Goodbye, privacy, goodbye, it was nice while it lasted.

[Rikafip]

What do you think about it? Are you as pessimistic as me or this article?

This was bound to happen eventually on the EU level as Estonia (who used to be one of the most "pro" crypto countries) started implementing the same ( or similar) law several months ago. We all knew that governments will want their piece if cake once crypto reaches certain level of adoption, and it's happening as we speak.

I think that P2P trading will boom after this law passes. And I have nothing against P2P trading.

I surely hope so, but I am not so optimistic as people tend to be conformists. Once you get out of bitcointalk, you soon realize how majority of crypto users don't care much about privacy, security, decentralization and all that being your bank thing.

And don't get me started on the fake democracy that never existed to begin with. Let me just say that those that claim they have democracy the most, don't have it at all

You want to say that Democratic People's Republic of Korea (better known as North Korea) is not democratic at all?

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[DaveF]

About the Minimum capital requirements.

From what I can see it's in line with a lot of the requirements there in the US and NY.

And it's actually significantly lower then for some states, like Texas just to have a BATM or do any kind of crypto <-> fiat business that can easily hit $1million requiremets. So I don't see that as a big deal.

The rest of the privacy stuff is just plain nuts.

-Dave

[Poker Player]

About the Minimum capital requirements.

From what I can see it's in line with a lot of the requirements there in the US and NY.

And it's actually significantly lower then for some states, like Texas just to have a BATM or do any kind of crypto <-> fiat business that can easily hit $1million requiremets. So I don't see that as a big deal.

The rest of the privacy stuff is just plain nuts.

-Dave

Are you talking about those requirements franky1 was talking about?

I've already shown that he was talking about a draft that didn't pass. Not the one that is the subject of this thread.

But for example they can never force a supermarket that accepts bitcoin to ask for KYC when someone pays for a bag of chips.

?

Precisely this draft aims to do just that.  o_e_l_e_o has explained it well, and you gave him merits for that.

Let's see how he says it in another post:

Actually, the new EU regulations propose AML check for every crypto transaction, regardless of the value:

The only thing that would be exempted would be transactions between two individuals but what this draft wants is something like if someone buys something in a supermarket for $1, paying in cash, they would be obliged to ask the customer for an ID to report to the IRS. This draft wants to do that for Bitcoin, which would seem absurd with cash.

This is getting interesting.  AML, KYC and now Know Your Transaction?  Next up.  KEYC, also known as Know Everything You Can.

Exactly, this is what this is about.

[qwertyup23]

I kinda had a feeling that this vote will go this way that is bad for crypto. I guess there still is a chance this won't happen any time soon because it has to go trough a bunch of other bureaucracy stuff in order to go trough. However, I really do think that unfortunately this is the future for crypto in the EU. Maybe a distant future (because of bureaucracy), but definitely a future.

This is very unfortunate since such regulations go against the vision of Satoshi, which is to create a freedom of transactions without any government/third-party intervention in our finances. Though this may be the first step in creating the law, I hope that the bill somehow limits the power of the government to meddle with the transactions in our exchanges, etc.

Assuming that the law/s will be enacted, will there be a big impact of cryptocurrencies in their price? Will we see BTC becoming something that is stable on its price, removing its volatility and inflationary nature?

[Wind_FURY]

The network will keep chugging along, and do what it does for the last 10 years, without rest, without downtime, producing block after block, issuing coin after coin for Mr. Heroine dealer in the dark market. By design, Bitcoin was built to be a work around against censorship. It's up to you, the user, if you want to continue to use it, or not just because someone pounded a gavel.

[operator55]

This is worse than many people think.

There will be blacklist of "non-compliant" entities. So moving company outside of EU won't work.
If actors like coinbase,kraken and binance want to keep their SEPA FIAT EUR gateways, they'll have to comply.

This is an attempt to convert cryptocurrency system into Banking like system where every party of the transfer is known.
If that goes through and gets implemented, it's pretty much the end of crypto and many fundamentals it's based on such as 'not-my-keys-not-my-coins'

At this moment there's no such regulation in draft but i can imagine that the next regulation -  after 12 month review, will be prohibiton to exchanges in EU from accepting any kind of transfers from unhosted wallets.
If you don't comply and you use unhosted wallet, you'll be kicked out of system and you'll never be able to cash out these funds in EU.

You'll have bank-like-account with your crypto and you'll only use that to send money to exchanges.

It was nice while it lasted, good that we got couple of more years to cash out.
I'm also sure that this draft violates many rights and could be fully overthrown in upper EU courts. But this is gonna take years and before that happens crypto is gonna be done.


But i will also tell you one thing, EU crypto firms owners are aware how shitty these regulations are and what is going to be their impact on the market and their businesses
When new AML directive about source of funds was implemented in EU Near 2018, the Bitstamp was sold
All EU exchanges are on heavy decline regarding volume and amount of customers since 2018.



It's worth noting that most crypto companies did absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening except of sending few emails, couple of days ahead of vote.  

Assuming that the law/s will be enacted, will there be a big impact of cryptocurrencies in their price? Will we see BTC becoming something that is stable on its price, removing its volatility and inflationary nature?

It will remove liquidity from the market, the compliance processes will extend and onboarding of new customers will take much longer. There'll be less money coming into the space.
As said above, this is attack on crypto fundamentals. At this moment crypto value is based primarly on speculation and most who get into the space are coming here for speculative gains, when you remove more and more fundamentals.. it's not gonna be good.
After implementing something like one can expect  heavy price decline over time, however many are not yet aware how serious these changes are.
This might be related to fact that many of big players on the market are present on offshore exchanges.



Literally every big crypto exchange should spend significant amount of funds on lobbying to avoid this being implemented. Long term it's disaster.

[slackovic]

This is very unfortunate since such regulations go against the vision of Satoshi, which is to create a freedom of transactions without any government/third-party intervention in our finances. Though this may be the first step in creating the law, I hope that the bill somehow limits the power of the government to meddle with the transactions in our exchanges, etc.

Assuming that the law/s will be enacted, will there be a big impact of cryptocurrencies in their price? Will we see BTC becoming something that is stable on its price, removing its volatility and inflationary nature?

I don't think this law will have much influence at the stability of Bitcoin price. It will be traded as it is traded now, the only difference is that the traders will have to do KYC if they live in the EU. And as we can see now, it seems as though majority of traders doesn't mind going trough KYC procedure.

[wozzek23]

Just for clarity, I use Bitcoin Core to store most of my stash (since 2014)…..


1.) If I was to send 2BTC to a centralised exchange in Europe that I am KYC’d with, will they accept those bitcoin from my ‘non custodial’ bitcoin wallet & allow me to sell & withdraw fiat to a linked bank account?

2.) If I buy 2BTC on for example Bitstamp & withdraw them to my ‘non custodial’ wallet is that acceptable?

I’m not even residing in an EU country, just curious incase similar rules are enforced in the UK. Assume I live in an EU country though when responding.

I don’t think that this would affect those that are living outside the EU. But The thing is that other countries might as well decide to adopt the same strategy, we are just not sure about that yet. All this while the government were just taking their time to study cryptocurrency and how it works and then know the perfect way to come for it. And this is what they have just started to do now.

From what I’ve understood, and to answer your question, how this is going to work is that if you are sending Bitcoin from your decentralized wallet to an exchange that is centralized, I believe that it would be accepted by the exchange.

And then if you decide to send Bitcoin from your centralized exchange to a decentralized wallet like you have said, the exchange would require you to give information about who is receiving the Bitcoin that you are sending out. So, you are giving information about yourself and about the recipient for whatever transaction you are making. That is how it’s going to work.

[o_e_l_e_o]

But for example they can never force a supermarket that accepts bitcoin to ask for KYC when someone pays for a bag of chips.

?

Precisely this draft aims to do just that.  o_e_l_e_o has explained it well, and you gave him merits for that.

Well, it depends on how the merchant is set up, as I explained here:

If a merchant accepts bitcoin directly then (at least for the time being) they can avoid this, but if they use a payment processor then they will be collecting KYC as well as information on the source of your funds for all transactions.

If a merchant is directly accepting bitcoin in exchange for goods or services, then they are simply a merchant who accepts bitcoin, and are not a "crypto-asset service provider". If a merchant, however, uses a payment processor to accept bitcoin in exchange for goods or services, then the payment processor is a "crypto-asset service provider", providing services on behalf of the merchant, and are therefore obligated to collect KYC and information about the coins you are spending.

That's my understanding, at least, but not being from the EU I am hardly an expert on EU law, and if EU politicians are anything like US politicians, they will openly twist and interpret the wording to mean whatever they want it to mean.

If you don't comply and you use unhosted wallet, you'll be kicked out of system and you'll never be able to cash out these funds in EU.

I see what you are saying, but maybe I don't want to be part of their system. Maybe the whole point I got involved in bitcoin in the first is was to get away from their system. Banning my bitcoin wallet and addresses from their centralized system achieves nothing, since I have never and will never use it to interact with their centralized system in the first place.

Peer to peer trading existed long before any centralized exchange, and it will continue to exist long after these centralized exchanges become nothing less than banks. There will always be a way to trade bitcoin.

[Poker Player]

If a merchant accepts bitcoin directly then (at least for the time being) they can avoid this, but if they use a payment processor then they will be collecting KYC as well as information on the source of your funds for all transactions.

If a merchant is directly accepting bitcoin in exchange for goods or services, then they are simply a merchant who accepts bitcoin, and are not a "crypto-asset service provider". If a merchant, however, uses a payment processor to accept bitcoin in exchange for goods or services, then the payment processor is a "crypto-asset service provider", providing services on behalf of the merchant, and are therefore obligated to collect KYC and information about the coins you are spending.

Oh, OK. The fact is that I can't imagine today any large company, such as a supermarket, as we were talking about in the example, accepting payments directly, and, in addition, non-custodial wallets using maximum privacy. I can hardly imagine a supermarket like Walmart in Europe without using a payment processor and using Electrum via Tor, or a similar system.

That's my understanding, at least, but not being from the EU I am hardly an expert on EU law, and if EU politicians are anything like US politicians, they will openly twist and interpret the wording to mean whatever they want it to mean.

Traditionally in Europe they are more social democratic than in the USA, which has some good pros, but one of the cons is giving up degrees of freedom voluntarily so that the State has more power, as it would be in this case regarding surveillance and control.

[BlackHatCoiner]

If that goes through and gets implemented, it's pretty much the end of crypto and many fundamentals it's based on such as 'not-my-keys-not-my-coins'

No, it's not.

The foundations of cryptocurrency, as an idea, are very strong. It is well known that peer-to-peer, decentralized networks are unstoppable. Of course and they can be regulated, but there's a limit. If you deposit your coins to big, centralized exchanges you fall back on the central point of failure. Don't. Use a DEX. You'll always be able to move them across pockets without anyone's permission.

I know no fundamentals that include the transition from crypto to fiat currency. This is what's going to get harder to do.

[o_e_l_e_o]

The fact is that I can't imagine today any large company, such as a supermarket, as we were talking about in the example, accepting payments directly, and, in addition, non-custodial wallets using maximum privacy.

Not at the moment, no. But there are self-hosted payment processors such as BTCPay, which presumably would not fall under this legislation since there is no third party involved. And if this legislation is going to make every other payment processor in the EU start requesting KYC and proof of where the coins came from for every transaction from buying a coffee to paying for an Uber, then perhaps self-hosted solutions which bypass this will just become more attractive and more popular.

[PrivacyG]

And if this legislation is going to make every other payment processor in the EU start requesting KYC and proof of where the coins came from for every transaction from buying a coffee to paying for an Uber, then perhaps self-hosted solutions which bypass this will just become more attractive and more popular.

They just initiated a war, did they not?  They are attacking us with all these Know Your Customer like laws and the backslash they get is their laws are a HUGE incentive for more privacy oriented tools and software.  First was Bitcoin and they tried attacking it directly.  Then came the Mixers, Coin Joins and all of this and they tried labeling them all as 'potential illicit activity'.

Recently Mixers, Coin Joins and Lightning Network came under attack.  And as of now they are trying to direct an attack towards Bitcoin directly.  Slowly, just like the Centralized Exchanges.  But for now, it looks indirect.  With Exchanges, first came the Tier 0 accounts with Verification Thresholds and now most of them turned into mandatory Know Your Customer for all accounts, with no Threshold.  It was only few years ago when you could have registered on at least 5 different Exchanges having Tier 0 (Unverified) account status.  Today there are only a handful.  Binance got cut off the list only recently as it now enforces KYC.  Now here comes Know Your Transaction, the next step.

If some governments started requesting tax reports for EVERY on chain transaction, even staking and the European Union is willing to go as far as requesting Know Your Customer or Know Your Transaction information for every single transaction made through third party payment processors.  Some countries have maximum limits for cash transactions.  Then making Know Your Transaction information exchange mandatory with a threshold is very close.  Give them an inch, guess how much they will take.  I feel attacked, this is an attack on all of us.

Moreover.  See how much they are shrinking the financial freedom even with banks.  In the last decade everything went nuts.  Declare everything you own.  Prove where the money came from.  Prove what you have done with it.  We recommend card over cash.  Want to buy Gold?  Oops, there is a threshold for anonymity.  Want to buy Gold using your life savings after working for decades for our system?  We have to check your history first and label you a criminal before we clear your name out.  Use card and you get discounts.  Use card and you get free points!  Give up your privacy and we reward you for it.  Pennies worth of rewards, but you will do it anyway because this is how much you think your privacy is worth.  Freaking nuts, I am telling you!

As Bitcoin or Cryptocurrency users, is there any way we can oppose this?  Any way non EU members can help by opposing this law or does the voting and all happen among these fossil leaders and decision makers out of who most have no idea how Bitcoin even works?

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[Marvelman]

As said above, this is attack on crypto fundamentals. At this moment crypto value is based primarly on speculation and most who get into the space are coming here for speculative gains, when you remove more and more fundamentals.. it's not gonna be good.

You're just spreading FUD now. What do crypto fundamentals have to do with value? Bitcoin was never intended to be a speculative asset. Bitcoin's fundamental values remain unchanged even if its value drops to $1.

After implementing something like one can expect  heavy price decline over time, however many are not yet aware how serious these changes are.

More serious than China banning crypto completely?

[fillippone]

Privacy is a strange feature. As once you lose control of it it is very difficult to have it back.
In this situation, a compulsory read is the following essay from Giacomo Zucco:
A treatise on privacy

It enlightened me on multiple aspects of the subject.

[evilgreed]

                Bloodyhell, these people just never run out of things to do in order to satisfy their own agendas. These bastards just sugarcoats the crap they do and get away with it all the time. And just when mass adoption is increasing faster than ever before, this comes. What great timing of coincidence. Not everyone is great with techy stuff and this fact may slow the mass adoption down again. May even make existing crypto enthusiasts to bid farewell. This is really infuriating.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Then making Know Your Transaction information exchange mandatory with a threshold is very close.  Give them an inch, guess how much they will take.  I feel attacked, this is an attack on all of us.

This was always their goal. Full KYC for every account, every wallet, every address, every transaction. Things like non-KYCed accounts at centralized exchanges are already fast disappearing. Either you submit everything to the authorities, or you don't. There are no half-measures; no middle-ground. If you don't want every single satoshi you own being tracked and monitored and recorded, then you need to stop using centralized services entirely and use bitcoin as it was intended - as peer to peer electronic cash, free from third parties.

As Bitcoin or Cryptocurrency users, is there any way we can oppose this?  Any way non EU members can help by opposing this law or does the voting and all happen among these fossil leaders and decision makers out of who most have no idea how Bitcoin even works?

EU citizens can write or call their representatives in the European Parliament, but whether or not that makes any difference is anyone's guess. The European Parliament strikes me as the kind of institution where the representatives care even less about the views of the people they claim to represent than national parliaments. As for people outside the EU, there is probably nothing you can do directly unless you want to pretend to be from the EU and email them anyway. Maybe contact exchanges which operate in the EU and ask them to actually fight this rather than roll over and accept it and sell out their users like they usually do?

[Pmalek]

It comes down to this: If the bill passes, each centralized service provider in the EU (exchanges, casinos, payment processors) will have to perform stricter KYC on their customers. Solution: Stop using centralized third-party services. It's that simple, but for many people the alternatives aren't going to be that attractive. How do you trade P2P in a place where almost no one uses Bitcoin and you need fiat? Bisq? Maybe.

Two things can happen:

• People will give in and accept this as the new norm because it's easier.
• We will witness a greater shift from centralized third parties to proper decentralized non-custodial solutions.

   
It's in human nature to take the easy route. Hopefully, there will be some resistance.

[franky1]

After reading the long draft, I was thinking that I didn't remember reading in the draft what franky1 had posted. I took him off ignore, looked up what he had posted, without citing the source, and I see that it is not in this draft.
After investigating, I see that he is quoting a previous draft that was not approved.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52020PC0593
The draft he cites is this one, which is not the one that was voted on last Thursday, nor the one I am referring to or referred to in the articles cited in the OP.

um yes they dont !approve" of things at the draft stage... instead they have "readings"


what you are now quoting. is not a "DRAFT"
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CJ12-PR-704888_EN.pdf
its an amendment report 'reading' of the draft.. not the actual draft

this is not the draft. its just a subset of possible amendments to make to the draft

what you are quoting is not the full document with full explanation and detail. you are just reference only the chapters they want to change.

and no i doubt you even dared read the entire draft and then compared all referenced amendments to see how it changes the wording. i predict you just copy and pasted my exert of the draft to google search for it and then see its not the same link as your are looking at (your subset) and thought 'oh look franky is not reading what im reading'
well of course because i am looking at the whole thing to get the full context.

but it is now funny how you and your chums are NOW using the words "service providers" and trying to hide your previous opinion of "non-custodial wallets"

very revealing

and funny at times..
your buddy, trying to input some nonsense so that he can try backing up your nonsense
EG

2. Transfers from/to un-hosted wallets
Secondly, it should be clarified that this Regulation applies also to transfers from or to crypto-asset wallets based on a software or hardware not hosted by a third party, known as ‘unhosted wallets’, provided that a crypto-asset service provider or another obliged entity is involved.

sorry but here is the thing. its again not about getting unhosted wallets to obtain info.
its about service providers which act as payment services where the private key owner is not the service provider
take for instance, if an exchange had a cold wallet 'owned by a trust'(legally separate entity) where the exchange itself(their website/server) was just a 'watch-only' service seeing deposits..
the exchange still needs to KYC the customer...
this does not mean the cold wallet software needs to. nor does the legal entity 'trust' of the cold wallet need to

here is the actual wording from the amendments

n the case of a transfer of crypto-assets from or to a crypto-asset wallet not held by a third party, known as an 'unhosted wallet', the crypto-asset service provider or other obliged entity should
obtain and retain the required originator and beneficiary information from their customer, whether  originator or beneficiary.

why would they do this amendment.
to as i suggested. to stop exchanges putting their cold wallet into separate legal entities to pretend they are not a crypto asset service by only being a watch only service.
yep they thought ahead and closed a loophole exchanges could have used to pretend they dont handle funds so they dont have to KYC..
the important thing is that payment service providers are the ones required. not the private key holder

[fzkto]

It seems to me that regulation of cryptocurrencies will sooner or later affect everything - exchanges, wallets, verification of addresses, and tax notices as a gift. The way out of this situation could be private coins such as Monero or others like it. DEX exchanges are already appearing and will begin to function well by then. Everyone will make their own choice, be law-abiding and have crypto ID or fight it.