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Good input.
It's never wrong to fight crime. But something that's a crime somewhere might not be a crime somewhere else, and somebody needs to decide who's a criminal, and that somebody has the power.
Introducing any kind of confiscation into the bitcoin protocol, no matter how 'well meant' it is, is plain wrong.
Bitcoin can be used to buy anything anyone is willing to sell for bitcoins. Crime in this world is not new. It has flourished and the black markets of this world is huge. And most of the trades are done with traditional money.
Bitcoin is not what needs to be attacked, what needs to be attacked or changed is the fabric of society. And Bitcoin can contribute to that cause, but not if it becomes corrupted.
For instance, there's been
asset confiscations now, in the crisis that takes place in Ukraine, some Russian officials have had their assets frozen by the USG. Afaik, the USG kills innocent people with drone attacks very frequently. How many americans have had their assets frozen because of this?
Who is to decide who's committing a crime, and who's money is to be frozen?
While Hearn might be a young man, a product of his environment, and not realizing what he's actually proposing, what he's proposing is the opposite of what Satoshi's orginal intentions were, Hearn need to learn this.
If we wanted to, we could introduce hammers that were dismantled until the user put his thumb on a finger print scanning device, and locked the hammer head into place. Unless the user was registered in the 'allowed hammer users' database, the hammer would not be usable, the shaft and the head would be disconnected. I can see many arguments for such a decision: Thiefs uses hammers to break into houses. Some people kill other people with a hammer. Some kill animals with the hammer. You could tear down your neighborhood fence if you didn't like it, with your hammer.
After all, to prevent crime, all hammers would need to be used only by registered users, and all usage would be recorded, and the same with all other tools and services that could be used for any crime. Ideally we would need to have a drone following every human around the clock to ensure they're not up to anything bad.
The point is that most tools are neutral, and it is the user that decide what it's used for, not the tool itself. Bitcoin is not evil by nature, even though some people will use it for evil purposes, just like they would use oil, gold, USD etc. for the same purpose.
Laws and regulations are essentially a product of what politicians running a country decides upon, often heavily influenced by industry groups and other parties that corrupt the ruling politicians.
Bitcoin is supposed to be something new, something fresh. And it's even more traceable than cash.
If you withdraw 5K USD from your account, and you pay a carpenter that money, he will most likely use it for grocery purchases, and to pay off other service men, in fact that money is quickly spread, and there's no trail of where it went. The trail ends at the ATM when the customer of the carpenter withdrew the money.
If you deposit money to an exchange, you most likely need to be indentified to exchange it for bitcoins. The exchange knows your identity, and so does the bank from where you sent the money to the exchange. And the exchange keeps a record of your transactions on the block chain, essentially forming a link between the money transfer and the blockchain. Any law enforcement can follow that trail. So if the user uses those bitcoins for anything nefarious, it could be traced back to him by an agency having enough resources.
Yet, many scream that Bitcoin is the ideal tool for crime, just like the Internet was the ideal tool for crime in its infancy. It would only be used for pedophiles and criminals. And those people do use, it but so do billions of people who're not doing any crimes.
Look how the Internet has transformed the world, and how global trade has become, and how important the Internet is for international business. What makes you think it will be anything different with bitcoin? No need to sign up for an account and give all your ID papers to a third party. You download a piece of software, and that's it. You can then send you money to anyone in the world with an internet connection.
You can work with a web designer in indonesia, a programmer in romania and pay them in btc, your webpage can sell a service or items that can be bought from all over the world, be it physical or digital. The bitcoins your receive from the customers can again be used in real world shops and online stores to buy items you need in your daily day, such as groceries and more.
It's something entirely new when it comes to payments online. Forget about all the old systems with draconical rules. If you want to send 1K USD worth of BTC to someone in your family anywhere in the world, how's that the business of anyone but yourself and your family? Forget about waiting a week to have your wire processes from Ireland to New Zealand , a week - you got to be kidding me! Or if your name is something like the name of someone on a watch list, the transfer might even be stopped pending investigation. The government don't care - the bank don't care - but you fucking care - because that money is supposed to be used for your kid attending university on an exchange program! It's your money and you should be allowed to use it exactly as you see fit, nobody has a business meddling with your monetary transactions.
See what the Internet has done, and imagine what a free flow of monetary transactions can do to the world. Imagine all the time spent earlier for travelling to a bank, waiting in a que, having your papers delivered, signing papers, and then waiting for a week or so to get your debit or credit-card, and then to add insult to the story, you have to wait for days when making an international transfer, and it even has to be reported to your government.
Bitcoin cuts through all that crap and is really usable. Download a program, and you're set to go. Of course there might be issues in terms of mass adoption currently, but it's the start of something great, and it has already grown a lot, and it is started to be taken seriously by many companies and governments.
Start meddling with this freedom, and we're soon back to square one.
You don't need to be a criminal to be concerned about facts like these:
- International transfers are often delayed and subject to excessive fees.
- Your account can be closed at will by the bank if they for whatever reason don't think you fit their ideal customer profile.
- The ability to withdraw cash is often limited, and you need to post note in advance and the amount you can withdraw in one go is sometimes limited.
- The government, if they judge you to be a criminal, they can simply instruct the bank to freeze all your assets.
- The government, if entering a special difficult financial position, could simply confiscate a certain amount of your funds or everything. It's not safe. Look at Cyprus. Believe it can't happen again?
Remember:
Give me control of a nations money supply, and I care not who makes it’s laws.
So, in my opinion let the services and exchanges take care of AML/KYC and leave the bitcoin protocol alone. If there eventually is a fact that bitcoin becomes uscoin, then a lot of people will start using other altcoins.
