Will the US ban self-hosted wallets?

[crabby]

Hi Everyone!

A few days ago, Brian Armstrong published some tweets that made some investors nervous because it sounded like the US might be trying to force people away from self-hosted wallets.

To address some of these concerns, I published an article.

Will the US Ban Self-Hosted Crypto Wallets?

However, I would love to hear what everyone here thinks! Do you think the US will try to ban self-hosted wallets, or at least try to make them difficult to use so people stop using them?

[hatshepsut93]

No one ever said anything about banning self-hosted wallets, all we have is a rumor that the US regulators will require centralized entities to do some sort of KYC before processing withdrawals to a self-hosted wallet. First, this is just a rumor, there has been no official commentary about it, so it's already one less reason to worry about. Second, it might be technically impossible to implement it, so even if some regulators want to make such requirement, they won't be able to pass it. Trump's administration will be gone soon, so with each day there's less and less chances it will actually happen.

[MusaMohamed]

It is a rumour, it is a FUD when bitcoin is trying to break $20,000. If the government wants to do something, it is for tax flow and for money laundering control. If the proposal is real, it is still impossible to verify all addresses from non-custodial bitcoin wallets. I don't think there are governments will ban bitcoin and crypto when the world changed together with the growth of blockchain and crypto market, adoption.

They can try to force as many people as possible to finish KYC as a prerequisite to use crypto exchanges but ban self-hosted wallets, no it is impossible mission. They slowly accept bitcoin and crypto and I don't see scenario they will try to reverse the progress.

[Yaunfitda]

I don't think the US will put a blanket ban on self-hosted wallets, I will say that US is as friendly as you can get as far as bitcoin is concern. But we really don't know where the news comes from and why of a sudden when the price of bitcoin is going on an ATH, this kind of news suddenly pop up.

They already forcing exchanges and other crypto related services to have KYC and I think that is enough for now. And I think what they are concern is about crypto people using privacy coin and that will be their initial target for now.

[Marvelman]

The government would find it practically impossible to implement it, even if that were true.
There is nothing more to it than just a FUD.

[GreatArkansas]

This is impossible to happen for me!
I agree with what other people said too, purely FUD. Self-hosted wallets are one of the best ways to become financially independent, it's one of the ways they don't own our funds, they can't control it, and they are not the ones who decide when we can use our funds, or control our funds.
If ever this will happen, I don't think people will panic, there will always a solution, for how many years since FUDs are keep coming, I hope people are already immune to these.

[mrob82]

I seriously doubt that the US government is going to institute an across the board sweep to ban self-hosted wallets. 
There are several reasons why:
1.  They are not going to invest in the infrastructure to do it.
2.  They are not going to invest in the manpower to do it.
3.  There is a much easier way for them to accomplish what they are looking to accomplish, see below.

They use a VAT tax or GST tax, then they get the outcome they want.  They will say ok cryptocurrency you win, we can't control you - but we can tax the shit out of you.  For example, open the flood gates.  Everyone should now use crypto to buy anything, but theres one catch.  We are going to implement a 15% tax on top of whatever you pay, if you use cryptocurrency.  They can either set it high or low, depending on what they want as the predicted outcome.  They just want money, set it at 3%-5%.  They want serious cash, control, or don't want it to be used, set it at 10%+. 

[Wexnident]

A few days ago, Brian Armstrong published some tweets that made some investors nervous because it sounded like the US might be trying to force people away from self-hosted wallets.

Having a tweet that "sounds" to be made into news doesn't seem that reliable. Even if we do say that there is a basis or what not on what the tweet indicated, it is nonetheless only assumptions on everyone's part and cannot really be said to be legitimate news. My take on this? Stop spreading news about it. It's like those stupid ass media that just pull out news from their asses from who knows where using the barest minimum of data. It's like out of the entirety of the news, only 1% could've said to have come from facts, and the rest are fully assumptions.

Additionally, it's close to impossible for the US to do it, even if they want to. They're technically removing our rights to manage our finance that way. They might as well have said that they'd remove finance from everyone, and they'd hold every money of every person on Earth.

[Oshosondy]

How will the USA ban self hostel wallet like they want to out humans into online slavary and lack of freedom. Is it a crime to have a wallet and in a way you want to have privacy unlike what PayPal and coinbase are doing? They just want to take control of everything but saying owners are in control. The custodial ways and the centralized means have even brought nothing than scam to people, that is why their fiat is the basis of money laundering and terrorism financing. There should just be no such thing, else making life worse for their citizens.

[crwth]

I was quite confused with the article because the tweet that was extracted was not the first tweet. After reading the series of tweets published by Brian Armstrong, I now understand where it started and how some people and rumors got to that conclusion of "banning" self-hosted wallets. I hope the US Treasury would have the right decision whether or not they will go through with something like this since many companies and investors are included in this.

I agree with what Brian Armstrong said as well.

If this crypto regulation comes out, it would be a terrible legacy and have long standing negative impacts for the U.S.

It's probably not going to be only in the U.S. but everywhere that follows their regulation and adopts it. It's just something to copy by other countries as well. I wouldn't think of it to be applied. It's limiting everyone's ability to have their own bank.

[Paycoinzzz]

Looks like he deleted the post and it's not really an official information yet. Alternatively, if it is official then Coinbase has already announced it.
But for the time being, the United States cannot ban Self-Hosted Crypto Wallets because Crypto is truly saving the economy of the United States. Bitcoin and the Defi projects are really a solution to cash flow and protect assets from inflation. So therefore the government will only support development in Crypto market and can not prohibit its.

[AakZaki]

Agreeing with the news is just a rumor. There is almost the same news at https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-wallet-regulations-industry-pros this article has been published on November 27, 2020. It may not be prohibited but it will be regulated but I think the regulations are still very difficult. This would go against protecting the privacy of its users. Reading in Coindesk USA is probably the rule and this has been done in Switzerland. The Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) in Switzerland has done so by issuing transaction rules. This rule applies to transactions over $ 1,000 and where ownership of a non-custodian wallet.

[Sterbens]

Hi Everyone!

A few days ago, Brian Armstrong published some tweets that made some investors nervous because it sounded like the US might be trying to force people away from self-hosted wallets.

To address some of these concerns, I published an article.

Will the US Ban Self-Hosted Crypto Wallets?

However, I would love to hear what everyone here thinks! Do you think the US will try to ban self-hosted wallets, or at least try to make them difficult to use so people stop using them?

this is still a topic of conversation for a while. and probably won't agree too much, besides because America still has a large community that uses crypto wallets. so it is not easy to implement the KYC system as a whole where there are no number of users anymore.

[el kaka22]

Plus KYC is something that is required in many cases for almost all exchanges anyway, so it shouldn't even be a big deal anyway. I understand that there are people who would like to avoid KYC as much as they possibly can, even though I do not fully get the reason why but I can understand that they want to have the freedom of choosing instead of being forced on it.

However if it was forced and made law, at the worst case nothing changes for me and it changes for some people who wanted the freedom of not doing KYC, and at best nothing changes. I do not see this as a big deal honestly, if this is all the consequences there is for removing money from American exchanges to self hosted wallet, that is a very limited amount of problem that shouldn't really bother many people.

[hugeblack]

Why do governments force customers to do something so difficult, and can they create software to track transactions, and thus it is easy to identify the identities of users and force them to pay taxes or comply with the tax rules, otherwise their currencies will be blacklisted?

In fact, the Tax Authority is cooperating with several bodies to obtain such software. They have spent a lot of money in the past period.

[2020Crypto]

You could just trade on DEX's like Uniswap and get around that issue if you really wanted to, lol.

Uniswap is by far the most used DEX to this day, however it has a LOT of limitations, which you can read more about right here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/decentralized-exchange-vows-to-remove-defis-limitations
Pretty interesting read

[sana54210]

Today it was declared that states have this right and not federal which means USA can't ban self-hosted wallets even if they wanted to. Which means you could live in a state that decides to do this, but it will be state by state basis. Plus, if we know USA well enough that means there will be few states that will do it and many that will not go for it on the basis of either not caring about it at all and not doing it because of it, or maybe supporting like states such as Ohio and California.

So long story short, we do not have any USA ban in our hands at all, there is no reason to assume anything bad.

If a state like Kentucky or something bans it, people will react to it and get scared but remember, it will be state by state basis and only a few will probably do it.

[TradingBull.io]

Imagine you can't own your own car anymore but must only use public transportation because the government wants to know where you go anytime...
THIS IS FREEDOM 

Though, if it sounds like an idea, it is probably impossible to enforce in practice.
Just like banning Bitcoin.

There are too many different ways to create a wallet (paper/hot/hardware) that are out of reach.
They will have to stick to self-declaration and mapping data/transactions from regulated Exchanges and KYCed liquidity providers.

[btc_angela]

Today it was declared that states have this right and not federal which means USA can't ban self-hosted wallets even if they wanted to. Which means you could live in a state that decides to do this, but it will be state by state basis. Plus, if we know USA well enough that means there will be few states that will do it and many that will not go for it on the basis of either not caring about it at all and not doing it because of it, or maybe supporting like states such as Ohio and California.

So long story short, we do not have any USA ban in our hands at all, there is no reason to assume anything bad.

If a state like Kentucky or something bans it, people will react to it and get scared but remember, it will be state by state basis and only a few will probably do it.

If this is true then we don't have to worry at all, but still this is a scary thing to hear coming from the US of A. I think this is the major issue that cause the price to shrink to $16k when Brain Armstrong of Coinbase tweeted this.

In any case, if this is a state to state basis, then the best thing to do if you unlucky live in a state that ban self hosted wallet then you will have at least a choice to leave and move to friendly crypto state.

[jacafbiz]

I don't think they will go that route but if they do, how are they going to effect the law. To me it seems some of these exchanges are after your Bitcoin and want to control it they way banks controls our money. All I need to move my funds around is my private keys, it doesn't mater which wallet I use, I will be able to access my funds with any secured wallet