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

[PrivacyG]

The optimist in me always likes to think that these laws will cause people to get their coins off exchanges, get open-source software and hardware with verifiable builds and start transacting much more amongst each other in a somewhat 'circular, Bitcoin-based economy' kind of way. If needed, P2P exchanges such as Bisq can be used as on-/off-ramps, but even if those were somehow shut down, Bitcoin mining could become more attractive again.

Let us face reality.  Most of those who not mind intrusive Know Your Customer today will not mind Know Your Transaction either.  I know my friends who do not mind Alexa listening in every single room of their house would not mind it.  They prefer five minute two click trades and instant website loading rather than running Bisq, syncing headers and all taking up to hours to do a trade.  And who cares about privacy today is using non custodial wallets and running their own node.  And in the event of Know Your Transaction becoming the 'next step', they will only continue to find alternatives.

It is why I am not as scared about this Know Your Transaction law as others may be.  At the end of the day, I am still going to look for ways to cover my footprints and thanks to Open Source and Decentralization, we are at that point where we have ways around mostly everything.  But I will always get mind freaked thinking how well they shaped up our brains over the years to accept invasive laws and corporations, even PRAISING them for what they are doing with our data and mind.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[o_e_l_e_o]

At the end of the day, I am still going to look for ways to cover my footprints and thanks to Open Source and Decentralization, we are at that point where we have ways around mostly everything.

At the moment, this legislation will have no direct impact on me since I do not use centralized exchanges and I do not live in Europe. But as I was just saying in my last post, this kind of thinking and this kind of legislation will absolutely spread around the world. There are similar pieces of legislation making their way through the various processes in the US and in Canada, and I'm sure plenty more elsewhere I am unaware of.

I will never stop doing the things I do to protect my privacy and prevent the government from including me in all their mass surveillance programs, not just when it comes to bitcoin but in all aspects of life. But there is no doubt that such legislation will make it more difficult. It will be more difficult for me to spend my bitcoin with any merchant who does not accept it directly (i.e. via a payment processor). Even merchants which do accept it directly may make things more difficult if they in turn start getting harassed by exchanges to show where their coins came from.

Obviously I'm hoping for the opposite - that more people wake up the draconian suppression being forced on them and the volume of peer to peer trading massively increases - but given how little people seem to value their privacy or freedom, I'm not holding my breath.

[mindrust]

We all knew this would happen. Either this or a compete crypto ban. This approach is more preferable probably.

I wonder though, where does that put XMR? I guess it doesn't make a difference as long as you use an exchange and as far as I know, more than 90% of the crypto people do use exchanges. This law converts every exchange into a crypto bank.

[franky1]

the law involves MSB(money service businesses) basically exchanges and services that do KYC anyway when they also handle fiat.
so it has little to no impact on them

already assume that when you use an exchange to convert to fiat. your details are already being logged by the exchange and they are already looking for red flags to report you.
they are already logging your sign up email and IP address, and funds from same UTXO being split and then deposited into multiple accounts.
they already do this to look for red flags like duplicate accounts. (to ensure people are not trying to circumvent the min limits of KYC)

the law does not affect people sending funds to other people(peer-to-peer) without middlemen
its not about requiring hardware wallets or software/nodes have KYC implemented into the code by law.

they have made it clear that the KYC info that MSB(service providers) should request should be separate from the transaction and requested from the customer not from the software, and should be obtained and verified as a separate thing

what it does do however is clarify that anyone being a payment processor for a fee. (yes altnet routers, you will be classified as a MSB!!)

what i find the most amusing is that a certain group of people that love an altnet are trying too hard to tell people to stop using bitcoin stop exchanging bitcoin (thus trying to crash the price) and then trying to advertise their altnets as a go-to thing pretending they will be safer to atomic-swap to stablecoins
even though if you read the legislation of both EU and US . those altnet lovers offering routes for a fee or atomic swaps for a fee will be classed themselves as MSB's and have to register and be regulated

yep, im amused that they are not crying about how its going to affect their own activities of their favoured altnet. they seem a little tooo busy trying to get people to use and buy/sell bitcoin less

.. here is something those people need to learn really quick about DEX and also altnet routing/atomic swaps. you might think tor/vpn/proxies will hide you.. DreadPirateRoberts thought the same until he was caught. but when your bank is seeing you do wire transfers to dozens of random people each day when you do private exchanges for fiat. your bank will suspect you are running an MSB(many localbitcoin operators thought they were safe, until they were not)

[n0nce]

~

So this involves every custodial wallet, every exchange, every swap service, every payment processor, every casino or sportsbook, basically every crypto service in question. If you so much as touch a third party, then they will be obligated to collect your information and pass it on to your government. The only thing that will remain private is direct transactions between individuals. 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.

Wow, this sounds real bad; worse than the first page of the thread indicated. I stand by my assertion that it could just push us more into what Bitcoin was and how it was envisioned, but it will surely have negative side effects such as being harder to use without compliance to these inhumane measures and potentially affecting the price.
Though I believe the uneducated 'Bitcoin as an investment' cex-lovers who don't care about KYC and AML won't care much about this either. Heck, they don't transact with Bitcoin, so it will affect them the least & as long as trading goes on and people continue to invest in Bitcoin, even if just 'as an investment', the price shouldn't drop.

[pooya87]

The optimist in me always likes to think that these laws will cause people to get their coins off exchanges, get open-source software and hardware with verifiable builds and start transacting much more amongst each other in a somewhat 'circular, Bitcoin-based economy' kind of way. If needed, P2P exchanges such as Bisq can be used as on-/off-ramps, but even if those were somehow shut down, Bitcoin mining could become more attractive again.

They say "necessity is the mother of invention". It is very clear from bitcoin paper that there was a necessity for a payment system like Bitcoin that led to its creation.

We also saw that DEX becomes a thing whenever a big CEX starts showing problem signs (either shuts down, scams, gets hacked or forces KYC). But unfortunately something else usually comes along and puts all the effort into sleep (to some extent). For example when the existing big exchanges at the time like Bittrex and Poloniex started showing shady symptoms Bisq gained a lot of popularity then Binance came along without KYC and it gained traction while Bisq volume went down and remained unpopular (in comparison to CEX).
I believe the more they push it, in short term we could see some disturbance in the market but in the long run we will see more decentralization coming out. It also may not be a bad thing to purge some of the weak hands who were only holding bitcoin for fiat profit.

Governments trying to have full control over every aspect of everyone's life is not a new thing either. They have also been pushing for restrictions on CEX and everything else surrounding bitcoin for ever. The more popularity bitcoin gains the more alarms it will raise for those in the seat of power! But it has to be met with resistance, if everyone just rolled over we would have never had bitcoin.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Obviously I'm hoping for the opposite - that more people wake up the draconian suppression being forced on them and the volume of peer to peer trading massively increases - but given how little people seem to value their privacy or freedom, I'm not holding my breath.

"Scalability isn't important until it suddenly is. Decentralization isn't important until it suddenly is. Privacy isn't important until it suddenly is." — Some random Twitter guy.

There are two scenarios. One's that privacy suddenly becomes important, people dislike this situation that comes from these strict regulations and educate themselves. Peer-to-peer trading increases, centralized exchanging decreases and so fourth. The second is that nothing happens. People simply choke this down and move on their lives, in a more regulated manner, which sounds much more probable.

This ignorance of the latter reminds me of how significant it is to have privacy on a protocol level.

But it has to be met with resistance, if everyone just rolled over we would have never had bitcoin.

Sure, but look what's the difference. Having Bitcoin is not the same as using Bitcoin. The former is like a "revolution from the sofa" while the latter is what's resistance needed for. And, even if it sounds pessimistic, I don't believe that people will rebel for their privacy. Yet, most don't even rebel for their debt-based money.

[o_e_l_e_o]

But it has to be met with resistance, if everyone just rolled over we would have never had bitcoin.

Which makes it all the more disgusting that exchanges and many other big players in the bitcoin ecosystem put up zero resistance to these kinds of changes, or even help them along. Centralized exchanges have always been in bed with banks and governments, willing to sell out their users for any profit whatsoever. The most opposition we have seen from this bill was a half-hearted email from Coinbase telling its users to take action themselves, while taking absolutely no action themselves. No campaigning, no lobbying, no funding a resistance. After years of selling out their users this is the best we can expect from them.

There was AOPP from a few months ago which a bunch of supposedly privacy respecting wallets were more than happy to jump onboard with until it seemed it was going to cost them some customers. And then we have Wasabi wallet becoming pro-censorship and anti-privacy of their own free will, well before any legal requirements or lawsuits forcing them to do so.

Privacy and privacy respecting software is harder and harder to come by. Every inch we give we will never get back. No piece of privacy invading legislation will ever be revoked. EU citizens should be fighting this now.

[Keremgor]

  MBS -Exchanges sooner or later will care more  about privacy coins or their business model will die.  Cryptos like  Grin No adress ,No amounts seen is only way to go. Fight or fly.

[n0nce]

If this will be implemented as described, I'm interested to see the bookkeeping required to enforce it.
Just Bitcoin is currently doing roughly 250,000 transactions per day, and they will have to somewhat manually go through all of them to check for 'illicit activities' and that all of them are somehow linked to a real-world identity of someone. Right? Then add on top of this all the 'fast blockchains' such as Ethereum.

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.

What I find interesting is that Kraken recently implemented Lightning. I am not saying that LN is 100% untraceable, but it does make things a lot harder. Sure, this bill is a legal thing that stands above anything that we can implement on the technical side, since it can basically state 'we won't accept your deposit (LN or not) if you don't provide full KYC and believable origin of fudns'. But on the other hand, there is no 'KYUTXO' because LN has no notion of UTXOs. Also I don't get how they want to handle Monero, since the transactions aren't public. Will they just ban it? Many open questions.

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

I really hope that as well!

Correct me if I am wrong P2P would still work even if the ban is in place, like in my country where there is a ban on crypto-currency transaction, and P2P has been a route for many.

This is very interesting. I assume Bitcoin wasn't banned from the start; so did you experience major changes in how cryptocurrency is perceived, used and handled in every-day life after the ban? Was P2P popular in your country before and how did the ban affect it? Which platform is preferred / go-to choice for those P2P trades?

~

Obviously, the latter sounds more like what Satoshi said, but in many cases an invention ends up being different in several ways from the original idea of its creator.

Today we have reached the current number of users and the current price among other things because of centralized exchanges, demand from companies and government regulations. How many people would use Bitcoin today if it were banned worldwide? And what would the price be? I think it would have a much smaller number of users and a much lower price.

If Bitcoin were used exclusively P2P, it would be a thing of a few cyberpunks, and events like, for example, legalization as a currency in El Salvador, would not have happened.

I'd agree that centralized entities have helped people to get into Bitcoin more easily than having to find users P2P who'd sell them some of this good stuff. But for one, a worldwide ban is completely off the books here, right? This is a EU thing to fully be able to track payments, not a ban. And even if; honestly, Bitcoin is P2P money. It's not meant to be in the same system as banks and similar service providers. I like to compare Bitcoin to P2P file sharing through Bittorrent. No matter how much centralized hosting providers, movie rentals and software vendors hate it, it continues to work and chug along.
I don't know if only cypherpunks would use Bitcoin if it were to get back to its P2P roots; that remains to be seen, but I don't think so.

Coins are used for paying and being paid

This is the critical step. Storing your own keys, running your own node, using open source software, mixing your coins, etc., are all trivial. Being able to spend your bitcoin without going through the fiat system is that hard part. I don't want to sell my bitcoin for fiat and then spend the fiat, I don't want bitcoin debit cards which sell your bitcoin for fiat at point of sale, I don't want to have to buy gift cards first, I don't want to have to go through some third party processor which swaps my bitcoin for fiat at the point of sale. Although I do some of these things to let me spend my bitcoin, what I really want are merchants which accept bitcoin directly. Give me enough of those, and avoiding the fiat system entirely becomes easy.

Couldn't have said it better, that's the spirit! What we can do is let merchants that we frequently use, know that we'd like them to accept Bitcoin payments directly. It starts with companies selling 'Bitcoin products' such as hardware wallets.
Personally, I've always considered moving to a place with better privacy laws in general if / when the current place gets too bad.

[Pmalek]

But on the other hand, there is no 'KYUTXO' because LN has no notion of UTXOs. Also I don't get how they want to handle Monero, since the transactions aren't public. Will they just ban it? Many open questions.

I don't think Bitcoin over Lightning Network will be looked at any different from first-layer Bitcoin. If a service provider accepts crypto payments, nothing changes. You will still be able to do your thing without KYC. If the coins get converted to fiat, third parties are required to request KYC, no matter what asset you use to pay. I hope exchanges will notice an outflux of users, but I remain skeptical. Centralized services will think of some new offers, give out some free coins or airdrops, and the majority will be happy to go along with it.     

[d5000]

So for the already KYC`d accounts there is no practical difference now and then !?

With this legislation, every transaction you make via a centralized exchange is reported directly to the relevant authorities in your country. So I would expect a lot more cases of people having accounts locked or coins seized pending some nonsense investigation because some sketchy blockchain analysis has decided that you might be a criminal.

I understood the proposal a bit different: for every transaction to an exchange/payment processor/other service provider you have to provide the identity of the sender, but only if the transaction is over 1000 € it must be reported automatically; however, the information must be transmitted by the service provider to the authorities "upon request", and there are other cases where a report can or should be sent by the service provider (if it's suspicious to be linked to criminal activity). I agree however with the second part - definitively, there would be more cases of blocked/seized accounts.

I forgot if it already was linked here, but this is the current draft proposal. I'm referring to article 16 (4a):

4 a. Where there is a transfer of crypto-assets from an unhosted wallet, the provider of crypto-asset transfers of the beneficiary shall collect and retain the information referred to in Article 14(1) and (2) from its customer, verify the accuracy of that information in accordance with paragraph 2 of this Article and Article 14(5), make such information available to competent authorities upon request, and ensure that the transfer of crypto-assets can be individually identified. For transfers of crypto-assets from unhosted wallets which are already verified and have a known originator, providers of crypto-asset transfers shall not be required to verify the information of the originator accompanying each transfer of crypto-assets.

The provider of crypto-asset transfers shall maintain a record of all transfers of crypto-assets from unhosted wallets and notify the competent authority of any customer having received an amount of EUR 1 000 or more from unhosted wallets.

To answer KevinMiles' question, I would say: For people who don't transact large quantities of crypto and already are KYCed, not much will change. But if you make a living with crypto, above all with trading, arbitrage and the like (which often will mean transacting large quantities) life will be more difficult and you should be very careful about segregating wallets and really evaluate thoroughly the services you use. For example, don't combine EU-regulated exchanges with small "unregulated" altcoin exchanges or DeFi apps; and if you want to use them, segregate regulated/unregulated funds strictly.

A point which came up in a discussion in the Spanish forum is the consequences for Lightning, which can have also problematic aspects. Private and non-commercial LN nodes should be safe, but for example EU exchanges which also are connected to Lightning (like Bitstamp) could have to restrict the node to their own customers (i.e. they could be used for deposits/withdrawals, but _not_ anymore for "supporting the network", as they would have to identify all senders/receivers of the transfer they route which is obviously unfeasible).

[franky1]

With this legislation, every transaction you make via a centralized exchange is reported directly to the relevant authorities in your country. So I would expect a lot more cases of people having accounts locked or coins seized pending some nonsense investigation because some sketchy blockchain analysis has decided that you might be a criminal.

nope. the MSB(exchange/service provider) has to locally log everything.. with the potential to use analysts and compliance officers employed by the MSB to use their minds, eyes, hands and algorithms to check for suspicious activities. where by if something reaches a certain threshold of suspicious activity of suspected illicit crimes (laundering/hacking/terrorism/tax evasion) THEN it is passed onto authorities

its not a default 'report everything'
if an MSB has 5million users that do 5 transactions a day..
the authorities do NOT get 25million reports a day!! FACT
if 1% of an MSB's users do suspicious things. the authorities might get (0.5%) 125k reports a day, because there is actually a suspicious activity threshold that needs to be met.
this is why MSB have to employ compliance officers and data analysts and have business policies of best practices and train staff.... rather then just a 'forwarding' portal of their entire database to authorities

funny part is certain people are asking innocent users to now use 'mixers' before depositing into an MSB. guess what. that MSB will see the mixer and immediately red flag it as suspect of laundering.

yep sometimes trying to be too careful by giving false iID and mixing, actually makes you more noticeable and worthy of looking into more.

analogy
its like oeleo's/blackhatcoiner's favourite hobby. stalking people.
(second hobby is being the worse ever door-to-door salesmen of an altnet)

by crouching down and hiding behind bushes to hope to not be seen.. the neighbours notice a strange guy sneaking around and report him to the cops.
if he simply walked along the path, standing tall and just followed his victim.. no one would bat an eyelid and no one would be concerned.

EG (watch a genuinely good spy movie)
do you think spies crouch down and hide behind bushes. no. their stalking is less noticeable. they hide in plain sight by not hiding.. by just acting like a normal person taking a casual walk

however oeleo and blackhatcoiner are promoting practices to get you more noticed and flagged as suspicious
their game is to get people reported to then pretend the person got reported because the MSB is over-reaching..
reality is this
yes MSB log details and have a X year statute of limitations on how long they can keep that info. but if you are doing nothing suspicious. the authorities never get a report on you and that data gets deleted after X years.
however do things like use mixers and give fake ID 'to preserve privacy' will get you flagged by the MSB they will look into you and investigate you and decide if your worthy of being reported

[o_e_l_e_o]

Just Bitcoin is currently doing roughly 250,000 transactions per day, and they will have to somewhat manually go through all of them to check for 'illicit activities' and that all of them are somehow linked to a real-world identity of someone. Right?

Reminds me of the guy who claimed to have a trading bot set up to trade constantly all day long with a target of zero profit, just so he could send thousands upon thousands of meaningless trades to the IRS and force someone to waste their time going through it all.

Also I don't get how they want to handle Monero, since the transactions aren't public. Will they just ban it? Many open questions.

I imagine they are approaching this the same way the approach most of their mass surveillance programs. Mass surveillance isn't used to prevent crimes, terrorism, etc. Mass surveillance is used to control the general population. Far more people use Bitcoin than use Monero, so it becomes the prime target for mass surveillance.

I understood the proposal a bit different: for every transaction to an exchange/payment processor/other service provider you have to provide the identity of the sender, but only if the transaction is over 1000 € it must be reported automatically; however, the information must be transmitted by the service provider to the authorities "upon request", and there are other cases where a report can or should be sent by the service provider (if it's suspicious to be linked to criminal activity).

Looks like you are partly right. On closer examination though, it isn't that individual transactions can't be over 1000 EUR, but rather if that person has received over 1000 EUR across all transactions. This gives you a deposit limit of slightly over 0.02 BTC at current prices before you are automatically reported to the authorities.

[Wind_FURY]

I'm also very confident that some users would rather be "criminals" than give back some of the freedom that they have won back through Bitcoin.

These moves aren't exclusively aimed at bitcoin nor have been provoked by them. Most of this has come to pass with the growing volume of trades and transactions that are happening on smart-contract platforms and the millions being moved in NFT sales. When only Bitcoin was being used, most transactions would have been smaller P2P ones. Those on Ethereum and these other platforms with VC money are huge and have been leading to a lot of people getting scammed and losing their money, OR, in a lot of other cases people making a lot of money without having to pay taxes.

I doubt that the nation states cared till it was just people losing money to scammers. Since every kid in the basement is starting to make 1000s of dollars with NFTs and wallet farming, they don't seem to be very comfortable anymore.

I believe that's where some of us might be wrong. In believing that the government is doing this for the prevention of plebs from being scammed. No, they're doing this because MASS ADOPTION of Bitcoin could mean death to their political strongholds. They didn't understand the underlying nature of Bitcoin until it was too late. The Pandora's Box is open, the government is merely trying to close it.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Also I don't get how they want to handle Monero, since the transactions aren't public. Will they just ban it? Many open questions.

Nonsense actions always leave unaddressed concerns. Take for instance the Russian address blacklisting from Coinbase. Governments are perpetually trying to figure out ways to control their citizens no matter if their actions are reasonable or not. But as a wise man once said,

Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own.

The power abuse comes from the impression that you need them for almost everything, especially their money. This aggressive behavior is on years now, as pooya87 has said.

As for Monero, it wouldn't surprise me if they required from centralized exchanges to hand out the customers' view keys, if any does accept it anyway; I thought we had baptized its usage as criminal offense. Notice that these actions bring into the open how faulty it is to rely on a third party.

Something tells me that those who do use it and aren't into it to make a quick buck will sooner or later rise in percentage, and along with it, the P2P exchanging necessity might emerge consequently. Is it currently a period to be hopeful or not, I wonder.

[n0nce]

Just Bitcoin is currently doing roughly 250,000 transactions per day, and they will have to somewhat manually go through all of them to check for 'illicit activities' and that all of them are somehow linked to a real-world identity of someone. Right?

Reminds me of the guy who claimed to have a trading bot set up to trade constantly all day long with a target of zero profit, just so he could send thousands upon thousands of meaningless trades to the IRS and force someone to waste their time going through it all.

Yup, I had read about it, too! Reference, for anyone interested.. (not sure if real, though):


This seems like the only cleartext source for this - I had seen it as a screenshot elsewhere. https://boards.4channel.org/biz/thread/47561034/i-have-a-bot-running-247-buying-and-selling-for-0

Also I don't get how they want to handle Monero, since the transactions aren't public. Will they just ban it? Many open questions.

I imagine they are approaching this the same way the approach most of their mass surveillance programs. Mass surveillance isn't used to prevent crimes, terrorism, etc. Mass surveillance is used to control the general population. Far more people use Bitcoin than use Monero, so it becomes the prime target for mass surveillance.

Makes sense, indeed.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

Well, like the op rightly said, it's expected, and at least, this puts an end to the unreal believe that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are above governmental regulations, it's evidently clear now and I honestly feel indifferent.
I personally don't have a problem with them knowing my wallet address or addresses but what I will feel so sad about is if they have access to my wallets(even though its decentralized) as it is with my bank accounts, if this should happen, then maybe decentralization should be taken out of English dictionary cus it failed to exist.

Anyways, I wish this is never passed, but if it's going to be passed, it should take great many years.

[taufik123]

-snip-

Bitcoin is indeed above government regulations, but each country or government has its own rules or regulations. The government will not fully regulate Cryptocurrency they only regulate the entrance but not for the inside. Don't worry, your personal wallet will still be decentralized and only you can manage it, because you own the private key.

as long as you don't publish your personal wallet address, everything will be safe.
stay away from exchanges that require KYC if you really don't want to be exposed.

[Lucius]

Also I don't get how they want to handle Monero, since the transactions aren't public. Will they just ban it? Many open questions.

I am in the EU, and in my country they have solved it in a way that regulatory agencies have asked all local crypto exchanges to remove such cryptocurrencies from their offer - and they have done so. I see no reason why this should not be a model that others will not follow

Bitcoin Store uklanja "Privacy coins" kriptovalute iz ponude
Sukladno novim smjernicama iz HANFA-e Bitcoin Store će ukloniti sljedeće kriptovalute (Privacy Coins) iz ponude: Monero, Decred, Zcash, Dash, Horizen, PIVX, Firo, Verge, Beam

The Bitcoin Store removes "Privacy coins" cryptocurrencies from the offer
In accordance with the new guidelines from HANFA, the Bitcoin Store will remove the following cryptocurrencies (Privacy Coins) from the offer: Monero, Decred, Zcash, Dash, Horizen, PIVX, Firo, Verge, Beam

I believe that's where some of us might be wrong. In believing that the government is doing this for the prevention of plebs from being scammed. No, they're doing this because MASS ADOPTION of Bitcoin could mean death to their political strongholds. They didn't understand the underlying nature of Bitcoin until it was too late. The Pandora's Box is open, the government is merely trying to close it.

In an attempt to remain ostensibly democratic and not follow in China's footsteps, they have been doing so for years - just look at what central bank governors are saying. Now that they see that the thing has gone too far, they will do everything to make Bitcoin as uninteresting as possible for all those who already own it or have planned to do so.

In the recent news that Thailand has banned cryptocurrencies as a method of payment, one could read the explanation that they do so in line with what is happening among others in the EU. It seems to me that they all read from the same manual, the only question is how quickly they will implement some things.

While the restrictions on the use of digital currencies for transactions will be effective starting April 1, companies in Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy will have until the end of April to comply with the new rules, the regulator said. It said the curbs on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin for commercial transactions are in line with regulations in Europe, the U.K., South Korea and Malaysia.