The Lost Ideology of Cryptography. Can we regain it again?

[enhu]

Etherdelta CEO was subjected to such issue because they were operating illegal exchange and the grounds I remember includes them not asking KYC for users. While we oppose KYC, the resistance might result differently. WE could always find ways to trade without them but since we aim for adoption, pressuring exchanges is their way of imposing the regulations.

[RiseX]

Have you ever asked yourself what’s the main idea behind cryptography and cryptocurrencies as the end product of it? The last 2 years were marked with dramatic legalization attempts of different cryptocurrencies, and it lead most companies to KYC implementation across the industry.

The primary purpose of cryptography is financial anonymity, and some of the services impose new rules of identity verification, even if your trading volumes are low. Recently we were doing a short industry overview with our team and came to the conclusion that cryptocurrencies are under pressure, EU and US are actively trying to get taxes from every financial operation made with crypto.

We were lucky to get evidence from one of our subscribers, who told that the oldest P2P exchange LocalBitcoins is verifying user profiles if their trading volume has crossed $7,500 mark. Even banks don’t put their attention on such small amounts. Moreover, your account gets suspended, and simply you can’t trade until you send them your documents.

Sure, maybe AML laws made them taking these measures, but regardless of that if you are building this kind of the business, don't you analyze what's going to happen next?

Currently, we are developing our P2P trading platform called RiseX which won’t impose any verification methods or trading limits because it contradicts with cryptography ideology. We want to build a place where people can trade without revealing their personal information.

Our team is just wondering what people think about these measures that most projects take? What future would you prefer in the cryptocurrency industry?

I realize that this is one of the actions to collect user information to be able to verify with the government users who have positive exchanges. They are trying to authenticate with the government that all transactions verified and there are no activities to support unauthorized money laundering.

I heard about this situation before. They do collect user information for sure because it's a critical problem for governments from the standpoint of financial integrity and security of the country. No banking system wants to use real money that has limited emission, that is why they try to put so much pressure on the exchanges, and can you notice that this happened relatively fast? - In just one year(2018).

[RiseX]

Etherdelta CEO was subjected to such issue because they were operating illegal exchange and the grounds I remember includes them not asking KYC for users. While we oppose KYC, the resistance might result differently. WE could always find ways to trade without them but since we aim for adoption, pressuring exchanges is their way of imposing the regulations.

We think that many exchanges were forced to share user's personal information with law enforcement of different countries, Moreover, at some point when your platform becomes popular and you have high trading volumes you will have some issues with state structures.

[bitfocus]

the sad truth is, most people who are in Bitcoin right now don't care about decentralization or anonymity, they just care about making money.

[deisik]

the sad truth is, most people who are in Bitcoin right now don't care about decentralization or anonymity, they just care about making money

From my perspective, this is a false dichotomy

Obviously, you can find a couple of people on both ends of the scale, i.e. people who are into Bitcoin exclusively because of its decentralized nature and capacity for providing anonymity, though in the latter case there are by far better alternatives while Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto himself, considered Bitcoin only pseudonymous and not truly anonymous

With that said, the majority of people gravitate toward the center of this scale. They like Bitcoin because they are free from third party risks (such as rogue banks and governments constantly stealing the purchasing power of their money), but they are also happy to make a few bucks with Bitcoin whenever an opportunity arises. And there is nothing wrong with that as it is just human nature