[2022-12-16] Germany calls for global regulation of the cryptospace

[bbc.reporter]

I reckon no amount of stricter regulations will stop the more advanced type or the higher level scammers similar to Sam Bankrupt-Fried who, has the political connections and who has wealthy financial backers that can finance their criminal and moneylaundering operations. Everyone should become very much aware of this.

I would be shaking my head if we, the commoners of the cryptospace, would support a move for stricter global regulations in crypto. This will only make the use of cryptocoins, Defi and other protocols harder for us commoners, however, it will certainly not make it more difficult for those higher level criminals to create and fund their scams in crypto.



Cryptocurrency regulation is currently a focal point for regulators and lawmakers all across the world. Regulators have been tightening the noose around the crypto industry to safeguard consumers from bad actors.

The colossal fall of the FTX crypto exchange has alarmed regulators even more, and lawmakers are trying to bring effective and efficient crypto regulation into place.

The president of BaFin has censured the current synopsis of the regime that governs the crypto sectors as not strict enough. This points toward the condition where the industry will not be able to keep bad actors in control.

Read in full https://bitcoinist.com/germany-calls-global-regulation-of-crypto-industry/

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[Lucius]

I think that without strict regulation, we cannot expect that anything will change in the sense that no new Bankman or Kwon will appear. At the same time, I think that strict regulation should go in the direction of much more difficult opening of centralized CEX and strict supervision of their operations. Some may consider it a threat to Bitcoin, but I don't think that would be the case, because Bitcoin is just a collateral victim in all of this.

A money factory that has its base in thousands of cryptocurrencies is nothing but one big fraud, no matter what name it hid behind - ICO, IOU, DeFi, stablecoins, or NTF. We can lie as much as we want, but the amount of money that disappeared through everything I mentioned is measured in hundreds of billions of $, and all because current laws allow it.

I am therefore in favor of draining that swamp, no matter how much some are against it. Of course, the price has to be paid, and it certainly won't be small - the average person still believes that Bitcoin should be blamed for everything, no matter how pointless it is.

[d5000]

I read a German article about the BaFin conference. It's interesting that the Mark Branson (the president of BaFin, the German SEC) says there are basically two possibilities to deal with the crypto industry:

1) regulate it tighter, requiring from crypto-assets service providers similar requirements to to those affecting traditional financial institutions, and thus allowing it to merge with the traditional financial system.

2) "let it burn", i.e. leave the sector completely unregulated but separated from the traditional financial system, and hope for a collapse due to all the scams and frauds (here he cites a recent article of Stephen Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in the Financial Times, which hope that the crypto industry "burns" alone, and argue for a prohibition for traditional financial institutions to invest in cryptocurrencies).

Branson prefers the first strategy, and advocates for a global regulatory approach led by the G20.

While I generally don't have problems with regulations regarding liquidity and risk (i.e. requiring proof-of-reserves) it is problematic that he also mentions money laundering. Of course money laundering should be prevented too, but KYC/AML is already quite strict for European crypto providers, and he still deems it as insufficient.

Too strict KYC/AML is a threat for the security of crypto users, as it would lead to more personal documents stored on servers of crypto businesses of all sizes, only waiting for hackers to steal them and facilitating identity theft. And we've seen recently with the proposed Marshall Warren bill in the US that there are politicians wanting to extend KYC/AML even to miners and potentially to software developers, which would be of course impossible to comply.

My opinion would be: Regulate the centralized crypto service providers, apply most of financial regulations to them, but take into account the risks of a too strict KYC/AML for privacy of everyday people and leave a space for small-scale usage with only basic requirements (i.e. phone verification). And don't touch the protocols themselves and their elements, like miners.

[bbc.reporter]

I think that without strict regulation, we cannot expect that anything will change in the sense that no new Bankman or Kwon will appear. At the same time, I think that strict regulation should go in the direction of much more difficult opening of centralized CEX and strict supervision of their operations. Some may consider it a threat to Bitcoin, but I don't think that would be the case, because Bitcoin is just a collateral victim in all of this.

A money factory that has its base in thousands of cryptocurrencies is nothing but one big fraud, no matter what name it hid behind - ICO, IOU, DeFi, stablecoins, or NTF. We can lie as much as we want, but the amount of money that disappeared through everything I mentioned is measured in hundreds of billions of $, and all because current laws allow it.

I am therefore in favor of draining that swamp, no matter how much some are against it. Of course, the price has to be paid, and it certainly won't be small - the average person still believes that Bitcoin should be blamed for everything, no matter how pointless it is.

I can agree in some of your argument that some regulation is good, however, what much of it will do is stop smaller, less advanced scammers. I am quite certain it will not stop the Bernie Maddofs, Elizabeth Holmes and the Sams in the world, who will have the proper connections to develop their scams and steal billions more in total compared to the small ICO, IOU, Defi and NFT scams of the world.

Also, ICO, IOU, Defi and NFT are not scams but only mediums that can be used for scams. This is very much similar to bitcoin where it can be used as a medium for scams but bitcoin itself is never the scam. I hope everyone will distinguish and accept the difference in this.

[Kakmakr]

I agree with the German government that some measures should be put in place to prevent scams, but it should be limited and not over regulated like the New York "BitLicense" that was introduced back in the day.

Bitcoin should be "Self-Policed" by the people who are using it, because governments tend to over regulate "new" innovation and thus causing a scenario where they slow down or kill adoption. 

[cr1776]

This is a bait and switch.  They claim to want to regulate crypto to protect people, but they really want to regulate crypto to protect themselves and their power over people's money and consequently their lives.  They like being able to tax the people of the world 5-10% every year via inflation.  With around $460 trillion in global wealth, that is a TON of money they'd lose out on stealing from people with the "little guy" being hit the most with high inflation.  

The solution is easy:  hold your own keys.  
Buy your bitcoin (or mine it), move it to your own keys.  Use it or save it.  Don't exit.

Don't believe that you can get a 10% return safely from some muppet in cargo shorts (SBF).  Don't believe you can get a 12% return from some guy and his family who can't answer specific questions on an AMA (Celsius).

It isn't rocket science.  If you don't hold the keys you are a creditor.  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  That isn't specific to crypto.  If you don't like it, keep your money in a bank.  Whatever regulation they put in place would be redundant given the laws on the books already.  SBF is already in trouble, what specific law would've helped?  A law against Ponzi schemes and scams has been around for a century or so and the scams have been around longer than that yet people are still taken in.

[Saint-loup]

Fortunately they can imagine all the regulations they want they will never be able to regulate further things than centralized platforms. They will never be able to stop people from exchanging cryptos p2p against goods, services, other cryptos or even fiats. They will never be able to stop people from creating and holding a seed wallet with some cryptos into it. Bitcoin has been designed to be fully decentralized and uncensorable. So I wish them good luck to try to regulate cryptos as if it was fiat money. If it was easy to do Bitcoin would have been replaced since many years.

[bbc.reporter]

This is a bait and switch.  They claim to want to regulate crypto to protect people, but they really want to regulate crypto to protect themselves and their power over people's money and consequently their lives.  They like being able to tax the people of the world 5-10% every year via inflation.  With around $460 trillion in global wealth, that is a TON of money they'd lose out on stealing from people with the "little guy" being hit the most with high inflation.  

Agreed, the government has never wanted to protect the people. 99% of the politicians who run the government only want to act on their self interests and the personal agendas of their backers.

The cryptospace is a threat to the banking system because it will break their monopoly on the creation of money, moving money, laundering of money and many other things about money. It will also break the monopoly on the government's definition of money. If anyone has noticed, much of the people in the community has considered bitcoin to be a more authentic form of money than fiat.

[AliErkic]

This is a bait and switch.  They claim to want to regulate crypto to protect people, but they really want to regulate crypto to protect themselves and their power over people's money and consequently their lives.  They like being able to tax the people of the world 5-10% every year via inflation.  With around $460 trillion in global wealth, that is a TON of money they'd lose out on stealing from people with the "little guy" being hit the most with high inflation.  

Agreed, the government has never wanted to protect the people. 99% of the politicians who run the government only want to act on their self interests and the personal agendas of their backers.

The cryptospace is a threat to the banking system because it will break their monopoly on the creation of money, moving money, laundering of money and many other things about money. It will also break the monopoly on the government's definition of money. If anyone has noticed, much of the people in the community has considered bitcoin to be a more authentic form of money than fiat.

Your conspiracy BS doesn't make sense at all. No need to wear a tinfoil hat when we can apply easy common sense:

"Government" isn't as simple as you are trying to suggest to us. It's different from country to country, some politicians are indeed corrupt, some want more power and some are just clueless but quite a large number of politicians are honest people.
Even Bukele wants more power because he's trying to run for a second term. Is it good? - No! But are his intentions malicious? I don't believe it.
Quite a large number of politicians want to protect people and bring prosperity.
In my opinion, Bukele wants to protect people and bring prosperity, too.

But it's very difficult to be succesfull. For Bukele, he bought Bitcoin when it was very pricey. Now, it has lost tons of value. Would you say he has a personal agenda, backed by criminal El Salvador networks or similar conspiracy bullshit? I would not.
He's just trying to improve his country and many politicians are trying to improve her country as well.
Yes, it's different in dictatorships, like Kim Yong Un, China, Putin's Russia or Erdogan's Turkey, where officials don't need to be elected and can't be removed. Or take Iran, where so many people protested for more human rights.

I would not generalize it too much. Scammers and hackers need to be caught and regulation is necessary. Crypto is full of scam maybe even more like we have scam, money laundering and corruption in traditional markets. Just take Ripple, Ripple should be taken out by Gary Gensler! I hope it will happen soon!
Crypto is a heaven for money laundering enabled by mixers like WasabiWallet, ChipMixer or Sindbad.io.
Even if a group like "war of rugs" is prepared better to fight against rug pulls or shady Darknet operators get arrested is already a good sign.
It is not easy but after time, crypto will get rid of scams, fraud, hackers, unbacked stablecoins and similar abuse.

[Kryptowerk]

This is a bait and switch.  They claim to want to regulate crypto to protect people, but they really want to regulate crypto to protect themselves and their power over people's money and consequently their lives.  They like being able to tax the people of the world 5-10% every year via inflation.  With around $460 trillion in global wealth, that is a TON of money they'd lose out on stealing from people with the "little guy" being hit the most with high inflation.  

Agreed, the government has never wanted to protect the people. 99% of the politicians who run the government only want to act on their self interests and the personal agendas of their backers.

The cryptospace is a threat to the banking system because it will break their monopoly on the creation of money, moving money, laundering of money and many other things about money. It will also break the monopoly on the government's definition of money. If anyone has noticed, much of the people in the community has considered bitcoin to be a more authentic form of money than fiat.

Your conspiracy BS doesn't make sense at all. No need to wear a tinfoil hat when we can apply easy common sense:

"Government" isn't as simple as you are trying to suggest to us. It's different from country to country, some politicians are indeed corrupt, some want more power and some are just clueless but quite a large number of politicians are honest people.
Even Bukele wants more power because he's trying to run for a second term. Is it good? - No! But are his intentions malicious? I don't believe it.
Quite a large number of politicians want to protect people and bring prosperity.
In my opinion, Bukele wants to protect people and bring prosperity, too.

But it's very difficult to be succesfull. For Bukele, he bought Bitcoin when it was very pricey. Now, it has lost tons of value. Would you say he has a personal agenda, backed by criminal El Salvador networks or similar conspiracy bullshit? I would not.
He's just trying to improve his country and many politicians are trying to improve her country as well.
Yes, it's different in dictatorships, like Kim Yong Un, China, Putin's Russia or Erdogan's Turkey, where officials don't need to be elected and can't be removed. Or take Iran, where so many people protested for more human rights.

I would not generalize it too much. Scammers and hackers need to be caught and regulation is necessary. Crypto is full of scam maybe even more like we have scam, money laundering and corruption in traditional markets. Just take Ripple, Ripple should be taken out by Gary Gensler! I hope it will happen soon!
Crypto is a heaven for money laundering enabled by mixers like WasabiWallet, ChipMixer or Sindbad.io.
Even if a group like "war of rugs" is prepared better to fight against rug pulls or shady Darknet operators get arrested is already a good sign.
It is not easy but after time, crypto will get rid of scams, fraud, hackers, unbacked stablecoins and similar abuse.

While I agree with most of your statements especially regarding the "government-issue" is not a black-and-white thing and varies a ton from country to country, I need to jump in and with your statement about mixers. While it is ceraintly used by money laundering individuals, it is also the only possible way to create some strongly needed privacy in the transparent Bitcoin chain. I would argue that the majority using these services are doing so 100% legally just trying to protect their privacy and aiming for some fungability to Bitcoin.
Check out this discussion if interested: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5410526.0

@OP: Fails like FTX are just a happy excuse for tighter regulations. What would really work is proper (crypto) education. But I think we are still 5 - 10 years away from this becoming a reality in schools.

[AliErkic]

While I agree with most of your statements especially regarding the "government-issue" is not a black-and-white thing and varies a ton from country to country, I need to jump in and with your statement about mixers. While it is ceraintly used by money laundering individuals, it is also the only possible way to create some strongly needed privacy in the transparent Bitcoin chain.

I agree, your point is very valid because mixers can also help to get privacy because all Bitcoin transactions and balances are public. If we buy now some goods and send a Bitcoin transaction to a vendor or a trader, such vendors or traders can view our balances on our address and where we have sent Bitcoin previously.

Mixers can help to protect our funds from curious views. Mixing coins for such a purpose (privacy) is very legitimate.

[bbc.reporter]

This is a bait and switch.  They claim to want to regulate crypto to protect people, but they really want to regulate crypto to protect themselves and their power over people's money and consequently their lives.  They like being able to tax the people of the world 5-10% every year via inflation.  With around $460 trillion in global wealth, that is a TON of money they'd lose out on stealing from people with the "little guy" being hit the most with high inflation.  

Agreed, the government has never wanted to protect the people. 99% of the politicians who run the government only want to act on their self interests and the personal agendas of their backers.

The cryptospace is a threat to the banking system because it will break their monopoly on the creation of money, moving money, laundering of money and many other things about money. It will also break the monopoly on the government's definition of money. If anyone has noticed, much of the people in the community has considered bitcoin to be a more authentic form of money than fiat.

Your conspiracy BS doesn't make sense at all. No need to wear a tinfoil hat when we can apply easy common sense:

"Government" isn't as simple as you are trying to suggest to us. It's different from country to country, some politicians are indeed corrupt, some want more power and some are just clueless but quite a large number of politicians are honest people.
Even Bukele wants more power because he's trying to run for a second term. Is it good? - No! But are his intentions malicious? I don't believe it.
Quite a large number of politicians want to protect people and bring prosperity.
In my opinion, Bukele wants to protect people and bring prosperity, too.

But it's very difficult to be succesfull. For Bukele, he bought Bitcoin when it was very pricey. Now, it has lost tons of value. Would you say he has a personal agenda, backed by criminal El Salvador networks or similar conspiracy bullshit? I would not.
He's just trying to improve his country and many politicians are trying to improve her country as well.
Yes, it's different in dictatorships, like Kim Yong Un, China, Putin's Russia or Erdogan's Turkey, where officials don't need to be elected and can't be removed. Or take Iran, where so many people protested for more human rights.

I would not generalize it too much. Scammers and hackers need to be caught and regulation is necessary. Crypto is full of scam maybe even more like we have scam, money laundering and corruption in traditional markets. Just take Ripple, Ripple should be taken out by Gary Gensler! I hope it will happen soon!
Crypto is a heaven for money laundering enabled by mixers like WasabiWallet, ChipMixer or Sindbad.io.
Even if a group like "war of rugs" is prepared better to fight against rug pulls or shady Darknet operators get arrested is already a good sign.
It is not easy but after time, crypto will get rid of scams, fraud, hackers, unbacked stablecoins and similar abuse.

Are you implying that the people behind the government are never corrupt and have never lied to their people to move forward with their self interests and their agendas? Never?

It is head shaking that you gave Bukele as an example and made the argument that because he made an incorrect investment decision, you use this as proof that he is 100% not corrupt and that he is a 100% honest politician hehe. I would admit that some countries have better governance than others, however, you should live in reality.

[Alduron]

Crypto can be a solution to prevent the people in power to steal from the working class by printing more money.
Of course they don't like it and will do everything to regulate it to death.

[Carlton Banks]

Fortunately they can imagine all the regulations they want they will never be able to regulate further things than centralized platforms. They will never be able to stop people from exchanging cryptos p2p against goods, services, other cryptos or even fiats. They will never be able to stop people from creating and holding a seed wallet with some cryptos into it. Bitcoin has been designed to be fully decentralized and uncensorable. So I wish them good luck to try to regulate cryptos as if it was fiat money. If it was easy to do Bitcoin would have been replaced since many years.

right, this is the typical almost wilful misunderstanding of what they are (incapable of) dealing with.

if there was any easy solution, it would have been floated by now, this is all just tacked onto the FTX whispering campaign, which is all rather pointless anyway as people are both ignoring and distrusting establishment figures more than ever before

[cr1776]

This is a bait and switch.  They claim to want to regulate crypto to protect people, but they really want to regulate crypto to protect themselves and their power over people's money and consequently their lives.  They like being able to tax the people of the world 5-10% every year via inflation.  With around $460 trillion in global wealth, that is a TON of money they'd lose out on stealing from people with the "little guy" being hit the most with high inflation.  

Agreed, the government has never wanted to protect the people. 99% of the politicians who run the government only want to act on their self interests and the personal agendas of their backers.

The cryptospace is a threat to the banking system because it will break their monopoly on the creation of money, moving money, laundering of money and many other things about money. It will also break the monopoly on the government's definition of money. If anyone has noticed, much of the people in the community has considered bitcoin to be a more authentic form of money than fiat.

I'd just add that the crypto space is a threat to not just the banking system, but the political system since they depend on the laundering for their power.

This is why the are all in favor of things like digital fiat.  It buys nothing except no bills, but allows those in power to control everyone and everything, everywhere.  An Orwellian nightmare for people who are being controlled.

[Carlton Banks]

yes, the unspoken point about digital fiat is that there are huge numbers of people all over the world that use cash to avoid the tax office. It's really just to create a hard layer in society, below which it's impossible to avoid tax.

all the charities, NGOs, churches and politicians will of course continue to operate their electronic tax avoidance schemes using CDBCs entirely unaffected, I shouldn't wonder that these schemes are designed to make all of that less easy detect.

the strange issue here is that the exact same organizations above are often handling money used for street level crimes; people trafficking and drug dealing. How will the ultimate beneficiaries of large crime organizations accept money at street level if cash no longer exists? blanket drug legalization would seem a strange way to sell the concept to your average person, so I'm at a loss as to how this is really supposed to play out. It's likely that at least some high level figures of such enterprises also have political influence too. In a world where the gangsters are rapidly running out of marks, it seems all rather unlikely to me that they would simply pack up and quit the game, so what's really going on?

[DooMAD]

Too strict KYC/AML is a threat for the security of crypto users, as it would lead to more personal documents stored on servers of crypto businesses of all sizes, only waiting for hackers to steal them and facilitating identity theft.

Only if people keep using Bitcoin in an unintended fashion.  The real threat is that people keep handing their BTC over to total strangers.  That's the root cause.  Once someone deposits their funds to a custodian, they effectively stop being a crypto user.  They don't hold crypto, they hold IOUs representing crypto.  Submitting to KYC/AML and surrendering privacy is just the shitty icing on a shitty cake.

Call me a cold and unrelenting ideologue, but bring on the regulations for custodians, I say.  Make that shit uncomfortable, inconvenient and even dangerous for people to use.  Maybe they'll finally learn better habits.  

[bbc.reporter]

This is a bait and switch.  They claim to want to regulate crypto to protect people, but they really want to regulate crypto to protect themselves and their power over people's money and consequently their lives.  They like being able to tax the people of the world 5-10% every year via inflation.  With around $460 trillion in global wealth, that is a TON of money they'd lose out on stealing from people with the "little guy" being hit the most with high inflation.  

Agreed, the government has never wanted to protect the people. 99% of the politicians who run the government only want to act on their self interests and the personal agendas of their backers.

The cryptospace is a threat to the banking system because it will break their monopoly on the creation of money, moving money, laundering of money and many other things about money. It will also break the monopoly on the government's definition of money. If anyone has noticed, much of the people in the community has considered bitcoin to be a more authentic form of money than fiat.

I'd just add that the crypto space is a threat to not just the banking system, but the political system since they depend on the laundering for their power.

This is why the are all in favor of things like digital fiat.  It buys nothing except no bills, but allows those in power to control everyone and everything, everywhere.  An Orwellian nightmare for people who are being controlled.

Hehe yes, they want complete control over something that has begun to progress and that is trying to move on from their control over the question what is money? They can delay the social development of the cryptospace through spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt, however, they can never delay the technical developments happening around the cryptospace which is presently taking much quicker steps than a few years ago.

I also speculate that in the next few years, it might be NFTs that might help on the growth and the more universal adoption of the cryptospace. I am aware that many bitcoiners consider them a scam. I consider it to be another medium of cutural development. This will be very important if we want adoption.

[NotATether]

Germany calls for global regulation of the cryptospace

You want stricter crypto regulations? That's great! Just put SBF in jail first and then we'll talk. No excuses.

[cr1776]

Germany calls for global regulation of the cryptospace

You want stricter crypto regulations? That's great! Just put SBF in jail first and then we'll talk. No excuses.

Perhaps they should look in the mirror and have tighter regulation of fiat so that it doesn't lose 99% of its value over a century.  Perhaps they should regulate the corruption of government officials first.

Of course, SBF is a scammer who just happened to use crypto.  Just like there are plenty of scammers using the euro and dollar.