[2017-03-27]Why the European Union is Against Anonymous Digital Currencies

[Kemarit]

Why the European Union is Against Anonymous Digital Currencies

In a recent announcement, the European Parliament (EU) released a new directive related to the anti-money laundering (AML) issue that focuses particularly on digital currencies, even if the EU considers it to be marginal but with a possibility to increase in the future.

AML vs. freedom?
The EU Directive 2015/849 - that requires Compliance by June of 2017 - wants to avoid potential money laundering. This is the fourth to address this issue, with the first directive enacted back in 1991.

The EU’s definition of money laundering has been changed among the different directives and the latest one is focused on Bitcoin and digital currencies with the goal of a new regulation for wallets and cryptocurrencies admins.

From this perspective, it is impossible not to link this directive to the continuous wrong association of Bitcoin to illegal activities.

As I wrote in a recent article, can regulation be a good answer to AML-related issues? Regulating or being afraid of something because it might be used for illegal activities is like blaming fiat currencies because they are used to buy drugs or weapons.

Cash money and digital currencies, in fact, have a few characteristics in common, especially if you consider their anonymous status. And AML existed even before cryptocurrencies.

Anonymous digital currencies
One of the major cryptocurrencies benefit is its free and anonymous status, considering that they are not controlled by any central bank and that transactions are executed through encrypted systems thanks to the Blockchain.

Also, we have to say that Bitcoin is not so anonymous as most people believe; instead we can say that ZCash and Monero completely hide their user’s data.

That said, the most recent directive issued in July indicates that digital currencies "don’t possess the legal status of currency or money" and "cannot be anonymous."

The EU went on to say:

“The credibility of virtual currencies will not rise if they are used for criminal purposes. In this context, anonymity will become more a hindrance than an asset for virtual currencies taking up and their potential benefits to spread. The inclusion of virtual exchange platforms and custodian wallet providers will not entirely address the issue of anonymity attached to virtual currency transactions, as a large part of the virtual currency environment will remain anonymous because users can also transact without exchange platforms or custodian wallet providers. To combat the risks related to the anonymity, national Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) should be able to associate virtual currency addresses to the identity of the owner of virtual currencies. In addition, the possibility to allow users to self-declare to designated authorities on a voluntary basis should be further assessed.”

Full Read Here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/why-the-european-union-is-against-anonymous-digital-currencies

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The EU went on to say:

“The credibility of virtual currencies will not rise if they are used for criminal purposes. In this context, anonymity will become more a hindrance than an asset for virtual currencies taking up and their potential benefits to spread. The inclusion of virtual exchange platforms and custodian wallet providers will not entirely address the issue of anonymity attached to virtual currency transactions, as a large part of the virtual currency environment will remain anonymous because users can also transact without exchange platforms or custodian wallet providers. To combat the risks related to the anonymity, national Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) should be able to associate virtual currency addresses to the identity of the owner of virtual currencies. In addition, the possibility to allow users to self-declare to designated authorities on a voluntary basis should be further assessed.”

...says the thief.

I know right? How about this:

The EU went on to say:

In addition, the possibility to allow users to self-declare to designated authorities on a voluntary basis should be further assessed.”

...but if you refuse we will fuck up your life.

[veleten]

The EU went on to say:

“The credibility of virtual currencies will not rise if they are used for criminal purposes. In this context, anonymity will become more a hindrance than an asset for virtual currencies taking up and their potential benefits to spread. The inclusion of virtual exchange platforms and custodian wallet providers will not entirely address the issue of anonymity attached to virtual currency transactions, as a large part of the virtual currency environment will remain anonymous because users can also transact without exchange platforms or custodian wallet providers. To combat the risks related to the anonymity, national Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) should be able to associate virtual currency addresses to the identity of the owner of virtual currencies. In addition, the possibility to allow users to self-declare to designated authorities on a voluntary basis should be further assessed.”

...says the thief.

I know right? How about this:

The EU went on to say:

In addition, the possibility to allow users to self-declare to designated authorities on a voluntary basis should be further assessed.”

...but if you refuse we will fuck up your life.

not exactly european union,but funnily enough the most corrupt parliamentary members in Ukraine are declaring their bitcoins voluntarily
if you look at their electronic declarations,some of them own hundreds of coins,five hundreds,two hundreds, etc.
nobody gives a damn or even asks them where did the money come from,so I guess it is different if you belong to the inner circles and if you just
some common folk making your living and earning a coin or two a month

[cr1776]

...because they are a bunch of anti-liberty, power-hungry control-freak people out to try to rule and rape the population of the world and to do so they have to know what everyone spends their money on? 

Kind of like the reasons they (and others such as India) don't like cash....it is too easy to not report everything you do to the morally bankrupt authorities.

[profitgenerator212]

Maybe because they have been founded by Nazis:

So we have Nazi Lawyers, Brownshirt Nazis, Auschwitz Nazi Death Camp Businessmen and Italian fascists basically creating the EU. Now that is a very honorable an moral way to setup a united Europe. The EU was built with the blood of the victims of the Holocaust, and nobody gives a damn.

https://steemit.com/history/@profitgenerator/history-of-the-european-union

[Qartada]

Any currency can be used for crime, including but not limited to fiat currency.  Anyone who is actually determined to launder their money will find a way and there will always be easy enough ways available.  Even if Bitcoin didn't do it, people would just find the new altcoin of the week that hasn't been properly banned yet and do that (not that the EU can find everyone who owns Bitcoin anyway).

[Carlton Banks]

It's good to remember that the EU (and other authoritarian political projects like it) sell authoritarianism using a very intelligent argument, so intelligent that huge numbers of people buy it.


Epithets like "Only the law can give you liberty" (Goethe, a lawyer by training, said something like this), and more subtly "With freedom comes responsibility", all conspire against true liberty. Tyrants love these expressions, as it takes careful thought and analysis to argue against such apparent truths.


Once these sorts of phrases are popularly accepted as wisdom, top-down centralised government just wants to help us make it real (the soft-kill approach: "we're from the government, and we're here to help"). They propose more and more restrictions by law, in the name of responsibility and freedom.

And that's the trick. People can be convinced that responsible behaviour can only happen when all people are forced into blind order following. And that's not responsibility at all.

Responsibility cannot, in truth, be attained through compliance or force. Because we are taught what to do to be responsible, we are never given the opportunity to see for ourselves why responsible behaviour is so important, and so we are shielded from the consequences of irresponsibility this way. We are deprived of huge amounts of important lessons in morality, lessons that would make our communities stronger through highly developed and widespread instincts for the logic and principles of responsible behaviour.


So remember, we have been bred to be lazy, that morality and responsibility are simply instructions to follow. The truth is that learning good moral judgement is what stops us from thoughtless and selfish behaviour, not these stupid punishment systems called "the law". Fortunately, Bitcoin has shown us that morality can be defined using a far stronger code, a truly unbreakable law: pure maths and logic. Thanks Satoshi.

[IconFirm]

If the unelected EUcrats in Brussels are so against anonymous payments - they should ban fiat.

[coolcoinz]

The EU is constantly trying to impose their stupid laws on the member countries, like forcing them to receive muslim migrants. That didn't go well, because the more you received the more terrorist attacks you got in the last year. Some countries that refused, like Hungary, are now under pressure and EU wastes their time on blocking the terrorist supply routes instead of focusing on finding them and deporting back to Africa. GB made the right choice to leave.

[IconFirm]

The EU is constantly trying to impose their stupid laws on the member countries, like forcing them to receive muslim migrants. That didn't go well, because the more you received the more terrorist attacks you got in the last year. Some countries that refused, like Hungary, are now under pressure and EU wastes their time on blocking the terrorist supply routes instead of focusing on finding them and deporting back to Africa. GB made the right choice to leave.

Sorry, but this is offtopic bullshit, racist & utterly false. You have no idea.

[Carlton Banks]

The EU is constantly trying to impose their stupid laws on the member countries, like forcing them to receive muslim migrants. That didn't go well, because the more you received the more terrorist attacks you got in the last year. Some countries that refused, like Hungary, are now under pressure and EU wastes their time on blocking the terrorist supply routes instead of focusing on finding them and deporting back to Africa. GB made the right choice to leave.

Sorry, but this is offtopic bullshit, racist & utterly false. You have no idea.

It's a strange topic, one could argue that the EU themselves have a very bizarre prejudice in the way they handle terrorists.


What do the EU/NATO countries do when these recent terrorists, who were born in the UK, Germany, France, Italy or Belgium, attacked the UK, Germany, France, Italy or Belgium?


"Easy" say EU/NATO, "let's bomb Syria, Libya and Iraq". Okaaaaaaaaay EU/NATO, that makes so much sense.

[aso118]

The EU went on to say:

“The credibility of virtual currencies will not rise if they are used for criminal purposes. In this context, anonymity will become more a hindrance than an asset for virtual currencies taking up and their potential benefits to spread. The inclusion of virtual exchange platforms and custodian wallet providers will not entirely address the issue of anonymity attached to virtual currency transactions, as a large part of the virtual currency environment will remain anonymous because users can also transact without exchange platforms or custodian wallet providers. To combat the risks related to the anonymity, national Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) should be able to associate virtual currency addresses to the identity of the owner of virtual currencies. In addition, the possibility to allow users to self-declare to designated authorities on a voluntary basis should be further assessed.”

...says the thief.

I know right? How about this:

The EU went on to say:

In addition, the possibility to allow users to self-declare to designated authorities on a voluntary basis should be further assessed.”

...but if you refuse we will fuck up your life.

not exactly european union,but funnily enough the most corrupt parliamentary members in Ukraine are declaring their bitcoins voluntarily
if you look at their electronic declarations,some of them own hundreds of coins,five hundreds,two hundreds, etc.
nobody gives a damn or even asks them where did the money come from,so I guess it is different if you belong to the inner circles and if you just
some common folk making your living and earning a coin or two a month

That is insane. People who hold coins should be able to explain how they obtained it. I guess we have a long way to go before we have regulations which make sense.

[Carlton Banks]

People who hold coins should be able to explain how they obtained it. I guess we have a long way to go before we have regulations which make sense.

Explain to who? For what purpose? Are you suggesting that we should voluntarily provide this information to known thieves, so the thieves can tell us how much of our money they would like?

[coolcoinz]

The EU is constantly trying to impose their stupid laws on the member countries, like forcing them to receive muslim migrants. That didn't go well, because the more you received the more terrorist attacks you got in the last year. Some countries that refused, like Hungary, are now under pressure and EU wastes their time on blocking the terrorist supply routes instead of focusing on finding them and deporting back to Africa. GB made the right choice to leave.

Sorry, but this is offtopic bullshit, racist & utterly false. You have no idea.

This is very much on topic. The EU's attitude towards cryptocurrencies and money in general has changed in the recent years due to terrorist threats. The threats they brought inside their borders and the same ones they are now trying to bring into other member countries. Countries that were against accepting migrants from the beginning.
Only leftists can't accept the fact that muslim extremists and jihadists hide among those migrants, nothing racist here.