Today on X: Europe BANS Anonymous Bitcoin Payments
Bitcoin: 🤷♂️tick tock, next block.
Good luck in clamping down something that happens anonymously.
Discussion
I just LOVE when bureaucrats and politicians pass laws that they cannot enforce!
It ALWAYS makes me day! 😍🤯😂
#europe #assholes #bitcoin
*anonymous payments using custodial wallets
Easy to clamp down on those. They're running money transmission businesses, either they comply and KYC clients or get rekt in court.
Yes and much more
The only part I see it could be stretched to cover self-custodial wallets is this:
"According to the agreement, CASPs will need to apply customer due diligence measures when carrying out transactions amounting to €1000 or more. It adds measures to mitigate risks in relation to transactions with self-hosted wallets."
The wallet developers aren't "carrying out transactions" so this would only affect LSPs. Since LN wallets with embedded nodes can use different LSP or none at all, this would realistically only apply to services such as LN addresses *a la Zeus*...
So, don't get Zapped over 1000€, I guess?
I recently sent €100 worth of Bitcoin to Revolut where I had bought it back in December and the deposit came from the withdraw address and they rejected the "source of funds" declaration. Being Revolut's withdraw statement matching the address. I then zapped €200 worth to Kraken, swapped it to € and instant wired that to Kraken, no question about the "source of funds".
Imo the new law will see many amendments over the next 1-2 years as the EU continues their struggle to remain in control over the money and it will not be easy to turn BTC into cash if those sats come from a non-kyced stack of coins. A simple "I mined those coins in 2015" wont suffice.
I agree with the financial institutions making it harder, not arguing that.
If you had used Revolut to receive the payment of selling those sats on robosats, they wouldn't even know you were selling sats. That's why the attack is mostly on custodial services.
The fragment I quoted specifically talks about CASPs, which can be consider any organization involved in the transfer of cryptos. But as I said, I don't think calling self-custody wallets CASPs willt hold in court.
Entirely agree with you on CASPs. At least for now since Ursula and Christine made it very clear that they do not approve of self-custodian wallets. So they'll think of something down the line.
I do use Robosats sometimes but I have a KYC stack for a number of reasons (collateral being one) and seeing how even a KYC stack is falling victim to Bitcoin discrimination within the glorious EU SEPA banking system is disturbing.
Of course they don't like it, but I think they know they can't do anything about it. They can slowly tighten the noose, but if they go to far, people will flee to the grey/black market and they'll lose all control and tax revenue. Central and Northern European countries are more likely to comply, but good luck going cashless in Southern and Eastern countries in the near future.