European Commission Targets 'Bitcoin Anonymity' For Regulation

[Lucian Armasu]

The European Commission proposed an "action plan" that targets prepaid cards and "Bitcoin anonymity" with new regulation that would force users to reveal their identities before converting Bitcoin into real currencies.

European Commission Targets 'Bitcoin Anonymity' For Regulation : Read more

 

[firefoxx04]

Good luck with that

 

[totedati]

Well online tracking and surveillance is not hard if you really want to do that! But is time to remember the hard and unpleasant fact that in all terrorist attacks the perpetrators was already under intelligence surveillance, on short list of suspects to watch, so with bitcoin or cash payments or not that do not make any difference about the final result and dead body count. The real issue is the rule of law who state that if you intent but do not act you are not guilty of anything and the old logical problem of proving that a liar lies or tells the truth which is an unsolvable problem if you stick to the scientific method.

 

[Robert Cook]

The whole point of bitcoin is that there is no government regulation. If something is popular because it is unregulated, regulating it will simply prompt bytecoin to become a thing. I wonder how much of these inept law attempts are grounded on the fact that most of these politicians do not really understand the way the internet works? They seem to love proposing blanket bans that are either completely ineffective, utterly ridiculous, or next to impossible to carry out. The sad part is, it seems they simply do not know any better.

 

[totedati]

Sincerely i really doubt that they are inept and incompetents about how internet work. Even bitcoin technology. And i really worry that they have an hidden agenda, that they try hard to put back the genie in the lamp, and that they will not stop until will succeed.

I live in a young democracy ant in the past i was really naive about issues like this but now i think what we need to worry is the hard fact that the good intentions, unintentional wrongdoings and sincere care about "we, the people" is a rara avis in all real politics, in all countries and the proved fact that good intentions is not the same thing as intelligence and a rich, genuine and proved professional career. Very bad persons who can do very bad things can be intelligent, competent, rich and with a brilliant professional career.

 

[Robert Cook]

Sincerely i really doubt that they are inept and incompetents about how internet work. Even bitcoin technology. And i really worry that they have an hidden agenda, that they try hard to put back the genie in the lamp, and that they will not stop until will succeed.

I live in a young democracy ant in the past i was really naive about issues like this but now i think what we need to worry is the hard fact that the good intentions, unintentional wrongdoings and sincere care about "we, the people" is a rara avis in all real politics, in all countries and the proved fact that good intentions is not the same thing as intelligence and a rich, genuine and proved professional career. Very bad persons who can do very bad things can be intelligent, competent, rich and with a brilliant professional career.

A valid point, they can be very wise and they can be working for their own means or someones else's, but with the stuff they propose, like banning encryption, you have to scratch you head an wonder where they got the idea that such an idea would work.

 

[milkton]

What a jike, do they realy dont know how terrorists get financed?

 

[jasonkaler]

I bet all terrorist organizations will immediately follow this proposed law, rather than just selling their bitcoins on the black market.

 

[JonDol]

The whole point of bitcoin is that there is no government regulation. If something is popular because it is unregulated, regulating it will simply prompt bytecoin to become a thing. I wonder how much of these inept law attempts are grounded on the fact that most of these politicians do not really understand the way the internet works? They seem to love proposing blanket bans that are either completely ineffective, utterly ridiculous, or next to impossible to carry out. The sad part is, it seems they simply do not know any better.

Actually not being regulated is the only problem here and they are grasping on the anti-terrorism stuff to justify its surveillance. With the Swiss banks' secrecy dissapearing more and more ppls started to think to the virtual money as a mean to avoid taxes

 

[dextermat]

too little too late

 

[g00ey]

The thing is that those Islamic terrorists were funded by a small clique who owns and controls the banking system. That same clique also owns the security so when a large transaction is done to these cells they can make the security turn a blind eye on those transactions. Arguments as to why these transactions should be let through could be that they are for national security reasons or for supporting diversity or whatever thinkable reasons that could be given for ignoring such transactions. That's how ISIS in the middle-east has been funded, these are not claims from my side but there are UN documents, official statements from various sources among other things to back this up.

The term "terrorist" is actually a very vague term. It is very convenient to call someone with the "wrong" opinions "terrorist" and use violent force against this so called "terrorist". This happens a lot in the Ukraine and the Poroshenko regime, they arbitrarily call someone's grandma a "Russian terrorist" and then drops a bomb in her living quarters. There are hours of footage available to back this up.

The purpose of these anonymous services is not to stop terrorism but to prevent spontaneous political oppositions among the people to get a foothold on affected countries, particularly in Europe. The thing is that as soon as you as an individual or as a group start working against the government, you will automatically be labeled a "terrorist" even during circumstances where the government has gone rogue and is working against its people or even trying to eradicate them, either through violence or through enforced mass immigration of strangers.

It may sound alien to someone who has grown up in the safety of a western welfare society that such a thing could happen in the Western world, or the Occident if you will. But it doesn't take much reading about the Bolshevik controlled communist Russia and its Gulags or the Ukraine and the Holodomor to realize that a similar thing is very possible to happen in the western world as well. Or even today as one should not forget that the Holodomor and the Communist Russia didn't happen that long ago.

 

[bit_user]

The thing is that those Islamic terrorists were funded by a small clique who owns and controls the banking system.

Um... what's your source on that?

 

[bit_user]

The NSA loves bitcoin. They barely have to lift a finger to get a record of all bitcoin transactions, ever. Perfect. IMO, that's probably the main reason the US didn't ban it.

Such legislation as this article describes will make it harder to move in/out of Europe, but little else. It's not surprising they want it, though. The only thing bitcoin is really good for is moving money around.

Anyway, bitcoin is doomed to remain niche. If you haven't already, read The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment. It's ironic that libertarian fanaticism (and a bit of boneheadedness) is what ultimately lead to its downfall.

As a former investor in bitcoin, I had already sold all of mine. I don't plan on getting back in, unless common sense somehow prevails (but it's not clear how that would happen, at this point). Maybe other virtual currencies, though...

 

[bit_user]

I bet all terrorist organizations will immediately follow this proposed law, rather than just selling their bitcoins on the black market.

The law is really about the financial institutions, so it's not up to the individual to decide whether to comply.

And the way bitcoin transfers work is by posting the transaction to the blockchain, which everyone can see. It's like a public ledger of all bitcoin transactions, if you didn't know. Your way of confirming someone gave you bitcoin is by checking the blockchain and seeing whether that amount was sent from their address to yours.

So, there's really no such thing as a black market transaction, because there's no such thing as "under the table". That's why I said "the NSA loves bitcoin", in my previous post.