessarily mean it a general sanction on the entire bitcoin network, those sanctioned addresseay have commit one crime or the other.

Every country has regulations according to the laws of its government and does not apply the same law to Bitcoin.
And sanctions for bitcoin, so far are prohibited from becoming official payment instruments in several countries that exist and do not become an impact on users, as long as they are converted to official fiat

We don't have to worry about the involvement of governments. Because of the huge popularity bitcoin is gaining, most governments around the world are trying to bring regulations into the use of Cryptos. Gradually bitcoin will be widely accepted all around the world as a means of exchange for goods and services

You mean to say that the "owner" of the address if they commit some "fraud/steal" from another address should be persecuted for crime? The question arises that how do you verify the owners of the addresses? Do you think the fraudstar would reveal that at all? And its not difficult to cover up your transactions using mixers, exchangers and all. No cyber crime department would be willing to look into such things at all.

Bitcoin was born to be unregulated. What needs to be regulated is the trading volumes market manipulation and not the transactions.