Have you heard of the Travel Rule? It's now coming to crypto.
In short, this regulation enforced globally by the Financial Action Task Force requires transactions above a certain threshold (set by respective countries, in some as low as $1000) to also carry the name, address, contact details and more in order to "effectively combat money laundering, terrorist and proliferation financing". This has been in place in fiat for quite a while now, but the FATF is now eyeing the crypto industry.
For crypto firms and users this is a bunch of headaches. Not only does it go against every principle of decentralization and privacy, there is also no agreed-upon format of this data, how it is supposed to accompany the transaction, whether every crypto product will have to perform KYC on every user, and what measures are put in place to protect this data from being stolen. Coinbase is developing a standard for compliance to address all of this, but so far the lack of clarity and explicit intent to monitor all financial activity, hand in hand with the global push for CBDCs, don't seem like a positive development.
I'm no lawyer, but I'm curious if you, stackers, are bullish on mass surveillance, or on money laundering and terrorist financing?