If you're using Bitstamp, now might be a good time to ditch it.

[Ultegra134]

This is so dumb, how does a photo with an address proves that you own it? You can take a photo with any address that you want, so if your goal is to withdraw to someone else's address, this regulation is not stopping it. Even signing a message isn't a strong proof, you can ask someone else to sign a message with their address. This law achieves absolutely nothing except for creating annoyance to users of centralized exchanges and more work the exchanges. It won't do anything to prevent money laundering or other illicit activity, and it won't even allow the government to better track Bitcoin transactions.  Whomever came up with this idea must be completely tech illiterate.

Didn't read the whole article to be honest, however, nether can I see how a photo of the address actually proves it's actually yours. It might not affect me at the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if it passes to other EU countries in the distant future. I was actually looking for an excuse to switch exchanges but couldn't bother doing it.

Bitstamp has way higher fees anyway (0.05%), compared to other exchanges, I don't even want to bother totalizing the money I've spent in fees.

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[malevolent]

It might sound stupid for now, but the picture will be clear when one day all major/Western/Western-aligned economies require that exchanges (serving also as custodial wallets) only do business with users who only send their coins to addresses belonging to users who have verified addresses at other exchanges/custodial wallets. It's getting bad, and it can get a lot worse.

[o_e_l_e_o]

The Trump administration initiated the procedure, but Biden already froze the decision and sent it for review.

The additional KYC requirements were proposed by former Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin. The incoming Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, is on record as saying that cryptocurrencies are used "mainly for illicit financing", that the government should "curtail their use" and make sure that "money laundering doesn't occur". I can't exactly see her taking a sympathetic approach and deciding to overturn this particular proposal. If anything, I suspect her to push ahead with it even harder. The freeze is simply because Biden wants his people to have time to review all the proposals that Trump's people were working on.

Now would be a good time to start getting all your funds off of centralized exchanges, before they get locked behind mandatory KYC processes.

[Itty Bitty]

I saw this discussion between the bitstamp customer service rep, at the bitstamp reddit site, and a former user. Seems to sum things up prety well

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitstamp/comments/ktmm1u/which_info_and_documents_are_required_for_full/


[–]Bitstamp-Lucas[🍰] 2 points 13 days ago
Our KYC procedures are in place so that we can provide a safe exchange platform to our users and also comply with our various regulatory obligations. I understand that it may be seen as an inconvenience, but it's done with the greater good of all our clients in mind. Having said that, you should still be able to withdraw your funds normally.


  [–]Twitxx 3 points 13 days ago
Inconvenience? You're straight up locking people out of their accounts because they can't provide things like trading history at other exchanges dating back 5 years, salary payslips, bank statements, investment portfolios, trading information/activity, proof of conversation with clients, proof of freelance activity, and that's on top of the basic kyc procedures such as the ones described by op. One of the best things I've done was to quit using bitstamp before all of this non-sense started going down. I have had issues with you before due to asking to re-confirm my address while I was out of the country, but all of this seems impossible to provide, not mentioning that all of this data you're gathering is just sitting duck, basically asking for a hack. Imagine losing all of your personal details to a data hack, just because the KYC procedure on some website wants to every single detail about your life. Yucks!

[o_e_l_e_o]

Some of the other response in that Reddit thread are pretty eye opening too. One user, who has been told that his account is going to be locked on January 31st if he does not provide years old information regarding source of funds, says he cannot provide this information since he no longer has an account with exchange the funds came from and they have been unable to help him. Other users say that funds came from exchanges which no longer exist at all, so there is no way of providing proof of source. The response from support is: "I suggest you try to contact them."

I fully expect there is going to be a flood of complaints against Bitstamp in the coming weeks. There will be a number of users who think they have provided all the necessary information only to find that their accounts are locked anyway, and there will be a number of users who are completely unaware of this entire situation. All these users will then be hit with excessively invasive requests for KYC and other information which they either do not want to provide or may be impossible to provide, as the information Bitstamp are asking for simply doesn't exist. All these users will have their accounts frozen and their bitcoin essentially held hostage.

Unless you are comfortable handing over details of your entire financial history, from standard KYC through to your salary, copies of your pay checks, your complete bitcoin transaction history and holdings, and so on, then you need to get off of Bitstamp and other centralized exchanges now. Given the chaos from a database of only names and addresses being hacked, I can't imagine the fallout when one of these databases of financial histories is inevitably hacked.

[arbiter5]

Unless you are comfortable handing over details of your entire financial history, from standard KYC through to your salary, copies of your pay checks, your complete bitcoin transaction history and holdings, and so on, then you need to get off of Bitstamp and other centralized exchanges now.

People have been preaching this everywhere for a while now. A lot of people are going to learn their lesson the way how Mt. Gox users learned theirs.

[cheezcarls]

This is bad. Really bad. Imagine if a lot of countries are doing the same. Governments are trying to kill the term “decentralization”. Regulatory moves like this are destroying the purpose of decentralization. Unless of course, if paper bills and physical coins are gonna phase out and we are going cashless transactions and merchants accepting cryptos, in that way, government will have a hard time regulating it.

[figmentofmyass]

This is bad. Really bad. Imagine if a lot of countries are doing the same.

the USA is heading that way. they proposed very similar regulations. they're currently on hold but i don't expect that to last long.

i won't be surprised if exchange customers are eventually just handing over a master pubkey to exchanges under legal declaration. i'll bet 80% of them won't even realize the implications, and will just give the exchanges an open door into all their financial activities.

Governments are trying to kill the term “decentralization”. Regulatory moves like this are destroying the purpose of decentralization.

i wouldn't say that. as usual, they are leveraging their power over industry to force centralized entities into attacking our privacy and scaring us into legal/tax compliance.

decentralized protocols like bitcoin---unaffected.

[o_e_l_e_o]

People have been preaching this everywhere for a while now.

Yeah, I've been saying it for years. First from a "not your keys" point of view, then from a privacy point of view, and now this. The reasons not to use a centralized exchange just keep stacking up.

the USA is heading that way. they proposed very similar regulations. they're currently on hold but i don't expect that to last long.

Agreed. Biden's blanket freeze on new regulations happened to also catch these crypto regulations but that doesn't mean he is opposed to them by any means, and Mnuchin's replacement is just as hostile to crypto as he was.

i won't be surprised if exchange customers are eventually just handing over a master pubkey to exchanges under legal declaration. i'll bet 80% of them won't even realize the implications, and will just give the exchanges an open door into all their financial activities.

There will surely be a big surge in interest in mixers, coinjoins, and other methods of obfuscation, which presumably exchanges will try to counter with more widespread and invasive blockchain analysis and blocking users who try to maintain any semblance of privacy. What a mess. We desperately need easier peer to peer trading with much larger volumes.

[Itty Bitty]

There is another Dutch cryptoservice provider called Bitonic that appears to be taking this issue to court.


https://bitonic.nl/en/news/220/bitonic-files-preliminary-injunction-to-be-relieved-of-wallet-verification-requirement


Don't know if Bitstamp is involved at all with this.

[Coin_trader]

It has some benefits in terms of security though. A hacker can't withdraw your funds in case your account has been compromised and besides that, In my case, I never send fund to third party wallet directly from my exchange wallet. Bitstamp also enforce by KYC too so basically user that still using there exchange are willing to undergo KYC or other verification process though.

I don't see this news as total bad news. Bitstamp is a centralized exchange so user must not expecting a decentralized feature on using it.

[o_e_l_e_o]

It has some benefits in terms of security though. A hacker can't withdraw your funds in case your account has been compromised

A very small benefit. A similar level of security could be reached by everyone using proper 2FA, requiring withdrawal addresses to be registered and confirmed via email and 2FA, and registered withdrawal addresses being unavailable for use for 48-72h after registration. All possible without requiring any personal information or KYC.

Conversely, the security risk to providing such a huge amount of personal information is massive. It's enough information to steal an identity, take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans or credit, and completely ruin someone's life.

Bitstamp is a centralized exchange so user must not expecting a decentralized feature on using it.

Sure, when you use a centralized service you can't expect the same things you would expect from a fully decentralized service, but this level of privacy invasion is something else entirely.

[witcher_sense]

"People in comparatively free countries think Bitcoin is about memes, Virtue Signalling on Twitter and other inconsequential things. Having fun is important, but facts about people suffering open tyranny as described here needs to be widely disseminated, exposed, and roundly condemned. The people doing this must be shamed into total submission, their ambassadors openly ridiculed and their national pride wounded."

A Tale From Bitcoin’s Future?

[jerry0]

Any US people or US citizens use bitstamp?