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This hasn't been the best week for WikiLeaks, to put it mildly. Coinbase has shut off the WikiLeaks Shop's account for allegedly violating the cryptocurrency exchange's terms of service. In other words, the leak site just lost its existing means of converting payments like bitcoin into conventional money. While Coinbase didn't give a specific reason (it declines to comment on specific accounts), it pointed to its legal requirement to honor "regulatory compliance mechanisms" under the US' Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
This doesn't prevent WikiLeaks from accepting cryptocurrency, but it will have to scramble to find an alternative if it wants to continue taking digital money from customers buying shirts and coffee cups. Unsurprisingly, the organization is less than thrilled -- it's calling for a "global blockade" of Coinbase, claiming that the exchange is reacting to a "concealed influence."
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/21/wikileaks-loses-coinbase-account/
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday April 23 2018, @06:12PM (12 children)
First of all, I'm in the USA.... that may matter.
Yeah. I get it. You can push Bitcoins all over the place with just web wallets or other third party softwares to handle your transaction details to the Bitcoin network. (You can't just open a telnet session and send "Hey, here's X bitcoins I want to move them!" If you figure a way to do that without a third party software brokering it for you, post the details, please.) Or you can just say "here's my public and private key.... you can transfer my coins away to your own account." Equivalently I can send you a paper wallet with Bitcoins in it and you have control of it and no third party must be involved. Of course I get that.
What you can't do is make them Dollars, or Euros, or Rubles. That requires someone to settle your account for an exchange. And ANY entity of size that will handle exchanges of size is either Regulated, or it is Criminal. Every one.
"But wait! I can! Just go to messageboard_blah_blah_blah and they'll send me $ or EUR for my Bitcoin! So there!"
Aside that you're then engaging in blind trust of that other party (or they are trusting you.... somebody has to drop the money first), if you don't think FINCEN are all over any transaction of significance.... well... good luck to you. And they do prosecute hell out of people acting as exchangers without having registered with them. (For example here [moneylaunderingwatchblog.com].)
You can move all the Bitcoin you want to other Bitcoin without a Government being involved. But what do you DO with it? Yes, you can buy stuff on Overstock. Or Microsoft. Can you pay your datacenter costs to Amazon? Or your electric bill? Or eat it? Or pay your employees in it? You know, the stuff that say a major organization might need to use it for. No, you need a converter for that. (And the big boys who are accepting Bitcoin.... are using converters as well like Coinbase or BitPay. They don't have time to screw with accumulating your details. Those big converters, as WikiLeaks just found out, are indeed subject to FINCeN regulation.)
By the way.... all those major players who are taking Bitcoin.... how did they get there? Oh. Just as above, the big players of the conversion world sold them on the idea of taking it. You know, the ones who HAVE to make nice with the Governments and make sure that Microsoft or Expedia or Overstock aren't being used for money laundering. They gave them sweetheart deals on fees (usually zero for a certain amount or time).
Yep. You can have endless amounts circling the universe in Bitcoin. But whenever you want to do something meaningful with it.... That Government will be there, watching and ready to slap the cuffs on. As Wikileaks just found out.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @08:06PM (5 children)
The problem is interfacing with the old system, not Bitcoin.
Then, you introduce a straw man; nobody said that Bitcoin is currently a good replacement for the entirety of the old system. However, that doesn't stop the world from moving away from the old system towards Bitcoin, slowly but surely, inexorably, as a way to avoid the Tyranny of an absolutely-controlled, monopolistic, governmental currency.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @08:59PM (1 child)
"the AC"? You are that AC.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @09:57PM
No. YOU are that AC.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday April 23 2018, @11:51PM (2 children)
No, the problem is that the old system is the one with the people with guns and the power to put you in gaol insist that all currency shalt be used in the approved manner, and if the new system hopes to survive it shalt pay homage to the people with the guns and the power to put you in gaol. Which includes Bitcoin, which when it crosses for conversion in the USA meets FINCEN. And you don't fix that problem, if a problem it is, with technology.
And my "straw man" is the point of the argument. Tyranical or not you must lay your head down somewhere. In that place is an authority who says what you shall and shalt not use for currency, and if you want to use something else they shall control how you are allowed to use it. You might not like that, but that is reality. That might change some day, but until it does you will reckon with the people with the guns and the power to put you in jail. One way or another. (Or you might become them, and learn why the old system is the way it is and why you will fight the new system - aka what happened to most of the hippies from the 60s.)
In terms of Wikileaks: It doesn't want Bitcoin, though it will accept it - especially if it gets donations that it would not have otherwise. But it, along with any sane money-taking entity, wants a currency with which it can negotiate for the services for which it needs. (Or that can be invested for the prospect of obtaining even further negotiable currency later.) Which is not Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency, sorry to burst your bubble. It is now just trying to ride a sentiment wave since their bubble of easy-conversion was burst by backroom strongarm pressure of the US Government.
As was pointed out: If all it wanted was Bitcoin all it would have to do is establish a paper wallet public address and say, "Hey! Send them here!" It wouldn't need a processor and the blockchain would just record all those transactions to that offline wallet address. Oh, but it can't do that! Because it needs that money in actual usable currency. So it needs a converter, and it makes far more sense to let that converter take the transactions than have to pay conversion fees from a paper wallet (which would still require a converter). So it calls out, "Meanie!" in the hopes that it can again find a source that will convert without falling awry of currency transaction law.
At any rate, before one processes transactions of scale, one will come to terms with the people who have the guns and the power to jail you for disobedience.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @12:23AM (1 child)
All those with entrepreneurial spirit and a respect for the rights of the individual (especially in the face of authoritarian Tyrannies) left your country long ago for the United States.
The world was never moved forward by men of your ilk.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday April 24 2018, @05:12PM
Lol. Nice troll attempt. It would work better if you knew anything about me, but you don't.
Advancement never comes without cooperation. Cooperation never comes without structure. Structure never changes without adjustments, and those adjustments never occur unilaterally without disruption of some sort. And disruption isn't always good. It isn't always bad, either. But the system already exists and thus there is a built-in conservancy against disruption - disruption must prove itself.
You can have independence and change and growth and entrepreneurship. But not without realistic recognition of the way power currently is. Those who try to change it unilaterally usually find differently when the power structure exercises that power. And the world gets more crowded every year - the places in which a person can set off and establish their own independent power without bumping someone else's nose are shrinking.
So, since you have all the answers: How do you stop money laundering and the financing of terrorism in the cryptocurrency environment without proceeding as the governments have done to place the strictures they have? I await your response and predict some form of anarchy as a reply.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 23 2018, @08:15PM
Anecdotally, I work in the US for a large multi-national corporation - 30% of our employees and 40% of our sales are outside the US. When I wanted to contract with a vendor for something priced at 25K Euros, it was a major act to get purchasing to process the PO - anxiety over shifting exchange rates, ignorance of how to make the PO pay in Euros, etc. Our systems are all in-place to handle these things, but the locals here just aren't familiar or comfortable with the process.
So, you can imagine trying to do something new like accepting bitcoin. I think it might have a chance at high volume, high margin places like Starbucks - they may lose or gain on the volatility between accepting payment and cashing out, but it should even out in the end, and even if they end up discounting their lattes 30% to a big batch of customers, if they got more customers than they had before by accepting bitcoin, that's probably a win for them. I could also see it becoming a popular (asshat) tip mechanism, better than giving lottery tickets.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Tuesday April 24 2018, @03:05AM
It is way worse, actually. Every time you "push Bitcoins all over" you have to record each transaction and report it to IRS in dollar amount and pay capital gain taxes if any. No, you can't submit a summary similar to 1099. You have to submit each and every transaction period.
Messing with IRS? Good luck with that.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday April 25 2018, @05:22PM (3 children)
Actually, I seem to recall that there were at least a few nations being subjected to hyperinflation where Bitcoin was in fact being adopted as a viable payment method for groceries, rent, etc. Especially popular since relatives working abroad could send home money without incurring substantial fees. I would assume the scaling problems have caused that usage to either fade away, or at least migrate to other crytpocurrencies.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday April 25 2018, @09:21PM (2 children)
I hadn't heard about that. So I tried to make Google my friend. Zimbabwe might be where you were thinking [bloomberg.com]? And then a week later an announcement from the Zimbabwe government that trade either wasn't legal or wasn't officially negotiable, depending [coindesk.com], with the same article saying Namibia has outlawed it. [?] Then in December clarification that it is completely unregulated but seems to be 'use at own risk'. [techzim.co.zw] And finally in March a Zimbabwean Bitcoin exchange was somehow hacked, though they described it as certain accounts were accessed unauthorizedly for trading and not a hacking of their exchange. [itwebafrica.com]
Or you could be referring to somewhere else.
I do still think the point is valid: It isn't yet a negotiable currency in which you can reasonably expect to make payment for whatever service you want from whomever you want, not the way a state currency is. A little bit more research (on that Bitcoin exchange site) turned up that Zimbabwe's central bank has decreed that travel agents and airlines can only accept local bank accounts for travel purposes - not Bitcoin. And it comes back to the central theme of mine: Cryptocurrency acceptance, generally, is allowed by a government. It isn't a divine right. You will find exceptions in all forms of currency: So I've read, in Russia in the 1980s Dollars were easily exchangable on the street for Rubles (and worth more than officially exchanging them,) but private ownership of foreign currency was illegal. They could do it, but if caught or if someone got too big without protection, again a reckoning would happen. And if a government does become Bitcoin friendly, again that is because a government decides to do so - if they decide to criminalize holding it, they can legally do that too.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday April 26 2018, @03:33AM (1 child)
That might well be it. And you would hardly expect the government to approve, would you? After all inflation, especially hyperinflation, doesn't just "happen" - it's an intentional act by the government, devaluing the currency as it increases it's own buying power by printing more money without a corresponding increase in economic activity. Any competing currency further devalues the inflating currency, making the "game" even less profitable and sustainable. Often even other "normal" currencies such as USD are discouraged or banned as well.
My point though is that it's not government approval that validates a currency, but popular adoption - though obviously a government has many tools at its disposal to hinder or encourage such adoption. As long as you can fairly reliably use a currency at the market for goods and services with "real" value, the currency itself has value, and you'll probably be willing to accept it as payment yourself. It doesn't much matter if the currency is bits of paper, metal, seashell, or completely abstract cryptographic ledger balances - they're all equally valueless in themselves, but once you have a critical mass of merchants willing to accept it as payment it becomes a viable currency.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday April 26 2018, @09:50PM
Yeah, and it's a good point. The exchange industry is throwing a lot of weight into getting adoption rolling and there will be a tipping point where it is used.
The real question is what risk you are willing to bear, be it currency fluctuations or being caught and jailed if the authorities so desire. I don't know about the accuracy of this article - I read something awhile back about Australia now requiring exchanges to comply with anti-money laundering provisions, but this [medium.com] seems to be a good spectrum. Some places there is no physical risk to utiziling cryptocurrency. Other places you can be jailed for it. It'll get used even if illegal - the Russian ruble thing proved that. But for today there are still a lot of places that "accept" it but won't hold it.
This sig for rent.