The EU is about to outlaw and restrict some of the most prized features in crypt

[NotFuzzyWarm]

As soon as you (try to) exchange your crypto into fiat you will be screwed because your assets have no proof of origin.

Who says you can't figure out a way to prove how the assets have been earned? No sane country will say no to recognizing income it can tax.

I did not say you could not prove where the assets came from. Of course you can (or should be able to) and it will have to be done for tax reasons - but you will have to do what amounts to KYC procedures to do it. I meant that your attempts at 'privacy' are screwed once you do that.

[btc-freedom-money]

Unfortunately, not. What do you expect? They are pushing CBDCs, they are trying to put fear into people with the survival kit to spend a lot on armaments that people are going to pay for through inflation and worse public services, they are pushing digital identity for total control worthy of 1984, that they want to control everything that is done in the DEX is just a logical consequence of the totalitarian state we are heading towards.

All totalitarian states so far have either crumbled under their own weight or have been destroyed from the outside. I think that will be the fate of EU as well.

Well, they want to ban VPNs, so I imagine Tor will be in the same package.

If they decide to ban Tor/I2P they will most likely go for some variant of DPI (deep packet inspection). However I think it is relatively easy to modify these protocol so that they won't be easily recognizable by the DPI firewalls that they will be using. But yeah, this will not stop them from trying to put everything under total control.

You can't hide that you use tor. Only temporarily with bridges. But it's just temporary for weeks or a few months, then they will detect that you have been using tor and then you will go to prison or whatever the punishment is going to be.

EU is already worse than china, and this is going to make EU 1 million times worse. I really would prefer living in china instead of EU. China has more freedom.

There will be no privacy in EU. No defi. And there will be absolute control. And the people will not do anything about it.

[btcinfo891]

You can't hide that you use tor. Only temporarily with bridges. But it's just temporary for weeks or a few months, then they will detect that you have been using tor and then you will go to prison or whatever the punishment is going to be.

The usual ways to detect Tor are

• 1. Monitoring the network traffic for connections to known Tor relays/bridges
• 2. Inspecting the SSL certificate(s) used by the suspected Tor clients
• 3. Portscanning suspected Tor relays for listening connections on standard Tor ports

1 can be fixed care by renting a VPS outside of EU and running a non-public bridge.
2 and 3 can be fixed too by modifying the Tor software and the VPS firewall.
There are quite a few other tricks that can be used to prevent the EU Gestapo from detecting that one is using Tor, but this forum and thread are not the best place to discuss this.

EU has always been leaning towards totalitarianism, but in the recent years things have really gone downhill. Frankly I don't care about China, Russia or any other other totalitarian states. Too bad EU takes example from them.

However I think that blocking Tor and VPN are not their main objectives. Most likely they will just remove physical cash (in fact they are already phasing it out), thus removing all crypto on/off ramps they don't control. Once the cash is gone the totalitarian state will be complete and we will be living in the Fourth Reich.

[Free Market Capitalist]

EU has always been leaning towards totalitarianism, but in the recent years things have really gone downhill. Frankly I don't care about China, Russia or any other other totalitarian states. Too bad EU takes example from them.

However I think that blocking Tor and VPN are not their main objectives. Most likely they will just remove physical cash (in fact they are already phasing it out), thus removing all crypto on/off ramps they don't control. Once the cash is gone the totalitarian state will be complete and we will be living in the Fourth Reich.

Worse than that. The project is to link digital identity to the use of CBDCs, so politicians will have all your information at the click of a button.

Some retards say that it's all the same, that nowadays when you use a cell phone you no longer have privacy. What they do not understand is that it is not the same that a company has my data and that to access them a judicial authorization is required, than a politician can access everything in an instant if he wants. Apart from the problem of hacks. Having medical data, employment, studies, economic behavior and behavior in general in the same centralized database is going to be a very juicy booty for hackers.

[NotATether]

Fuck them.

No wonder why my CoinGate payments stopped working all of a sudden.

[Free Market Capitalist]

Fuck them.

No wonder why my CoinGate payments stopped working all of a sudden.

I am not clear if you are located in the EU or not but in any case CoinGate is, and therefore subject to the MiCA law, the last snippets of which will come into force in September this year, some have already come into force, and some companies are implementing what the law requires for September. For example, the MiCA allows 1 transaction per day without KYC in cryptocurrency ATMs as long as it is less than €1,000 but the vast majority of ATMs have gone ahead and already apply it. I understand that they have done it to coincide with the fiscal year.

Welcome to Big Brother Union.

[Lucius]

You can't hide that you use tor. Only temporarily with bridges. But it's just temporary for weeks or a few months, then they will detect that you have been using tor and then you will go to prison or whatever the punishment is going to be.

Hide from who? If you don't want your ISP to know that you use Tor, then find a good VPN and connect to it first, then to Tor. Besides, no one can forbid you from using Tor, even in countries that are obsessed with surveillance of their citizens. Where public bridges are blocked, you can request private ones through the browser itself.

EU is already worse than china, and this is going to make EU 1 million times worse. I really would prefer living in china instead of EU. China has more freedom.
There will be no privacy in EU. No defi. And there will be absolute control. And the people will not do anything about it.

Comparing China and the EU in the context of human rights really doesn't make sense - and if you really think China is better, maybe you should go there and feel communism on your own skin. Cryptocurrency trading and mining are banned in China, as are many popular websites, and what do you think happens to those who break these bans?

[NotATether]

I am not clear if you are located in the EU or not but in any case CoinGate is, and therefore subject to the MiCA law, the last snippets of which will come into force in September this year, some have already come into force, and some companies are implementing what the law requires for September. For example, the MiCA allows 1 transaction per day without KYC in cryptocurrency ATMs as long as it is less than €1,000 but the vast majority of ATMs have gone ahead and already apply it. I understand that they have done it to coincide with the fiscal year.

Welcome to Big Brother Union.

I'm not a European nor do I live there.

They are based in Lithuania, an EU country, which sucks for this kind of thing but it is what it is. Coinpayments still works great. Maybe Bitpay too but I haven't used it recently.

[Saint-loup]

I'm not a European nor do I live there.

They are based in Lithuania, an EU country, which sucks for this kind of thing but it is what it is. Coinpayments still works great. Maybe Bitpay too but I haven't used it recently.

Now it's going to be a chance to not be an European citizen for crypto and cypher users. It seems USA are gladly taking the exact opposite direction of EU(SSR), by stop prosecuting and almost prohibiting to do it, exchanges, wallet and mixing services. So it's going to be very difficult for european companies to work with american ones using cryptocurrencies, because the rules they have to follow seem to be antinomic now.

I'm leaving this here.

https://www.justice.gov/dag/media/1395781/dl?inline

-snip-

Executive Order 14178 tasks the Justice Department and others with "protecting and promoting" (1) "the ability of individual citizens and private-sector entities alike to access and use for lawful purposes open public blockchain networks without persecution"; and (2) "fair and open access to banking services for all law-abiding individual citizens and private-sector entities alike." In response to those taskings, the Justice Department will stop participating in regulation by prosecution in this space. Specifically, the Department will no longer target virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and offline wallets for the acts of their end users or unwitting violations of regulations-except to the extent the investigation is consistent with the priorities articulated in the following paragraphs.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

You left out page 2 of that - the 'except in cases of' bit...

The policy outlined in Executive Order 14178 requires the Justice Department to prioritize
investigations and prosecutions that involve conduct victimizing investors, including
embezzlement and misappropriation of customers' funds on exchanges, digital asset investment
scams, fake digital asset development projects such as rug pulls, hacking of exchanges and
decentralized autonomous organizations resulting in the theft of funds, and exploiting
vulnerabilities in smart contracts. Such enforcement actions are important to restoring stolen funds
to customers, building investor confidence in the security of digital asset markets, and the growth
ofthe digital asset industry.
Pursuant to the "total elimination" policy set forth in Executive Order 14157, entitled
Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially
Designated Global Terrorists, the Justice Department will also prioritize cases involving use of
digital assets in furtherance of unlawful conduct by cartels, Transnational Criminal Organizations,
Foreign Tenorist Organizations, and Specially Designated Global Terrorists. For example, cartels
and human trafficking and smuggling rings have increasingly turned to digital assets to fund their
operations and launder the proceeds of their illicit businesses. The same is true of fentanyl
production: increasingly dangerous precursors purchased from China and used in the production
of fentany1in Central and South America are often paid for using digital assets. Terrorist groups,
such as Hamas and ISIS, and nation states subject to US sanctions, like North Korea, also continue
to transact using digital assets in an attempt to conceal their financing from law enforcement. As
part ofthe Justice Department's ongoing work against fentanyl trafficking, terrorism, cartels, and
human trafficking and smuggling, the Department will pursue the illicit financing of these
enterprises by the individuals and enterprises themselves, including when it involves digital assets,
but will not pursue actions against the platforms that these enterprises utilize to conduct their illegal
activities.

So the mixers et al are NOT entirely off the hook. In return for that Get Out of Jail Free card I bet many will be happy to provide the needed tracking information (to whatever extent they can) in the above cases.

[Saint-loup]

That's a very personal interpretation of this text IMO. And I'm a bit surprised you didn't post it in the quoted thread despite meriting Theymos' statement or you didn't open a new topic to defend this point of view, at least. Personally I think the most important part of this quote is the last sentence. In addition you should notice the title of this memorandum intended for all DOJ employees is "Ending regulation by prosecution". So for me, it is what it is, they've decided to stop prosecution until more specific regulations on the matter come into force, if it ever happens .

As part ofthe Justice Department's ongoing work against fentanyl trafficking, terrorism, cartels, and
human trafficking and smuggling, the Department will pursue the illicit financing of these
enterprises by the individuals and enterprises themselves, including when it involves digital assets,
but will not pursue actions against the platforms that these enterprises utilize to conduct their illegal
activities.

[Free Market Capitalist]

I'm with Saint-loup on this. The direction the Trump administration is taking is the complete opposite of the European one. The European one consists of regulating beforehand, controlling, prohibiting (as happens with USDT), while Trump's gives freedom and only pursues the crime a posteriori, plus it focuses on the offender and not on the means, because focusing on the means is like pursuing the knife maker because there are stabbings.

[hugeblack]

So the mixers et al are NOT entirely off the hook. In return for that Get Out of Jail Free card I bet many will be happy to provide the needed tracking information (to whatever extent they can) in the above cases.

This quote can be understood as governments beginning to understand the nature of cryptocurrencies, but in any case, I don't think the majority of new cryptocurrency users care about privacy.

In short, they focus their efforts on cartels, considering this technology users less vulnerable to dark activities.

[pawel7777]

There's a lot of noise out there and it's not easy to find a reliable source with the actual legislation.
Have the EU even published the DAC8 directive in one, comprehensive document? Is this it?:
https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-10215-2023-INIT/en/pdf (I found this link in some PWC publication but it's from 2023 so it could be outdated).

Nevertheless, the EU tightening the screw on any remaining privacy is not a surprise to anyone. Restrictions and overregulations is all they have to offer.

[Money Bunny]

EU coming in hard now. They’re basically trying to kill off privacy in crypto — banning mixers, targeting Monero and Zcash, and forcing DeFi to act like banks with full KYC. This goes completely against what the space was built for. Looks like they’re trying to fence off innovation instead of embracing it. It’ll push real crypto development further underground or offshore. Let’s see how the market reacts.

[goldkingcoiner]

Mandotary KYC for Defi platforms? LOL that's a joke?

Unfortunately, not. What do you expect? They are pushing CBDCs, they are trying to put fear into people with the survival kit to spend a lot on armaments that people are going to pay for through inflation and worse public services, they are pushing digital identity for total control worthy of 1984, that they want to control everything that is done in the DEX is just a logical consequence of the totalitarian state we are heading towards.

You want to know what I think?

They do not actually believe they will be able to implement many of these new regulations on truly decentralised services. What they are really doing is testing the waters on how far they can succeed with tightening and enforcing regulations on decentralised money before they start forcing CBDCs on everyone. DeFi can fork, use privacy tools, or migrate to non-EU jurisdictions. No problem. So this is likely more about setting an infrastructure for CBDCs rather than actually regulating Defi.

Fear only works in the short term. They want to find long term ways of keeping everyone in a decentralised future under control. I am not worried about these new measures but I am sceptical of what they actually mean.

[landstrykere]

EU has always been leaning towards totalitarianism, but in the recent years things have really gone downhill. Frankly I don't care about China, Russia or any other other totalitarian states. Too bad EU takes example from them.

However I think that blocking Tor and VPN are not their main objectives. Most likely they will just remove physical cash (in fact they are already phasing it out), thus removing all crypto on/off ramps they don't control. Once the cash is gone the totalitarian state will be complete and we will be living in the Fourth Reich.

Worse than that. The project is to link digital identity to the use of CBDCs, so politicians will have all your information at the click of a button.

Some retards say that it's all the same, that nowadays when you use a cell phone you no longer have privacy. What they do not understand is that it is not the same that a company has my data and that to access them a judicial authorization is required, than a politician can access everything in an instant if he wants. Apart from the problem of hacks. Having medical data, employment, studies, economic behavior and behavior in general in the same centralized database is going to be a very juicy booty for hackers.

I have been since long registered on this forum as a reader. Now I have to say that with the new EU law that is acted now since 01.07.25, what we can expect is sometime the ban of self-custody wallets. By now, there is a question about the kind of wallet: self-custody or hoster and if so which one. I bet it is a transitional step in order to accustom users to a level of fencing, then 2d step will feel less repressive.

So it is exactly what you tell about encapsulating users digitally 100%. Basically if BTC is not centralized by state banks,  the other way for EU regime is to centralize the users... At the same time, exchangers/traders get swallowed inside the financial state controlled grid. Money and people digitalized and tracked real time, where it comes from, where it goes to, what they do, what they write, what they think.

I live in Norway and sometime I use a local highly controlled trading platform, Firi, because it is a simple way to convert BTC to NOK and get wired to bank account.
Yesterday evening I connected in order to send some BTC to my account there. There was the warning about additional checks, it says we will have to tell what is the source of the BTC:

https://i.imgur.com/XIi4iC0.jpeg

 I sent some BTC from a wallet of mine friday evening, and the status by now early sunday is on "incoming":

https://i.imgur.com/lCdggeJ.jpeg

you will laugh: it is stuck in "incoming" long after transaction was tens of times confirmed, because we are ... week-end. Here in Norway even bank computers don't work week-end. Ie. if you do a payment online in your bank, after friday 15:00 it doesn't arrive to recipient until monday from 05:00.
In the case of Firi, then, you can't wire ie. withdraw from your wallet to your bank week-ends. And now since 01.07, when you send BTC to your bitcoin address there, it is also stuck until monday, then operators will check, ask questions and what not.   If exchange rates goes down significantly in the week-end ... Before 01.07, you could put BTC in your wallet and do a "sale" to NOK, so you had your money credited a bit after BTC incoming was confirmed. Now the BTC are also in week-end limbo until what will be the exchange rate of monday morning. Silly.

Anyway, back to the "Matrix" build by EU.
The way to escape it requires to travel,, so to have a bank profile outside EU, which means in fact outside the whole "West". Once you have this, you can use hops across digital systems. There are still countries where cash is required. Inside EU, cash is either almost banned or strongly limited (few ATMs, capping + questions, at bank's discretion), but outside EU, say some of Asia, Africa, some South America, you will need cash, so VISA cards can be used to get cash. EU politburo has still some level of digital repression, and these days the whole West is criminally hysterical, it is going to be very grim.
Last year there was a massive USA-EU combined attack that also criminalized developers, the case of Samourai for instance, and the ban of VISA/Mastercard/SWIFT/SEPA for buying Monero.

[zasad@]

https://decrypt.co/330410/eu-anti-money-laundering-warns-crypto-firms

EU Anti-Money Laundering Authority Warns Crypto Firms of New Regulations
The chair of the EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) noted the ‘fragmented’ EU crypto markets, and the risk of the ‘diverging application’ of rules.

"EU's new Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) issues warning to crypto exchanges and service providers about stricter compliance requirements starting this month.
Regulators must now assess beneficial owners and shareholders of crypto companies to ensure they're not involved in money laundering or terrorist financing.
New AML rules prohibit anonymous wallets and privacy coins, requiring crypto firms to provide direct government access to account data by July 2027."

[Free Market Capitalist]

New AML rules prohibit anonymous wallets and privacy coins, requiring crypto firms to provide direct government access to account data by July 2027."

With how badly the EU's elephantine bureaucracy works, with a bit of luck this will be delayed for another year or two.The bad thing is that I don't see a possible political change that could reverse this. The only possibility would be that they would make fools of themselves compared to what the USA is doing and they would have to think again.