[Blacklist] of unreliable, 'taint proclaiming' Bitcoin services / exchanges

[n0nce]

After many discussions in Announcing Wasabi Wallet 2.0 and elsewhere, I came to the conclusion that we need a community-curated summarized list of untrustworthy services that I call 'taint-proclaiming services'.

These services ignore one of Bitcoin's fundamental values of being fungible, usable and acceptable everywhere and anywhere. They each come up with their own arbitrary set of taint rules by which they allow themselves not only to deny your Bitcoins, but also to steal them from you and / or directly share your data with government agencies. Some people may not be aware of this, some may accept it for the convenience of the service in question, and others may prefer to stop using these services.

I'd like to encourage everyone who had such an experience or a reliable news article about something like this happening, to share it and I'll add it to the list.

|	Paxos Exchange	|	Rejects mixed funds	|	Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/another-crypto-exchange-discourages-the-use-of-bitcoin-mixing-services/	|
|	Binance Exchange	|	Rejects mixed funds (Wasabi)	|	Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/as-fatf-regulations-galvanize-crypto-mixing-applications-are-targeted/	|
|	Coinbase Exchange	|	Closes accounts that deposit mixed funds	|	[need source]	|
|	Wasabi 2.0 Mixer	|	Blacklists UTXOs by working with Chainalysis	|	Source: https://blog.wasabiwallet.io/zksnacks-blacklisting-update/	|
|	BestChange.com	|	Supports 'clean and dirty Bitcoins'	|	Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3309245.msg60225919#msg60225919	|
|	Gemini Exchange	|	No funds from gambling; 'Attempts to conceal the origin are not allowed'	|	Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5398316	|
|	Betcoin Casino	|	'Strict Anti-Coin Mixing Policy' ( 8.8 )	|	Source: https://www.betcoin.ag/support/betcoinag-terms-service	|
|	Playbetr Casino	|	'Strict Anti-Coin Mixing Policy' ( 8.13 )	|	Source: https://www.playbetr.com/terms	|
|	Openchange instant exchange	|	Mixed funds labeled as 'stolen'	|	Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5404704	|
|	[banned mixer] Mixer	|	'Coins with dark history are never let in.'	|	Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5458437.msg62501094#msg62501094	|

I remember there are many more such cases, but can't find web articles about them right now, so I'd appreciate any additions.

PSA: Keep in mind, any centralized exchange may at any point in time start closing and freezing accounts, rejecting UTXOs and sharing your information. This is merely a blacklist, not a whitelist; exchanges not on this list aren't guaranteed to be 'safe and reliable'.

If anyone is wondering: why is this even important?; make sure to read through this post and think it through.

[1] 'this is a severe threat to Bitcoin'
[2] 'Nobody would reject a dollar bill because it has previously been used in a crime'

I've seen several posts lately from people willing to treat Bitcoin as non-fungible because they believe some coins are "tainted".
I'd say this is a severe threat to Bitcoin, and I wouldn't be surprised if governments use this because they can't stop Bitcoin in any other way. If people believe Bitcoin is "tainted", they won't accept it anymore. "We" should really inform people not to fall for this.
Nobody would reject a dollar bill because it has previously been used in a crime, despite the fact that 85 to 90% contains traces of cocaine. Claiming Bitcoin isn't fungible is just plain stupid.

Here's a few examples:

Today netex24 exchanger sent me tainted btc.

What's that? Are you saying Bitcoin isn't fungible?

service which i wanted to top up blocked my account.

The solution is simple: don't use services that tell you your Bitcoin is different than another Bitcoin.

I don’t tell that i will return btc. We can trace it. We can mark it.

Bitcoin is fungible. Stop trying to convince people it's not, and stop using services that treat Bitcoin as if it's not fungible.

Lmao you have no glue what are you talking about. Please stop spam in my tread if you don’t know anything about chainanalys, thx

This site explains very well what it's all about:

Coin validation proposed to offer as a service to trace coins and try to give you a rating about how the history of the coin from your point of view and to offer that as a service to businesses. I think this could be quite dangerous because it goes back to that 17th century court case where now you could receive a coin that is perfectly valid at the time that you receive it, but a few weeks later a crime is uncovered and now your coin is tainted. So if this coin validation service is advicing many of the merchants where you would want to spend your coin at, it's tainted and now the merchant would refuse to accept your coin. That's a strange experience for you; you're holding a coin that you might have to sell at a discount to get rid of it. The aggregate effect of this might create a run on the bitcoin price. So it reopens this long-set legal principle that currency or currency units are all equal.

I can't stress enough how important this is!

[1715497336]

1715497336

[DaveF]

Gemini does not close accounts as far as I know because of 'taint'. They have closed accounts for many other reasons, some of which are semi-legit and others that are 100% BS and many of them arbitrary but I have never seen a reliable report about them closing for taint.

Fail any form of KYC --> Closed
Don't give them info they request --> Closed
Something changes in your life and you don't tell them --> Closed
Log in from a restricted location even with an account from another part of the world --> Closed
What looks to be moving money without a reason to their security even if you are not --> Closed
And so on.

Not defending them, but there are 1000s of the above type reports, no reports that I trust of 'they did not like my BTC'

-Dave

[dkbit98]

I remember there are many more such cases, but can't find web articles about them right now, so I'd appreciate any additions.

Any exchange that works with Chainalysis and similar companies can freeze customer accounts if their tracking software marks their addresses as ''tainted''.
You are missing Binance exchange from that list, and they are freezing accounts for sure for various reasons if they think something is suspicious.
I remember reading before how many Colombian users accounts got frozen, and others got flagged for risk management and anti-money laundering:
https://insidebitcoins.com/news/binance-sued-by-colombian-users-for-frozen-accounts
https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/05/12/so-many-locked-out-binance-users-say-their-accounts-have-been-frozen-for-months/

PS
Don't forget that fake dex exchanges (like Uniswap) can also freeze your funds.
Paxful P2P exchange is the first P2P exchange that works with Chainalysis, so you know what that means.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Don't give them info they request --> Closed

But what prompts them to request additional info? Some sort of blockchain analysis which flags up something you did as "suspicious".

What looks to be moving money without a reason to their security even if you are not --> Closed

Is this not based on blockchain analysis though? You did something with your coins that they didn't like? Is that not taint?


There was another similar thread about this just a few weeks ago here: Black List of crypto exchanges! (BANS and confiscation)
Although it was discussing exchanges sanctioning Russian users, I'll quote myself from that thread here, because it is very applicable:

Here is the list of exchanges which can ban you and confiscate your funds at any moment:

• All centralized exchanges

[PrimeNumber7]

Any centralized exchange is going to be accountable to the government where it operates. Western governments are going to expect exchanges to follow AML laws to prevent money laundering.

If you don’t like this, as oelio points out, your only real option is to not use a centralized exchange.

The information that those in the list in the OP are using is ultimately public information. Anyone can look at the same information and come to their own conclusions.

[DaveF]

Don't give them info they request --> Closed

But what prompts them to request additional info? Some sort of blockchain analysis which flags up something you did as "suspicious".

All hearsay but it seems to be as you go above certain levels of trading they want more KYC. But from what people are at least admitting to it seems to be based on amounts, not any particular coins. We can't know the truth of what Gemini is thinking or if what they are posting is true so......

Is this not based on blockchain analysis though? You did something with your coins that they didn't like? Is that not taint?

What I have seen several complaints about is people move fiat in and don't trade and then pull the fiat out. And then they close your account.
Once again, posted on the net so you can never know the true story about amounts and other things. But I can see that triggering something.

-Dave

[n0nce]

Gemini does not close accounts as far as I know because of 'taint'. They have closed accounts for many other reasons, some of which are semi-legit and others that are 100% BS and many of them arbitrary but I have never seen a reliable report about them closing for taint.

Alright, thanks for the feedback, I'll remove it for now, then!

I remember there are many more such cases, but can't find web articles about them right now, so I'd appreciate any additions.

Any exchange that works with Chainalysis and similar companies can freeze customer accounts if their tracking software marks their addresses as ''tainted''.

I understand that, but I'd like to compile a list of only 'verified' services / i.e. ones where there's a clear precedent.

Here is the list of exchanges which can ban you and confiscate your funds at any moment:

• All centralized exchanges

They can, sure. But I'd like to know and make visible to everyone which are either openly against fungibility / mixing and condone it officially or where many users have reported such issues in the past.

[bitmover]

Here is the list of exchanges which can ban you and confiscate your funds at any moment:

• All centralized exchanges

They can, sure. But I'd like to know and make visible to everyone which are either openly against fungibility / mixing and condone it officially or where many users have reported such issues in the past.

Even so, it's worth to mention any centralized exchange are likely reject certain address/coin.

At any time, for any reason, we may have a problem with any centralized exchange.

This is why we should always send our coins in batches to exchanges.
I have made some big sells in binance last years when we reached ath. I was afraid they could reflect my funds, so I send in 3-4 transactions. Only after the fiat withdrawal I made the next btc transaction.

No problems, and there were some mixed funds and some funds from casinos.

But I don't trust any exchange.

In Brazil, selling big amounts in p2p transfers may be a problem with tax authorities. It is not illegal, but  it is more likely that they will demand more information, which is quite uncomfortable

[n0nce]

Would this news qualified for your list? https://news.bitcoin.com/another-crypto-exchange-discourages-the-use-of-bitcoin-mixing-services/

Here is the list of exchanges which can ban you and confiscate your funds at any moment:

• All centralized exchanges

They can, sure. But I'd like to know and make visible to everyone which are either openly against fungibility / mixing and condone it officially or where many users have reported such issues in the past.

That was already included in OP!

Even so, it's worth to mention any centralized exchange are likely reject certain address/coin.

True, I'll add a disclaimer, thanks! That's the reason this is a 'blacklist', not a 'whitelist' (in that, anything not on the list isn't guaranteed to be safe).

In Brazil, selling big amounts in p2p transfers may be a problem with tax authorities. It is not illegal, but  it is more likely that they will demand more information, which is quite uncomfortable

Trading larger volumes is an interesting question indeed. We pondered about that a bit on a tangent in this topic [How to leave KYC for good] and I don't think there's a really '100% safe, but also tax compliant' solution yet.
I believe if someone were to open an exchange in a crypto-friendly country like Portugal or El Salvador, that exchange may not be pressured as much when it comes to AML and maybe even KYC; while still providing European / American official documents that you can use when doing your taxes.

[LoyceV]

I've seen several posts lately from people willing to treat Bitcoin as non-fungible because they believe some coins are "tainted".
I'd say this is a severe threat to Bitcoin, and I wouldn't be surprised if governments use this because they can't stop Bitcoin in any other way. If people believe Bitcoin is "tainted", they won't accept it anymore. "We" should really inform people not to fall for this.
Nobody would reject a dollar bill because it has previously been used in a crime, despite the fact that 85 to 90% contains traces of cocaine. Claiming Bitcoin isn't fungible is just plain stupid.

Here's a few examples:

Today netex24 exchanger sent me tainted btc.

What's that? Are you saying Bitcoin isn't fungible?

service which i wanted to top up blocked my account.

The solution is simple: don't use services that tell you your Bitcoin is different than another Bitcoin.

I don’t tell that i will return btc. We can trace it. We can mark it.

Bitcoin is fungible. Stop trying to convince people it's not, and stop using services that treat Bitcoin as if it's not fungible.

Lmao you have no glue what are you talking about. Please stop spam in my tread if you don’t know anything about chainanalys, thx

BestChange.com should be added to this list. Even though they're not an exchange, and even though I've used them, they seem to think not all Bitcoins are equal:

Don’t you think exchangers that do not follow AML should be excluded from your site? Or at least marked as untrustworthy.
Today netex24 exchanger sent me tainted btc. And obviously service which i wanted to top up blocked my account.
I checked transaction via AML bot:
 
Risk Score: 50% Medium risk transaction
Medium risk
Exchange ML Risk Veryhigh - 100%

@rokuen
Thank you for the signal, we will certainly investigate the matter to find out all the details and if necessary, will take measures to prevent this in the future. The exchanger you named is one of the largest on over-the-counter and such appeals are the matter of exception.

In any case, your situation requires our involvement. We will certainly get in touch with the service representatives to find out the technical details of your transaction and offer them to change the counterparty, if necessary, if they use some compromised custodial service to store bitcoin.

In line with this, I am interested to know if the BestChange company subscribes to the idea that there are clean and dirty Bitcoins. I mean, yes, there are probably a lot of crimes in which Bitcoins are involved as there are countless others which involve fiat, but do you think that Bitcoins involved in these crimes are tainted and are therefore dirty and shouldn't be accepted by different Bitcoin platforms?

This is not so much our moral position, but the forced adherence to generally accepted norms. Regardless of our or anyone else's opinion, AML purity for cryptocurrency transactions has become as important a property as it is for fiat currencies. Most crypto transactions end up in centralized custodial services that adhere to standard rules for the entire global market, in particular, the fifth AML directive of the European Union (5AMLD). Therefore, in a sense, the widespread introduction of AML made BTC an analogue of NFT of the ERC-1155 standard

This site explains very well what it's all about:

Coin validation proposed to offer as a service to trace coins and try to give you a rating about how the history of the coin from your point of view and to offer that as a service to businesses. I think this could be quite dangerous because it goes back to that 17th century court case where now you could receive a coin that is perfectly valid at the time that you receive it, but a few weeks later a crime is uncovered and now your coin is tainted. So if this coin validation service is advicing many of the merchants where you would want to spend your coin at, it's tainted and now the merchant would refuse to accept your coin. That's a strange experience for you; you're holding a coin that you might have to sell at a discount to get rid of it. The aggregate effect of this might create a run on the bitcoin price. So it reopens this long-set legal principle that currency or currency units are all equal.

I can't stress enough how important this is!

[n0nce]

I've seen several posts lately from people willing to treat Bitcoin as non-fungible because they believe some coins are "tainted".
I'd say this is a severe threat to Bitcoin, and I wouldn't be surprised if governments use this because they can't stop Bitcoin in any other way. If people believe Bitcoin is "tainted", they won't accept it anymore. "We" should really inform people not to fall for this.
Nobody would reject a dollar bill because it has previously been used in a crime, despite the fact that 85 to 90% contains traces of cocaine. Claiming Bitcoin isn't fungible is just plain stupid.


This site explains very well what it's all about:

Coin validation proposed to offer as a service to trace coins and try to give you a rating about how the history of the coin from your point of view and to offer that as a service to businesses. I think this could be quite dangerous because it goes back to that 17th century court case where now you could receive a coin that is perfectly valid at the time that you receive it, but a few weeks later a crime is uncovered and now your coin is tainted. So if this coin validation service is advicing many of the merchants where you would want to spend your coin at, it's tainted and now the merchant would refuse to accept your coin. That's a strange experience for you; you're holding a coin that you might have to sell at a discount to get rid of it. The aggregate effect of this might create a run on the bitcoin price. So it reopens this long-set legal principle that currency or currency units are all equal.

I can't stress enough how important this is!

Thanks for the quotes Loyce! Informing people is exactly what this thread is aimed at; though admittedly it's mostly focusing on keeping a list of the entities that are known / proven to try make people believe some coins are 'tainted'.

[hugeblack]

Does anyone know why they reject the “polluted” coins or on what legal basis they base their classification on these coins? In the end, the coins that come from the mixtures are not necessarily illegal or from illegal sources?

Does your service include sites that do not accept bitcoin from gambling, porn, drug promotion, etc.? Or are you talking about mixing/“polluted” coins specifically?

In the previous days, we started hearing the term green coins "those that have been mined from environmentally friendly sources" and which many platforms "such as Coinbase" may adopt for reasons related to the stock market.

[LoyceV]

Does your service include sites that do not accept bitcoin from gambling, porn, drug promotion, etc.? Or are you talking about mixing/“polluted” coins specifically?

I'd say it's about any reason to consider some Bitcoins more equal than others.

Note that this isn't about exchanges freezing funds owned by drug dealers, that's understandable. It's about freezing funds from the bar where the drug dealer bought his coffee.

[n0nce]

Does your service include sites that do not accept bitcoin from gambling, porn, drug promotion, etc.? Or are you talking about mixing/“polluted” coins specifically?

Yes, I'd absolutely add such sites that just arbitrarily reject certain 'coins'.
Anyone trying to come up with a definition of 'pollution' of BTC is actually attacking Bitcoin's fungibility and should be called out. That's what this thread is for.


An easy way to understand it is the comparison to 'dirty fiat' that LoyceV has brought up: nobody rejects a paper bill you got by winning at a casino or a lottery or one you got by selling drugs. Nobody inspects bank notes for illegal substances or checks the serial numbers.

Another point to consider would be that laws differ around the world. I may live in a state where growing and selling marijuana is legal, so selling it for BTC would be absolutely legal; however if I send the coins to someone in a different state or use the BTC to pay for coffee, and someone would somehow label it as 'drug money', it couldn't be spent anymore. Wouldn't that be pretty crazy?
If this seems far fetched, think about something else: booze. In most parts of the world, nobody would label me a criminal if I were to sell home-brewed beer. But there are places where alcohol is indeed illegal.

What I'm trying to say is: we can't restrict Bitcoin that was used for activity X because it is illegal in state Y. Bitcoin knows no states, borders or laws.

[OROBTC]

...

A very useful thread, thanks OP and other repliers.  These facts/policies/thoughts are important because they do indeed cast light on threats to BTC and the philosophy of privacy.  Very important.

*   *   *

*Gemini, my experiences only*

In January 2021 I finally joined Gemini.  I did the whole KYC thing, answered their questions, etc.  I did this because I wanted to sell some of the BTC I had acquired for MUCH cheaper, and so take some gains.  I sold a lot between January and October (2021).

When I applied to get into Gemini, I told them upfront that most of my coins were mixed and/or coinjoined.  I told them that I was not doing illegal things, but valued my privacy.  No drugs, no gambling.  US citizen.  I wanted to sell some BTC to take some gains.

They took me on.  I went on to sell a large percentage of my BTC at those wonderfully high prices in 2021.

Gemini had some questions about the way I was selling (some small amounts a couple of times a week for a few months), they thought I might be cashing out BTC from a business.  I told them no, I was selling that way because I wanted to CA$H IN some BTC and that I was not smart enough to sell at the All Time High, so I was selling over a period of relatively high prices (Jan - Oct 2021).  And Gemini was OK with that.  And as far as I am concerned, Gemini served me well (albeit with KYC and explanations).

[PrimeNumber7]

Does your service include sites that do not accept bitcoin from gambling, porn, drug promotion, etc.? Or are you talking about mixing/“polluted” coins specifically?

I'd say it's about any reason to consider some Bitcoins more equal than others.

Note that this isn't about exchanges freezing funds owned by drug dealers, that's understandable. It's about freezing funds from the bar where the drug dealer bought his coffee.

Do you have any evidence that this is happening? I don't think it would be difficult for a blockchain analysis company to see the difference between someone buying $100 worth of drinks at a bar, and a someone selling $100,000 worth of coin.

When you spend 1BTC, you are spending a very specific output of a previous transaction, or a very specific set of outputs from previous transaction(s). If you are spending that 1BTC, the transaction fee you will need to pay will depend on how many outputs you are spending.

[LoyceV]

Thanks for the quotes Loyce!

How about curses?

Except that I forgot to mention one thing: The 1 mBTC you’ll receive has a curse associated with it

As said, those opposed received some cursed coins

If this doesn't show how much BS the idea of "tainting" is, I don't know what does

Note that this isn't about exchanges freezing funds owned by drug dealers, that's understandable. It's about freezing funds from the bar where the drug dealer bought his coffee.

Do you have any evidence that this is happening?

No, it was a theoretical example.

I don't think it would be difficult for a blockchain analysis company to see the difference between someone buying $100 worth of drinks at a bar, and a someone selling $100,000 worth of coin.

The $100,000 might get more interest, but does that mean the "taint" disappears for small transactions? It sounds arbitrary.
And what if the miner gets a transaction fee from a drug dealer? Or if the drug dealers pays a very high fee to a friendly miner who gives him back fresly mined coins?

For who hasn't read it yet: ChipMixer explains it nicely:

Furious you go for coffee. Barista shows you printed QR code. You mindlessly pay 0.1 mBTC with your mobile wallet. Your blockchain privacy has been lowered. How?

Baristas deposit address is printed which means it has been used by every bitcoin-using customer. Everyone around seen you pay with Bitcoin to public address and they can check your transaction to know your public address and how much Bitcoin you have. Bob is not there but he also knows where and when you have been drinking. Your coffee-induced habit has been recorded on blockchain forever.

You go out to your favorite vegan store. You try to pay when owner checks something on their computer and visibly reddens. They start shouting about unfair practices and slavery of coffee plantations. You are banned and cannot come back. What happened?

Baristas public address is well known. Vegan store owner may check if somebody transacts with them. When you paid for coffee - they did not know. But your vegan transaction is linked to previous transaction making it impossible to hide. If you could mix your Bitcoins you would have avoided that.

So, we now have cursed Bitcoins. I bet church can sell blessed Bitcoins at a premium. And vegan Bitcoins. Meat Bitcoins. Coffee slave Bitcoins. Drug Bitcoins.
Or just Bitcoins. I'll go for that.

[n0nce]

Thanks for the quotes Loyce!

How about curses?

Except that I forgot to mention one thing: The 1 mBTC you’ll receive has a curse associated with it

As said, those opposed received some cursed coins

If this doesn't show how much BS the idea of "tainting" is, I don't know what does

LOL, Bitcoin has gone religious or what?

So, we now have cursed Bitcoins. I bet church can sell blessed Bitcoins at a premium. And vegan Bitcoins. Meat Bitcoins. Coffee slave Bitcoins. Drug Bitcoins.
Or just Bitcoins. I'll go for that.

I take a plain Bitcoin too!

[Poker Player]

|	Paxos Exchange	|	Rejects mixed funds	|	Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/another-crypto-exchange-discourages-the-use-of-bitcoin-mixing-services/	|
|	Binance Exchange	|	Rejects mixed funds (Wasabi)	|	Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/as-fatf-regulations-galvanize-crypto-mixing-applications-are-targeted/	|
|	Coinbase Exchange	|	Closes accounts that deposit mixed funds	|	[need source]	|
|	Wasabi 2.0 Mixer	|	Blacklists UTXOs by working with Chainalysis	|	Source: https://blog.wasabiwallet.io/zksnacks-blacklisting-update/	|
|	BestChange.com	|	Supports 'clean and dirty Bitcoins'	|	Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3309245.msg60225919#msg60225919	|

This blacklist is very commendable.

Does anyone believe that over the years these companies will change their behavior? Because what I see is that the list of companies will get bigger and bigger. There will be more control, less privacy, more KYC/AML and more blacklist of supposedly tainted coins.

I already expressed a similar, rather pessimistic opinion in my thread: Goodbye, privacy, goodbye, it was nice while it lasted.

Convince me otherwise, please.

[n0nce]

This blacklist is very commendable.

Feel free to add any similar experiences you've had (maybe with funds coming from poker sites - as your name suggests) and I can add them to the OP! I know some exchanges and other services complain about funds from gambling sites, but don't know exactly which ones, so any feedback in this direction from a long-time forum member would definitely be appreciated.

Does anyone believe that over the years these companies will change their behavior? Because what I see is that the list of companies will get bigger and bigger. There will be more control, less privacy, more KYC/AML and more blacklist of supposedly tainted coins.

I personally don't think so (short-term), however if services realize that large amounts of users stop trusting them with their coins if they show such (unreliable / untrustworthy) behavior, they might stop considering going more strict with KYC/AML and blacklisting / 'taint definitions'. Long-term it might convince companies who already went 'down' the 'taint route' to do a U-turn; it's much harder to do though, since they'll have to somehow explain they you suddenly accept 'dirty criminal coins' that they previously deemed 'bad' and unacceptable.

I already expressed a similar, rather pessimistic opinion in my thread: Goodbye, privacy, goodbye, it was nice while it lasted.
Convince me otherwise, please.

It's a good thread; however as pointed out there, we still have alternatives, some of which are P2P and / or fully decentralized. I strongly believe we can educate people to stop conforming with outrageous, unreasonable rules that e.g. exchanges put in place and stop doing business with them. If enough people understand this (which is a pretty reasonable / logical thing - since good alternatives do exist), the centralized services will be forced to back-pedal if they don't want to go out of business.

[LoyceV]

Does anyone believe that over the years these companies will change their behavior? Because what I see is that the list of companies will get bigger and bigger. There will be more control, less privacy, more KYC/AML and more blacklist of supposedly tainted coins.

"Taint" becomes real if enough people believe it's real. So this will depend on the users, but given that many users accept KYC-demands, they'll probably go for this too. I don't have high hopes.
Privacy changes on the protocol level could help, but I have no idea how likely that is to be implemented.

[Poker Player]

Feel free to add any similar experiences you've had (maybe with funds coming from poker sites - as your name suggests) and I can add them to the OP! I know some exchanges and other services complain about funds from gambling sites, but don't know exactly which ones, so any feedback in this direction from a long-time forum member would definitely be appreciated.

In my case I have not had any problems with crypto gambling sites and as I have said in other threads, I play poker on fiat sites because there is much more traffic and better software, besides you can use statistics software (legal). The problem with crypto poker sites is that if they are without KYC it is easy for several players to collude. In other words, privacy makes it easier to cheat.

From what I know about gambling sites there is a trend that is the same as what we are discussing in the thread. Years ago practically no gambling site required KYC. Nowadays there are a few left but less and less, so the trend in the future is going to be like that. If we want to defend privacy we should defend the gambling sites without KYC, and only play in them. But the fact is that privacy has been lost in gambling and the use of crypto gambling sites does not seem to have decreased.

Btw, all this issue has made me think a lot and I have created a poll about it: Act to defend privacy or resign ourselves to its loss?

[LoyceV]

From what I know about gambling sites there is a trend that is the same as what we are discussing in the thread. Years ago practically no gambling site required KYC. Nowadays there are a few left but less and less, so the trend in the future is going to be like that. If we want to defend privacy we should defend the gambling sites without KYC, and only play in them. But the fact is that privacy has been lost in gambling and the use of crypto gambling sites does not seem to have decreased.

Isn't that because the owners too need to be able to spend their money legally? Anyone could create an online crypto casino, and as long as the owner is anonymous, they could run it on .onion and stay anonymous. But when they grow bigger, and the owners are swimming in money, they can't explain all that wealth to their local government without making their casino fully compliant.

[o_e_l_e_o]

If enough people understand this (which is a pretty reasonable / logical thing - since good alternatives do exist), the centralized services will be forced to back-pedal if they don't want to go out of business.

I've said this before many times. Money talks. If, when Coinbase decided to spring "enhanced KYC" on all their users, all their users just said "No thanks, I'll take my business elsewhere", you can guarantee they would reverse that decision within the hour and by the next day they would be lobbying governments and buying out politicians to change the laws to be more privacy friendly. If, when Binance decided to start charging 100x more than they needed to for withdrawals to trick newbies in to accepting their centralized scamcoins instead, all their users just said "No thanks, I'll take my business elsewhere", you can guarantee that those withdrawal fees would drop by 95% within the hour. I'm far less optimistic than you, though. In a space filled with people who will throw money at obvious scams, who talk about centralized altcoins like they are the next big thing, who think privacy is only for criminals and that government oversight is a good thing, then the vast majority will quite happily roll over and accept whatever nonsense centralized exchanges thrust upon them.

There will always be a strong privacy focused group of users to build and promote things such as Bisq, ChipMixer, JoinMarket, and so on, but unfortunately there will always be a much larger group of users selling themselves and bitcoin out by handing over every last shred of data and dignity to anyone who asks for it.

Privacy changes no the protocol level could help, but I have no idea how likely that is to be implemented.

This is only real solution, I think. Too many people will always be too willing to surrender their privacy for the smallest convenience. Even on this forum of all places we have plenty of users, including many senior users, who actively disparage privacy and privacy enhancing tools.

[PrimeNumber7]

Note that this isn't about exchanges freezing funds owned by drug dealers, that's understandable. It's about freezing funds from the bar where the drug dealer bought his coffee.

Do you have any evidence that this is happening?

No, it was a theoretical example.

I don't think it would be difficult for a blockchain analysis company to see the difference between someone buying $100 worth of drinks at a bar, and a someone selling $100,000 worth of coin.

The $100,000 might get more interest, but does that mean the "taint" disappears for small transactions? It sounds arbitrary.
And what if the miner gets a transaction fee from a drug dealer? Or if the drug dealers pays a very high fee to a friendly miner who gives him back fresly mined coins?

I think you are conflating multiple issues. Blockchain analysis is going to reveal that a hypothetical drug dealer paid a bar $100. That same blockchain analysis is going to reveal that it is some merchant receiving that transaction for a nominal amount. Exchanges are generally not going to care about a merchant receiving nominal amounts of coin from a drug dealer, when the amounts are in line with what they expect to receive during the normal course of business from a single customer.

The above is similar to a drug dealer paying a transaction fee. If the fee is within an expected range, no one is going to bat an eye when the miner goes to spend the block reward. However, if the transaction fee is outsized, questions might start to get asked, especially if a particular miner receives large transaction fees on any kind of regular basis (when other miners do not).

[n0nce]

Does anyone believe that over the years these companies will change their behavior? Because what I see is that the list of companies will get bigger and bigger. There will be more control, less privacy, more KYC/AML and more blacklist of supposedly tainted coins.

"Taint" becomes real if enough people believe it's real. So this will depend on the users, but given that many users accept KYC-demands, they'll probably go for this too. I don't have high hopes.
Privacy changes no the protocol level could help, but I have no idea how likely that is to be implemented.

I'm not sure they would help a lot to be completely honest. Any service committing to this whole 'taint' thing would for one, heavily resist such a change to Bitcoin and maybe even try to fork it or some shenanigans like that (of course, not before spreading enormous FUD about the proposal and telling everyone that it's initiated by criminals, to protect other criminals). And secondly, if something like this were to be implemented, it would probably be optional (if not just for backwards compatibility) and they'd just define any transaction that uses this new feature 'tainted'.

In the end, even if implementing privacy on protocol level would solve all our issues and exchanges & authorities would suddenly accept that they can't easily track Bitcoin anymore (highly unlikely in my opinion), I'd like to bring up one question. Do the people who currently use Bitcoin with 0 privacy (who would gain some by this procedure), deserve it? Do people who are ready to sell out their own PII without blinking twice, who are ready to run with all the 'criminal tainted UTXO' nonsense, deserve protocol-level protections of their privacy?

Because everyone who actually cares about privacy and Bitcoin as a whole, can already use Bitcoin pretty privately as of today, without (risky and time consuming / costly) protocol changes.

There will always be a strong privacy focused group of users to build and promote things such as Bisq, ChipMixer, JoinMarket, and so on, but unfortunately there will always be a much larger group of users selling themselves and bitcoin out by handing over every last shred of data and dignity to anyone who asks for it.

Unfortunately, you are right. Do you believe this is because of ignorance, brain-washing or maybe it's much more complicated than that? I don't think privacy is a very hard thing to understand, yet a lot of people repeat 'I have nothing to hide [here, have my data]' like a preprogrammed mantra. Why isn't the 'default phrase' about privacy 'I don't have anything to show [so nope, you can't see my data]', instead?

Privacy changes no the protocol level could help, but I have no idea how likely that is to be implemented.

This is only real solution, I think. Too many people will always be too willing to surrender their privacy for the smallest convenience. Even on this forum of all places we have plenty of users, including many senior users, who actively disparage privacy and privacy enhancing tools.

Do these people ('many people will always be too willing to surrender their privacy for the smallest convenience') deserve deep protocol changes, though? Can't Bitcoin just stay as it is? Even if it means lots of people won't get to enjoy some of its core benefits?

[Poker Player]

Isn't that because the owners too need to be able to spend their money legally? Anyone could create an online crypto casino, and as long as the owner is anonymous, they could run it on .onion and stay anonymous. But when they grow bigger, and the owners are swimming in money, they can't explain all that wealth to their local government without making their casino fully compliant.

I don't know, some of the casino licenses are from tax havens, with fairly lax regulations and low profit tax, if they impose any tax at all. Surely they have more leeway to be able to spend funds that have no clear origin than if they had a license, say, from some EU country. The reason I don't know, but there is a general trend in the world to more and more KYC/AML everywhere, even the number of tax havens has reduced considerably from a few decades ago to today.

I have been thinking a lot about this issue, which I think will be a topic of much discussion in the coming years, and so far, I have come to the following conclusions:

1) The top privacy advocates I see on the forum are on average quite a bit smarter than the average citizen and the average forum user and quite a bit more tech-savy than the average Bitcoin user.

2) I think that this blacklist is useless, because only the minority of people in point 1 are going to pay attention to it. Let's look at an example:

If Best Change is unreliable, it's not just a matter of not using their services. The responsible users of the forum should not advertise it in their signature either. There are currently 24 members in the Best Change campaign and one vacancy for which people are constantly applying.

This blacklist would make sense if it could convince at least some of the participants to leave the campaign, and convince at least some of the potential candidates not to apply for the vacancies.

Is something like this going to happen? No, not at all. That's what I mean by facts and not ideals.

By the way, to me what Best Change says doesn't sound crazy at all, and if it's so wrong that statement, I don't see why he hasn't been debated on that point in the thread.

The same will happen with Wasabi signature campaign, good luck trying to convince people not to participate in the campaign.

3) And the same could be said about the many casinos advertised on the forum. In this case not so much about clean or dirty coins, but in the attack on privacy. The casino I advertise has KYC requirements, like most of them.

The only ones that I clearly remember that operate without a license and without any KYC requirements are Lightlord's casinos, lol, of great reputation on the forum at least until recently, despite his habit of paying very late.

So, I would believe that this type of blacklists and the defense of privacy that you forum members described in 1) advocate will give any practical result if it would have visible results in the forum. Like convincing those of us who advertise to blackjack.fun or Best Change to stop doing so because they are privacy attacking companies. And convincing people not to apply to fill in the slots.

[NotATether]

Fail any form of KYC --> Closed
Don't give them info they request --> Closed
Something changes in your life and you don't tell them --> Closed
Log in from a restricted location even with an account from another part of the world --> Closed
What looks to be moving money without a reason to their security even if you are not --> Closed
And so on.

And this uncovers the weakest link in the chain of buying/sellng crypto: Sure, the crypto itself may be pseudonymous, but exchanges make the rules as to which users are "good" and which users are "bad". And we can't count on governments to step in and correct this because they are being lobbied by exchanges to do otherwise. They are basically the wild west of crypto.

Also, exchanges tend to make rules absed on what bad people are doing with cryptocurrencies (think scammers and criminals) and currently there is not a single action being taken against them to stop their illegal activities. Why? Because people think it's too hard to do so.

I've said this before, but cyberattacks and cyberscams happen through operating systems and browsers, these companies need to step up and dismantle their operational infrastructure similar to how copyrighted stuff is DMCA'ed.  Perhaps a similar bill needs to be introduced by the cybersecurity and tech companies to address that, so that all forms of malware and scams can be "copyrighted" (except that there is no legal owner of them, and anyone attempting to use them are stopped in their tracks).

[LoyceV]

In the end, even if implementing privacy on protocol level would solve all our issues and exchanges & authorities would suddenly accept that they can't easily track Bitcoin anymore (highly unlikely in my opinion), I'd like to bring up one question. Do the people who currently use Bitcoin with 0 privacy (who would gain some by this procedure), deserve it? Do people who are ready to sell out their own PII without blinking twice, who are ready to run with all the 'criminal tainted UTXO' nonsense, deserve protocol-level protections of their privacy?

Yes. Privacy is a human right.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 12

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

If privacy is guaranteed on a protocol level, you don't need (to rely on) laws to protect you. Many people don't care about many things, but improving it makes it better for everyone. Including the people who couldn't care less.

Because everyone who actually cares about privacy and Bitcoin as a whole, can already use Bitcoin pretty privately as of today, without (risky and time consuming / costly) protocol changes.

In the beginning, there was no taint. Now there are "lists of tainted coins". Unless they're "unlisted" again after the FED sells them, the number will only increase. It's like religion: even if you don't believe it, you're still bothered by it.

If Best Change is unreliable, it's not just a matter of not using their services. The responsible users of the forum should not advertise it in their signature either. There are currently 24 members in the Best Change campaign and one vacancy for which people are constantly applying.

Up to the point where BestChange went with the "taint" BS, I had recommended them several times and started to trust them. After this, I'll be more careful recommending them, and even though I still trust their service, it changed my view on them.

By the way, to me what Best Change says doesn't sound crazy at all, and if it's so wrong that statement

Let's highlight this part:

AML purity for cryptocurrency transactions has become as important a property as it is for fiat currencies.

It's totally different! If I deposit money to my bank, they may ask me how I got the money, but they won't hold the previous use of that money against me.

I don't see why he hasn't been debated on that point in the thread.

It seemed futile there.

The same will happen with Wasabi signature campaign, good luck trying to convince people not to participate in the campaign.

Most people's loyalties are flexible when it comes to earning money. But informing them is the first step: if they don't know about it, they can't take an informed decision.

The casino I advertise has KYC requirements, like most of them.

That's another thing: I would never send my documents to Costa Rica! Let me quote the website right right next to their registered address: "We accpet gambling". That doesn't sound like a company I'd trust with my identity.
Isn't it funny they're licensed in Curacao but don't allow users from Curacao to use their site?

[o_e_l_e_o]

I'm not sure they would help a lot to be completely honest. Any service committing to this whole 'taint' thing would for one, heavily resist such a change to Bitcoin and maybe even try to fork it or some shenanigans like that (of course, not before spreading enormous FUD about the proposal and telling everyone that it's initiated by criminals, to protect other criminals).

Let them try. You would either end up with a small number of centralized exchanges forking to some niche altcoin which would quickly die (and those exchanges along with it), or if you somehow reached consensus among a majority of large exchanges for a fork (which would be near impossible since they would all want to somehow exert majority control), then you would be left with essentially a CBDC.

Do the people who currently use Bitcoin with 0 privacy (who would gain some by this procedure), deserve it?

Do people who use inappropriately high fees deserve segwit? Do people who use inappropriately low fees deserve RBF? Shouldn't they all just learn to look at the mempool rather than have us implement time consuming protocol changes? Changes are driven by what is good for bitcoin, not by what its users may or may not deserve.

Do you believe this is because of ignorance, brain-washing or maybe it's much more complicated than that?

Bit of all three. Modern life is filled with indoctrination that you don't need any privacy, or that giving it up is a good thing. Go to social media and broadcast your entire life to everyone. Sign up for an account and receive $5 off your next order. Let us track your activity for more personalized results. Let us record everything that happens inside your own home so you can turn off your lights with your voice. Complete KYC so you can buy some useless shitcoin.

[Pmalek]

I wrote What Do Centralized Exchanges Consider as Taint last month.

I was told by Gemini support personnel that if they find out that you are depositing coins from a casino/sportsbook or you are trying to conceal the origin of your coins, your account will be permanently closed. Binance.US said something similar, although they didn't specifically mention the closing of accounts. "Actions will be taken" is the wording they used.

[PrimeNumber7]

I wrote What Do Centralized Exchanges Consider as Taint last month.

I was told by Gemini support personnel that if they find out that you are depositing coins from a casino/sportsbook or you are trying to conceal the origin of your coins, your account will be permanently closed. Binance.US said something similar, although they didn't specifically mention the closing of accounts. "Actions will be taken" is the wording they used.

I think it is important to note that this is different than taint. I believe they are saying that if they conclude, based on the facts, that you are depositing the proceeds from gambling, they will close your account. I understand that they are not saying they will necessarily close your account based on a single metric on a single report.

[n0nce]

In the end, even if implementing privacy on protocol level would solve all our issues and exchanges & authorities would suddenly accept that they can't easily track Bitcoin anymore (highly unlikely in my opinion), I'd like to bring up one question. Do the people who currently use Bitcoin with 0 privacy (who would gain some by this procedure), deserve it? Do people who are ready to sell out their own PII without blinking twice, who are ready to run with all the 'criminal tainted UTXO' nonsense, deserve protocol-level protections of their privacy?

Yes. Privacy is a human right.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 12

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

If privacy is guaranteed on a protocol level, you don't need (to rely on) laws to protect you. Many people don't care about many things, but improving it makes it better for everyone. Including the people who couldn't care less.

Alright; that's a good point, however I still don't know why the entities pushing against this human right (politicians, lawmakers, ...) would treat 'Bitcoin with protocol level privacy' any different from 'Bitcoin with high-level privacy' (that comes from ChipMixer or other non-traceable origin). To them I don't think it matters why they can't trace it, just that they can't - and that's what they push back against. They couldn't care less in which layer we implement privacy, in my opinion.

I'm not sure they would help a lot to be completely honest. Any service committing to this whole 'taint' thing would for one, heavily resist such a change to Bitcoin and maybe even try to fork it or some shenanigans like that (of course, not before spreading enormous FUD about the proposal and telling everyone that it's initiated by criminals, to protect other criminals).

Let them try. You would either end up with a small number of centralized exchanges forking to some niche altcoin which would quickly die (and those exchanges along with it), or if you somehow reached consensus among a majority of large exchanges for a fork (which would be near impossible since they would all want to somehow exert majority control), then you would be left with essentially a CBDC.

Honestly, if the majority of people (think 'Bitcoin Twitter' with most of their big 'personalities' and conference speakers) use and support centralized exchanges, Wasabi and similar, I can see a scenario where miners see it as more profitable to mine on that chain instead of the original one. Contrary to the UASF, in this scenario it's possible that the majority of (especially loud) voices side with the taint nonsense.

As long as the exchanges and government bodies behind them don't control the hashpower, it's not really a CBDC, but on the other side exchanges already 'issue' (sell) nonexistent BTC, so it's really close to be honest.

I wrote What Do Centralized Exchanges Consider as Taint last month.

I was told by Gemini support personnel that if they find out that you are depositing coins from a casino/sportsbook or you are trying to conceal the origin of your coins, your account will be permanently closed. Binance.US said something similar, although they didn't specifically mention the closing of accounts. "Actions will be taken" is the wording they used.

Thanks a lot, this is what I'm looking for! Will add with links to your post. Edit: Won't add Binance for now, since they didn't mention 'attempts to hide the origin', so I have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they just don't want funds that come directly from a gambling site.

I wrote What Do Centralized Exchanges Consider as Taint last month.

I was told by Gemini support personnel that if they find out that you are depositing coins from a casino/sportsbook or you are trying to conceal the origin of your coins, your account will be permanently closed. Binance.US said something similar, although they didn't specifically mention the closing of accounts. "Actions will be taken" is the wording they used.

I think it is important to note that this is different than taint. I believe they are saying that if they conclude, based on the facts, that you are depositing the proceeds from gambling, they will close your account. I understand that they are not saying they will necessarily close your account based on a single metric on a single report.

It is 'taint', though: you are trying to conceal the origin of your coins. What if Pmalek sends me his coins (that he got from a gambling site) for a 3D printed steel washer jig that I sold him; and then I want to deposit those BTC on Gemini? Gemini will easily be able to claim that I am the one who withdrew the coins from a gambling site and that I just shuffled them from one wallet to another in an attempt to hide their origin.

[Poker Player]

There are many points to comment on here, and as I said before, it seems to me that this issue of privacy is going to give a lot to talk about. I think it's going to be like the never-ending story. When I have more time I will continue commenting on this and the other threads on other points of this matter, but there is a central aspect that I want to comment on.

Yes. Privacy is a human right.

I affirm that the right to privacy is a right that has limits and it is good that it has them, and I would like to know if you agree with this or not, because if not, it seems to me that it is not worthwhile to continue debating on the subject.
Privacy has to have some limits from the moment you live in society.

Part of privacy is the right to secrecy of communications, but if the authorities believe you are breaking the law, they can spy on your communications to check if you are indeed doing so.

Defending that you have the right to 100% privacy with Bitcoin is the same as defending it in this aspect and I, although I defend the right to privacy to a certain extent, recognize that it has to have some limits.

I don't know if you are arguing that the authorities should not have the right to violate your privacy either in any case such as the one above.

[LoyceV]

Yes. Privacy is a human right.

I affirm that the right to privacy is a right that has limits and it is good that it has them, and I would like to know if you agree with this or not, because if not, it seems to me that it is not worthwhile to continue debating on the subject.
Privacy has to have some limits from the moment you live in society.

Agreed. I noticed the word arbitrary in Article 12:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy

That's an interesting choice of words, which leaves a lot of room for law makers to collect information.

Part of privacy is the right to secrecy of communications, but if the authorities believe you are breaking the law, they can spy on your communications to check if you are indeed doing so.

Defending that you have the right to 100% privacy with Bitcoin is the same as defending it in this aspect and I, although I defend the right to privacy to a certain extent, recognize that it has to have some limits.

I don't know if you are arguing that the authorities should not have the right to violate your privacy either in any case such as the one above.

I agree there are limits. And I have no problems with government cracking down on (suspected) criminals.
What I do have a problem with, and which has been in the news several times in the past years, is government agencies illegally listening in on many private conversations (the so called drag-net approach).
Where I live, we have quite good privacy laws, but they're violated by many if not most organisations, including government itself.

Alright; that's a good point, however I still don't know why the entities pushing against this human right (politicians, lawmakers, ...) would treat 'Bitcoin with protocol level privacy' any different from 'Bitcoin with high-level privacy' (that comes from ChipMixer or other non-traceable origin). To them I don't think it matters why they can't trace it, just that they can't - and that's what they push back against. They couldn't care less in which layer we implement privacy, in my opinion.

You're probably right: they'll still try to get rid of Bitcoin, just like they're (slowly) trying to get rid of cash money.

[Pmalek]

I think it is important to note that this is different than taint. I believe they are saying that if they conclude, based on the facts, that you are depositing the proceeds from gambling, they will close your account. I understand that they are not saying they will necessarily close your account based on a single metric on a single report.

It looks like taint to me. I don't think it's going to be difficult for them to prove (if they want to) that the deposited Bitcoin came from a gambling platform. The owner of the coins could have changed, but it's still the same "dirty" coins. Dirty in their own understanding of that term. If I can't use them on that exchange, it means they are tainted/tagged/dirty/unwanted/rejects... Call them whatever you want.

Just imagine being told the same thing when you use fiat. You go out to buy something and the shop clerk tells you can't use those bills because they have traces of this and that. Get out of my shop before I call the police.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I agree there are limits. And I have no problems with government cracking down on (suspected) criminals.
What I do have a problem with, and which has been in the news several times in the past years, is government agencies illegally listening in on many private conversations (the so called drag-net approach).

This.

Privacy invasion, such as searching someone's home or devices or monitoring their communications or financial activities, is entirely justified if there is reasonable evidence to suspect that person of a non-victimless crime. However, such cases account for probably <1% of privacy invasion which takes place under the direction of governments and their associated agencies. What absolutely is not justified is the blanket surveillance of entire populations and countries, the wire tapping, the banning of end to end encryption, the government backdoors in to your devices and software, and all the other shocking revelations which have come from and since Snowden.

There is no evidence that such blanket surveillance has prevented terrorist attacks or any of the other things that governments claim. Its goal is population control, not crime prevention. It is never justified and it should be resisted.

And history shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent. A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one.

[dkbit98]

Privacy changes on the protocol level could help, but I have no idea how likely that is to be implemented.

Privacy protocol changes would probably be best thing for some people or nightmare for others, but it's hard to imagine that happening right now.
I think mimblewimble has some chances to be implemented in BTC like it was for LTC, but this is only optional and most people probably wouldn't even use it like that.
Maybe we could see some better second layer solutions for privacy, or some wallets that couldn't be stopped by regulators.

And this uncovers the weakest link in the chain of buying/sellng crypto: Sure, the crypto itself may be pseudonymous, but exchanges make the rules as to which users are "good" and which users are "bad". And we can't count on governments to step in and correct this because they are being lobbied by exchanges to do otherwise. They are basically the wild west of crypto.

We could always use bitcoin for trading p2p without third parties, but I guess there wouldn't be enough liquidity (mostly fake) that would attract big players and big capital.
As long as we have governments acting like our babysitters, we are going to have corruption and power concentration that will affect bitcoin for sure.

What if Pmalek sends me his coins (that he got from a gambling site) for a 3D printed steel washer jig that I sold him; and then I want to deposit those BTC on Gemini? Gemini will easily be able to claim that I am the one who withdrew the coins from a gambling site and that I just shuffled them from one wallet to another in an attempt to hide their origin.

It depends how deep their detection software is going to search for Bitcoin connected with gambling, but they could always expend that to mixers, hacks, supporting truckers, sending coins to another country owner, etc.
This can go super crazy, especially with those carbon credits they are rolling out soon, this could soon become a living nightmare if we continue using centralized exchanges.
I like the idea of using offline paper bitcoin notes that could enable us to use this notes like cash, and nobody would find any online trace, until we spend BTC from that note.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I like the idea of using offline paper bitcoin notes that could enable us to use this notes like cash, and nobody would find any online trace, until we spend BTC from that note.

I don't think the paper bitcoin notes solves anything. If I withdraw coins from a gambling site to a paper note, and then that paper note changes hands 100 times before ending up with you, and you deposit those coins to an exchange, then the exchange will absolutely still look at the blockchain and just see:

Gambling Site -> Intermediary Address (the paper note) -> Exchange

No amount of emails telling them that the bitcoin had changed hands will convince them not to class those coins as tainted, otherwise literally everyone who is accused of having tainted coins can just email and say "It wasn't me".

This can go super crazy, especially with those carbon credits they are rolling out soon, this could soon become a living nightmare if we continue using centralized exchanges.

Again, this is the real solution here. If the whole community stopped buying in to this taint nonsense and stopped using exchanges which enforce this nonsense, then the whole concept would disappear very quickly.

[Pmalek]

Again, this is the real solution here. If the whole community stopped buying in to this taint nonsense and stopped using exchanges which enforce this nonsense, then the whole concept would disappear very quickly.

But we all know this isn't going to happen. Or it will take a long time before centralized exchanges notice a significant drop in user activity to the point they start worrying about their profits and maybe change their ways just a little bit. Incentivizing users with some free money, decreased trading fees, and in the future maybe giving them an NFT (with promises that it's going to be worth a lot soon) will still be enough for most to forget about all the negatives.

[n0nce]

Alright; that's a good point, however I still don't know why the entities pushing against this human right (politicians, lawmakers, ...) would treat 'Bitcoin with protocol level privacy' any different from 'Bitcoin with high-level privacy' (that comes from ChipMixer or other non-traceable origin). To them I don't think it matters why they can't trace it, just that they can't - and that's what they push back against. They couldn't care less in which layer we implement privacy, in my opinion.

You're probably right: they'll still try to get rid of Bitcoin, just like they're (slowly) trying to get rid of cash money.

There is no evidence that such blanket surveillance has prevented terrorist attacks or any of the other things that governments claim. Its goal is population control, not crime prevention. It is never justified and it should be resisted.

And history shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent. A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one.

I'd agree that resistance is the only solution. We're always looking for technical solutions, but honestly, it's a political / social problem and it requires a political / social solution.
If anyone defines untraceable cryptocurrencies as illegal, it doesn't matter if you added the untraceability through a mixer ('high level') or protocol level like Monero. They'll treat them equally.

If we want to solve these issues, we need education and conviction of millions of people who don't want mass surveillance and cause pressure on politics. If everyone just complies, authorities will keep doing their thing.

Privacy changes on the protocol level could help, but I have no idea how likely that is to be implemented.

Privacy protocol changes would probably be best thing for some people or nightmare for others, but it's hard to imagine that happening right now.
I think mimblewimble has some chances to be implemented in BTC like it was for LTC, but this is only optional and most people probably wouldn't even use it like that.
Maybe we could see some better second layer solutions for privacy, or some wallets that couldn't be stopped by regulators.

Again, I don't know why the ones banning ChipMixer UTXOs would suddenly accept MimbleWimble. Or protocol-level anonymous Bitcoin.
I'm not sure you can find a technical solution to a political problem.

To be clear: privacy is possible today, with mixing, CoinJoin and Lightning. Maybe in the future with MimbleWimble and protocol-level changes. But there are parties that don't want such anonymous funds, funds that aren't tied to a real-life identity or funds that in the past have passed a casino. I don't see them suddenly accepting anonymous funds that have essentially just been anonymized in a novel technical way.
Just because the reason they don't accept it isn't that they don't like mixers specifically, it's that they don't like anonymity.

We can already and always will be able to use Bitcoin anonymously peer-to-peer; with or without any changes.
It's just that certain organizations don't treat all Bitcoin equal and I feel with enough pressure from end users (e.g. by educating) - as early as possible - they might actually be forced to change their terms wherever they're already just voluntary (e.g. Wasabi). And wherever terms are legally limited, with the huge amounts of funds they have, exchanges could do lobby work to be able to meet the users' demands (for privacy).


Let me just frame this real quick

This can go super crazy, especially with those carbon credits they are rolling out soon, this could soon become a living nightmare if we continue using centralized exchanges.

Again, this is the real solution here. If the whole community stopped buying in to this taint nonsense and stopped using exchanges which enforce this nonsense, then the whole concept would disappear very quickly.

[NotATether]

Incentivizing users with some free money, decreased trading fees, and in the future maybe giving them an NFT (with promises that it's going to be worth a lot soon) will still be enough for most to forget about all the negatives.

And we have now hit the nail on the problem.

The masses only follow the person with the carrot-stick, because that's all they care about.

And the carrot-stick guy is the exchanges, and we ain't got nothing to incentivise these people not to use those exchanges.

It takes other (good) exchanges to destroy the rotten ones.

[Pmalek]

And the carrot-stick guy is the exchanges, and we ain't got nothing to incentivise these people not to use those exchanges.

It takes other (good) exchanges to destroy the rotten ones.

The new (good) ones have to be better than those they are trying to replace. In every sense of the world. If it's a combination of good and bad, most people will just continue using the sites they are comfortable with. Unfortunately, it mostly boils down to how much money/crypto will eventually end up in someone's pocket or wallet. You are not going to get to most people telling them how decentralized exchanges are better and explaining the reasons why that is, when all they see is that the centralized one gives them $50.000/coin, while the best offer on the decentralized one is only $49.200.   

Then there is the issue with marketing. Have you ever seen an ad or commercial for Bisq? Me neither. But if you watch sports, you can see centralized exchanges in the biggest sports competitions nowadays. Money buys new customers.

[n0nce]

Unfortunately, it mostly boils down to how much money/crypto will eventually end up in someone's pocket or wallet.

Honestly, if throughout multiple years of using centralized exchanges, only once you get an account frozen or closed, once you get coins blacklisted, once your exchange exit scams you, or even if you want to withdraw your funds when you buy Bitcoin - a decentralized exchange will actually be cheaper.

In another thread people reported some exchanges' withdrawal fees for Bitcoin are around the $20 mark; if that's not 'getting less money in your pocket / wallet', I don't know what is.

[dkbit98]

And the carrot-stick guy is the exchanges, and we ain't got nothing to incentivise these people not to use those exchanges.

There is really no incentive to use use centralized exchanges.
Yes, it's probably easier to use them and there is much bigger volume that is probably automated or fake.
You can't get better incentive than knowing your coins are not sent to some third party man who will track your every step and scan your every move and transaction.

Honestly, if throughout multiple years of using centralized exchanges, only once you get an account frozen or closed, once you get coins blacklisted, once your exchange exit scams you, or even if you want to withdraw your funds when you buy Bitcoin - a decentralized exchange will actually be cheaper.

We don't know how the future of decentralized exchanges will look like, but it's totally possible to create some revenue sharing that would create profit for everyone who participate in that dex.
Using something like Lightning or other second layer solution, with improved privacy would be big advantage for me, and you don't have to worry about angry employee stealing your data because he got sacked from with work.

[n0nce]

And the carrot-stick guy is the exchanges, and we ain't got nothing to incentivise these people not to use those exchanges.

There is really no incentive to use use centralized exchanges.
Yes, it's probably easier to use them and there is much bigger volume that is probably automated or fake.
You can't get better incentive than knowing your coins are not sent to some third party man who will track your every step and scan your every move and transaction.

I've got another incentive! Money

If you think about it, buying $100 on such an exchange with 0.0007BTC withdrawal fee (~$15 US) at current market price of $22,485.53 and withdrawing, paying 0.0007BTC in fees means instead of 0.00444730BTC, you get 0.00374730 in your wallet, effectively having paid an outrageous price of $26,685.88 / BTC. That's a markup of 18.5%.

Paying an almost 20% premium for having the convenience of buying BTC on an app instead of downloading and installing Bisq, is not something I'm willing to do to be honest.

Honestly, if throughout multiple years of using centralized exchanges, only once you get an account frozen or closed, once you get coins blacklisted, once your exchange exit scams you, or even if you want to withdraw your funds when you buy Bitcoin - a decentralized exchange will actually be cheaper.

We don't know how the future of decentralized exchanges will look like, but it's totally possible to create some revenue sharing that would create profit for everyone who participate in that dex.
Using something like Lightning or other second layer solution, with improved privacy would be big advantage for me, and you don't have to worry about angry employee stealing your data because he got sacked from with work.

What do you mean with revenue sharing? Something like staking / lending features?
Right now, in the case of Bisq the profit you get for 'participating' is that your order stays online. There's no need and no use for you to keep the application running if you don't try to buy / sell which I think is the simplest and most secure way to do things. Sure, you could incentivize users to run their Bisq nodes to 'host' other people's offers and such, so that it's not mandatory to keep the application running to buy or sell. But I don't think it's a good idea; it would make things unnecessarily complicated and introduce many more failure points.

Integrating Lightning is definitely going to be a big step for Bisq (or other decentralized exchanges), as it will allow to DCA more easily and also to quickly get small amounts of fiat when you need it, without requiring to pay relatively high on-chain fees (since it's multisig and there are Bisq fees and whatnot).

I'd definitely agree that having the peace of mind that there's not a company behind the scenes that can mess things up is a big bonus.

[BlackHatCoiner]

There is really no incentive to use use centralized exchanges.

There's one case, though, in which I justify the use of centralized exchanges: If you're sending (or receiving) a lot of money via a bank account or another financial institution and there is no legal framework for cryptocurrencies in your country.

This is some trouble, because not only do you have to somehow justify the transaction to the bank, but you also have to be aware of some special-arbitrary treatment from the tax office. Using a centralized exchange is probably going to pull you through the former, but I'm not so sure about the latter. Exchanging with Bisq in this case might not be a wise move.

[n0nce]

There is really no incentive to use use centralized exchanges.

There's one case, though, in which I justify the use of centralized exchanges: If you're sending (or receiving) a lot of money via a bank account or another financial institution and there is no legal framework for cryptocurrencies in your country.

This is some trouble, because not only do you have to somehow justify the transaction to the bank, but you also have to be aware of some special-arbitrary treatment from the tax office. Using a centralized exchange is probably going to pull you through the former, but I'm not so sure about the latter. Exchanging with Bisq in this case might not be a wise move.

You're saying if I sell 1BTC on Bisq and I suddenly get $20,000 via bank transfer, which on other days doesn't happen too often, the bank is going to ask questions? I mean, you could just reply to those questions honestly and say you bought BTC at a certain earlier point in time and sold it online. I don't think it would be a big issue; it's going to be similar to buying (or selling) another expensive item like a car.

Maybe the only catch would be that - in your words - 'there is no legal framework for cryptocurrencies in your country'. I'm honestly not sure what happens if there is no 'category' for cryptocurrency at all, but I believe most countries do have something by now; so of course make sure that you're legally allowed to own a large sum of BTC without telling anyone, if you want to keep it 'hidden', prior to selling it.
If you're in a country that has property tax (I believe such as LoyceV), and plan to sell it for fiat in the future, make sure to tell them yearly how much BTC you own (denominated in fiat) and you can hold it anonymously (no need to hand public keys or anything like that) without problems. Then, when the day comes that you're selling it all on Bisq, there shouldn't be any issues. Since they can go back and see that you always declared ownership of them and paid your taxes on them.

In general I don't think using a centralized exchange to do something illegal in your country, is going to make it legal. If you follow your laws in the first place, you can pretty surely sell P2P without worries. If you didn't follow some law, which later makes it hard to sell your crypto, it will be just as hard if you use a centralized exchange.

[BlackHatCoiner]

You're saying if I sell 1BTC on Bisq and I suddenly get $20,000 via bank transfer, which on other days doesn't happen too often, the bank is going to ask questions? I mean, you could just reply to those questions honestly and say you bought BTC at a certain earlier point in time and sold it online.

Not so simple if the money come from a complete stranger. But, if they come from a well-known, billion dollar worth of company, "the bell might not ring". Again, though, I'm not so sure what to do with the tax office.

I don't think it would be a big issue; it's going to be similar to buying (or selling) another expensive item like a car.

It isn't, because, first of all I can't evade the taxation of a mobile (in contrast with bitcoin), and second, there's normally a legal framework around that and I know what I should do, how much it'll cost me in the end etc.

but I believe most countries do have something by now

Unfortunately, not.

In general I don't think using a centralized exchange to do something illegal in your country, is going to make it legal.

Me neither, but I have a feeling that people who use a centralized exchange cover up this issue. Maybe I need to reach an accountant.

[LoyceV]

You're saying if I sell 1BTC on Bisq and I suddenly get $20,000 via bank transfer, which on other days doesn't happen too often, the bank is going to ask questions?

Yep. It may vary per country, but I'd expect a letter asking many questions (just shy of the color of my underware).

I mean, you could just reply to those questions honestly and say you bought BTC at a certain earlier point in time and sold it online. I don't think it would be a big issue

They'll also ask for a copy of your taxes, including your savings at other banks. Privacy? Lol. If you don't like it, they'll close your account.

it's going to be similar to buying (or selling) another expensive item like a car.

Not really: the car is traceable in your name.

If you're in a country that has property tax (I believe such as LoyceV), and plan to sell it for fiat in the future, make sure to tell them yearly how much BTC you own (denominated in fiat) and you can hold it anonymously (no need to hand public keys or anything like that) without problems.

I think the proper term in English is a wealth tax, but indeed, filing it and paying your annual taxes avoids jail time if you ever buy a jet or something.

Then, when the day comes that you're selling it all on Bisq, there shouldn't be any issues. Since they can go back and see that you always declared ownership of them and paid your taxes on them.

You'll be fine, as long as you answer all privacy invading questions your bank asks.

In general I don't think using a centralized exchange to do something illegal in your country, is going to make it legal. If you follow your laws in the first place, you can pretty surely sell P2P without worries.

From what I've seen, using an established exchange makes the bank "easier" because they know at least the other party isn't a criminal. Now let's say you sell 1 BTC and receive $20,000 tainted dollars P2P. Then what?

[n0nce]

You're saying if I sell 1BTC on Bisq and I suddenly get $20,000 via bank transfer, which on other days doesn't happen too often, the bank is going to ask questions?

Yep. It may vary per country, but I'd expect a letter asking many questions (just shy of the color of my underware).

I mean, you could just reply to those questions honestly and say you bought BTC at a certain earlier point in time and sold it online. I don't think it would be a big issue

They'll also ask for a copy of your taxes, including your savings at other banks. Privacy? Lol. If you don't like it, they'll close your account.

it's going to be similar to buying (or selling) another expensive item like a car.

Not really: the car is traceable in your name.

Then, when the day comes that you're selling it all on Bisq, there shouldn't be any issues. Since they can go back and see that you always declared ownership of them and paid your taxes on them.

You'll be fine, as long as you answer all privacy invading questions your bank asks.

Okay; so because I didn't buy via KYC exchange in the first place (therefore 'not traceable in my name'), they'll ask more questions compared to another sale and may / may not steal my fiat money?
Then I guess a P2P (cash in hand) trade of those BTC might be possible or otherwise a direct sale for BTC. In that case you will be sure not to get anything stolen from you and as long as your tax documents are fine, there won't be issues on that front either.

In general I don't think using a centralized exchange to do something illegal in your country, is going to make it legal. If you follow your laws in the first place, you can pretty surely sell P2P without worries.

From what I've seen, using an established exchange makes the bank "easier" because they know at least the other party isn't a criminal. Now let's say you sell 1 BTC and receive $20,000 tainted dollars P2P. Then what?

That's because the bank has liabilities / duties to the country it operates in and a registered exchange (company) is an easy / no headache source of funds for them, right?

[LoyceV]

Okay; so because I didn't buy via KYC exchange in the first place (therefore 'not traceable in my name'), they'll ask more questions compared to another sale and may / may not steal my fiat money?

One of the things they check is indeed if you sent money to a centralized exchange In the past.

Then I guess a P2P (cash in hand) trade of those BTC might be possible or otherwise a direct sale for BTC. In that case you will be sure not to get anything stolen from you and as long as your tax documents are fine, there won't be issues on that front either.

Unless you decide you want to deposit the cash (in a large amount) to your bank again.

That's because the bank has liabilities / duties to the country it operates in and a registered exchange (company) is an easy / no headache source of funds for them, right?

The banks just tries to cover their asses, especially after the huge fines they've had recently for not doing enough against money laundering. Even though, as far as I know, those fines were based on fiat money laundering.

[n0nce]

That's because the bank has liabilities / duties to the country it operates in and a registered exchange (company) is an easy / no headache source of funds for them, right?

The banks just tries to cover their asses, especially after the huge fines they've had recently for not doing enough against money laundering. Even though, as far as I know, those fines were based on fiat money laundering.

That was my impression, too. So it means if politicians one day find out that criminals use centralized exchanges as well, cashing out via centralized exchange won't be any better than P2P or decentralized, right?

It seems to me like you need some sort of 'government-approved party' in your crypto-to-fiat-path to prevent issues with larger amounts. What if new exchanges are going to be based in a crypto-friendly country like Portugal or El Salvador; such an exchange could probably get away with accepting all UTXOs, without blacklisting, while at the same time being 'governmentally-approved' so that banks won't need to thoroughly question source of funds when cashing out.

[LoyceV]

So it means if politicians one day find out that criminals use centralized exchanges as well, cashing out via centralized exchange won't be any better than P2P or decentralized, right?

I don't think it matters. They know banks are used by criminals, but banks consider money from other banks clean.

It seems to me like you need some sort of 'government-approved party' in your crypto-to-fiat-path to prevent issues with larger amounts. What if new exchanges are going to be based in a crypto-friendly country like Portugal or El Salvador; such an exchange could probably get away with accepting all UTXOs, without blacklisting, while at the same time being 'governmentally-approved' so that banks won't need to thoroughly question source of funds when cashing out.

Something tells me receiving a bank transfer from El Salvador (which has one of the highest crime rates in Latin America) will be a big red flag.

Portugal won't help much, it's part of EU and thus has to follow EU legislation.

[n0nce]

So it means if politicians one day find out that criminals use centralized exchanges as well, cashing out via centralized exchange won't be any better than P2P or decentralized, right?

I don't think it matters. They know banks are used by criminals, but banks consider money from other banks clean.

That won't ever change either, as long as the top-tier politicians use banks themselves for their shady businesses, right?

It seems to me like you need some sort of 'government-approved party' in your crypto-to-fiat-path to prevent issues with larger amounts. What if new exchanges are going to be based in a crypto-friendly country like Portugal or El Salvador; such an exchange could probably get away with accepting all UTXOs, without blacklisting, while at the same time being 'governmentally-approved' so that banks won't need to thoroughly question source of funds when cashing out.

Something tells me receiving a bank transfer from El Salvador (which has one of the highest crime rates in Latin America) will be a big red flag.

Portugal won't help much, it's part of EU and thus has to follow EU legislation.

I'm pretty sure that EU legislation is more lax than most countries' individual laws; as we've seen with the house sale in Portugal and no VAT or other taxes on crypto. This is now all a tangent on its own in this topic, so to get back on it; I don't think EU legislation calls for blacklisting of UTXOs. And therefore countries who want to be more crypto-friendly could explicitly position themselves in favor of fungibility and against 'taint'. In my opinion though, most people don't even realize that this taint and blacklisting is happening or ignore it; there must be demand / public interest for 'taint denying' Bitcoin services / exchanges / countries; then they will in one way or another emerge.

[o_e_l_e_o]

That won't ever change either, as long as the top-tier politicians use banks themselves for their shady businesses, right?

Not just that, but the banks keep these politicians in power by generous donations and funding their campaigns, as well as constantly funding them after they have been elected with gifts, grants, and other lobbying.

Have a look at: https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=F03

This shows you the breakdown of funding by commercial banks in 2021-2022 in the US. Feel free to choose a different financial sector or election cycle from the menu on the right. Make sure to check out both the total campaign donations as well as the total lobbying spending.

As long as our politicians are so heavily funded by banks, then the banks will continue to be allowed to launder money and other illegal activities. They may occasionally get hit with some inconsequential fine of a few million dollars to keep up the façade, but nothing that actually affects their bottom line.

[n0nce]

That won't ever change either, as long as the top-tier politicians use banks themselves for their shady businesses, right?

Not just that, but the banks keep these politicians in power by generous donations and funding their campaigns, as well as constantly funding them after they have been elected with gifts, grants, and other lobbying.

Have a look at: https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=F03

This shows you the breakdown of funding by commercial banks in 2021-2022 in the US. Feel free to choose a different financial sector or election cycle from the menu on the right. Make sure to check out both the total campaign donations as well as the total lobbying spending.

As long as our politicians are so heavily funded by banks, then the banks will continue to be allowed to launder money and other illegal activities. They may occasionally get hit with some inconsequential fine of a few million dollars to keep up the façade, but nothing that actually affects their bottom line.

I guess then things will only substantially change when Bitcoiners will start bribing donating and funding politicians.

[dkbit98]

You're saying if I sell 1BTC on Bisq and I suddenly get $20,000 via bank transfer, which on other days doesn't happen too often, the bank is going to ask questions? I mean, you could just reply to those questions honestly and say you bought BTC at a certain earlier point in time and sold it online. I don't think it would be a big issue; it's going to be similar to buying (or selling) another expensive item like a car.

I would always choose payment in cash for trading like this, this option is also available in Bisq face-to-face, or accept several smaller payments in your bank accounts, in different time periods.
It's a good idea to some choose crowded public place for this trade, and not some dark corner of the night.
You can buy a car and most things, unless it's lamborgini or something super expensive that would attract lot of attention.

I don't think it matters. They know banks are used by criminals, but banks consider money from other banks clean.

Isn't this banking system weird all together?
There is no magical formula that turns money from dirty to clean, it's just numbers on screen and they all have history to show if you go back enough.
It's just some dudes with seating in chair central control station saying what is clean and what is not.
Oh and they also control offshore banks, when they need them 

[n0nce]

You're saying if I sell 1BTC on Bisq and I suddenly get $20,000 via bank transfer, which on other days doesn't happen too often, the bank is going to ask questions? I mean, you could just reply to those questions honestly and say you bought BTC at a certain earlier point in time and sold it online. I don't think it would be a big issue; it's going to be similar to buying (or selling) another expensive item like a car.

I would always choose payment in cash for trading like this, this option is also available in Bisq face-to-face, or accept several smaller payments in your bank accounts, in different time periods.
It's a good idea to some choose crowded public place for this trade, and not some dark corner of the night.
You can buy a car and most things, unless it's lamborgini or something super expensive that would attract lot of attention.

That's not always possible. For one, what are you going to do with that huge pile of cash afterwards? Buying something else with cash (like, another car at a dealership) will require proving source of funds. I mentioned in the past on this forum, that trying to buy a car over 10,000€ with cash required proving source of funds.
Further, are you willing to accept 1BTC worth of cash without checking it? A bank is usually a good way to check the money is good; either meet with the buyer at their bank and have them withdraw the money in front of you (that would work) or you go to your bank and try depositing it. But that won't work if you want to skip the bank altogether.

I don't think it matters. They know banks are used by criminals, but banks consider money from other banks clean.

Isn't this banking system weird all together?
There is no magical formula that turns money from dirty to clean, it's just numbers on screen and they all have history to show if you go back enough.
It's just some dudes with seating in chair central control station saying what is clean and what is not.
Oh and they also control offshore banks, when they need them 

It's absurd, for sure. Just the fact that they get bailed out if they make bad business decisions, using taxpayer money, while every other business doesn't. Or the fact that they just buy politicians and nobody turns an eye; while it's essentially simply bribing. Or, as you say; that they define 'taint' without having an easily linkable history of funds like the Bitcoin blockchain does. What's also absurd is that I can't talk to a representative if it's weekend, if it's too early or too late, if it's a national holiday and probably many more cases; which means it's disfunctional 50% of the time. It's just a bad system. (rant over)

[LoyceV]

Isn't this banking system weird all together?

It's absurd, for sure.

No arguing there. It's probably the weirdest business we have. Then again, "money" is weird too. To quote Henry Ford:

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

I believe this is still true. Why work all your life for a tiny amount of money, while central banks create a million times more money than you earn in a lifetime in a millisecond?

This, by the way, is why I'm in Bitcoin. Central banks can't create more. And I believe they truely fear that.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Why work all your life for a tiny amount of money, while central banks create a million times more money than you earn in a lifetime in a millisecond?

Because you don't know there's an alternative, and if you don't know that, then you will, rationally, fall back on thinking that's the only solution there is. No matter how unfair it is, if you can't imagine of something better, your brain will, automatically, stop thinking about the problem. You will get to admit it, sooner or later.

But, it's time to change this. We do have a better alternative now. Bitcoin, that eliminates dishonest human behavior. There are no words in this system. Words are empty, they take no part in the way we construct consensus. Action is what matters. There's no faith in this system. Proof-of-Work is self-authenticating. Bitcoin is, ultimately, more fair.

And that's before we even talk about the efficiency aspect.

[Poker Player]

Add one more to the list, please.

Known scam site Bitlucy(crap).com is apparently very concerned about mixed coins:

8.8. Strict Anti-Coin Mixing Policy - Bitlucy has a strict policy against mixing coins. In accordance with the KYC and AML policies outlined in our terms. If a deposit or withdrawal is suspected of being received from or sent to an address that is associated with the mixing of coins, Bitlucy reserves the right to indefinitely hold a transaction until one of the following is complete: (1) The withdrawal is refunded to the same address through which the deposit was made from; or (2) the withdrawal is sent upon a full and thorough KYC and AML account verification and everything is accurate; or (3) the withdrawal is refunded and full gameplay has been reached.

What a joke.

[LoyceV]

Known scam site Bitlucy(crap).com is apparently very concerned about mixed coins:

They copied it from betcoin.ag (2015). And it's also copied by playbetr.com (2018). This is going to be a long list.

[icopress]

Add one more to the list, please. [...]

I don’t think that a fraudulent site should be added to this list, there are other lists for this, red tags, etc.

Have you seen the names of the companies represented in the OP? Are there scammers among them?

This list has a completely different goal ... not to mention that the Bitlucy plagiarized their conditions from other bookmakers.

[Poker Player]

I don’t think that a fraudulent site should be added to this list, there are other lists for this, red tags, etc.

Have you seen the names of the companies represented in the OP? Are there scammers among them?

This list has a completely different goal ... not to mention that the Bitlucy plagiarized their conditions from other bookmakers.

Of course I've seen it, and I've commented on it a few pages back.

I guess what you don't want is for legitimate projects (albeit with questionable blacklisting policies) to be mixed with scam sites, and I don't care if it gets listed or not. What had caught my attention is how a scam site supposedly cares about this, but seeing that they've probably copied it to give the appearance of seriousness, I'm not surprised.

[n0nce]

Known scam site Bitlucy(crap).com is apparently very concerned about mixed coins:

They copied it from betcoin.ag (2015). And it's also copied by playbetr.com (2018). This is going to be a long list.

Thanks guys; so the first one is a scam site and the other two are not? Then I'd just add Betcoin and Playbetr; since I wouldn't want to list scam coins in the first place to be honest.

[bbc.reporter]

|	Paxos Exchange	|	Rejects mixed funds	|	Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/another-crypto-exchange-discourages-the-use-of-bitcoin-mixing-services/	|
|	Binance Exchange	|	Rejects mixed funds (Wasabi)	|	Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/as-fatf-regulations-galvanize-crypto-mixing-applications-are-targeted/	|
|	Coinbase Exchange	|	Closes accounts that deposit mixed funds	|	[need source]	|
|	Wasabi 2.0 Mixer	|	Blacklists UTXOs by working with Chainalysis	|	Source: https://blog.wasabiwallet.io/zksnacks-blacklisting-update/	|
|	BestChange.com	|	Supports 'clean and dirty Bitcoins'	|	Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3309245.msg60225919#msg60225919	|
|	Gemini Exchange	|	No funds from gambling; 'Attempts to conceal the origin are not allowed'	|	Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5398316	|

This should bring attention to the importance of Defi protocols like Uniswap, onchain mixing similar to Tornado Cash, usage of anonymous coins and the development ZK rollups similar to ZKsync. Everything the community needs has been developed and will continue to be developed. If a scammer like Sifu can interact directly to a smart contract for onchain mixing and mock everyone about it on Twitter, it is very clear that it cannot get more unstoppable than this hehehehe.

[Poker Player]

Thanks guys; so the first one is a scam site and the other two are not? Then I'd just add Betcoin and Playbetr; since I wouldn't want to list scam coins in the first place to be honest.

The other two have been present on the forum for a long time and have signature campaigns runned by Hhampuz running for a couple of years, with no major problems with them so far. So yes, they are legitimate. In this case I would say that a copied T&C rule can be due to several legitimate factors, as someone who is going to launch a casino, looks at the T&C of some other reputable casino, and takes as a base their T&C adapting them and changing some points but not others.

[n0nce]

This should bring attention to the importance of Defi protocols like Uniswap, onchain mixing similar to Tornado Cash, usage of anonymous coins and the development ZK rollups similar to ZKsync.

Except all this DeFi stuff can't do fiat on-/off-ramps. You can only get so far with that. Sure, swap one token for another, or even cross-chain atomic swaps. But I believe most of the services that deanonymize users are centralized exchanges, which are seen as the only way to acquire or sell cryptocurrency by most users.

Everything the community needs has been developed and will continue to be developed.

Sure! Right now I'd recommend anyone to on-/off-ramp through Bisq or other P2P means and I'm looking for more usage of the existing and the development of competing solutions.

The other two have been present on the forum for a long time and have signature campaigns runned by Hhampuz running for a couple of years, with no major problems with them so far. So yes, they are legitimate. In this case I would say that a copied T&C rule can be due to several legitimate factors, as someone who is going to launch a casino, looks at the T&C of some other reputable casino, and takes as a base their T&C adapting them and changing some points but not others.

Thanks a lot!

[bbc.reporter]

This should bring attention to the importance of Defi protocols like Uniswap, onchain mixing similar to Tornado Cash, usage of anonymous coins and the development ZK rollups similar to ZKsync.

Except all this DeFi stuff can't do fiat on-/off-ramps. You can only get so far with that. Sure, swap one token for another, or even cross-chain atomic swaps. But I believe most of the services that deanonymize users are centralized exchanges, which are seen as the only way to acquire or sell cryptocurrency by most users.

Agreed, however, what is the cryptospace if it is not being developed to avoid converting to fiat. I reckon stablecoins might have very good growth in the cryptospace as we have been witnessing since 2017. The liquidity and volume of much of the market is in stablecoins and many exchanges have begun to accept only stablecoins as a replacement for fiat for purposes of compliance. Shadow banking in China is speculated to be running on USDT as their main currency..

Also, by using stablecoins it brings to the community a better solution for fiat. It is permisionless, borderless and can be cheap to use. But I agree to the cons also after what happened to Luna and UST.

[n0nce]

Agreed, however, what is the cryptospace if it is not being developed to avoid converting to fiat.

It's just the reality of things as of right now that most merchants only accept fiat, which means for lots of purchases, conversion back to fiat is necessary. The more private and more 'in the spirit of crypto' we can accomplish this, the better.

Also, by using stablecoins it brings to the community a better solution for fiat. It is permisionless, borderless and can be cheap to use. But I agree to the cons also after what happened to Luna and UST.

This makes no sense after your previous statement. First, you like the idea of replacing fiat with crypto, but then you also like crypto that is 'stable' which means 'pegged to fiat'? If we want to get away from fiat, we can't promote 'digital fiat'..
Unless a stablecoin exists that is pegged to 'purchasing power', which I don't think exists as an established index or anything like that.

[LoyceV]

Also, by using stablecoins it brings to the community a better solution for fiat. It is permisionless, borderless and can be cheap to use. But I agree to the cons also after what happened to Luna and UST.

This makes no sense after your previous statement. First, you like the idea of replacing fiat with crypto, but then you also like crypto that is 'stable' which means 'pegged to fiat'? If we want to get away from fiat, we can't promote 'digital fiat'..
Unless a stablecoin exists that is pegged to 'purchasing power', which I don't think exists as an established index or anything like that.

Not only does the value of stable coins depend on a single company, that also gives them the power to "taint" any coin they want. They could just as well have used a central database instead of a blockchain.
It gets even worse when a certain scam exchange creates their own centrally controlled blockchain and adds a stable coin (and even Bitcoin!) on their own fully controlled blockchain. Now there are 2 companies that can taint you "stable" coins!

TL;DR: "not your keys, not your coins".

[BlackHatCoiner]

Tether devs probably read the whitepaper until "Digital signatures provide part of the solution", skipping the "the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending" part.

but then you also like crypto that is 'stable' which means 'pegged to fiat'?

Not only they aren't "pegged to fiat", but this automatic consideration that fiat is stable is a nonsense. Have we seen what's going onto this world since 2020 the beginning of fiat currencies? There's no fiat currency that has retained its value. Even "strong" economies like the US, UK, EU, they're all experiencing massive devaluation of their currencies everyday.

Unless a stablecoin exists that is pegged to 'purchasing power', which I don't think exists as an established index or anything like that.

A stable coin whose exchange rate looks like 1 coin = 1 hash is definitely not stable. The more the purchasing power, the more the supply, ergo the less the equilibrium price. If only we could find a way to determine that the supply will remain the same, regardless of the energy spent, with some kind of variable parameter... 

They could just as well have used a central database instead of a blockchain.

I'll have to argue they don't. Blockchains have full transparency and an established monetary policy. You have neither of those in USDT.

[n0nce]

but then you also like crypto that is 'stable' which means 'pegged to fiat'?

Not only they aren't "pegged to fiat", but this automatic consideration that fiat is stable is a nonsense. Have we seen what's going onto this world since 2020 the beginning of fiat currencies? There's no fiat currency that has retained its value. Even "strong" economies like the US, UK, EU, they're all experiencing massive devaluation of their currencies everyday.

Fiat currencies are just as 'stable' as Bitcoin, if we determine the stability of a currency on its value denominated in itself.

If people consider something 'stable' that keeps a value of $1, they must deem the US dollar stable; just because it holds its own value.
It's funny, because by the same logic, I could argue that 'Bitcoin is a stablecoin, since BTC1 = BTC1'.

Or I could maybe create a 'BTCT' token that is 'pegged to BTC', so it's a stablecoin, because it is always worth the same amount as another currency (in this case BTC), even though that one fluctuates in value..
Don't see the difference between the scenarios I describe and 'USDT = stablecoin'.

Anyhow; we always end up on these huge tangents..

[BlackHatCoiner]

If people consider something 'stable' that keeps a value of $1, they must deem the US dollar stable; just because it holds its own value.

I think people consider the US dollar a stable currency, because it's "backed" (I really hate this word) by the US economy, is usable by anyone in an enforcing manner, and is minted by one entity* which supposedly tries to retain the value since it has complete control of the supply, and that's elected by the people "democratically".

However, this is not an advantage to begin with. It might look as an advantage, but in reality, you need to have your rights encroached to enjoy it. Same as with privacy invasion. Having less money laundering, tax evasion and terrorism is pointless if you have every inch of your privacy invaded.

*I mean cash (M0), but a much higher percentage (~95%) of non-cash money (M1, collateral) is controlled by commercial banks, whose actions are ultimately controlled by the central bank (not government!) who have seen themselves somewhat elite lately?

[dkbit98]

I'll have to argue they don't. Blockchains have full transparency and an established monetary policy. You have neither of those in USDT.

Isn't USDT just a token that is made on ethereum public transparent blockchain?
I am not fan of Tether but something like that can be useful short term when someone is trading.

It's funny, because by the same logic, I could argue that 'Bitcoin is a stablecoin, since BTC1 = BTC1'.

Not exactly, because they are comparing 1 dollar with all other fiat currencies and with other assets like gold, silver, etc. to determine how stable dollar is.
I think that nothing is really stable, it's only illusion used to steal wealth from people using inflation and other tools like that.
It's crazy to think that someone made us believe that fiat currencies can be called stable when we know they have infinite supply and they are printed all the time.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Isn't USDT just a token that is made on ethereum public transparent blockchain?

Does it matter if it's transparent alone, though? Alright, so we can verify that there are about 66.83B USDT according to coinmarketcap. Does it have a point if there can't be consensus found in a monetary policy and users have to just follow what one entity says? Sure, there's transparency of their action, but not of their arbitrary intentions. I can't do something if they decide to freeze some Ethereum addresses or inflate USDT to infinity by tomorrow morning, other than to verify it.

By the way, fun fact: Tether and Ethereum have no circulating supply completion bar. Because Tether and Ethereum are fiat. 

[n0nce]

It's funny, because by the same logic, I could argue that 'Bitcoin is a stablecoin, since BTC1 = BTC1'.

Not exactly, because they are comparing 1 dollar with all other fiat currencies and with other assets like gold, silver, etc. to determine how stable dollar is.

I don't think that's how stablecoins are defined. The definition of 'stable' is 'when measured against USD'. Just like they measure stocks and other assets against the USD; they do so with cryptocurrency and if a currency is more 'similar' to the US dollar, it's called 'more stable'. But I argue that the dollar itself isn't stable, and I don't think anyone doubts that.

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies where the price is designed to be pegged to a cryptocurrency, fiat money, or to exchange-traded commodities (such as precious metals or industrial metals).

Basically, peg = stable - which is pretty misleading, if we look at the USD purchasing power chart.

[bbc.reporter]

Agreed, however, what is the cryptospace if it is not being developed to avoid converting to fiat.

It's just the reality of things as of right now that most merchants only accept fiat, which means for lots of purchases, conversion back to fiat is necessary. The more private and more 'in the spirit of crypto' we can accomplish this, the better.

Also, by using stablecoins it brings to the community a better solution for fiat. It is permisionless, borderless and can be cheap to use. But I agree to the cons also after what happened to Luna and UST.

This makes no sense after your previous statement. First, you like the idea of replacing fiat with crypto, but then you also like crypto that is 'stable' which means 'pegged to fiat'? If we want to get away from fiat, we can't promote 'digital fiat'..
Unless a stablecoin exists that is pegged to 'purchasing power', which I don't think exists as an established index or anything like that.

I am not quite certain what you are arguing about if a peg to fiat for you is a problem for a stablecoin. I am only talking about the concept of a stablecoin as a pemissionless, borderless and cheap internet currency we can use in crypto sportsbooks or in marketplaces similar to Opensea.

In any case, the whole cryptospace trading market is running on liquidity provided by stablecoins already. I reckon the market capitalization of USDT, USDC and BUSD added together would make in no.3 and this is growing.

Also, yes 1 bitcoin = 1 bitcoin but what you can buy with bitcoin during November will presently cost you more today because it is -85% in value. It is a head shaking argument for stability.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I am only talking about the concept of a stablecoin as a pemissionless, borderless

A stablecoin isn't permissionless/borderless. As said, Tether can decide to blacklist certain Ethereum addresses arbitrarily, and it has already happened. It's just one entity. You may not have to hand them over your identity to register, but it doesn't go in your way. You're under their own rules; not yours as in bitcoin. You someday might not be "worthy" enough to have access.

I reckon the market capitalization of USDT, USDC and BUSD added together would make in no.3 and this is growing.

Market capitalization is pointless in cryptocurrencies, let alone in stablecoins. It doesn't show the money that's inside the system. Tether can mint a quadrillion USDT, but there's no real money created other than unlicensed IOUs.

[LoyceV]

Tether can decide to blacklist
~
unlicensed IOUs.

This makes me wonder if the users ever thought about the long-term perspective. With exchanges, you often hear the advice to take your coins out because "not your keys, not your coins". Weirdly enough, that generic recommendation isn't applied to "stable" coins!
Who thinks Tether will still exist 10 years from now? Or 50 years? I bet the dollar will still be around, and Bitcoin too. I'm not so sure yet about the euro, but I'm pretty sure the current stable coins won't last 50 years.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Does it matter if it's transparent alone, though?

Not at all. We can see what Tether does with USDT on various chains, but we can't see a single thing they do with their reserves. We know from previous court cases and filings that USDT is not backed up 1-to-1 with USD and that Tether are running a fractional reserve.

I am only talking about the concept of a stablecoin as a pemissionless, borderless and cheap internet currency we can use in crypto sportsbooks or in marketplaces similar to Opensea.

But stablecoins aren't permissionless - they are centralized and can be remotely locked/frozen by their issuers at any time, which has happened many times.

Also, yes 1 bitcoin = 1 bitcoin but what you can buy with bitcoin during November will presently cost you more today because it is -85% in value. It is a head shaking argument for stability.

Yes, but what I can buy with bitcoin 2 years ago will cost me far less because bitcoin is +50% in value. Whereas what I can buy with USD has never been lower than it is today. Until tomorrow.

I'm not so sure yet about the euro, but I'm pretty sure the current stable coins won't last 50 years.

Case in point - a "stablecoin":

[dkbit98]

Does it matter if it's transparent alone, though? Alright, so we can verify that there are about 66.83B USDT according to coinmarketcap. Does it have a point if there can't be consensus found in a monetary policy and users have to just follow what one entity says? Sure, there's transparency of their action, but not of their arbitrary intentions. I can't do something if they decide to freeze some Ethereum addresses or inflate USDT to infinity by tomorrow morning, other than to verify it.

I don't think anyone can verify exact supply of US dollars, and it's monetary policy is even worse, yet everyone many people are still using it.
Yes I know anyone can freeze your USDT tokens, and people tried to make better alternatives (USDC, DAI, etc.) but they are all crap because they are based on ethereum blockchain.
If something can be reversed once like eth chain, that means it can be reserved again.  

I don't think that's how stablecoins are defined.

I really don't know exact definition of crypto stablecoins, there are some algorithm based and pegged to it's based shitcoin, like in case of Terra debacle.
There are even some stable coins that are pegged to Gold, like for example Tether Gold.
https://gold.tether.to/

The definition of 'stable' is 'when measured against USD'. Just like they measure stocks and other assets against the USD; they do so with cryptocurrency and if a currency is more 'similar' to the US dollar, it's called 'more stable'. But I argue that the dollar itself isn't stable, and I don't think anyone doubts that.

Wait a minute, and what happens in time of hyperinflation like it was in Weimar Republic and other countries?
In United States dollar crashed in great depression, and nobody could say this was stable currency.
They all claimed Mark and other failed fiat currencies were ''stable''.

[n0nce]

I am not quite certain what you are arguing about if a peg to fiat for you is a problem for a stablecoin.

Oh don't worry about it; it's off-topic anyway. You're correct; these coins are 'stable' compared to the dollar and Bitcoin is 'cheap' now compared to November - but this all assumes we value BTC and everything else against the US dollar.
It's obvious the dollar itself isn't stable in terms of purchasing power; and if we're calling something stable because it follows the value of something else, even though that loses value, we might just as well call BTC 'stable' when it loses (or gains) real value.

Or, to make it more analogous to Tether; maybe easier to understand, let's assume we create a BTCT (Bitcoin-tethered stablecoin that always has the value of 1BTC).

|	Tether	|	BTCT	|
|	Loses value when USD loses value	|	Loses value when BTC loses value	|
|	Gains value when USD gains value	|	Gains value when BTC gains value	|
|	Is only stable in reference to the USD	|	Is only stable in reference to BTC	|
|	Is always worth 1USD	|	Is always worth 1BTC	|
|	Is even called stable if 1USD lost 99% of its value	|	Is even called stable if 1BTC loses 99% of its value	|

So it seems very comparable; this BTCT should be called a stable coin right?

I am only talking about the concept of a stablecoin as a pemissionless, borderless and cheap internet currency we can use in crypto sportsbooks or in marketplaces similar to Opensea.

If you need permissionless, borderless and cheap you should try Bitcoin (on Lightning for small amounts where a few cents in tx fee is not considered cheap).
As far as I know, Tether is not decentralized, so it's not permissionless; at least not nearly as permissionless and borderless as Bitcoin.

The definition of 'stable' is 'when measured against USD'. Just like they measure stocks and other assets against the USD; they do so with cryptocurrency and if a currency is more 'similar' to the US dollar, it's called 'more stable'. But I argue that the dollar itself isn't stable, and I don't think anyone doubts that.

Wait a minute, and what happens in time of hyperinflation like it was in Weimar Republic and other countries?
In United States dollar crashed in great depression, and nobody could say this was stable currency.
They all claimed Mark and other failed fiat currencies were ''stable''.

Yes, that's the irony: you can have a super inflationary 'base currency' (USD, Weimar Republic Marks etc.), create a crypto coin that follows its value and call it a 'stable' coin.
Everyone can see the dollar is not stable, but the coins that follow its price are stable (by definition).

I'm arguing that by the same definition, I can create a coin that follows BTC price action and call it a 'stablecoin' because it always has the value of 1BTC, no matter if it tanks or 'moons'.

In fact, in an attempt of 4D chess, I could create a coin that follows 'TerraClassicUSD' price and it would have been 1:1 to this day, never 'lost any value' (compared to the base currency TerraClassicUSD), even though USTC has crashed compared to other currencies like the US dollar, the Euro or just purchasing power. It should be a 'stable coin' based on the definition given earlier: stable = following something else, no matter if that itself is not stable.

Basically, peg = stable - which is pretty misleading, if we look at the USD purchasing power chart.

Case in point - a "stablecoin":

Looking at these 2 graphics side by side; if I peg something to the above currency and call it 'stable', I should also be able to peg something to the below currency and call it 'stable', right?

[LoyceV]

Looking at these 2 graphics side by side; if I peg something to the above currency and call it 'stable', I should also be able to peg something to the below currency and call it 'stable', right?

The difference is the time frame: the dollar is quite stable from today to tomorrow, while Bitcoin can easily lose or gain 20%. But I've also seen the dollar (or euro) gain or drop much more than 1% in a day, after some announcement from a central bank.
Now that I think about it, it makes me wonder if Bitcoin is called volatile to distract from the continuous drop in value of fiat money. Fact is: there is no stable currency anymore.

[icopress]

n0nce, in case you need an official statement from the Betnomi.

We do accept deposits from mixers etc but not from illicit income.
If user is using our services to clean/ launder the funds then this will be a violation but mixers by themselves should be no problem.

[LoyceV]

We do accept deposits from mixers etc but not from illicit income.
If user is using our services to clean/ launder the funds then this will be a violation but mixers by themselves should be no problem.

How do I interpret this? Let's say someone steals 1 Bitcoin, and gambles it at Betnomi. That's not allowed, right? And that makes sense!
But if someone gets 1 Bitcoin from a mixer, he can use it to gamble at Betnomi, even if that 1 Bitcoin was previously stolen by whoever sent it to the mixer? If so, that would make perfect sense to me too!

The thief isn't allowed to use stolen funds, but you can't blame a Bitcoin owner because of whatever a previous owner did.

[icopress]

The thief isn't allowed to use stolen funds, but you can't blame a Bitcoin owner because of whatever a previous owner did.

I think the way you put it makes sense. As far as I know, my short question was answered directly by the founder.

I decided to quote the answer that I received so that there would be no confusion in the future.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Not accepting funds from illicit activity sounds very confusing. You'll have to determine:

• What's considered illicit? If it's illegal? Based on which country? User's? Casino's? Laws differentiate.
• How can you prove it's illicit? Money is fungible. Most thieves wouldn't be thieves if they knew they can be traced somehow probably. Unless you infringe on everyone's privacy.

Responding with "we don't care about mixed funds, we just don't accept money that come from illicit activity" opens up a big discussion. Do casinos need to make such heavy statements to maintain the status quo?

[n0nce]

Looking at these 2 graphics side by side; if I peg something to the above currency and call it 'stable', I should also be able to peg something to the below currency and call it 'stable', right?

The difference is the time frame: the dollar is quite stable from today to tomorrow, while Bitcoin can easily lose or gain 20%. But I've also seen the dollar (or euro) gain or drop much more than 1% in a day, after some announcement from a central bank.

Sure, the time frame is different. But as you say, fiat currencies can also fluctuate quickly. Let's keep in mind that there are also other 'fiat stablecoins', so even a coin following the Mexican peso would be called stablecoin. Even though it went from $0.70USD to $0.05USD in the last 10 years. Relative to the Mexican economy and to Mexican Peso holders, such a stablecoin would indeed appear 'stable' and not have lost any value.

I remember some weeks in 2018, where the TRY was inflating so hard that it 'out-crashed' Bitcoin, so measured in TRY people would have made profit holding Bitcoin (even though it was losing tons of value when measured in USD) compared to a Turkish Lira stablecoin. In that sense, Bitcoin was more stable than a theoretical stablecoin.

Now that I think about it, it makes me wonder if Bitcoin is called volatile to distract from the continuous drop in value of fiat money. Fact is: there is no stable currency anymore.

I don't believe in conspiracies hiding behind every corner, but I do believe that the majority of people sees their country's currency as stable and everything that loses or gains value, when measured in their local currency, unstable. This is a general thing that I also noticed before Bitcoin and / or in other contexts than Bitcoin.

The thief isn't allowed to use stolen funds, but you can't blame a Bitcoin owner because of whatever a previous owner did.

I think the way you put it makes sense. As far as I know, my short question was answered directly by the founder.

I decided to quote the answer that I received so that there would be no confusion in the future.

Thanks for reaching out icopress! I myself don't fully understand, like LoyceV and BlackHatCoiner, how they try to accomplish that (discerning funds after they have been mixed).
I do get that casinos don't want to be used as mixers. My issue is just with blocking users' funds if they come from ChipMixer or CoinJoin.

Maybe they mean that if e.g. I hold 'tainted' coins (coming from a theft, etc.) and deposit them to Betnomi, they will block them, but if I send them through a mixer, first then I'm good? Would be great if Andrew can confirm the last sentence..

It would be interesting to know how they are able to tell apart mixed and non-mixed funds, though. I guess ChipMixer chips can be identified by always being multiples of BTC0.001 minus a small 'sweeping' transaction fee, but other mixing methods may not be that easy to identify and could lead to coins being labeled as 'illicit', even though the user for example, got it from another CoinJoin user who themselves got it through theft.

[LoyceV]

It looks like you can add Openchange.cash to the list: SCAM EXCHANGE: Openchange (Openchange.cash):

I have tried to exchange 0.256 BTC, one ChipMixer's chip, to Monero.

After receiving enough confirmations they changed order status to "Mistake" and accused me of trying to money launder stolen funds. According to their AML bot funds that I have sent are stolen. I have tried to explain them what Chipmixer is and it was a waste of time. They keep insisting on:"Risk of your transaction - Stolen 100.00%".

[icopress]

After receiving enough confirmations they changed order status to "Mistake" and accused me of trying to money launder stolen funds. According to their AML bot funds that I have sent are stolen. I have tried to explain them what Chipmixer is and it was a waste of time. They keep insisting on:"Risk of your transaction - Stolen 100.00%".

Are the funds returned to the owner?

[NeuroticFish]

Are the funds returned to the owner?

Nope, they're asking for "supporting documents" (KYC, source of funds) which, from my understanding, the rightful owner doesn't want to send.

[icopress]

Nope, they're asking for "supporting documents" (KYC, source of funds) which, from my understanding, the rightful owner doesn't want to send.

It is one thing to reject a deposit/withdrawal, another to confiscate.

BestChange should intervene. If they do not intervene and the funds are not returned, this will be a bad precedent that deserves a red label.

Every exchanger presented on our website has been thoroughly checked before listing, and the BestChange team constantly monitors exchangers' services quality. This minimizes risks when making financial transactions in exchangers listed on our website. Should an exchanger fail to properly fulfill its obligations, a number of measures would be taken against it which stimulate the exchanger to solve the issue as fast as possible.

I wouldn't say better.

It doesn't worry you that an anonymous entity demands people to share their legal documents? It worries me! I'm okay with legit companies following the law in the country they're registered in. I'm also okay with totally anonymous services that solely rely on their reputation.
But I'm not okay with anonymous entities cherry picking which rules do or don't apply to them.

[LoyceV]

BestChange should intervene.

They responded twice, see Janyiah's feedback:

   Admin BestChange.com    June 30, 2022, 20:14
Hello!

We request the exchanger's administrator to respond to the user's complaint.

Best regards, BestChange administration.

Admin BestChange.com    June 30, 2022, 21:47
Hello!

There is no mark in monitoring about possible verification because verification is not carried out at the exchange service.
The situation with your order is another, the funds from you were not received by the exchange service and were frozen by the exchange, which requested verification, because the funds have the status Stolen 100%.

By creating and confirming your initial order, you have agreed to all the terms and conditions of the exchanger. The rule 7.7 of terms says about situations with frozen funds.
Verification is one of the most common and effective ways of following the AML and KYC policies.

In this case it is not possible to resolve this situation without providing the requested information to the exchange office.

None of this makes sense: if funds are stolen, sending documents to an anonymous website isn't going to change that. But they say they'll return it after receiving documents.

Note that the feedback has been bumped 48 times: BestChange allows the exchanger to cancel the claim (this happened 20 times). Then, Janyiah can renew the claim (which happened 19 times). That alone is very shady: imagine if any user on Bitcointalk could turn their negative feedback into neutral just by clicking it.

This brings another interesting question: what happens to "tained" Bitcoins once a service decides they're "tainted" (based on completely arbitrary criteria)? I wouldn't be surprised if they use this as an excuse to keep funds for themselves, AKA stealing. It's not as if they know Bob stole the Bitcoins from Alice, and they return them to Alice. So what's the plan after announcing some Bitcoins as "tainted"?

[icopress]

This brings another interesting question: what happens to "tained" Bitcoins once a service decides they're "tainted" (based on completely arbitrary criteria)? I wouldn't be surprised if they use this as an excuse to keep funds for themselves, AKA stealing. It's not as if they know Bob stole the Bitcoins from Alice, and they return them to Alice. So what's the plan after announcing some Bitcoins as "tainted"?

We will return to this as well.

I'll wait until Monday and see how the situation unfolds and then I think to intervene.

[malevolent]

Does anyone believe that over the years these companies will change their behavior? Because what I see is that the list of companies will get bigger and bigger. There will be more control, less privacy, more KYC/AML and more blacklist of supposedly tainted coins.

"Taint" becomes real if enough people believe it's real. So this will depend on the users, but given that many users accept KYC-demands, they'll probably go for this too. I don't have high hopes.
Privacy changes on the protocol level could help, but I have no idea how likely that is to be implemented.

It's possibly too late for that. Given the size of the market, and how many do not want to deal with Monero, or view such transactions with more suspicion, at this point I really wouldn't be surprised if major exchanges and businesses decided to stay on the old chain without privacy, assuming they wouldn't have been able to successfully torpedo efforts to improve BTC at all.

[n0nce]

Does anyone believe that over the years these companies will change their behavior? Because what I see is that the list of companies will get bigger and bigger. There will be more control, less privacy, more KYC/AML and more blacklist of supposedly tainted coins.

"Taint" becomes real if enough people believe it's real. So this will depend on the users, but given that many users accept KYC-demands, they'll probably go for this too. I don't have high hopes.
Privacy changes on the protocol level could help, but I have no idea how likely that is to be implemented.

It's possibly too late for that. Given the size of the market, and how many do not want to deal with Monero, or view such transactions with more suspicion, at this point I really wouldn't be surprised if major exchanges and businesses decided to stay on the old chain without privacy, assuming they wouldn't have been able to successfully torpedo efforts to improve BTC at all.

I'm not that sure about this. Look at Lightning: it's in a way 'protocol-level privacy' (just one layer higher), and some exchanges added or plan to add Lightning support for deposits and withdrawals.

Since improved privacy was always one of Lightning's selling points, I'm not sure how customers would react if suddenly certain LN payments were declined / stolen. Hopefully more outrage than when this happens on-chain, where unfortunately as we determined, lots of people bought into 'well, the blockchain is transparent (no privacy, just pseudonymity) and I guess I got bad coins'.

The hope is that protocol-level privacy (on L1 or L2) creates different expectations in the majority of customers, who would 'let their money talk' if a business were to act against (like by ignoring or questioning) such built-in privacy.

[LoyceV]

lots of people bought into 'well, the blockchain is transparent (no privacy, just pseudonymity) and I guess I got bad coins'.

If you put it like this, the whole "taint" thing really sounds like a scam to confiscate people's funds. And the last case I read about totally looked that way. "Taint" is used by shady websites to steal funds.

[swogerino]

lots of people bought into 'well, the blockchain is transparent (no privacy, just pseudonymity) and I guess I got bad coins'.

If you put it like this, the whole "taint" thing really sounds like a scam to confiscate people's funds. And the last case I read about totally looked that way. "Taint" is used by shady websites to steal funds.

I think I agree while I had a lot of problems with Cex.io last week but at the final they released the funds,of course I am never ever using them after lots of questions from their side,nevertheless I think to put that exchange here as a couple of friends have been asked even to sign a message to demonstrate their belongings in order to verify the deposits,so far more than a week passed and no answer from them,most probably it should be added to the list here.I don't know what they are thinking but they tell you after,for example they don't send you an email that your account is under investigation but once you deposit funds and then try to withdraw they bomb people with questions.Looks like this "tainted" thing is being abused in a very big way from many centralized exchanges.

[n0nce]

I think I agree while I had a lot of problems with Cex.io last week but at the final they released the funds,of course I am never ever using them after lots of questions from their side,nevertheless I think to put that exchange here as a couple of friends have been asked even to sign a message to demonstrate their belongings in order to verify the deposits,so far more than a week passed and no answer from them,most probably it should be added to the list here.I don't know what they are thinking but they tell you after,for example they don't send you an email that your account is under investigation but once you deposit funds and then try to withdraw they bomb people with questions.Looks like this "tainted" thing is being abused in a very big way from many centralized exchanges.

Why did they question you? Did you send funds from CoinJoin / mixer or did they generally mention anything about your coins being 'tainted' at all?

I just checked their ToS: https://cex.io/terms
And indeed they have something against gambling, weapons and other things. They don't mention taint, though.

In my opinion, it's fine if a business doesn't want funds that come straight from an online casino for example, as long as they don't call a coin 'forever tainted' if it once came from such a casino.
If you withdraw to your personal wallet and then send the funds to cex.io, they should absolutely be accepted.

[tadamichi]

In my opinion, it's fine if a business doesn't want funds that come straight from an online casino for example, as long as they don't call a coin 'forever tainted' if it once came from such a casino.
If you withdraw to your personal wallet and then send the funds to cex.io, they should absolutely be accepted.

But then the casino could do the same and just transfer their funds to a new wallet and then use them again. Just trying to taint a coin for whatever reason creates a whole lot of unnecessary problems.

In the end its about protecting individuals fundamental right to transact. Blacklists are always subjective, not transparent and ultimately dont prevent crimes from happening. But they violate fundamental rights of individuals, and open the door to abuse and a dysfunctional economy. Money launderers and criminals will always find a way to evade them.

So we should try to reach more social consensus about that its absolutely essential for Bitcoins success to not accept any kind of taint being introduced by anyone. We gotta be completely stubborn here. Innocent until proven guilty, companies can still report criminals to law enforcement and it will be handled in court where it should be. Individuals fundamental rights are essential for a functional society and it starts with the freedom to transact. Even when not personally affected yet this is absolutely crucial for everyone. Privacy solutions can only help, but we also need awareness by many, to really push against it.

[LoyceV]

In my opinion, it's fine if a business doesn't want funds that come straight from an online casino for example, as long as they don't call a coin 'forever tainted' if it once came from such a casino.
If you withdraw to your personal wallet and then send the funds to cex.io, they should absolutely be accepted.

But then the casino could do the same and just transfer their funds to a new wallet and then use them again. Just trying to taint a coin for whatever reason creates a whole lot of unnecessary problems.

Agreed. Coinbase's "you're not allowed to send coins to or from a casino" demands are the oldest form of "taint" I've seen, and somehow the Bitcoin community largely accepted that. As if Coinbase has any business checking how people spend their money.
I've never used Coinbase for many reasons, but this adds to the list.

[swogerino]

I think I agree while I had a lot of problems with Cex.io last week but at the final they released the funds,of course I am never ever using them after lots of questions from their side,nevertheless I think to put that exchange here as a couple of friends have been asked even to sign a message to demonstrate their belongings in order to verify the deposits,so far more than a week passed and no answer from them,most probably it should be added to the list here.I don't know what they are thinking but they tell you after,for example they don't send you an email that your account is under investigation but once you deposit funds and then try to withdraw they bomb people with questions.Looks like this "tainted" thing is being abused in a very big way from many centralized exchanges.

Why did they question you? Did you send funds from CoinJoin / mixer or did they generally mention anything about your coins being 'tainted' at all?

I just checked their ToS: https://cex.io/terms
And indeed they have something against gambling, weapons and other things. They don't mention taint, though.

In my opinion, it's fine if a business doesn't want funds that come straight from an online casino for example, as long as they don't call a coin 'forever tainted' if it once came from such a casino.
If you withdraw to your personal wallet and then send the funds to cex.io, they should absolutely be accepted.

I got my coins,I told them I get the coins from my mining activity,I provided them all the related screenshots and they agreed to release funds then.However the problem is with a lot of friends of mine,they have also earnings from mining,working online and a couple of other normal places (not gambling,not war related and not a mixer for sure),they even were asked if a wallet is yours by asking to sign a message,they did sign a message and since one week no nothing at all.They Cex got all the data needed,how much time do they need to verify further.

[BlackHatCoiner]

In my opinion, it's fine if a business doesn't want funds that come straight from an online casino for example, as long as they don't call a coin 'forever tainted' if it once came from such a casino.

But then the casino could do the same and just transfer their funds to a new wallet and then use them again. Just trying to taint a coin for whatever reason creates a whole lot of unnecessary problems.

I think what n0nce meant is: It's okay for a business to not want to be included into illicit activity and fight it, but that should happen as long as they don't invade in people's privacy and enforce non-effective tactics that do more harm than good, if they do any good at all.

Unfortunately for businesses that accept bitcoin, there's no way to try to prevent criminal activity, without harming their customers, because there's no way to do in cash either way. Ultimately, there's no way for these businesses to prevent that criminal activity.

[tadamichi]

In my opinion, it's fine if a business doesn't want funds that come straight from an online casino for example, as long as they don't call a coin 'forever tainted' if it once came from such a casino.

But then the casino could do the same and just transfer their funds to a new wallet and then use them again. Just trying to taint a coin for whatever reason creates a whole lot of unnecessary problems.

I think what n0nce meant is: It's okay for a business to not want to be included into illicit activity and fight it, but that should happen as long as they don't invade in people's privacy and enforce non-effective tactics that do more harm than good, if they do any good at all.

Unfortunately for businesses that accept bitcoin, there's no way to try to prevent criminal activity, without harming their customers, because there's no way to do in cash either way. Ultimately, there's no way for these businesses to prevent that criminal activity.

Yup definitely. Im just trying to make a case for, that if we look at all these measures in a result oriented way, we gotta acknowledge that they don’t achieve anything they’re trying to achieve. Not even something simple as blocking a casino really works, without affecting innocent users. In the end casino money will still reach the service, so nothing was prevented. So why have it in the first place. There’s many good reasons to try to fight illicit activity and it might not even always be ill-intended by businesses. But we have more and more consequences creeping in, without even having solved anything.

There can also be many different views and one person might be ok with something that someone else isn’t, but everyone who uses Bitcoin has certain goals that are aligned with each other. We want Bitcoin to succeed, we want the freedom to transact. Businesses don’t wanna get crushed by regulators and Bitcoiners want businesses to adopt Bitcoin. I think if we agree to one strategy here, that is no coin taint at all(is probably the most efficient solution), then we can achieve our goals much easier and withstand much more pressure together. If Businesses keep going against their customers and get more and pressure from regulators, it will be much easier to crush them. And it makes it harder for Bitcoiners to use Bitcoin. So im thinking that maybe we could use one clear shared strategy in this case, even when there’s differing opinions.

[n0nce]

In my opinion, it's fine if a business doesn't want funds that come straight from an online casino for example, as long as they don't call a coin 'forever tainted' if it once came from such a casino.
If you withdraw to your personal wallet and then send the funds to cex.io, they should absolutely be accepted.

But then the casino could do the same and just transfer their funds to a new wallet and then use them again. Just trying to taint a coin for whatever reason creates a whole lot of unnecessary problems.

In my opinion, it's fine if a business doesn't want funds that come straight from an online casino for example, as long as they don't call a coin 'forever tainted' if it once came from such a casino.
If you withdraw to your personal wallet and then send the funds to cex.io, they should absolutely be accepted.

But then the casino could do the same and just transfer their funds to a new wallet and then use them again. Just trying to taint a coin for whatever reason creates a whole lot of unnecessary problems.

Agreed. Coinbase's "you're not allowed to send coins to or from a casino" demands are the oldest form of "taint" I've seen, and somehow the Bitcoin community largely accepted that. As if Coinbase has any business checking how people spend their money.
I've never used Coinbase for many reasons, but this adds to the list.

In my opinion, there is a difference between receiving a payment directly from a casino's address or receiving a coin that in the past has been withdrawn from a casino.
The former is normal business procedure: some businesses are simply not allowed to receive a payment from a casino, be it in crypto or fiat. That's nothing new.

The latter is what's really the problem. Why should a business deny working with me because the coins I hold, I received e.g. for working from someone online, who themself got it by cashing out their casino account? This is not 'making business with casinos', since I'm obviously not one. I just received coins for my honest work, from someone who gambles. This is the 'taint problematic'.

In the end its about protecting individuals fundamental right to transact. Blacklists are always subjective, not transparent and ultimately dont prevent crimes from happening. But they violate fundamental rights of individuals, and open the door to abuse and a dysfunctional economy. Money launderers and criminals will always find a way to evade them.

So we should try to reach more social consensus about that its absolutely essential for Bitcoins success to not accept any kind of taint being introduced by anyone. We gotta be completely stubborn here. Innocent until proven guilty, companies can still report criminals to law enforcement and it will be handled in court where it should be. Individuals fundamental rights are essential for a functional society and it starts with the freedom to transact. Even when not personally affected yet this is absolutely crucial for everyone. Privacy solutions can only help, but we also need awareness by many, to really push against it.

I absolutely agree with this. If you don't directly refuse to do business with an individual or other business because of whatever reason, that's your right. But marking coins 'tainted' and banning them forever is bullshit and a bad excuse for stealing coins.

Yup definitely. Im just trying to make a case for, that if we look at all these measures in a result oriented way, we gotta acknowledge that they don’t achieve anything they’re trying to achieve. Not even something simple as blocking a casino really works, without affecting innocent users. In the end casino money will still reach the service, so nothing was prevented. So why have it in the first place. There’s many good reasons to try to fight illicit activity and it might not even always be ill-intended by businesses. But we have more and more consequences creeping in, without even having solved anything.

There can also be many different views and one person might be ok with something that someone else isn’t, but everyone who uses Bitcoin has certain goals that are aligned with each other. We want Bitcoin to succeed, we want the freedom to transact. Businesses don’t wanna get crushed by regulators and Bitcoiners want businesses to adopt Bitcoin. I think if we agree to one strategy here, that is no coin taint at all(is probably the most efficient solution), then we can achieve our goals much easier and withstand much more pressure together. If Businesses keep going against their customers and get more and pressure from regulators, it will be much easier to crush them. And it makes it harder for Bitcoiners to use Bitcoin. So im thinking that maybe we could use one clear shared strategy in this case, even when there’s differing opinions.

Of course they aren't achieving anything in terms of 'protecting' people or anything like that. My suspicion is honestly that these businesses are routinely stealing some people's funds. Look back at PayPal: in the beginning, they stole customers' money by closing their accounts at will, too. Nowadays it's well known that they went specifically after smaller accounts because they knew people wouldn't bother reporting it or pursuing the issue any further for a few bucks. But do that to hundreds of thousands of accounts and you got yourself some nice cash to work with.

Rearding casinos, it's kind of a special case. Ever since they existed (in physical form) it was an easy way to launder money: buy chips, play a bit, return them, and get new cash, unlinked to your deposit. Therefore, some businesses refuse to get payments directly from a casino, since in case of a money laundering investigation, they would get in the spotlight, too. However money I got in my personal wallet, should be accepted by everyone. After all, if I withdraw money from the casino and then do a bank transfer or spend fiat at a store, nobody cares either.

I got my coins,I told them I get the coins from my mining activity,I provided them all the related screenshots and they agreed to release funds then.However the problem is with a lot of friends of mine,they have also earnings from mining,working online and a couple of other normal places (not gambling,not war related and not a mixer for sure),they even were asked if a wallet is yours by asking to sign a message,they did sign a message and since one week no nothing at all.They Cex got all the data needed,how much time do they need to verify further.

So you wanted to deposit coins from mining to cex.io and they froze them, asking for proof. But proof of what? Also with your friends - what are they claiming is the reason for freezing their funds?
Are they claiming that your coins come from illicit activities or what exactly?

[LoyceV]

In my opinion, there is a difference between receiving a payment directly from a casino's address or receiving a coin that in the past has been withdrawn from a casino.
The former is normal business procedure: some businesses are simply not allowed to receive a payment from a casino, be it in crypto or fiat. That's nothing new.

Bitcoin is supposed to be electronic cash. If I get cash from a casino, there's no way anyone can know, and nobody is going to refuse my cash for that reason. Ideally, Bitcoin should be treated the same.

[tadamichi]

In my opinion, there is a difference between receiving a payment directly from a casino's address or receiving a coin that in the past has been withdrawn from a casino.
The former is normal business procedure: some businesses are simply not allowed to receive a payment from a casino, be it in crypto or fiat. That's nothing new.

Yup, but im also asking myself if there’s a possibility for businesses to go against this legally. It could be argued that they can’t really link addresses to specific types of businesses themselves, so maybe there’s some possibilities to get similar statuses to cash businesses.

Of course they aren't achieving anything in terms of 'protecting' people or anything like that. My suspicion is honestly that these businesses are routinely stealing some people's funds. Look back at PayPal: in the beginning, they stole customers' money by closing their accounts at will, too. Nowadays it's well known that they went specifically after smaller accounts because they knew people wouldn't bother reporting it or pursuing the issue any further for a few bucks. But do that to hundreds of thousands of accounts and you got yourself some nice cash to work with.

Really good point, with all these factors there must be a way to make a case against the legitimacy of all these measures. Would love to hear some lawyers opinion about this. Im also wondering why companies are just complying instead of making some cases themselves.

[n0nce]

In my opinion, there is a difference between receiving a payment directly from a casino's address or receiving a coin that in the past has been withdrawn from a casino.
The former is normal business procedure: some businesses are simply not allowed to receive a payment from a casino, be it in crypto or fiat. That's nothing new.

Bitcoin is supposed to be electronic cash. If I get cash from a casino, there's no way anyone can know, and nobody is going to refuse my cash for that reason. Ideally, Bitcoin should be treated the same.

Yes, cash is my benchmark as well. Hence I'd like coins that have been withdrawn from a casino into a personal wallet, to be accepted anywhere.
It's just that if you 'withdraw' from the casino directly into an exchange's 'deposit' address, you never 'had the cash in your hands', and it's basically a direct money transfer (think: bank transfer) from a casino to an exchange. Since most businesses wouldn't accept bank transfers from casino bank accounts, I can see how they don't want the same through Bitcoin.

Yup, but im also asking myself if there’s a possibility for businesses to go against this legally. It could be argued that they can’t really link addresses to specific types of businesses themselves, so maybe there’s some possibilities to get similar statuses to cash businesses.

Casino, as well as exchange, and other businesses' addresses are well-known most of the time, though.

Really good point, with all these factors there must be a way to make a case against the legitimacy of all these measures. Would love to hear some lawyers opinion about this. Im also wondering why companies are just complying instead of making some cases themselves.

Against taint? I believe so, yes. Against accepting a direct payment from a casino, I don't think so. That's really a kind of 'exception' - as I said before - that exists for a long time. I remember before crypto casinos, there were obviously fiat online casinos, and some banks didn't allow withdrawals from them. Because from a pure business perspective, there are no 'casino user accounts'; the bank is actually getting a bank transfer from a casino's bank account number. For legal reasons, in many countries they simply aren't allowed to receive payments from casinos' bank accounts, or they don't want to, not to get involved into money laundering investigations if / when they happen.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Since most businesses wouldn't accept bank transfers from casino bank accounts, I can see how they don't want the same through Bitcoin.

As you say, the distinction here is that they are discriminating against the entity, not against the coins.

I don't ever want anything to do with Coinbase. I'll never sign up for their exchange, and I'll never do business with them under any circumstances, since they are pretty much antithetical to bitcoin in my mind. But I would obviously be insane to say I never wany anything to do with any coin which has passed through Coinbase. Since I'm not an idiot, I recognize that it is impossible to accurately identity which outputs contain coins which were once held by Coinbase, and that any transaction can be (and often is) coins changing hands.

Saying you don't want to deal with a casino is fine. Refusing certain coins from me because those coins were once withdrawn from a casino by someone else* is entirely unacceptable.

Really good point, with all these factors there must be a way to make a case against the legitimacy of all these measures.

Education. Remind everyone that blockchain analysis and taint is fancy guesswork which frequently gets thing wildly wrong. Remind everyone that as soon as bitcoin is involved in any transaction, it is impossible to say which bitcoin has ended up where. Remind everyone that taint isn't a real thing, and it only exists to allow blockchain analysis companies to make profit and to allow exchanges and governments to steal your coins. Remind everyone to stop using any exchange or service which is attacking and undermining bitcoin by enforcing such absolute nonsense.

*Based on guesswork and provably false assumptions.

[tadamichi]

Yup, but im also asking myself if there’s a possibility for businesses to go against this legally. It could be argued that they can’t really link addresses to specific types of businesses themselves, so maybe there’s some possibilities to get similar statuses to cash businesses.

Casino, as well as exchange, and other businesses' addresses are well-known most of the time, though.

Really good point, with all these factors there must be a way to make a case against the legitimacy of all these measures. Would love to hear some lawyers opinion about this. Im also wondering why companies are just complying instead of making some cases themselves.

Against taint? I believe so, yes. Against accepting a direct payment from a casino, I don't think so. That's really a kind of 'exception' - as I said before - that exists for a long time. I remember before crypto casinos, there were obviously fiat online casinos, and some banks didn't allow withdrawals from them. Because from a pure business perspective, there are no 'casino user accounts'; the bank is actually getting a bank transfer from a casino's bank account number. For legal reasons, in many countries they simply aren't allowed to receive payments from casinos' bank accounts, or they don't want to, not to get involved into money laundering investigations if / when they happen.

Yeah, but laws and regulations also need to be enforceable, having a central register with all business addresses is a nightmare and can also easily be dodged when businesses just create new addresses that arent registered somewhere. Chain analysis isnt sufficient to even decide this, as oeleo already pointed out. And well known addresses neither. Bank accounts are much more static and from central entities, not pseudonymus and traceable even if a business used another account to dodge regulations. Maybe theres some room here to push back against these regulations by pointing out that theyre generally unenforceable and harm their customers and business models in the process. And maybe theres different ways to comply with regulations that dont have these drawbacks.

[o_e_l_e_o]

having a central register with all business addresses is a nightmare and can also easily be dodged when businesses just create new addresses that arent registered somewhere.

Which would be a massive attack on bitcoin. A single centralized register controlled by whom? And if that single entity decides an address is blacklisted, then that address can't transact with any registered business in the country/world? Completely centralized nonsense. Thankfully it is unlikely to come to this since blockchain analysis companies have little incentive to work together to create such a database while they can continue to convince governments and exchanges they provide useful information rather than just pure guesswork, and that they should be paid for this guesswork.

Maybe theres some room here to push back against these regulations by pointing out that theyre generally unenforceable and harm their customers and business models in the process.

Pointing it out to these services achieves nothing. Even when individual users try to explain to them the basic concept of how bitcoin works (i.e. coins which 10 transactions ago came from a casino are not still "tainted"), they don't care. Easier for them to just steal the user's coins and close their account. The only thing which will work is mass action. If everyone stopped using Coinbase today because of their support of taint, you can guarantee they would abandon it by tomorrow and be lobbying the government to change the rules.

[LoyceV]

A single centralized register controlled by whom? And if that single entity decides an address is blacklisted, then that address can't transact with any registered business in the country/world? Completely centralized nonsense.

A centralized database with information on all transactions sounds like a bank! That doesn't even need a blockchain.
Unfortunately, many people are very comfortable with centralized organisations that know far too much about them.

[tadamichi]

having a central register with all business addresses is a nightmare and can also easily be dodged when businesses just create new addresses that arent registered somewhere.

Which would be a massive attack on bitcoin. A single centralized register controlled by whom? And if that single entity decides an address is blacklisted, then that address can't transact with any registered business in the country/world? Completely centralized nonsense.

Exactly, thats why im saying all these useless regulations should be contested in court by businesses from the beginning, because there isn’t even a way that they could be implemented in a non nonsense way, thats what i tried to point out. Bitcoin is similar to cash, so they should make the case that it should be treated as such and not give in to any bs that these regulators want to push on them.

Maybe theres some room here to push back against these regulations by pointing out that theyre generally unenforceable and harm their customers and business models in the process.

Pointing it out to these services achieves nothing. Even when individual users try to explain to them the basic concept of how bitcoin works (i.e. coins which 10 transactions ago came from a casino are not still "tainted"), they don't care. Easier for them to just steal the user's coins and close their account.

Sadly yeah, i just hope some legitimate businesses will start to care and do something. It would separate them from the rest. But its unlikely to happen, they all just comply to nonsense.

The only thing which will work is mass action. If everyone stopped using Coinbase today because of their support of taint, you can guarantee they would abandon it by tomorrow and be lobbying the government to change the rules.

Agree, if everyone starts to inform their circle we can move something, many newbies simply don’t understand it yet, but they will if we explain it correctly.

[o_e_l_e_o]

A centralized database with information on all transactions sounds like a bank!

Careful now, citizen! You've just expressed an opinion which is out of line with the Official Acceptable Opinions Manual^TM of the Central Chain Analysis Database. All your addresses will be blacklisted for 7 days in order to give you time to thoroughly reread the manual and reeducate yourself as to what is acceptable public speech. We trust this won't happen again!

Exactly, thats why im saying all these useless regulations should be contested in court by businesses from the beginning

But there is no incentive for an exchange to do so. Each exchange knows they can ask ridiculous KYC and that they can arbitrarily freeze or steal some users' coins, because every other centralized exchange is doing it too. They'll only start paying attention when they start losing business to DEXs or peer to peer trading. But with the general growth of bitcoin, for ever users which leaves a centralized exchange to use non-KYC trading methods instead, two more newbies come along and sign up without realizing they are sacrificing everything that bitcoin stands for.

Sadly yeah, i just hope some legitimate businesses will start to care and do something. It would separate them from the rest. But its unlikely to happen, they all just comply to nonsense.

There are indeed exchanges which rightly completely ignore any taint nonsense, such as Bisq and LocalCryptos, and coinjoin implementations such as JoinMarket. Perhaps we could also start a whitelist of online businesses such as gift card sellers which are known to pay no attention to taint and freely accept mixed or coinjoined coins, etc.

[OROBTC]

[...]

Perhaps we could also start a whitelist of online businesses such as gift card sellers which are known to pay no attention to taint and freely accept mixed or coinjoined coins, etc.

Yes, fight censorship by using businesses that accept BTC as BTC.

[n0nce]

Exactly, thats why im saying all these useless regulations should be contested in court by businesses from the beginning

But there is no incentive for an exchange to do so. Each exchange knows they can ask ridiculous KYC and that they can arbitrarily freeze or steal some users' coins, because every other centralized exchange is doing it too. They'll only start paying attention when they start losing business to DEXs or peer to peer trading. But with the general growth of bitcoin, for ever users which leaves a centralized exchange to use non-KYC trading methods instead, two more newbies come along and sign up without realizing they are sacrificing everything that bitcoin stands for.

I believe the mistake was made when the first exchanges faced regulatory pressure and gave in / came up with 'taint'; claiming they are doing their best to freeze / block transactions from 'fraudulent activity' so that authorities leave them alone and don't treat them as 'businesses helping in internet crime'. Then they probably also noticed that it's a great way to make a bit of extra money. Remember, precedent was created beforehand in fiat land: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paypal#Criticism_and_controversies

The issue with stuff like this is that when you have a precedent, like normalizing a notion of 'taint' in Bitcoin and normalizing account closures due to 'past illicit activities' of coins, it is hard to explain that almost everyone was wrong about this for over 10 years.
I remember years ago, when even my own knowledge of Bitcoin was a lot worse, 'taint' was already a relatively known / normal concept. 'Clean coins' it was called back then. You wanted to get 'clean coins' not to get in trouble... This is years ago. Imagine establishing such terms and then having to re-educate people. It's going to be hard honestly.

The other day, I discovered JoinMarket's ANN thread, which is funny since it's being brought up a lot (even in below quote). Look at what belcher had to say about taint in 2015.

Because of the incentives of JoinMarket, you have access to a huge amount of clean, untainted bitcoins to mix with at a very low price. Many of the bitcoins you're mixing with will be bought from regulated exchanges, owned by legitimate holders of bitcoin.

Do you understand? Even guys who endorsed and developed CoinJoins, didn't apparently fully 'get it' back then.

Sadly yeah, i just hope some legitimate businesses will start to care and do something. It would separate them from the rest. But its unlikely to happen, they all just comply to nonsense.

There are indeed exchanges which rightly completely ignore any taint nonsense, such as Bisq and LocalCryptos, and coinjoin implementations such as JoinMarket. Perhaps we could also start a whitelist of online businesses such as gift card sellers which are known to pay no attention to taint and freely accept mixed or coinjoined coins, etc.

Funnily, those that do ignore the nonsense, aren't really often businesses but rather decentralized open-source platforms..
Actually when I created this blacklist, I contemplated making a whitelist, but I believe it's going to be a lot of work to maintain it, and businesses also tend to either give themselves the right to steal funds due to 'taint' or say nothing on the topic at all; never have I read ToS that specifically say all coins are accepted equally.

[dkbit98]

Bitcoin is supposed to be electronic cash. If I get cash from a casino, there's no way anyone can know, and nobody is going to refuse my cash for that reason. Ideally, Bitcoin should be treated the same.

Difference is that Bitcoin is digital and cash doesn't have history unless you mark them with special tracking devices, that is unrealistic for large amount of money.
Casino in cooperation with government could also spray invisible paint on bills to track their movement and alert authorities when you pay with them anywhere.
One way we could mitigate this is by using something like Bitcoin Notes on paper, that could be used for Bitcoin offline cash payments.

There are indeed exchanges which rightly completely ignore any taint nonsense, such as Bisq and LocalCryptos, and coinjoin implementations such as JoinMarket. Perhaps we could also start a whitelist of online businesses such as gift card sellers which are known to pay no attention to taint and freely accept mixed or coinjoined coins, etc.

There are probably more exchanges and services that don't care about history of coins, but it would be impossible work collecting correct information about them for this whitelist.
One day exchange could accept any coins, tomorrow for whatever reason they could confiscate them, so I would give advantage to something that is really decentralized.

[o_e_l_e_o]

It's going to be hard honestly.

Yup, but without it, we will end up with two tiers of bitcoin. "Clean, government approved bitcoin", which are accepted anywhere and trade for a premium, and "tainted, government condemned bitcoin" which are refused by most businesses and users and are worth less. Yes, bitcoin itself will still be decentralized and censorship resistant, but if the only thing I can do with my "tainted" bitcoin is trade it back and forth for other "tainted" bitcoin with other "tainted" users, then it will have failed as a currency. Allow me to quote myself:

I've never had a problem yet with having bitcoin refused or seized, but I also don't use any centralized exchanges. However, to say I am not concerned about this kind of privacy invading behavior spreading to merchants and affecting me in the future would be a lie, especially with the news of mining pools now excluding so called "blacklisted" transactions. The day I can't spend my bitcoin without completing KYC is the day I trade all my bitcoin to monero, I'm afraid.

Actually when I created this blacklist, I contemplated making a whitelist, but I believe it's going to be a lot of work to maintain it, and businesses also tend to either give themselves the right to steal funds due to 'taint' or say nothing on the topic at all; never have I read ToS that specifically say all coins are accepted equally.

One day exchange could accept any coins, tomorrow for whatever reason they could confiscate them, so I would give advantage to something that is really decentralized.

Yeah, fair points. It would just be nice to be able to get a bit of a feel for a new merchant I've never used before first, rather than having to make a small test purchase first to see if they are going to take issue with my coinjoined/mixed bitcoin. Although simply avoiding any merchant which uses BitPay already gets you a good chunk of the way there.

[n0nce]

It's going to be hard honestly.

Yup, but without it, we will end up with two tiers of bitcoin. "Clean, government approved bitcoin", which are accepted anywhere and trade for a premium, and "tainted, government condemned bitcoin" which are refused by most businesses and users and are worth less. Yes, bitcoin itself will still be decentralized and censorship resistant, but if the only thing I can do with my "tainted" bitcoin is trade it back and forth for other "tainted" bitcoin with other "tainted" users, then it will have failed as a currency.

I guess then we would need to onboard businesses who are willing to get educated, understand that taint is nonsense and explicitly stand against it. Only with a business explicitly declaring in ToS (or wherever) Bitcoin as fungible am I willing to include it on a whitelist.

Yeah, fair points. It would just be nice to be able to get a bit of a feel for a new merchant I've never used before first, rather than having to make a small test purchase first to see if they are going to take issue with my coinjoined/mixed bitcoin. Although simply avoiding any merchant which uses BitPay already gets you a good chunk of the way there.

BitPay is censoring UTXOs? It's actually listed on https://bitcoin.org/en/wallets/desktop/, funnily - together with Wasabi wallet. Not a good look if it has similar problems.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I guess then we would need to onboard businesses who are willing to get educated, understand that taint is nonsense and explicitly stand against it.

That's the thing - ignoring made up taint is the default position. All you have to do to ignore taint is set up bitcoin wallet and give your address to customers. Let's encourage more of that.

BitPay is censoring UTXOs?

BitPay does a whole lot of shady stuff, including demanding KYC not just from merchants who use it but also the customers who shop at those merchants via BitPay, and freezing any payments they don't like. I find that they are predominantly used by businesses who are quite happy to comply with taint nonsense, and so are quite happy for BitPay to demand KYC from all their customers and do all their dirty work for them.

Note there is a difference between the BitPay payment processor and the BitPay wallet, but given how utterly horrendous the former is I would never touch the latter (or indeed anything from the same company).

[n0nce]

I guess then we would need to onboard businesses who are willing to get educated, understand that taint is nonsense and explicitly stand against it.

That's the thing - ignoring made up taint is the default position. All you have to do to ignore taint is set up bitcoin wallet and give your address to customers. Let's encourage more of that.

Exactly; unfortunately there's no way to tell if a business is doing exactly that or if it's 'sometimes' blocking funds due to 'taint' (especially if it's rare).
As long as they don't position themselves explicitly, it's not possible to guarantee that they are 'benign', no matter how many anecdotal examples exist, where supposedly 'tainted' inputs were accepted.

BitPay is censoring UTXOs?

BitPay does a whole lot of shady stuff, including demanding KYC not just from merchants who use it but also the customers who shop at those merchants via BitPay, and freezing any payments they don't like. I find that they are predominantly used by businesses who are quite happy to comply with taint nonsense, and so are quite happy for BitPay to demand KYC from all their customers and do all their dirty work for them.

Note there is a difference between the BitPay payment processor and the BitPay wallet, but given how utterly horrendous the former is I would never touch the latter (or indeed anything from the same company).

[o_e_l_e_o]

As long as they don't position themselves explicitly, it's not possible to guarantee that they are 'benign', no matter how many anecdotal examples exist, where supposedly 'tainted' inputs were accepted.

Yeah, true. And even if they did position themselves explicitly as ignoring taint and respecting privacy, there is nothing stopping them from suddenly changing everything one day and instead becoming pro-taint, pro-surveillance, and pro-censorship. *cough* Wasabi *cough*

Although whenever I see a merchant or business using a self-hosted payment processor such as BTCPay, I immediately feel much more comfortable using them then I do with third party centralized payment processor.

[ABCbits]

Only with a business explicitly declaring in ToS (or wherever) Bitcoin as fungible am I willing to include it on a whitelist.

But i expect it'll difficult for most business owner to do that explicitly due to various regulation/law. I only expect anonymous group or service which focus on user privacy to do that.

Note there is a difference between the BitPay payment processor and the BitPay wallet, but given how utterly horrendous the former is I would never touch the latter (or indeed anything from the same company).

Take note BitPay wallet is open source[1], where few people automatically assume it has to be good/secure/trusted. But i'd like to let people know WalletScrunity failed to compile the wallet from source code[2]. Someone even offer USDT for people who can give detailed build guide under Windows[3].

[1] https://github.com/bitpay/wallet
[2] https://walletscrutiny.com/android/com.bitpay.wallet/
[3] https://github.com/bitpay/wallet/issues/12046

[n0nce]

Only with a business explicitly declaring in ToS (or wherever) Bitcoin as fungible am I willing to include it on a whitelist.

But i expect it'll difficult for most business owner to do that explicitly due to various regulation/law. I only expect anonymous group or service which focus on user privacy to do that.

That will definitely be a limitation. I can see how someone could use such a written commitment to Bitcoin fungibility as 'proof that the business endorses and facilitates money laundering' or something along these lines.

[bitmover]

Add FTX to that list.

FTX is asking information about Brazilian users who are using bitcoin mixers:

Google translated:

FTX demands explanations from users who use Bitcoin mixers
A Brazilian user and customer of the FTX exchange told Livecoins that in recent days he was surprised by an unusual charge from the exchange. Gaining fame as one of the largest cryptocurrency operations in the world, second only to Binance, this platform is one more operating in Brazil.

As the report told, the platform client was carrying out a negotiation to accept Bitcoin, and provided the brokerage address to receive the amount.

The person responsible for processing the transaction then chose to use a mixer to protect their identity and not reveal their BTC possession. This is a common practice among secure transactions, since as the blockchain is public, by revealing its address, the network user could expose its balance and he did not want that.

Upon receiving the transaction, however, the FTX customer's address ended up being placed on an alert list. The broker quickly contacted the user and demanded explanations about the origin of the money, stating that this is part of the compliance policy.
https://livecoins.com.br/corretora-cobra-explicacoes-de-usuarios-que-utilizam-mixers-de-bitcoin/

I couldn't find information about this incident by users from other countries. But we should keep an eye open.

[dkbit98]

FTX is asking information about Brazilian users who are using bitcoin mixers

This is the first time I hear something like this coming from FTX exchange and they probably started using similar detecting software like their friends and partners from Binance.
FTX recommendation I found in this article is very stupid, they are recommending we should know all our counterparties before making transactions, or transact only with regulated platforms with established compliance procedure.
So imagine I run a business selling stuff online and offline, I would have to kyc all my customers, and check all their transaction history  
They have to be crazy if they really suggesting stuff like this to their customers.

[n0nce]

Add FTX to that list.

FTX is asking information about Brazilian users who are using bitcoin mixers:
~snip~

Honestly, asking a user where they got their funds from is pretty shitty - in my opinion, it's none of anyone's business where I got my money from.
But I don't see a mention of taint or seizing of funds because of their supposed criminal history.

I think I said it before, but in my opinion it's a little bit different whether an exchange steals my coin because whoever I got it from, withdrew it from a gambling site or a mixing service -- or because I sent coins directly from mixer / gambling / ... to the exchange.
The former is a matter of taint and would get a service onto my blacklist; the latter is a matter of businesses choosing which other services they don't want to do business with.

For example, I could own a car dealership and choose to only accept cash or Bitcoin payments, because I don't want to do business with banks (by receiving money through bank transfers which obviously come through banks that I don't like to do business with as a Bitcoiner).
The distinction is that I don't discriminate against the users or whatever they did with their money in the past, but I discriminate against other businesses (in this case, banks). It will still have an unpleasant effect on the users of course.


That said, I am considering adding a second section for services who ask more questions than usual when your funds come from mixers, casinos, and generally discriminate coins by their supposed origin (e.g. other exchange's known address, gambling site's known payout address, ...).
This would be a broader set of 'unreliable, due to general UTXO discriminating, services' as opposed to this list of 'unreliable, due to taint proclaiming, services'.
Let me know what you guys think about that.

[bitmover]

Add FTX to that list.

FTX is asking information about Brazilian users who are using bitcoin mixers:
~snip~

Honestly, asking a user where they got their funds from is pretty shitty - in my opinion, it's none of anyone's business where I got my money from.
But I don't see a mention of taint or seizing of funds because of their supposed criminal history.

I think I said it before, but in my opinion it's a little bit different whether an exchange steals my coin because whoever I got it from, withdrew it from a gambling site or a mixing service -- or because I sent coins directly from mixer / gambling / ... to the exchange.
The former is a matter of taint and would get a service onto my blacklist; the latter is a matter of businesses choosing which other services they don't want to do business with.

What I find more weird is that a bank never asked me any kind of proof of where my money comes from.
At the most, I just write my annual income, without giving any proof (at least in all banks and brokers that I ever used)
...
But bitcoin exchanges are now asking for "proof of funds", paychecks

[n0nce]

What I find more weird is that a bank never asked me any kind of proof of where my money comes from.
At the most, I just write my annual income, without giving any proof (at least in all banks and brokers that I ever used)
...
But bitcoin exchanges are now asking for "proof of funds", paychecks

Through bank transfers, that's no wonder - because they can ask the other bank so they obviously know where it 'comes from', easily.
Try depositing a few thousand USD worth of cash, and you will most probably get a phone call. Especially if it's not common for you to deposit large sums.

For instance, if you open a restaurant and thus start depositing cash on a regular basis, they will call and ask once, and then most probably leave you alone. Banks don't even care a lot about taxes, they just want to make sure they're not accomplices in crimes.
Especially since in case of a problem, your spoken statement (e.g. that you got the cash from your new restaurant business) can be used in a legal system as proof that they did a reasonable effort to find out the funds' origins and to the best of their knowledge, you were running a legitimate business.

[bitmover]

What I find more weird is that a bank never asked me any kind of proof of where my money comes from.
At the most, I just write my annual income, without giving any proof (at least in all banks and brokers that I ever used)
...
But bitcoin exchanges are now asking for "proof of funds", paychecks

Through bank transfers, that's no wonder - because they can ask the other bank so they obviously know where it 'comes from', easily.
Try depositing a few thousand USD worth of cash, and you will most probably get a phone call. Especially if it's not common for you to deposit large sums.

For instance, if you open a restaurant and thus start depositing cash on a regular basis, they will call and ask once, and then most probably leave you alone. Banks don't even care a lot about taxes, they just want to make sure they're not accomplices in crimes.
Especially since in case of a problem, your spoken statement (e.g. that you got the cash from your new restaurant business) can be used in a legal system as proof that they did a reasonable effort to find out the funds' origins and to the best of their knowledge, you were running a legitimate business.

A few years ago I sold a physical property and received some money in my bank account. I received no phone call. Nobody asked for my paychecks or where did that money from the property came from. All my explanations were made to the IRS, as the law demands.

I believe exchanges are being more invasive than the traditional banking system. Probably the lack of regulation may be allowing abuses from the exchanges over users and from the authorities over the exchanges.

[n0nce]

A few years ago I sold a physical property and received some money in my bank account. I received no phone call. Nobody asked for my paychecks or where did that money from the property came from. All my explanations were made to the IRS, as the law demands.

I believe exchanges are being more invasive than the traditional banking system. Probably the lack of regulation may be allowing abuses from the exchanges over users and from the authorities over the exchanges.

They are, but that's because Bitcoin is more like physical cash than like a bank transfer. In your example, you 'received money in your bank account' (bank transfer). If you were to sell a car for $20k in cash and deposit the amount, you would get questions, the same way an exchange questions you when depositing 1BTC.

I'm not trying to defend exchanges (see this thread); just saying that banks aren't really any better or worse - the two are almost synonymous. Some larger exchanges, in fact, are already banks and some banks offer Bitcoin or crypto exchange services. So the lines get very very blurry.

[dkbit98]

That said, I am considering adding a second section for services who ask more questions than usual when your funds come from mixers, casinos, and generally discriminate coins by their supposed origin (e.g. other exchange's known address, gambling site's known payout address, ...).
This would be a broader set of 'unreliable, due to general UTXO discriminating, services' as opposed to this list of 'unreliable, due to taint proclaiming, services'.
Let me know what you guys think about that.

I think new topic will only create more confusion.
Instead of creating new topic I would suggest expanding this topic and create separate part that is dealing only with additional questions coming from services.
More than often you will find that one exchange could be doing both, asking questions about history of your coins and freezing accounts for alleged ''tainted'' coins.

What I find more weird is that a bank never asked me any kind of proof of where my money comes from.
At the most, I just write my annual income, without giving any proof (at least in all banks and brokers that I ever used)

It's not really that different, except the fact that you never controlled any fiat money, unless you hold it as cash in your hand.
They already have full history of digital numbers on screen sent by other banks, but receiving larger amount of money would certainly trigger their red alert.

For instance, if you open a restaurant and thus start depositing cash on a regular basis, they will call and ask once, and then most probably leave you alone.

Bankers will never leave you alone because they are always trying to sell you new credit line, so you can have more and more debt, until whole economic debt explodes by design.

A few years ago I sold a physical property and received some money in my bank account. I received no phone call. Nobody asked for my paychecks or where did that money from the property came from. All my explanations were made to the IRS, as the law demands.

Maybe that is still possible in your country, but it's almost impossible to happen in Europe and western world.
Even if you don't receive call from bank, you will certainly receive calls or visit from tax authority andf other government parasites.
In many countries they are even reducing number of things and limit amount of money you can use to buy something with cash.

[n0nce]

I think new topic will only create more confusion.

That's why I said second section. Would still be part of the original post in this thread.

More than often you will find that one exchange could be doing both, asking questions about history of your coins and freezing accounts for alleged ''tainted'' coins.

In that case, it would probably just be listed in the current list, though. It would become a subset of the new, more broader list - hence no need to list things twice.

A few years ago I sold a physical property and received some money in my bank account. I received no phone call. Nobody asked for my paychecks or where did that money from the property came from. All my explanations were made to the IRS, as the law demands.

Maybe that is still possible in your country, but it's almost impossible to happen in Europe and western world.
Even if you don't receive call from bank, you will certainly receive calls or visit from tax authority andf other government parasites.
In many countries they are even reducing number of things and limit amount of money you can use to buy something with cash.

I've sold a lot of stuff online and got paid through bank transfer, in the past. Mostly consumer electronics-type stuff, so no very high value of course.

The one limit I know of is a 10,000€ limit above which it gets tricky paying in cash. Businesses accepting such amounts need to get and keep a proof of origin from you.

Actually, EU is even trying to ban payments above 10,000€ in cash.

McGuinness said: “We respect that citizens like cash and we don’t want to get rid of it. We are talking about an upper limit of €10,000. Carrying so much money around in your pockets is really difficult. Most people don’t.” 

Some member states currently have ceilings on cash payments, ranging from €500 in Greece to €15,000 in Poland.

[NeuroticFish]

Actually, EU is even trying to ban payments above 10,000€ in cash.

In my country this is actually happening. For at least 6-7 years already. Whatever you want to buy and it's expensive, it has to be done through bank (hence with KYC).
If you want to buy a new car, worth for example €15k, you will not even be allowed to pay the €10k in cash, maybe some 10-15% of the price, and they will tell you nicely, but firmly, that the rest must be transferred through bank.

[dkbit98]

Actually, EU is even trying to ban payments above 10,000€ in cash.

I can confirm that in Greece you can't buy almost anything with cash (except maybe ice cream, popcorns, donuts, etc...),
and few days ago Israel just reduced cash payments to 6,000 Shekels (equivalent to $1,760) for business transactions and 15,000 Shekels ($4,400) in personal transactions.
If you combine this with digital ID wallets they started introducing in Greece, you can see direction all this is going, and they justify if with security, safety and money laundering.
They want to remove cash and remove all privacy and custody of money from people, but this is where Bitcoin could play important role.

Sources:
https://econintersect.com/israel-restricts-cash-payments-to-boost-digital-payments
https://www.nfcw.com/2022/07/29/378338/greece-rolls-out-digital-id-cards-and-driving-licences/

[BlackHatCoiner]

I can confirm that in Greece you can't buy almost anything with cash (except maybe ice cream, popcorns, donuts, etc...)

As a Greek citizen, I can tell you that I'm forbidden to make any transaction that involves more than 1,500 EUR in cash. For example, a smart TV, an upgraded PC build, a second-hand motorcycle. Obviously, I'm money laundering in all three cases. 

If you combine this with digital ID wallets they started introducing in Greece, you can see direction all this is going, and they justify if with security, safety and money laundering.

Bingo. Gov.gr Wallet isn't really a wallet at the moment, it's just an app that contains your identity and driver license, but it won't take long before our representatives have the brilliant idea to enforce their euro-shitcoin across millions of devices with just an update.

They want to remove cash and remove all privacy and custody of money from people, but this is where Bitcoin could play important role.

I'm afraid it'll have to. There's no other emergency exit. It's either bitcoin or complete bureaucratic dictatorship.

[n0nce]

Actually, EU is even trying to ban payments above 10,000€ in cash.

In my country this is actually happening. For at least 6-7 years already. Whatever you want to buy and it's expensive, it has to be done through bank (hence with KYC).
If you want to buy a new car, worth for example €15k, you will not even be allowed to pay the €10k in cash, maybe some 10-15% of the price, and they will tell you nicely, but firmly, that the rest must be transferred through bank.

Wow, that's getting scary to be honest. It's probably getting worse over time. As I said, from my experience, anything under or including 10.000€ was fine without any documents. At the dealership. I know of people who sold / bought cars for larger amounts P2P in cash, though.

~snip~
They want to remove cash and remove all privacy and custody of money from people, but this is where Bitcoin could play important role.

Totally! I hope people see and take this opportunity better sooner than later.
Just taking the opportunity to highlight my current 'personal text': Ubi concordia, ibi victoria. I'm not sure governments really want to fight against a population in which every single citizen understands what was taken away from them by limiting (or potentially banning) physical cash.

They want to remove cash and remove all privacy and custody of money from people, but this is where Bitcoin could play important role.

I'm afraid it'll have to. There's no other emergency exit. It's either bitcoin or complete bureaucratic dictatorship.

Call me optimistic, but I want to believe that without Bitcoin, people would resort to foreign cash like USD and / or barter + gold coins? I'm probably totally off on this one, though.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Call me optimistic, but I want to believe that without Bitcoin, people would resort to foreign cash like USD and / or barter + gold coins? I'm probably totally off on this one, though.

There's no chance this ever happens, because:

• There will be a non-(yet)-hyperinflated currency they can use. It'll just not work exactly like cash.
• Physical cash (EUR etc.) will be discouraged to use, because usage of the e-euro will be incentivized by the conformists who'll adopt it. (And then probably by the entire world)

[LoyceV]

For example, I could own a car dealership and choose to only accept cash or Bitcoin payments, because I don't want to do business with bank

Wait, you guys still have that freedom? Here, cash payments for cars above €10k have to be reported, and car sellers with many cash payments are already "suspicious" according to their bank. Google tells me in Belgium it's not allowed to pay €3000 or more in cash for a car (or anything else). Many EU countries have similar laws already, and the maximum amounts are only getting lower.

You're basically forced to use banks. Of course governments aren't going to allow people to switch to crypto instead of cash, they need to protect their interests. And as long as most people don't care about privacy and banks offer convenient services to itemize your payments, we all just let this happen.

I am considering adding a second section for services who ask more questions than usual when your funds come from mixers, casinos, and generally discriminate coins by their supposed origin (e.g. other exchange's known address, gambling site's known payout address, ...).
This would be a broader set of 'unreliable, due to general UTXO discriminating, services' as opposed to this list of 'unreliable, due to taint proclaiming, services'.

Does that mean one is worse than the other? As in: one is less bad and thus should be more acceptable? I don't think that's a good idea.

What I find more weird is that a bank never asked me any kind of proof of where my money comes from.
At the most, I just write my annual income, without giving any proof (at least in all banks and brokers that I ever used)

Here, your salary usually arrives from another bank, making it obvious where it came from. Do you mean you get your money in cash and then deposit it to your bank, which they happily accept?

I can confirm that in Greece you can't buy almost anything with cash (except maybe ice cream, popcorns, donuts, etc...)

Greece apparently holds the record with the shadow economy making up 21.5% of the economy. You may not be able to buy a car in cash, but I'm pretty sure your mechanic will accept it.

[tadamichi]

Call me optimistic, but I want to believe that without Bitcoin, people would resort to foreign cash like USD and / or barter + gold coins? I'm probably totally off on this one, though.

There's no chance this ever happens, because:

• There will be a non-(yet)-hyperinflated currency they can use. It'll just not work exactly like cash.
• Physical cash (EUR etc.) will be discouraged to use, because usage of the e-euro will be incentivized by the conformists who'll adopt it. (And then probably by the entire world)

I would say depends on how restrictive this e-euro would become over time. If it breaks peoples freedom to transact even more, then i can see more and more people resorting to other forms of payment, for transactions that would be restricted. In a trusted community anything could work as a form of payment. Bitcoin is the way out of this, but even without it they would probably find ways that can atleast help on a smaller scale.

It will most likely end up in bureaucratic dictatorship first anyways, even with Bitcoin. Because not enough people are in it yet. But this time would also be the biggest unintentional marketing event ever created for Bitcoin and then many eyes will probably have been opened.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Greece apparently holds the record with the shadow economy making up 21.5% of the economy.

Yes. We're good at it. Laws here are close to optional. More like if they go well with you. 

I would say depends on how restrictive this e-euro would become over time. If it breaks peoples freedom to transact even more, then i can see more and more people resorting to other forms of payment, for transactions that would be restricted.

Most people nowadays use credit/debit cards and bank accounts, wherein they get their account frozen, charged with disputes, high fees etc. Yet, they still use them. Is it ignorance? I don't know, but they have their freedom infringed and most don't even react.

Bitcoin is the way out of this, but even without it they would probably find ways that can atleast help on a smaller scale.

I doubt it. Without physical cash there's no other private and convenient method to transact.

It will most likely end up in bureaucratic dictatorship first anyways, even with Bitcoin. Because not enough people are in it yet.

Some jobs can't be done without cash, even if they belong to the shadow economy. These people don't "get in", because they currently see no tangible difference. But, once their cash will no longer be an option, where do you see them head at?

[tadamichi]

I would say depends on how restrictive this e-euro would become over time. If it breaks peoples freedom to transact even more, then i can see more and more people resorting to other forms of payment, for transactions that would be restricted.

Most people nowadays use credit/debit cards and bank accounts, wherein they get their account frozen, charged with disputes, high fees etc. Yet, they still use them. Is it ignorance? I don't know, but they have their freedom infringed and most don't even react.

Oftentimes there is no other choice, i need a bank account to receive my paycheck. Sometimes the poorest in richer countries still need credit cards to still be able to transact when their bank account is already empty for this month. Sometimes its more convenient, because its more divisible than cash. You cant really pay online with cash. A debit/ credit card can sometimes be the easier/ cheaper way to transact in foreign countries, if you have a good one with low fees. There is some advantages when using credit/ debit cards depending on the situation. Most people just use a mix of everything depending on whats easiest based on the situation. Many people simply also were never affected by the points you listed above and still trust the system. They have no clue how the system works and distrust Bitcoin on the other hand and think its just hot air.

Bitcoin is the way out of this, but even without it they would probably find ways that can atleast help on a smaller scale.

I doubt it. Without physical cash there's no other private and convenient method to transact.

When cash disappears they need an alternative, it can be a worse alternative if theres no better choice anymore, as long as its still better than an e-euro for the situation they need it in.

It will most likely end up in bureaucratic dictatorship first anyways, even with Bitcoin. Because not enough people are in it yet.

Some jobs can't be done without cash, even if they belong to the shadow economy. These people don't "get in", because they currently see no tangible difference. But, once their cash will no longer be an option, where do you see them head at?

The most saleable good, depending on the situation where its used. If were heading into central planning and an e-euro wouldnt allow for all kinds of transactions, then there is another more saleable good in these specific ones. In prisons that dont allow their inmates to earn money, something like cigarettes still serves as something like money. In prisons that allow their inmates to earn money, they can buy things with regular fiat. If a prison doesnt allow trade between inmates with fiat, inmates would still use the next best good to do it, for example cigarettes.

It all depends on which good is the most saleable, if were going after monetary theory. This is what the bureaucrats forgot, because they stopped studying it. They cant micromanage how money is spent, first they tried with inflation, now they will probably try cbdcs. But they will affect the degree of saleability of their shitcoins more and more, and other forms of payment will emerge in situations where their new currency becomes unusable.

[dkbit98]

As a Greek citizen, I can tell you that I'm forbidden to make any transaction that involves more than 1,500 EUR in cash. For example, a smart TV, an upgraded PC build, a second-hand motorcycle. Obviously, I'm money laundering in all three cases.  

Oh so you are dirty criminal like Al Capone was I hope there are no government bots in forum that are tracking and reporting your words to big brother.
You won't be able to do this anymore when they try to unite your digital ID with eeuro, but maybe people should switch back to drahma, gold and bitcoins.
Problem with all their digital money numbers is unlimited supply and you can't verify it's supply, so it's perfect for government criminals, oh and they can make it with expiration date.

Yes. We're good at it. Laws here are close to optional. More like if they go well with you.  

I even heard from one greek friend that you didn't have to pay any property ownership tax until recently when law changed, and I think taxes like that are pure extortion.
You pay tax when you buy land or house, but it's not really yours but it's the property of the state and they can take it away if they want.

I'm not sure governments really want to fight against a population in which every single citizen understands what was taken away from them by limiting (or potentially banning) physical cash.

Don't worry about governments, they have all the tools to bribe and incentivize people to use whatever they want, just look what happened in past.
But good thing is that we don't need majority of people, even few percent of people that don't comply will be enough, question is do we even have few percent willing to stand up

Greece apparently holds the record with the shadow economy making up 21.5% of the economy. You may not be able to buy a car in cash, but I'm pretty sure your mechanic will accept it.

What they call shadow-economy is actually free trading between people and this should be perfectly normal, but I guess we are living in crazy world.
I think government controllers would like most if we don't own anything (including money) and rent everything digitally.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Oftentimes there is no other choice

Since 2009, there's pretty much a choice to avoid median disputes, high transaction fees and account suspensions for arbitrary reasons. The fact that the merchants and employers don't bother to look into their collective benefit doesn't mean there's no other choice.

Sometimes its more convenient, because its more divisible than cash.

Sure. But, using cash over credit card is absolutely more private than it is convenient to use credit card over cash, and more important.

When cash disappears they need an alternative, it can be a worse alternative if theres no better choice anymore

The only alternative to physical cash is electronic cash.

They cant micromanage how money is spent, first they tried with inflation, now they will probably try cbdcs.

I'm pretty sure they know what they're doing. First "inflation is transitory", then "inflation might stay", now "define recession". I'm sure they all share the same agenda, that is the great reset.

You pay tax when you buy land or house, but it's not really yours but it's the property of the state and they can take it away if they want.

Yes, although I think our 24% VAT is what takes the cake. Twenty four percent. About a quarter of it.

[tadamichi]

Sometimes its more convenient, because its more divisible than cash.

Sure. But, using cash over credit card is absolutely more private than it is convenient to use credit card over cash, and more important.

Agree. But we’re still in the minority, most people don’t have these considerations. Cash back, some free bonuses and ability to pay bills later? They will use a credit card. There are no privacy considerations for most people.

Even in Bitcoin it’s still hard to get people off centralized exchanges or services that use chain analysis and blacklists, and even scams like celsius held a lot of Bitcoin that people deposited there. I don’t remember the exact number, but it was a lot. People gave up self custody and privacy for a ponzi scheme, just because it promised a lot of yield. They preferred this over the actual system that is built to protect them from this. There’s a lot of people that give up all principles for the idea of getting more return, but it never even has to happen. That’s the paradox.

When cash disappears they need an alternative, it can be a worse alternative if theres no better choice anymore

The only alternative to physical cash is electronic cash.

Yup, so i expect people to choose Bitcoin, because it’s much more saleable than other things already. This was more for the case that Bitcoin didn’t exist. Bitcoin still gives everyone access to a worldwide market, no matter how bad cbdcs get. I don’t see the majority choosing something else over this. Removing cash can be the next catalyst for Bitcoin.

They cant micromanage how money is spent, first they tried with inflation, now they will probably try cbdcs.

I'm pretty sure they know what they're doing. First "inflation is transitory", then "inflation might stay", now "define recession". I'm sure they all share the same agenda, that is the great reset.

They know what they’re doing, but apart from this. In the eu specifically they tried to increase spending since a long time now. The whole strategy of negative or zero interest rates exists since a long time now, and partly to achieve this. But it failed hard in the end. So now they have to go into more extremes, with cbdcs they could completely micromanage how people spend their money. Central banks don’t really have any dry powder anymore, and i expect them to go into extremes to smh keep this broken system alive, there’s no other choice. It’s this or a huge financial crisis for them. They also would never admit defeat to Bitcoin voluntarily, even if they could really fix the mess like this. It’s also about self preservation.

For reference:

The ECB's negative interest rate

But why punish savers and reward borrowers?

A central bank's core business is making it more or less attractive for households and businesses to save or borrow, but this is not done in the spirit of punishment or reward. By reducing interest rates and thus making it less attractive for people to save and more attractive to borrow, the central bank encourages people to spend money or invest. If, on the other hand, a central bank increases interest rates, the incentive shifts towards more saving and less spending in the aggregate, which can help cool an economy suffering from high inflation. This behaviour is not specific to the ECB; it applies to all central banks.

We had a complete downwards trend in interest rates since 2008.

[cryptosize]

Cash is not 100% anonymous.

Serial numbers exist for a reason and they're being recorded in certain cases (i.e. bank burglary).

You do NOT want "tainted" banknotes in your hands... the police will ask where you found them.

Also, ECB had plans to embed RFID chips in Euro banknotes long time ago:

https://www.eetimes.com/euro-bank-notes-to-embed-rfid-chips-by-2005/
https://www.fleur-de-coin.com/eurocoins/banknote-rfid

Not sure why they scrapped their plans, maybe logistics didn't pan out.

Now they have CBDCs to fulfill their sinister plans, so no need for elaborate physical tracking mechanisms...

[LoyceV]

Greece apparently holds the record with the shadow economy making up 21.5% of the economy. You may not be able to buy a car in cash, but I'm pretty sure your mechanic will accept it.

What they call shadow-economy is actually free trading between people and this should be perfectly normal, but I guess we are living in crazy world.
I think government controllers would like most if we don't own anything (including money) and rent everything digitally.

It feels to me as if government wants everyone to have a paid job (paying taxes), even though they could do the same thing without payment. So if I help you, and you help me, we're good. But if I pay you for your help, and you pay me, we're both paying income tax. Formalizing normal actions makes the GDP grow, but we'd both have less money in the end.

You do NOT want "tainted" banknotes in your hands... the police will ask where you found them.

That's the thing: with cash, I don't worry about this, because I don't have to! The police can ask anything they want, and as long as I didn't break any laws when I received that money, I'm not in any trouble. The whole idea of "taint" in Bitcoin is to make people liable for other people's actions, which doesn't apply to cash fiat money:

First of all I was going to explain what we mean by fungibility before bitcoin and ecash. It's an old legal concept in fact, about paper currency. It's the idea that a one ten dollar note is the same as any other ten dollar note. If you receive a note that was involved in a theft, 10 transactions ago, and the police investigate the theft, they have no right to remove the ten dollar note from your pocket. It's not your fault that it was involved in a previous crime. And so bank notes actually have serial numbers, so it would be possible for a stolen note to be traced back to you.

This first arose, there was a 17th century court case where a wealthy merchant sent a couple of high-value bank notes to a colleague in the post and they never arrived. Before he sent them, he was quite paranoid that they would get stolen. He wrote down the serial numbers and made a mark on them. Sure enough they didn't arrive, so he put in a complaint with the bank, and evenutally the notes turned up at the bank. He tried to get the bank to return the notes to his ownership. The courts sided with the bank. Their reason was that if notes could be returned to their original owner after a theft, it would damage confidence in currency and it would be bad for business, the currency would become unusable because every time you received the paper note you would have to look in the newspaper whether it was reported stolen, or you would have the risk of it being taken, or you would have to rush to the bank to deposit it so that it was the bank's problem.

(click for the full quote)

The bolded part is the interesting part: the idea of taint damages confidence in Bitcoin. With fiat, there are quite powerful institutions protecting that confidence. With Bitcoin, the same powerful institutions would like to see Bitcoin fail. And if taint can contribute to damaging people's confidence, then that's what they'll try to convince you of.

[BlackHatCoiner]

What's also important to note is: Being subjected to "taint" and not being private (enough) are completely different situations. Even if we had zero services that treated bitcoin as non-fungible, we'd still have inadequate privacy in bitcoin transactions, part of which Lightning is improving at the moment.

On the other hand, physical cash is strongly more anonymous. Serial numbers don't reveal the direction of the coin. Therefore, there's no room for data brokers.

[n0nce]

I am considering adding a second section for services who ask more questions than usual when your funds come from mixers, casinos, and generally discriminate coins by their supposed origin (e.g. other exchange's known address, gambling site's known payout address, ...).
This would be a broader set of 'unreliable, due to general UTXO discriminating, services' as opposed to this list of 'unreliable, due to taint proclaiming, services'.

Does that mean one is worse than the other? As in: one is less bad and thus should be more acceptable? I don't think that's a good idea.

I think it would be for everyone to decide by themselves if it's more acceptable. But I believe it's more comforting to know that funds from a personal wallet are always accepted, so in those cases you would theoretically just need an extra step instead of e.g. withdrawing from an exchange directly into another one's deposit address or to a web shop's payment address.

I can confirm that in Greece you can't buy almost anything with cash (except maybe ice cream, popcorns, donuts, etc...)

Greece apparently holds the record with the shadow economy making up 21.5% of the economy. You may not be able to buy a car in cash, but I'm pretty sure your mechanic will accept it.

It's inevitable..

I would say depends on how restrictive this e-euro would become over time. If it breaks peoples freedom to transact even more, then i can see more and more people resorting to other forms of payment, for transactions that would be restricted.

Most people nowadays use credit/debit cards and bank accounts, wherein they get their account frozen, charged with disputes, high fees etc. Yet, they still use them. Is it ignorance? I don't know, but they have their freedom infringed and most don't even react.

You may be surprised; in my experience especially the last few years, I get the best feedback and interest in Bitcoin when I bring up the issues that fiat has (like frozen bank accounts etc.) and ask people if they experienced similar problems with banks. Then I explain them how Bitcoin fixes that and it really sparks much more interest than trying to explain how good of an investment it is. Especially since that's not its original goal anyway.

I'm not sure governments really want to fight against a population in which every single citizen understands what was taken away from them by limiting (or potentially banning) physical cash.

Don't worry about governments, they have all the tools to bribe and incentivize people to use whatever they want, just look what happened in past.
But good thing is that we don't need majority of people, even few percent of people that don't comply will be enough, question is do we even have few percent willing to stand up

How's that? I mean how are a few percent opposing these new measures enough to stop them?

[LoyceV]

You may be surprised; in my experience especially the last few years, I get the best feedback and interest in Bitcoin when I bring up the issues that fiat has (like frozen bank accounts etc.) and ask people if they experienced similar problems with banks. Then I explain them how Bitcoin fixes that and it really sparks much more interest than trying to explain how good of an investment it is. Especially since that's not its original goal anyway.

I don't (personally) know anyone who had their bank account frozen. I know the stories, and from those it looks like it's (Amsterdam) coffee shops and prostitutes (those are legal businesses) who have a hard time keeping a bank account. But "normal" people here don't lose access to their account. The only questions I got from my bank were relating to Bitcoin trades.

[cryptosize]

You may be surprised; in my experience especially the last few years, I get the best feedback and interest in Bitcoin when I bring up the issues that fiat has (like frozen bank accounts etc.) and ask people if they experienced similar problems with banks. Then I explain them how Bitcoin fixes that and it really sparks much more interest than trying to explain how good of an investment it is. Especially since that's not its original goal anyway.

I don't (personally) know anyone who had their bank account frozen. I know the stories, and from those it looks like it's (Amsterdam) coffee shops and prostitutes (those are legal businesses) who have a hard time keeping a bank account. But "normal" people here don't lose access to their account. The only questions I got from my bank were relating to Bitcoin trades.

In the future they will freeze your CBDC funds if you have a low social credit score...

"Normal" people with "high" social credit score won't face any issues, just like people who are compliant to dictatorships face no issues.

[o_e_l_e_o]

You do NOT want "tainted" banknotes in your hands... the police will ask where you found them.

With Bitcoin, the same powerful institutions would like to see Bitcoin fail.

It's such a hypocritical situation. No vendor ever worries about the history of the bills they receive, despite it being perfectly possible to exactly identify individual bills which were involved in robbery, theft, scam, etc., due to their serial numbers. And yet large fiat institutions advance the concept of bitcoin taint, despite it (usually) being completely impossible to identify individual bitcoin or satoshi which were involved in a robbery, theft, scam, etc., due to the very nature of UTXOs being joined and split.

In fiat we can be 100% sure which bills are tainted, but no one cares.
In bitcoin we can only poorly guess at which outputs are tainted, but apparently it has to underpin the entire ecosystem.
Buying in to this nonsense is an active attack on bitcoin.

In the future they will freeze your CBDC funds if you have a low social credit score...

Absolutely. It is the next logical step in the surveillance state. In many countries people are already scared to speak out against their government. That fear will only get worse when the government can choose to immediately freeze all your money pending your "re-education".

[BlackHatCoiner]

I don't (personally) know anyone who had their bank account frozen.

Neither do I, but I don't socialize with people who'd have their accounts frozen, even though they sometime freeze accounts arbitrarily.

From a quick search, bitcoin users and protestors aren't friends with the banks.

• https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/17/russia-todays-uk-bank-accounts-frozen-says-editor
• https://canucklaw.ca/emergencies-act-invoked-bank-accounts/
• http://www.smh.com.au/business/bitcoin-tensions-rise-as-investors-claim-banks-freezing-their-accounts-20171229-p4yy3z.html
• http://localbitcoins.blogspot.fi/2013/06/localbitcoinscom-bank-account-frozen.html
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=160292.0

In the future they will freeze your CBDC funds if you have a low social credit score...

Absolutely.

Can't imagine how capricious it'll be to get rated in such score system. Like, how low can we reach? Absolutely terrifying.

[DooMAD]

In the future they will freeze your CBDC funds if you have a low social credit score...

Absolutely.

Can't imagine how capricious it'll be to get rated in such score system. Like, how low can we reach? Absolutely terrifying.

And the worst part is that most people are going to sleepwalk straight into it.  It's like the masses are completely oblivious to the ever-creeping threat of fascism.

[BlackHatCoiner]

And the worst part is that most people are going to sleepwalk straight into it.

Inevitable to witness the fourth-turning sheep "massacre". Fascism steps on ignorance. And ignorant, weak people are nowadays abundant.

[cryptosize]

In the future they will freeze your CBDC funds if you have a low social credit score...

Absolutely.

Can't imagine how capricious it'll be to get rated in such score system. Like, how low can we reach? Absolutely terrifying.

And the worst part is that most people are going to sleepwalk straight into it.  It's like the masses are completely oblivious to the ever-creeping threat of fascism.

Safety > freedom (for the masses/sheeple)

People are inherently insecure* (their biggest fear is death/starvation, hence why the "pandemic" narrative was so successful from the get-go), so they're going to flock to whomever promises "safety". The "stay safe" slogan is NOT a coincidence!

* this was imprinted on our genes tens of thousands of years ago (Homo Sapiens emerged in 200.000 BCE), since ancient people had endless freedom, but lack of security and no guaranteed food supplies

As soon as civilization & farming was invented back in 10.000 BCE, people willingly exchanged their freedom (hunter gatherer lifestyle) for safety/security (and worse/inferior food, like wheat compared to meat).

[cryptosize]

Just imagine what will happen when food supplies dry up and fiat currencies go down the gutter (could happen this winter, especially with EUSSR's failed currency)... how are people going to feed themselves and their families/children? Survival instincts (reptilian brain) will kick in!

But wait, WEF has a savior to feed us all (yay, moar safety!):

https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/2021/01/14/americas-biggest-owner-of-farmland-is-now-bill-gates-bezos-turner/

Why do you think Bill Gates has bought so much land?

1) It's a good hedge against inflation (limited land >>> unlimited USD)

2) He gains a huge leverage over people:

No more meat for you? No worries, Uncle Bill is gonna give you soy "meat"... but only if you're a good boy/girl (whatever gender you prefer, there are hundreds of them ) and you accept CBDCs, UBI and social credit score.

This motherfucker predicted the COVID plandemic back in 2015 and at the same time he started buying tons of farmland...

WEF's Great Reset agenda exists at least since 2016:

https://twitter.com/wef/status/808328302213689344

You better tell me if that's a coincidence or not.

These motherfuckers are not sheeple at all, they have long-term plans and they're willing to wait as long as it takes to implement them.

[dkbit98]

Cash is not 100% anonymous.

Nobody said cash is totally anonymous, but I can still trade or buy almost anything with cash without leaving any electronical trace of that transaction.

Also, ECB had plans to embed RFID chips in Euro banknotes long time ago:

It's to expensive to print more paper with tracking chips inside when they are already working on CBDC in 90% of countries around the world.
They probably have on or two reserve options in case CBDC plan doesn't work out as they expected.

How's that? I mean how are a few percent opposing these new measures enough to stop them?

Few percenters always made big changes in human history, and all the rest are mostly hypnotized mases that follow some trend, whatever that is.
People need to be inspired by acts of brave people so they can make changes in their lives and around them, but majority of people would never do that because they are governed and ruled by fear.

I don't (personally) know anyone who had their bank account frozen. I know the stories, and from those it looks like it's (Amsterdam) coffee shops and prostitutes (those are legal businesses) who have a hard time keeping a bank account. But "normal" people here don't lose access to their account. The only questions I got from my bank were relating to Bitcoin trades.

Depends on country you live in, but I know examples of people who got everything frozen because of their political views.
Are you sure that bank accounts with tractors of all those farmers are not frozen? 
If they don't freeze their accounts, they will try to take away their land and that is even worse.

Inevitable to witness the fourth-turning sheep "massacre". Fascism steps on ignorance. And ignorant, weak people are nowadays abundant.

To be honest I think we are all much weaker and more spoiled than many generations of people that lived before us.
There is one saying that easy times are creating weak people, and hard times are creating strong people.

[n0nce]

You may be surprised; in my experience especially the last few years, I get the best feedback and interest in Bitcoin when I bring up the issues that fiat has (like frozen bank accounts etc.) and ask people if they experienced similar problems with banks. Then I explain them how Bitcoin fixes that and it really sparks much more interest than trying to explain how good of an investment it is. Especially since that's not its original goal anyway.

I don't (personally) know anyone who had their bank account frozen. I know the stories, and from those it looks like it's (Amsterdam) coffee shops and prostitutes (those are legal businesses) who have a hard time keeping a bank account. But "normal" people here don't lose access to their account. The only questions I got from my bank were relating to Bitcoin trades.

While I do know of such cases, there are other easy questions you can ask that in most people spark a 'Yes! I've experienced that and it was super annoying [or something worse than annoying].'

These days, when speaking to absolute Bitcoin newbies, I try to gauge whether they've got any issues with the current system. And it turns out most do! Most people have experienced account closures, chargebacks, cards not accepted globally when travelling and high monthly fees.
If it turns out they do see issues with the money being centrally controlled, not internationally usable, with outrageous fees for international bank transfers and it losing value each and every year; then I can proceed to present them how Bitcoin is different in all of those aspects.

You do NOT want "tainted" banknotes in your hands... the police will ask where you found them.

With Bitcoin, the same powerful institutions would like to see Bitcoin fail.

It's such a hypocritical situation. No vendor ever worries about the history of the bills they receive, despite it being perfectly possible to exactly identify individual bills which were involved in robbery, theft, scam, etc., due to their serial numbers. And yet large fiat institutions advance the concept of bitcoin taint, despite it (usually) being completely impossible to identify individual bitcoin or satoshi which were involved in a robbery, theft, scam, etc., due to the very nature of UTXOs being joined and split.

In fiat we can be 100% sure which bills are tainted, but no one cares.
In bitcoin we can only poorly guess at which outputs are tainted, but apparently it has to underpin the entire ecosystem.
Buying in to this nonsense is an active attack on bitcoin.

That's the one thing I've got to hold against the 'The only solution is to make it cryptographically impossible to link UTXOs and deduce their history' argument that nullius brought up lately. That it 'works' (mostly) with cash, too, even though taint could be proclaimed, enforced and normalized. Heck, how hard can it be to build and code a paper money serial number scanner?

~snip~

I would really appreciate if you could avoid double-posting, resize images and write more compact.
And of course, stay on topic.. Straying away a bit is kind of normal on this forum, but I'd prefer to keep talking about taint and exchanges in here.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Heck, how hard can it be to build and code a paper money serial number scanner?

Trivial. And trivial of course to link every such machine to a centralized database of taint. But they dont do that, and people should ask themselves why, when we know that hard cash is the preferred method of transaction for criminals, money launderers, terrorists, and all the people they say they want to protect us against. So why not apply taint to cash like they want to do with bitcoin? Because just like mass surveillance, it has never been about preventing crime and there is absolutely no evidence that it does anything whatsoever to prevent crime. It is about population control. That's it. In the same way the knowledge that you are constantly being watched makes you compliant and obedient, knowledge that your coins will be tainted makes you compliant and unwilling to do anything your government doesn't approve of.

They don't need to do this with cash, because the vast majority of people use digital fiat now, with the banks enforcing the rules of the government and performing mass surveillance for them. Look at the Canadian truckers as a prime example of this happening in a western nation. Spend your money in a way the government don't like? Uh oh, now all your accounts have been seized.

[tadamichi]

Heck, how hard can it be to build and code a paper money serial number scanner?

Trivial. And trivial of course to link every such machine to a centralized database of taint. But they dont do that, and people should ask themselves why, when we know that hard cash is the preferred method of transaction for criminals, money launderers, terrorists, and all the people they say they want to protect us against. So why not apply taint to cash like they want to do with bitcoin? Because just like mass surveillance, it has never been about preventing crime and there is absolutely no evidence that it does anything whatsoever to prevent crime. It is about population control. That's it. In the same way the knowledge that you are constantly being watched makes you compliant and obedient, knowledge that your coins will be tainted makes you compliant and unwilling to do anything your government doesn't approve of.

They don't need to do this with cash, because the vast majority of people use digital fiat now, with the banks enforcing the rules of the government and performing mass surveillance for them. Look at the Canadian truckers as a prime example of this happening in a western nation. Spend your money in a way the government don't like? Uh oh, now all your accounts have been seized.

This. It’s also an easy game for money launderers, criminals and terrorists because they will just pick out any loophole there is. Globally. It’s enough for one loophole to exist anywhere to wash billions. Added to the fact that big companies and their lobbyists have no interest in helping fight these crimes, they will create loopholes for themselves. In my country it’s this bad already that politicians are letting companies write law "drafts" for them, and no one gives af. It’s ending up in huge drafts that no regular person has the time to understand this stuff anymore, with the mass that’s flying in. Media is forcefully financed by taxes so they’re quiet on what really matters. It’s a completely opaque process.

We end up in a situation where the individual gets into complete mass surveillance and needs to justify every step they make, they get controlled harder than any criminal would. While criminals just create loopholes and get completely free passes for whatever they want to do. These regulations achieve nothing against criminals, they can now act like they’re fighting it on the outside and most won’t ever get it. And this isn’t happening in some "3rd world country" it’s happening in one of the biggest economies in the world, that has the reputation of doing things correctly. It’s so easy to fool people for them, because they have this reputation and stay discreet, but in the end it’s the same as everywhere else just no one is expecting this, not even the own population, they believe in this fairytale.

[BlackHatCoiner]

That's the one thing I've got to hold against the 'The only solution is to make it cryptographically impossible to link UTXOs and deduce their history' argument that nullius brought up lately. That it 'works' (mostly) with cash, too, even though taint could be proclaimed, enforced and normalized. Heck, how hard can it be to build and code a paper money serial number scanner?

I'm completely against on finding a solution with cryptography as well, and I've said it in the past. Taint analysis, besides fundamentally pointless, is non-related with privacy. Take Monero as an example. There's better privacy on-chain, but nearly all centralized exchanges have decided to disapprove it. That's equal with tainting all XMR because of terrorism and money laundering.

If someone tells you that your coin is tainted, you don't look into the code, because the problem isn't into the code.

[n0nce]

That's the one thing I've got to hold against the 'The only solution is to make it cryptographically impossible to link UTXOs and deduce their history' argument that nullius brought up lately. That it 'works' (mostly) with cash, too, even though taint could be proclaimed, enforced and normalized. Heck, how hard can it be to build and code a paper money serial number scanner?

I'm completely against on finding a solution with cryptography as well, and I've said it in the past.

That's a strong and maybe unpopular opinion, but I am glad you bring it up. I believe it's debatable; whether you can solve a problem in one domain with a solution from another domain. Generally, I wouldn't say that's something impossible to do. In this case, I just don't get the hypocrisy between crypto and fiat (in the former, taint is enforced, in the latter it's not). Though it should be possible without cryptographic changes, it would be the only way to make 100% sure it cannot be enforced anymore.

Taint analysis, besides fundamentally pointless, is non-related with privacy. Take Monero as an example. There's better privacy on-chain, but nearly all centralized exchanges have decided to disapprove it. That's equal with tainting all XMR because of terrorism and money laundering.

They just 'taint' the whole coin, alright. I don't believe they can do the same with Bitcoin without destroying themselves in the process, though.

I know that 'what satoshi would think about this or that' isn't relevant today anymore; but even if we generalize to the whole set of cypherpunks, I do believe that most would advocate for some cryptographic / technical solution, even if we have a political issue at hand.
Heck, the fiat banking system as a whole is a 'political problem' and here we are, on Bitcointalk, spending large amounts of time talking about Bitcoin which was envisioned to solve the 'fiat banking system problem' in a technical, cryptographic fashion.

The issue with trying to solve a political problem with political means (as opposed to cryptographic means) is that politics doesn't work like that. I do believe I'm going way off-topic now, so if anyone would like to pursue this line of discussion, we could continue in 'Politics & Society'. But let me state this: no matter how many votes you get for whichever party you come up with, no matter how many emails you send to your lawmakers and how many signatures you collect for a petition; significant change in politics usually just requires a lot of money coming from private corporations. And these private corporations, are very often banks. We've done a full circle!

* n0nce puts tinfoil hat off ^{[not really; this is mostly public information]}

[BlackHatCoiner]

Heck, the fiat banking system as a whole is a 'political problem' and here we are, on Bitcointalk, spending large amounts of time talking about Bitcoin which was envisioned to solve the 'fiat banking system problem' in a technical, cryptographic fashion.

We don't deal with the banking system in a technical, cryptographic fashion. We do it by discussing the benefits of actually using bitcoin. A new merchant adopting bitcoin is a new vote in favor of our policy, and against the banking system.

Technical innovations such as bitcoin help us give solutions to technical problems, such as the cost of transaction, the speed, the efficiency, the privacy, the security etc., but it's you individually who's responsible for enforcing this policy. You're not going to be allowed to use it if you don't react to misinformation or if you don't educate others. It's you who's going to solve "taint"-like problems, not a c++ file.

[n0nce]

Heck, the fiat banking system as a whole is a 'political problem' and here we are, on Bitcointalk, spending large amounts of time talking about Bitcoin which was envisioned to solve the 'fiat banking system problem' in a technical, cryptographic fashion.

We don't deal with the banking system in a technical, cryptographic fashion. We do it by discussing the benefits of actually using bitcoin. A new merchant adopting bitcoin is a new vote in favor of our policy, and against the banking system.

Well, Bitcoin in itself is an alternative to the banking system, which thanks to its use of cryptography can be fully decentralized and trustless.

I would argue that in the same way, an alternative to the transparent blockchain with easily enforceable taint claims, would be a blockchain that uses cryptography to be fully veiled, which removes the ability to trace coins.

Technical innovations such as bitcoin help us give solutions to technical problems, such as the cost of transaction, the speed, the efficiency, the privacy, the security etc., but it's you individually who's responsible for enforcing this policy. You're not going to be allowed to use it if you don't react to misinformation or if you don't educate others. It's you who's going to solve "taint"-like problems, not a c++ file.

I believe that problems like banning a piece of technology itself are hard to solve with more technology. But taint the ability to enforce taint is a technical problem which we can solve with tech or in this case, cryptography (and it has already been solved on other blockchains).

[o_e_l_e_o]

In this case, I just don't get the hypocrisy between crypto and fiat (in the former, taint is enforced, in the latter it's not.

The hypocrisy is as I explained above. They can already control fiat, so no need for taint analysis. They cannot control bitcoin, so better make up arbitrary nonsense to scare people in to submission.

But taint the ability to enforce taint is a technical problem

Is it, though? There is nothing in the bitcoin code which gives anyone the ability to enforce taint or otherwise censor your outputs. Taint is only enforceable because of centralized services which have complete control over all deposits to their platforms. If everyone changed their behavior and stopped using centralized platforms, taint wouldn't exist. That makes the enforcement of taint, at least partially, an anthropological problem. Which is why I continue to advocate for education, and not just technical changes.

[cryptosize]

There's tons of hypocrisy from the establishment in nearly every aspect.

They enforce KYC on crypto exchanges, even though nobody really needs it (where's the benefit for users? zero/nada).

They don't enforce KYC on social media (FB, Twitter, IG etc.), even though they're rife with alt/scam accounts.

Why is that? Because if they enforced KYC there, MAU stats would drop like flies.

It's no wonder Elon Musk didn't buy Twitter after all...

Enforce KYC and then we'll see who is real and who isn't. In China there are bot farms where you can buy paid followers, likes etc.

ps: They could "taint" BTC even more if Russia decides to adopt it for gas exports. Suddenly it would become a... "terrorism" tool.

In reality, ECB would have to print trillions of euros to build BTC reserves and nobody from the WEF clique (Lagarde/Ursula) wants that.

[n0nce]

But taint the ability to enforce taint is a technical problem

Is it, though? There is nothing in the bitcoin code which gives anyone the ability to enforce taint or otherwise censor your outputs. Taint is only enforceable because of centralized services which have complete control over all deposits to their platforms. If everyone changed their behavior and stopped using centralized platforms, taint wouldn't exist. That makes the enforcement of taint, at least partially, an anthropological problem. Which is why I continue to advocate for education, and not just technical changes.

Yes, it is. The fact that you can trace UTXOs is a limitation of the open blockchain. If Bitcoin had a blockchain like Monero's, amounts are hidden and a coin's history is hidden as well, through technology (cryptography).

I guess in a perfect utopia, without barely any centralized platforms, there would be nobody to enforce taint. However, even e.g. a wealthy individual giving out Bitcoin loans or anything like that could still discriminate against certain coins or could be discriminated against, as soon as their address is known. The very ability of attaching taint to coins by tracing UTXOs is purely technical.

Anyhow, it is going to be much easier to build a technical solution than trying to solve the problem solely through education (and I'm saying this as the creator of this thread ), if the goal is to get all centralized services shut down.

[cryptosize]

Yes, it is. The fact that you can trace UTXOs is a limitation of the open blockchain. If Bitcoin had a blockchain like Monero's, amounts are hidden and a coin's history is hidden as well, through technology (cryptography).

I like Monero's tech solution (opaque ledger), but there are certain cases where I want a transparent ledger (like BTC's) to exist.

MtGox hackers were real criminals and it makes sense to trace stolen funds. They could easily get away with it if BTC was like XMR and I don't think BTC devs will ever implement a hard fork (too risky for such a valuable asset, which might become adopted by institutional investors one day).

Someone who is against corrupt governments/WEF is NOT a criminal, but they can "paint" him as a criminal/enemy of the state... in this case, it's better to use XMR and not BTC.

Last time I checked, Binance (biggest exchange) still has XMR listed. Kraken also has it.

There's also TradeOgre (no KYC needed) where you can exchange XMR for something else (BTC and whatnot) and atomic swaps (kinda like DEX) on a Monero wallet.

So far the establishment hasn't done a lot to ban it... why? Because CBDCs don't exist (yet), so the masses have no reason to adopt cryptos (BTC & Lightning, XMR, ZEC, BEAM etc.)

We'll see in 2025 and beyond...

[BlackHatCoiner]

If Bitcoin had a blockchain like Monero's, amounts are hidden and a coin's history is hidden as well, through technology (cryptography).

If Bitcoin had a blockchain similar to Monero, be sure that it'd be treated differently. In the same way the Internet would be if it was designed to work like Tor. In the same way if the most popular messengers, the masses use, were designed to work in a p2p fashion, completely privately.

As I said, when it comes to tainting, XMR and BTC is the same thing. The overwhelming majority of centralized exchanges have banned the former, because it is potential for any XMR to be tainted or subjected to criminal activity. They can't follow the coin's direction, so they're blacklisting all the coins.

They could easily get away with it if BTC was like XMR and I don't think BTC devs will ever implement a hard fork

No need for hard forks. A Monero-like sidechain that is backed by bitcoins is trivial to make, and requires no consensus changes. It isn't made, because privacy techniques are already good enough, I suppose.

[dkbit98]

Trivial. And trivial of course to link every such machine to a centralized database of taint. But they dont do that, and people should ask themselves why, when we know that hard cash is the preferred method of transaction for criminals, money launderers, terrorists, and all the people they say they want to protect us against.

Maybe because they are printing more money all the time and they run out of serial numbers  
But seriously, they are removing old paper bills and releasing new ones all the time, and they probably have some database that is not publicly released.
Besides, I think that most of the fiat money doesn't really exists and it's only numbers on screen, so if all the people wanted to withdraw from banks, it wouldn't be enough paper money for this transactions.

They don't need to do this with cash, because the vast majority of people use digital fiat now, with the banks enforcing the rules of the government and performing mass surveillance for them. Look at the Canadian truckers as a prime example of this happening in a western nation. Spend your money in a way the government don't like? Uh oh, now all your accounts have been seized.

Exactly, but this was slow gradual process and they offered benefits and incentives to make people switch using mostly digital fiat money.
I know one girl from China said she didn't see paper money or hold it in her hands for years, and if you don't have smartphone you can't live in China cities anymore.

I would argue that in the same way, an alternative to the transparent blockchain with easily enforceable taint claims, would be a blockchain that uses cryptography to be fully veiled, which removes the ability to trace coins.

Even if some private blockchains like this exist today, they are not totally private and they need to be constantly improved and changed.
It's fair to say that in future it's going to be possible to reveal most transactions for let's say monero, so they need algorithm improvements all the time.
I wish bitcoin had optional privacy from start, and it's crazy that so far nobody proposed any realistic protocol change for this.

It's no wonder Elon Musk didn't buy Twitter after all...

It's just a circus show for the masses.
I bet their end game is for him to buy twatter in the end but they will introduce mandatory kyc for profiles, with excuse of bot reduction and better security.
Anyone who think Musk is a good guy is delusional. just remeber mess he made with Bitcoin, Doge, etc.
Oh btw twatter was recently hacked and millions of phone numbers leaked 

[tadamichi]

Yes, it is. The fact that you can trace UTXOs is a limitation of the open blockchain. If Bitcoin had a blockchain like Monero's, amounts are hidden and a coin's history is hidden as well, through technology (cryptography).

I like Monero's tech solution (opaque ledger), but there are certain cases where I want a transparent ledger (like BTC's) to exist.

MtGox hackers were real criminals and it makes sense to trace stolen funds. They could easily get away with it if BTC was like XMR and I don't think BTC devs will ever implement a hard fork (too risky for such a valuable asset, which might become adopted by institutional investors one day).

In my mind the bigger "problem" of an opaque ledger is that its harder to verify everything or to discover bugs for most people, subjectively i have more confidence in the open one, even if it might be irrational. Isnt it like, that there is a stronger need to trust the implementation of the math, with some uncertainity left? The transparent design of bitcoin kinda removes this uncertainity, atleast to me. Im still not convinced that its absolutely necessary to make everyrthing indistinguishable, but i acknowledge the idea behind it.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Even if some private blockchains like this exist today, they are not totally private and they need to be constantly improved and changed.

That's true for everything. Bitcoin, technology, humans in general need improvement and change. Don't understand how private blockchains differ.

I wish bitcoin had optional privacy from start, and it's crazy that so far nobody proposed any realistic protocol change for this.

It didn't have optional privacy (which is pleonasm, privacy is always optional), because there weren't chain analysis scumbags to begin with. Once it appeared to be apparent that there's no privacy with or without Coin Control, proposals such as CoinJoin, Lightning, mixers, Taproot were made.

and it's crazy that so far nobody proposed any realistic protocol change for this.

Unpopular opinion: There's already sufficient privacy, especially in Layer 2 solutions which are believed to be used the most in the future.

[LoyceV]

A Monero-like sidechain that is backed by bitcoins is trivial to make

Do you mean a trustless sidechain, or one where you have to trust a certain entity? If it's trustless, I think it's a great idea.

Trivial. And trivial of course to link every such machine to a centralized database of taint. But they dont do that, and people should ask themselves why, when we know that hard cash is the preferred method of transaction for criminals, money launderers, terrorists, and all the people they say they want to protect us against.

Maybe because they are printing more money all the time and they run out of serial numbers 
But seriously, they are removing old paper bills and releasing new ones all the time, and they probably have some database that is not publicly released.

Serial numbers have been used to catch murderers, in 1988 already. I can only imagine how big the current database of known tainted bills is.
But the main difference is of course that this taint is only used to catch the real bad guy, and not to blame anyone who received the money later on.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Do you mean a trustless sidechain, or one where you have to trust a certain entity? If it's trustless, I think it's a great idea.

Trustless, in the same sense a blockchain is. Colored coins could play the big role here, because that's what it essentially is; to access sidecoin, just burn bitcoin. Initially, it'd have 0 coins, but overtime most users could transit into the sidechain, and have no dealings with the main chain.

But, I think solutions such as Lightning, wherein you move actual bitcoins and not altcoins/sidecoins just works better. You'd get about the same levels of privacy with either using the Monero-like sidechain or the Lightning Network.

[LoyceV]

Colored coins could play the big role here, because that's what it essentially is; to access sidecoin, just burn bitcoin. Initially, it'd have 0 coins, but overtime most users could transit into the sidechain, and have no dealings with the main chain.

I had to look up how Colored Coins work, but burning Bitcoins for it doesn't sound right. I'd much rather use a solution that can be turned back into on-chain Bitcoins (such as LN).

[BlackHatCoiner]

I'd much rather use a solution that can be turned back into on-chain Bitcoins (such as LN).

It could work without burning the coins, just by colorizing them. Sidecoins, in that case, would be backed by colored bitcoins. It would work like this: To acquire sidecoin, colorize bitcoin. To use sidecoin, do not touch the bitcoin. Once you're done with the sidecoin, spend the colored bitcoin; it'd decrease the colored coins circulation.

Similar thing they have done at Bisq.

[dkbit98]

That's true for everything. Bitcoin, technology, humans in general need improvement and change. Don't understand how private blockchains differ.

Yes, but Bitcoin base protocol didn't change that much since the beginning, compared to all other shitcoins that change in very drastic way.

It didn't have optional privacy (which is pleonasm, privacy is always optional), because there weren't chain analysis scumbags to begin with. Once it appeared to be apparent that there's no privacy with or without Coin Control, proposals such as CoinJoin, Lightning, mixers, Taproot were made.

Privacy is obviously not optional for privacy based applications, and it was realistic prediction that Bitcoin would be target of various government agencies in future.
Instead of using all the different hoops, different wallets, mixers, coinjoins, etc I would much more prefer to use private transactions by default.

Unpopular opinion: There's already sufficient privacy, especially in Layer 2 solutions which are believed to be used the most in the future.

Fact is there isn't, and it's not easily usable by majority of people.
You should understand that most of the people today are brainwashed zombies and they can only use easy solutions for privacy (if they care about that at all).
Tell the average crypto guy to use layer 2 for privacy and he won't have a clue what you are talking about.

But the main difference is of course that this taint is only used to catch the real bad guy, and not to blame anyone who received the money later on.

It's only used to catch small fish criminals, meanwhile you have big fishes doing what they do without any issues.
Older I am more I think that all this is just one big government circus show for the masses.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Yes, but Bitcoin base protocol didn't change that much since the beginning, compared to all other shitcoins that change in very drastic way.

Sounds good.

Privacy is obviously not optional for privacy based applications

Privacy is optional in the sense that you can selectively reveal your activity. I mean, nobody (protocols included) can force you to remain private; it's something you take responsibility upon.

Instead of using all the different hoops, different wallets, mixers, coinjoins, etc I would much more prefer to use private transactions by default.

Me too. But, apparently, most do care trading off scalability and core changes in the protocol for privacy by default.

Tell the average crypto guy to use layer 2 for privacy and he won't have a clue what you are talking about.

As long as those who're interested in both learning and preserving their privacy are able to setup a node, I'm fine. That's what it takes to have nearly-zero transaction costs in an instant and private fashion.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Exactly, but this was slow gradual process and they offered benefits and incentives to make people switch using mostly digital fiat money.

As with all things privacy related. People are happy to let Amazon and Google record every single word that is spoken inside their house, provided it means they can play a song without having to press like 3 buttons on their phone. They will of course be happy to transition away from cash if it means some 1% reward on their spending.

People have always been happy to trade their privacy for the slightest convenience. This is why we need both education as well as privacy enforcement at the protocol level.

But the main difference is of course that this taint is only used to catch the real bad guy, and not to blame anyone who received the money later on.

Which everyone seems to understand without a second though when it comes to fiat, but for some reason when it comes to bitcoin people start defending the ridiculous privacy invasion and stealing of coins which is practiced by centralized exchanges. I've never understood why, other than they just mindlessly by in to the government propaganda without question.

[dkbit98]

People have always been happy to trade their privacy for the slightest convenience. This is why we need both education as well as privacy enforcement at the protocol level.

Yes, until you end up in a system like you have in China, paying with your face biometrics, can't move anywhere without some silly digital ID, can't leave China even if you want.
Everything is tracked and controlled, so you end up with lot's of people committing suicide jumping out of windows because they can't live like this anymore.
This scenario is not so far from happening in other parts of the world, and it happen gradually in China.

[BlackHatCoiner]

This scenario is not so far from happening in other parts of the world

This scenario did happen during the pandemic, and I'm sure this tyrannic behavior is here to stay, globally.

In my country, certain employees of the private and public sector were forced to do the vaccine[1] and reveal the corresponded certificate whenever they entered a closed room. Later, it was compulsory to do the same for open places, like cafeterias. Then, the elders were given the choices to either do the vaccine or pay a €100 fine for each month they weren't "prudent".

I presume next up is repealing of cash, introduction of social credit score, reduction of non-green energy usage, transition from actual reality to virtual reality etc., all of which happen at the expense of our liberty.

[1] https://www.kodiko.gr/nomothesia/document/737234/nomos-4820-2021 (Law 4820/2021)

[tadamichi]

People have always been happy to trade their privacy for the slightest convenience. This is why we need both education as well as privacy enforcement at the protocol level.

Yes, until you end up in a system like you have in China, paying with your face biometrics, can't move anywhere without some silly digital ID, can't leave China even if you want.
Everything is tracked and controlled, so you end up with lot's of people committing suicide jumping out of windows because they can't live like this anymore.
This scenario is not so far from happening in other parts of the world, and it happen gradually in China.

*waits for franky to explain us, how absolute compliance is true freedom, that mass surveillance doesn’t apply to conformists and that victims of tyranny just didn’t read the guidelines well enough and should take their tinfoil hats off.*

I’ll probably never understand how people stay so ignorant about these issues, maybe they fall for the illusion that it can never hit them individually, until it happens.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Yes, until you end up in a system like you have in China, paying with your face biometrics, can't move anywhere without some silly digital ID, can't leave China even if you want.

I mean, in the West already all your movements are tracked by the handy GPS device that 99% of the population carry with them at all times, and all your purchases are tracked through your debit/credit cards, online accounts, store cards, and so on. But as above, people get some tiny convenience and so are willing to pay the price.

I’ll probably never understand how people stay so ignorant about these issues, maybe they fall for the illusion that it can never hit them individually, until it happens.

Perhaps they think that by simping for the government then the government might leave them alone.

[cryptosize]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_road_to_hell_is_paved_with_good_intentions

^ Keep this phrase in your mind! It's very, very relevant these days.

I'm not saying all socialists/communists are bad guys, some are just idealists (useful idiots, I would say) who envision a utopia (more like a sci-fi dystopia/techno-feudalism according to Great Reset folks)...

Way upper in the hierarchy there are bad guys (Klaus Schwab and whatnot): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad

Be careful what you wish for... there might be unintended negative consequences!

I’ll probably never understand how people stay so ignorant about these issues, maybe they fall for the illusion that it can never hit them individually, until it happens.

Modern people are like cute little dogs (tamed animals). Totally harmless.

Ancient people were more like wolves (untamed animals). Very dangerous.

Domestication is a thing on Homo Sapiens too...

And guess what? Tyrants love this process. Who wants a revolution? Who wants to lose power?

Perhaps they think that by simping for the government then the government might leave them alone.

OnlyFeds™

[dkbit98]

I mean, in the West already all your movements are tracked by the handy GPS device that 99% of the population carry with them at all times, and all your purchases are tracked through your debit/credit cards, online accounts, store cards, and so on. But as above, people get some tiny convenience and so are willing to pay the price.

Yeah I know, but you can still opt-out for some things, you can use dumb phone, or install graphene os in android phone, and you can still use cash in many places.
Things in China are next level craziness, and there is no way you can opt-out or even escape their country if you don't like this changes.
Lot of Chinese people escaped to Vietnam and from there to other countries, but now they put extra guards and massive barb wires or borders like in concentration camps.
Not to mention that Bitcoin is fully banned in only few countries in the world and China is one of them, you can still use it but be ready to go in jail if they catch you.
So almost everything is ''tainted'' in China because their government say so.  

[goldkingcoiner]

I think it would be a good idea to have a wallet which warns you when you are about to transfer coin to an address owned by one of these taint-scam freaks. We should destroy their business model at the root and use their own tactic against them. I think every wallet should have them on their "blacklist".

The most prudent option would be to avoid centralization all together and never put your coins in a third party wallet, but people seem to really enjoy all the diverse altcoins which exchanges have to offer.

This is a people's war against the government. Lets not let them intimidate us with their lapdogs.

[LoyceV]

I think it would be a good idea to have a wallet which warns you when you are about to transfer coin to an address owned by one of these taint-scam freaks.

That won't work: there's no way to know who owns an unused Bitcoin address. And I don't think this is a feature that belongs in a wallet: a wallet should do what I tell it to do, without complaining.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I think it would be a good idea to have a wallet which warns you when you are about to transfer coin to an address owned by one of these taint-scam freaks.

Two things:

• You can't know the owner of an unused address, as Loyce rightly points out.
• You shouldn't, because that's like tainting taint supporters. We're not like them. We recognize each coin and address equal, regardless of where they come from.

The root of all evil is lack of education. You don't solve tainting with software. You solve it with reaction, and people won't react if they're not educated enough to acknowledge the benefits of doing this collectively.

[o_e_l_e_o]

And I don't think this is a feature that belongs in a wallet: a wallet should do what I tell it to do, without complaining.

Agreed. As attractive as it might seem at first to "blacklist the blacklisters", then you just run in to the exact same problem again: Who determines what should go on our "good" blacklist? We simply loop full circle and end up back at square one, with a centralized entity deciding where we can and cannot send our coins. Just because it is a centralized entity we happen to agree with (for now!) is irrelevant. Giving anyone or any entity the power to enforce a blacklist is against the ethos of decentralization and self ownership.

We should destroy their business model at the root

The way to do this is to just stop using them. As I've said before, if every single customer of Coinbase withdrew all their funds tomorrow and stopped using their platform in a mass protest against taint, Coinbase would have changed their rules by tomorrow and would be lobbying governments and going to court to fight against privacy invasion and oppression by the end of the week. But since people continue to play by their made up rules and continue to hand over money to them, they don't care.

[dkbit98]

I think it would be a good idea to have a wallet which warns you when you are about to transfer coin to an address owned by one of these taint-scam freaks. We should destroy their business model at the root and use their own tactic against them. I think every wallet should have them on their "blacklist".

It sounds to me that you want to create one more centralized taint blacklisting service, and you want to clean the mud with adding more mud on top.
There is no need for some special wallet alert when you know you are sending coins to wallet centralized exchanges is always a risk.
Simple solution is not to use services or exchanges that openly support this taint trend, and switch to Bisq and p2p trading.

[n0nce]

The root of all evil is lack of education. You don't solve tainting with software. You solve it with reaction, and people won't react if they're not educated enough to acknowledge the benefits of doing this collectively.

Regarding education...

The most prudent option would be to avoid centralization all together and never put your coins in a third party wallet, but people seem to really enjoy all the diverse altcoins which exchanges have to offer.

... and people using centralized services to buy altcoins - I think it's very important to reiterate that decentralized and / or trustless crypto exchanges do exist.

I just made a quick forum search and found this thread, but maybe there are other / better ones that collect decentralized exchanges.

Personally, I can recommend Bisq and Robosats, as well as https://boltz.exchange/.

[DooMAD]

I still can't tell if the decision for these services to enforce taint is because the regulators are pressuring them to, or because it's an ideological stance.  If the pressure is coming from regulators, then they are placing companies in an impossible position. 

I don't know if the rules are similar elsewhere, but in the UK, for example, any business regulated by the FCA (Financial Services Authority) is required to maintain a log of all formal complaints where, from the customer's point of view, the customer has suffered 'financial loss', 'material distress' or 'material inconvenience'.  Companies then have to submit this log to the FCA on a regular basis.  So if any customer has legitimately obtained BTC which inadvertently happens to be on some arbitrary blacklist and are being denied service, they have done nothing wrong.  From their perspective, they are definitely now suffering from financial loss, because someone is claiming their BTC is now worthless when it isn't.  As a result, they're likely also suffering from distress and inconvenience.  Regulators would be engaging in staggering double standards if they are the ones placing innocent customers in this position, but forcing companies to handle the resulting complaints.

[Lordsilvabtc]

The accountability centralized exchanges has for the government makes it seems so unfavorable to most of us, who are advocating for decentralized system, the purpose of Bitcoin has been core at most times and interpreted different, Thereby holding people to ransome at one stage in life

Looking at the above list, there's no doubt Binance Exchange seems to be the worst of them all, just my opinion and my experience, Once a decree is made by government, Binance immediately takes action against traders in their eco system, which doesn't look good to a serial traders like my self

Boycott those exchanges would have taught them a huge lesson, but then some people still feels entangled with them hence they can not step, and search out a better favorable system, it's no longer a new how Binance worked with various Government agencies to inflict pains amongst their ecosystem, good example of this can be found in this cases https://www.thecable.ng/binance-restricts-281-nigerian-crypto-accounts-to-prevent-fraud/amp

I do honestly think that most of those projects or companies, Mostly centralized agencies advocating for privacy protection, ain't really private at all, rather they use that word to attract us and then deal mercilessly with those who makes use of their services, I advice we stage on guard. And be extremely careful with those exchanges, in order to have a secured data, Without our information being exposed out there...

[LoyceV]

it's no longer a new how Binance worked with various Government agencies to inflict pains amongst their ecosystem, good example of this can be found in this cases https://www.thecable.ng/binance-restricts-281-nigerian-crypto-accounts-to-prevent-fraud/amp

You can't expect Binance to not follow government regulations. It doesn't look like these cases are related to "tainted Bitcoins", it looks like they were flagged for other reasons. Nigerian scammers have quite a reputation on the internet,  and your link shows many of the accounts were blocked at the request of international law enforcement.

As I put it earlier:

Note that this isn't about exchanges freezing funds owned by drug dealers, that's understandable. It's about freezing funds from the bar where the drug dealer bought his coffee.

In this case, I don't think it's the bar owner who got his account frozen.

[LoyceV]

You can add Thormixer to the list of taint proclaiming services:

The platform runs a scoring procedure for each incoming coin so to check its reliability and purchase it for its reserves. The service liaises with crypto stock exchanges and controls the money inflow around the clock – if the algorithm detects a shortfall it blasts notification messages to investors and quickly tops up the reserves. Coins with dark history are never let in.

[n0nce]

Update July 2023: Added new mixing platform [banned mixer], thanks to Loyce for bringing it up.

|

[banned mixer] Mixer

|

'Coins with dark history are never let in.'

|

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5458437.msg62501094#msg62501094

|

Some quotes for archiving purposes:

The platform runs a scoring procedure for each incoming coin so to check its reliability

The service liaises with crypto stock exchanges

Coins with dark history are never let in.

It's funny to me how first they claim they only allow coins without a 'dark history' ([insert usual mantra of: taint does not exist, all coins are equal, Bitcoin is worthless otherwise, no definition of clean or dirty is given, ...]).
While shortly after, they claim their service 'cleans the track record of people's coins':

The algorithm carries out multi-layered cleansing that achieves a clean track record for your coins.

If coins are already 'clean', there is no reason to 'clean their track record', right? Some people really try to sell a product without understanding that their whole concept makes no sense..

'I sell washing machines that only clean already clean clothes! Please give me your money!'

[Pmalek]

<Snip>

I thought Wasabi and their coordinator were the only "privacy-focused" (yeah right) service that had blacklisting and restrictions like that, and now we can add Thormixer to that list. Why do I have the feeling that this is going to become a norm in the future? So-called selective privacy if we believe you deserve it, but we will never tell you why you don't deserve it, and will update our rules as time goes by.   

[BlackHatCoiner]

Why do I have the feeling that this is going to become a norm in the future? So-called selective privacy if we believe you deserve it, but we will never tell you why you don't deserve it, and will update our rules as time goes by.

I don't think it's going to become the norm. Sure, governments and regulators will try to invade into Bitcoin users' privacy as much as possible, but genuine users don't buy that, and usually, it's genuine users who want privacy. Look on what happened with Wasabi. They've lost countless of clients. Nobody bought it. Even the contributors themselves were caught to trying and pretending they're okay with it, as they have a financial incentive to protect. They were neither convincing. It makes a splash, even to the most dumb head in the world, that a fungibility-preserving software can't just treat the currency as non-fungible and cooperate with a company that strives to harm that fungibility as much as possible.

I didn't know Thormixer, but the last thing I'd care about is their pro-taint policy. Lol, just read the thread, the guy is an inexperienced scum, and he'd be the last person on this forum to whom I'd trust my funds to.

[ValeraNBA]

Hi, everyone!
My BTC was stolen and I want to tell about it.
Can I post here about scam from exchange or need start another topic?
Thx