It is not surprising that these entities oppose the proposed NY regulations, although I doubt they really understand the actual regulations. The proposed regulations would not require companies to identify customers unless they are giving fiat to customers in exchange for their bitcoin or giving customers bitcoin in exchange for their fiat (in other words exchanges).
I don't think the proposed changes are perfect however they are a step in the right direction in order to prevent scams in the exchange "world"
Is AML/KYC really necessary to avoid scams.
What about the following method. If you want to trade on an exchange, you first have to register. Then you need to verify your account.
Verification could be done by personal visit to the exchanges office. Show ID, and a trusted person with the exchange OK's you in the system. You're immediately approved.
2nd method:
To link your bank account, the exchange first needs to send you a very small wire transaction. The exact amount received will then be submitted in the verification panel at the exchange by the user. After this has been done, the user still needs to wait 7 business day before it's possible to either withdraw fiat or bitcoins. This ensures that the user has access to the bank account in question, and the 7 day delay would scare a scammer, because they're usually in an extreme hurry.
Storing ID documents with a 3rd party, usually it should not be a problem, however it is a security risk, and identity theft could occur.
The methods above would probably not satisfy current AML/KYC laws, however - do these laws really work? Another possibility would be to slowly increasing the limit of any user, so as to exhaust and annoy scammers so much that they give up, as we all know - the longer a scam goes on - the larger the chance is that it will be detected. If some innocent user is scammed of 100 EUR, it's bad, but it's a lot worse to be scammed 1000 EUR.
I don't quite get the point of AML/KYC in the regard that it should stop crime. Would not dedicated criminals be able to acquire fake ID's?
Also, when dealing with money, why should there be one or more entities peeking into your transactions? Why should there be entities scanning your transactions for suspicious words, and then halting it for 'investigation'? To stop terrorists, drug cartels and money laundering? It seems like that current financial enterprises are quite capable of supporting such customers, all on their own, despite all the wrenches the financial services put in the tires of their customers. To me it seems like that the only ones losing out are customers, which gets a worse customer experience, and businesses who needs to do a lot of manual work to comply with the rules. Those who are determined to break the law, will find a way anyway.
Again and again, we see how centralized services, like banks, health care institutions etc. gets compromised, and credit card details, patient records and other personal data goes out into the wild. Which conclusion could we draw from this? Perhaps that it is a very bad practice to store detailed personal information on centralized systems?
As long as we're looking at centralized solutions, perhaps the best solution in terms of identity checking is to have one governmental institution running a very high security infra structure, having a database of signatures. Each citizen can acquire a hardware token from his local police station or similar, and every time the user needs to identify himself online, the service he wants to use will contact the central database and check if the signature given is a valid one. To prevent misuse in the event the signature should be lost, there could be some sort of cryptoalgorithm involved, such that a compromise of the hardware token itself would not lead to identity theft.
Currently governmental issued ID's are the only document telling a business that you are in fact you. By extension, these companies trust the government not to do wrong. If there was a system whereby the business did not check scanned papers submitted to them, but rather just checked a code generated and sent to them, which they then verify with the central register, the possibility of identity fraud resulting from a breach of the service would be largely avoided. This would make life much easier both for customers and businesses.
Of course, some decentralized system would be better, not depending on a centralized database, but there's nothing preventing a government from utilizing blockchain technology to do much the same. Perhaps some visionaries and cryptonerds should move to some remote small African country and make the most efficient government ever seen.
Also, it's quite ridiculous that many actions you need to do with a bank requires your personal presence presenting ID-cards. It should not be necessary to present ID to a bank more than once. At that point you get a hardware token, much like I described earlier, and you're submitted to this ID-system, which could be centralised (not optimal solution), or built on blockchain technology.
In my personal opinion, AML/KYC requirements slows down business, and is more of an annoyance than anything else. And as for money laundering and the black economy.. Who defined that the black economy is black? And why using the word 'black'? This is what the government has decided, not the people. As citizens, we're forced into this system whether we like it or not.
If I came to your house and claimed that from now on, I would take 10% tax on all transactions that you did, would you not be outraged? How dare I. I would do nothing of value to deserve such payments, but I would have thugs that would be dispatched to your house unless you obeyed. Usually we call that extortion, and it's usually done by mafia. It's called protection money. The state claims that you need to pay, so hospitals, schools, roads etc can be paid for, yet too much money is wasted in very inefficient systems. Naturally, if you got 10K USD from very hard work, you'd spend the money with great care, whereas if you got it for free, by someone by chance, you'd be much more inclined to blow it away. Easy come, easy go. In essence that's what it's like to work in the government. If you spend too much money, no big deal - there's always more. Perhaps not in all countries, but in many countries it's like that.
The bureaucrat that overspends a million dollars on poor project planning, would he'd done the same on his own property, or would he've been more careful with the money then? Having too much money and little responsibility leads to waste.
On the other side, in a community, I'm sure that the local population would raise to the challenge when challenged. If they want a local hospital, they need to run it and fund it themselves. Want to travel between two cities, then pay for the service that you use. Overpaying, as the population does all the time, there's no point to it.
Also, by default, we're natural creatures, we're born on this earth and we shall die on this earth. There's no natural logic to the fact that we must be slaves to any kind of overlords the short time we're here on earth. I'm am sure the government would tax animals if they could, but they can't. I know some US states have licenses for various dogs. For instance, some places you need to pay a license for every dog you have. I never saw a bird pay taxes, and I never saw a bear pay taxes. Yet, these creatures cross national borders every day of the week, without anyone hassling them.
Governments are very creative, and always find new ways of adding taxes, and they're also deep in bed with large corporations and banks. Some places, you cannot set up solar panels on your own house, because the power industry has lobbied the government to disallow this, and I've heard stories where you are not allowed to collect rain water. Not sure if it was a joke or not, but I think Portugal proposed a tax on sunshine, but it was dismissed.
The government can basically set any rules they want, and a government mostly exist to sustain itself, not to create a better nation. If the government wanted to create a better nation, they would have slimmed down their organization drastically, and improved their service a lot and introduced real consequences for bureaucrats that does not do their job well. Today many government employees can do literally what the fuck they want without any real consequences, they can harass, jail and destroy the lives of single individuals without any consequences.
Big data mass surveillance and analysis, like the NSA is doing is really going to bite the USG in the ass. The US IT industry is already seeing the consequences of this, and losses are massive, and that's perhaps the only thing that will have the USG listening?
Governments should serve the people, not the other way around. Today, in most countries, the ordinary man is a slave of the state. I'm not extremely familiar with banks and loans, but afaik, banks might have 10% of the amount you're lending, and then they issue a 100% loan to you, which is backed by debt, by your promise to pay them back, by working your ass off, i a job you might not even like particularly much, and it might take you 20-30 years if not more to pay your mortgage.
And then you have some people that says: I will have this no more, and they go into the woods, cut down trees and build their own houses, but that yet again is a problem, because the buildings are not adhering to state building codes. In my view, if those souls are happy with their 'substandard' housing, they should be left alone.
It's very hard today to avoid governmental interference, but I cannot understand anything else than the fact that if someone charges me 10-20% additionally for something that I purchase, be it good or service, that extra charge is payment out of nothing. Ok, if I use the railway, or the road, I accept that a certain percentage has to be paid to whoever is maintaining that infrastructure, but if I go to a restaurant and eat a pizza, why should anyone else but me and the restaurant be involved in that transaction.
If anyone else came and claimed that you had to pay an extra 15% for your food, in return for virtually nothing, you would be outraged and claim it was theft. But since it's the government doing it, it's widely accepted, since it's 'the law'. But what's the law in reality? The law is whatever those in charge at the moment decide is the law.
The law is used to make us into slaves. We're not bound by iron-chains, but the chains are still there, but not visible.
What would happen if tomorrow, everybody in your entire country said that they would take it no more. No more taxes, VAT or whatever you call it would be paid until the government cleaned up its act, minimized spending, had a very minimal bureaucratic overhead, and realized that its role is that of a servant for the public, and not as their suppressor.
I read something interesting, before the fall of Rome, soldiers used to steal money from citizens to get their wages. These days it's quite common for US police to stop cars on the highroads and confiscate cash, because it must, after all come from narcotics trade. Then they take the cash and inject it into their own budget. How long until somebody makes a stealth drone that will follow a car, keeping cash out of sight for any police office, or just frankly delivery of cash by drone. How is the police going to stop that? With police drones?
Other interesting cases of creative tax is countries where using your own abilities is considered 'skilled work', so for example if you build your own cabin and you're a craftsman of trade, this is taxable. Let's say you are low on budget, and that you paid 30K USD for the materials, and after that you're essentially broke. Then you spend a lot of time making the cabin, and then a couple of weeks later, you get a surprise inspection for the local government, and they present you with a 10K USD bill. For what? For using skilled work to gain an 'advantage'.
Or what about somebody that inherits a building, and then there's inheritance tax, meaning that to pay this tax, the entire building must be sold. Never mentioning the fact that the money used to set up the building and pay down the loan in the first place already is heavily taxed, so the government is virtually grabbing everything they can from the citizens, to keep them submissive.
Or what about entrepreneurs that have start ups that's very high valued. These values are not real, and they know it, but still the taxman wants his. Until that valuation is realized, not taxes should ever be considered! It had killed many companies, and some people have even committed suicide over it.
We nerds should just be happy that it's not easy to see what we're doing, as we're just sitting at our computers. Imagine if your local govt. could see all the code that you made, that benefits you, and that's considered skilled work, and thus taxable.
And the worst imaginable thing, is that there actually exist people who defend all of these things. I'm sure that the very same people would accept to be anally probed on airports, if that was a security measure introduced by the govt.
What's interesting is to see how far the development will go in the coming years. Will we eventually have to fly in our underwear, wrapped in plastic and handcuffed, just to be on the safe side? The point is that the personal rights are slowly being eroded, until there's none left at all.
The fact that if you're considered a threat to national security in the US, you could be detained indefinitely, is extremely scary. In reality I guess most cases are solved after less or more hassle for the individual involved, but there's nothing preventing the USG from throwing your ass into some camp if you've annoyed the wrong person. Of course that will never officially be announced.
Yeah, and please - if you think my logic is flawed, let me know what's wrong with it. Some people never questions authority. Is authority always right, even when they're wrong?
