Operation Chokepoint 2.0 (Biden's administration quitet ban on crypto)

[pawel7777]

Around 2013 Obama's administration launched the original, controversial operation Chokepoint when many businesses, despite operating fully legally, started losing access to banking services forcing many of them to shut down. That crackdown was not conducted by any formal, voted-for legislation, but was done indirectly by putting pressure on banks to cease support for specific types of businesses.
You can read about that in this 2014 thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=616603.0

Fast forward 10 years: Biden's administration (who was a vice president under Obama for those who don't know) is trying to do the same to the crypto sector. This is nicely explained by Nic Carter in this article:
https://www.piratewires.com/p/crypto-choke-point

Or this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV1jp4FrKlU

Also mentioned by Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2023/02/09/us-accused-of-trying-to-quietly-ban-bitcoin-ethereum-and-crypto/

[1714700484]

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[coupable]

I don't find it surprising at all. No, I think Biden has chosen the perfect time to quietly pull the rug out from under the feet of the crypto community. The crypto market has been in continuous decline since the ftx platform crisis, which contributed to the decline in Americans' confidence in this market in general.
The second point is related to the banks willingness to obey these procedures, because by doing so they will lose an important part of the income from withdrawals and deposits through trading platforms.

[dkbit98]

Fast forward 10 years: Biden's administration (who was a vice president under Obama for those who don't know) is trying to do the same to the crypto sector. This is nicely explained by Nic Carter in this article:
https://www.piratewires.com/p/crypto-choke-point

It's obvious that US administration started fighting on all fronts with everything that has any connection with fiat and crypto, that includes banks with their cards, all p2p platforms (several shut down recently), and centralized exchanges are under pressure for some time.
To me it's clear why they are doing this, they are working hard to remove cash from all countries (it already started in Nigeria), and introduce their shitty CBDC projects as poor replacement everywhere.
They can't do that fully until they control Bitcoin to fiat money flow as much as they can, but they also tried banning torrents for years and look at their poor results with that example.

[Scripture]

Banks will be more in favor to this because they will benefit on this, luckily crypto businesses are not centered in America, meaning if they will push this through many investors will be forced to do business outside US which can be more open to other countries as a good development.

Hard to know if the current administration is secretly doing this, and with the current movement of SEC, we might see the pattern on this. Well, Bitcoin is being attacked since then so this is not new anymore. Fortunately Bitcoin is made by this, and still able to rise despite of all the pressure on every country.

[hatshepsut93]

If they won't unbank Coinbase and Binance, Bitcoin will be fine. If they do, the price will instantly plummet, adoption will either slow down significantly or turn negative. But it seems like the chance of them doing the latter are very low, since this is a very unofficial rumored crackdown on smaller businesses rather than a total ban on crypto.

[hemzer]

If they won't unbank Coinbase and Binance, Bitcoin will be fine. If they do, the price will instantly plummet, adoption will either slow down significantly or turn negative. But it seems like the chance of them doing the latter are very low, since this is a very unofficial rumored crackdown on smaller businesses rather than a total ban on crypto.

They should. It will help decentralized exchanges

[bbc.reporter]

@pawel7777. This is certainly what everyone in the cryptospace should be expecting. They do not want the cryptospace to compete with the moneylaundering operations of their backers from the banking sector hehehe.

I would begin to be more skeptical if the Biden administration began a more supportive attitude on bitcoin and the cryptospace.

Also, more stricter legislations should also be expected under Biden. I speculate that everything will be banned in time and with only a few whitelisted projects and services allowed to continue.



Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said she plans to reintroduce legislation with Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., that would extend anti-money laundering laws to a broad array of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. That would include digital asset wallet providers, miners, validators and other blockchain network participants.

The original version of the bill she and Marshall introduced last December also would have prohibited banks and other financial institutions from transactions with digital asset mixers, which are meant to mask transactions made on public blockchains.

If introduced in the same form as last December, the bill would also extend anti-money laundering reporting requirements to include U.S. persons who transact in $10,000 or more in digital assets using an offshore account and require the Treasury Department to do anti-money laundering compliance examinations for money service businesses, the registration that large U.S. crypto companies fall under.

Source https://www.theblock.co/post/211783/warren-pledges-to-reintroduce-crypto-anti-money-laundering-bill

[Plaguedeath]

If they won't unbank Coinbase and Binance, Bitcoin will be fine.

They should. It will help decentralized exchanges

US is trying to ban Bitcoin, not only the centralized exchange!

Although decentralized exchange can be a way for the US citizens to trade Bitcoin, you're breaking the laws and you're must make sure anything you're doing will not get detected by SEC! when you're using decentralized exchange, you will need to use bank accounts to receive your fiat which is leave a trace for the chainalysis and SEC to track you.

I have no idea why you can think using a decentralized exchange will offer 100% anonymity, it doesn't simple as that.

[franky1]

if you are running a service of swapping "currency"  for a fee, requiring using your bank account for wire transfers as part of that swap.. you are a money service business MSB/payment facilitator. requiring a licence and a business bank account

being a MSB/PF is not a acceptable term of use in your personal bank account terms of service agreement

local bitcoin users that done regular p2p swaps for fiat .. got hit the most by their banks flagging the unusual frequency of wire transfers..
this has been ongoing for years (2014+) world wide. when countries legitimised crypto as currency "money" (instead of private property(pre 2014)

but thats the downside of when bitcoin became a "legitimised currency" in law, which meant those doing money service businesses need to then become licenced businesses if they do more then whats deemed "personal use"

you can be a MSB but not from a personal account without a MSB licence
yes needing to get a licence which means KYC customers and such.

the amateur users stupidly thought the solution was to open new bank accounts and then use de-fi, thinking the fault lays in links to using 'localbitcoins' as the cause..
but localbitcoins only fault was advertising amareurs, which meant amateurs got too popular. doing too many wire transfers thus hitting the thresholds of flags of non personal use  in their personal accounts

but again the de-fi users if they get too popular by having too frequent random transfers to strangers for amounts outside of whats deemed personal use. will get caught running a MSB

hint hint. dont get too popular de-fi guys if you are still using a personal bank account to do your swaps

[pooya87]

This is not surprising at all since it has always been how the modern dictatorships work. They quietly enforce their illegal authority on people and call it democracy and anybody who speaks against it and gains momentum will be "deleted".
This is also not surprising knowing that US dollar is losing its dominance slowly and in a couple of years its value could be lower than Venezuela bolivar as more countries dump it. The US regimes fear is obvious so they try to eliminate all competition, whether it is Chinese Yuan or decentralized bitcoin. Funny thing is that they lose in all cases...

[avikz]

No surprises there! Same has been done in my country as well.  This is a well thought-out move by the world leaders. Every government understands that crypto market has not yet reached to an extent where they can survive on its own. A seamless integration is needed with fiat for the crypto market to survive and grow. So the governments are cutting the access to banking services for the crypto related businesses.

In my country, the government did the same to a company called Zebpay. Now they have moved to Singapore and operate in 30 countries except my country. Options will be there but now the crypto businesses will have to go through a lot of regulatory hassles.

[digaran]

Ooh, scary stuff, I'm scared guys can someone post a ban appeal to the white house? We promise to be good from now on. Joe the sleepyhead.

[franky1]

i as a brit can say this without bias...

i read the OP's content as if he is a republican/trump supporter being anti democratic party

however the actual events are not banning all accounts
its banning accounts of bank account owners that are doing business but not being licenced, when said businesses are operating as a money business
its also businesses that operate certain flaggable offenses such as laundering russian riches or gambling services in a no-gambling region or other politically prohibited stuff

yes those businesses might be operating ethically for their customers. but they still need to operate legally

the fault here lays in where bitcoin stopped being treated as a tradable private property and instead traded as a currency which allowed regulators to get their fingers in and grab power over crypto businesses

its the downside of "going mainstream recognition as a currency circa 2013 and being more enforced since

[DaveF]

i as a brit can say this without bias...

i read the OP's content as if he is a republican/trump supporter being anti democratic party

however the actual events are not banning all accounts
its banning accounts of bank account owners that are doing business but not being licenced, when said businesses are operating as a money business
its also businesses that operate certain flaggable offenses such as laundering russian riches or gambling services in a no-gambling region or other politically prohibited stuff

yes those businesses might be operating ethically for their customers. but they still need to operate legally

the fault here lays in where bitcoin stopped being treated as a tradable private property and instead traded as a currency which allowed regulators to get their fingers in and grab power over crypto businesses

its the downside of "going mainstream recognition as a currency circa 2013 and being more enforced since

It's easier to say it's called making everyone play by the same rules.

People who took the time, set themselves up as a MSB, properly filed the paperwork and everything else were and are loosing money to people who were doing things under the table. Want to take $100 of BTC and convert it to fiat for a friend, fine. Want to do it for a stranger, also fine. Want to do it for 1000 people and charge a percentage. You are running a MSB and should be treated as such.

-Dave

[franky1]

yep daveF said it better

but still worth adding in. that the real cause of the requirement of licencing for the big players above X threshold.. was defining bitcoin as a currency rather than its original 2009-2014 category, which was private property

becasue its the "defined as currency" part that allowed the regulators to step in..
..
pre 2014 people could trade as much as they liked without regulation/licencing because bitcoin was treated the same as trading pokemon cards and artwork back then

[pooya87]

however the actual events are not banning all accounts
its banning accounts of bank account owners that are doing business but not being licenced, when said businesses are operating as a money business
its also businesses that operate certain flaggable offenses such as laundering russian riches or gambling services in a no-gambling region or other politically prohibited stuff

Yes, Yes. NSA also knows the color of your underwear from another continent while pinky swearing that they are protecting you from "the bad guys" and doing it for the national security.

[franky1]

however the actual events are not banning all accounts
its banning accounts of bank account owners that are doing business but not being licenced, when said businesses are operating as a money business
its also businesses that operate certain flaggable offenses such as laundering russian riches or gambling services in a no-gambling region or other politically prohibited stuff

Yes, Yes. NSA also knows the color of your underwear from another continent while pinky swearing that they are protecting you from "the bad guys" and doing it for the national security.

someones been on the weed and has the tin foil at on

by being a currency. you join the competition of the banks.
bitcoin could have continued as-is, being defined as private property and not need compliance of businesses to be the same as banks compliance

we could have developed our own security/insurance things to keep businesses honourable.. but instead we just got too happy that governments wanted to step in
and "legitimise bitcoin" (endorse) without thinking of the negatives of such act

to me regulations should not be about delegating money service businesses to police the customers. regulations should be regulators auditing the businesses and taking businesses to court quickly when they screw customers over

..
yes i dislike the hypocrisy of "licencing"
where by there are MORAL businesses not screwing over customers who are not "legit" because they didnt "just register" now being easily slammed by their banks
and how those that do register get a free pass on certain immoral acts and given weak penalties for doing so simply because they did "just register"

[DaveF]

The other 1/2 the of it is that is also has the potential to save people from getting scammed by others who are operating without the proper licensing.

DaveF goes out and files the paperwork, gets the background checks, posts valid bonds and insurance.
pooya87 does not.

DaveF as has to charge more to cover his expenses. pooya87 does not.

DaveF disappears with a bunch of peoples money. After a bunch of time and effort they get at least some of their money back from the bond and insurance.

pooya87 disappears with a bunch of peoples money. After a bunch of time and effort people get nothing. Possibly an auction here on BTC from other community members trying to help out.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5434623.0

Even today there are banks here in the US that do not have FDIC insurance. And people keep putting money into them. And are surprised when they disappear in the middle of the night with their funds.

As franky1 said. You want to be a currency you get to play by those rules.

-Dave

[franky1]

private property (as bitcoin was pre 2014) had human rights to privacy by default
(property law)

by being currency(2013+) its now part of "bank secrecy act" rules which is different to human rights. where financial data is not treated the same as private property

yep i said it you have no rights to privacy when using currency
and thats been the law since way before the most people were born(1970)

so its not a new thing that was invented by obama after bitcoin was invented and used to fight bitcoin. its something thats always been in play for 50 years. which bitcoiners think they are not part of because they still think its still the ethos of bitcoin 2009-2013.. even though they accept the "mainstream free publicity" benefits of bitcoin categorisation 2013+. they just didnt read the downside of accepting the categorisation of bitcoin 2013+

oh by the way..
china that banned treating bitcoin as currency. this stops regulated businesses from exchanging bitcoin. (and if a business is offering exchanges it should be regulated)

but bitcoin is actually protected in china as private property.. allowing people to privately trade and own it(p2p). and they cant do anything about it
yep a chinese person can still own bitcoin and privately trade it p2p. they just cant find a regulated centralised exchange in china to exchange it

[pooya87]

Good points but the problem is that the regulations are made by governments to monitor people's activities not to ensure their security. This is why they enforce a lot of restrictions on customers such as KYC which is not going to help with the business owner scamming its users but instead will give all your detailed information and your activities to the authorities.
We see that in the banking system too. Remember the disasters leading to 2008? All those banks were regulated and members of FDIC and yet they ruined the economy and in the end they were bailed out while their "customers" were crushed.