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16 sats \ 7 replies \ @ek 16 Aug 2022 \ on: Change my mind: Large bitcoin transactions should not be private bitcoin
What I don't get is that most agree that communications should be private (E2E encryption in Signal or HTTPs for example) but when it comes to finance, that is suddenly a bad thing.
I get that we are trying to "combat terrorism", lobbyism or money laundering (insert other reasons here).
But how exactly is the argument different for financial privacy?
By this logic, shouldn't for example Signal do KYC to not allow big players access to encrypted communications?
Another good reason is to say "to protect the children". Works everytime. Who would be against protecting children? /s
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Nah, fuck children, they're annoying and they make me uncomfortable drinking in front of them.
But we do have strong distinctions between which communications should be private and which shouldn't. For example, insider trading regulations. So I think it's fair to ask if, similarly, some transactions should be private and some shouldn't.
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Good point. It's definitely fair to ask, that's why I upvoted your post. Thanks for posting it!
But regarding insider trading:
There, we regulate that insider trading is not allowed by investigating it when it was exposed. But we don't regulate that every communication between parties must be open to prevent such things. Correct me if I am wrong.
So I think the difference is that insider trading laws do not lead to "guilty until proven innocent" which is how AML laws are applied. There, you are guilty until proven innocent which I think is not how it should be.
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Well thanks for the upvote!
If I'm reading you right, you're saying that all entities should be presumed innocent until proven guilty, meaning their transactions should be private and any wrongdoing must be discovered another way. I'm open to that and do take that view regarding many things, but I'm wondering if in this case the wrongdoing would actually be impossible to discover if all transactions are private.
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Yes, exactly. I think those wrongdoings should be discovered another way since else, other rights that are more important to me go out the window. Privacy and free speech (since AML or similar laws can be used for censorship) are the first which come to my mind.
However, yes, I am also wondering if that would make it impossible to prevent cases where financial transactions are not good for society.
Someone else in this post proposed to have Gov btc addresses public, so maybe something in this direction.
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I might actually prefer if our democracy required politicians to give up all communications privacy. This isn't a complete response to what you said, but it is a special case that I might think is good.
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I agree. I guess it fits with my bias toward privacy as the privilege of the powerless, which is what my question is getting at, but perhaps Bitcoin will solve these problems in other ways.
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