Trump administration announces plans for greater surveillance of cryptocurrency users

[Resurgence]

The Trump administration plans to introduce regulations for cryptocurrencies that are intended to crack down on their use in facilitating money laundering and other illicit activities, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday.

Mr. Mnuchin told lawmakers that the regulations were being developed with other agencies and financial regulators to improve transparency surrounding digital currencies like Bitcoin. The administration has expressed growing concern over the use of such currencies to anonymously execute illegal transactions and potentially evade American sanctions on countries like Iran.

“We are about to roll out some significant new requirements,” Mr. Mnuchin said during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. “We want to make sure that technology moves forward; on the other hand, we want to make sure cryptocurrencies aren’t used for the equivalent of old Swiss secret number banking.”

Mr. Mnuchin did not provide details of what the regulations would entail. He said that they would provide greater transparency so that law enforcement could see where money was going and ensure that it was not being used to aid money laundering.

After playing down the risks of cryptocurrencies at the beginning of Mr. Trump’s term, Mr. Mnuchin said over the summer that they posed a national security threat.

President Trump has also expressed skepticism about cryptocurrencies, declaring last year that he was “not a fan” and that their value was volatile and “based on thin air.”

As part of his effort to more closely police cryptocurrencies, Mr. Mnuchin has been pushing to relocate the Secret Service back to the Treasury Department from the Department of Homeland Security. In the budget proposal the White House released this week, the administration cited the importance of the Treasury Department and Secret Service working together to monitor the use of cryptocurrencies, which it cited as “an emerging threat.”




https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/us/po...rency.html

[RodneyYouPlonker]

The best thing that I've found about using Crypto Currency is that when you buy things online, sometimes you might be buying from Criminals and it does happen a lot.  The people who you buy from can't always be trusted as I've found out before and handing over Credit Card details is highly dangerous these days.  You open yourself up in a big way to fraud.  People will pass Credit Card details over to Criminals as a third party and they will use them for Crime and Fraud and they will try and use your details to hack into your bank account.  At least with Crypto you're much safer, you can send somebody some coin and it's totally safe, you are the one that controls the payment and sends it.  There is no danger of having your details passed onto a third party.  Nobody is going to steal from your bank if you're using Crypto, you can pay anybody you want and there's very little worry.

Sadly these days all this fraud that goes on, the criminals are very smart and they study these things very carefully.  If you're planning on paying for something online using a credit card you have to be very careful what you do, who you give your details to.  This is what I mean really Crypto currency is really good and I'm totally all for that.  Also as well as getting ripped off by banks doing exchanges and taking lots of money from you to convert to other currency, it's terrible what goes on.  I'm all for it and I usually avoid using Credit card unless it's a company that I can trust and know well.

If anybody is a criminal these days it's the banks for ripping people off and over charging them.  If you get fraud on your card the only thing they can do is block it and give you a new one, it's the only protection there is.  Cards are really bad, if you want something good but fear of being conned then by all means get a good Digital wallet and pay that way.

[waregim]

I only buy online as a last resort, and there use PayPal or Amazon - who will compensate for fraud.
Almost.
With PayPal *always* use a CC (not bank acct) and threaten a chargeback if not refunded.
On eBay rmind them that "No Returns' simply means you do not have to return for refund, as the term itself holds no water with consumer law.
Amazon/CIA is someone the slimeballs dont want to f*ck with. Really.

There is a reasonable level of safety with double encryption stuff like Monero as long as no cryptos are ever associated with a bank account. As long as the cryptos stay isolated in the cryptoverse there is a modicum of security.
As soon as it translates into fiat, the magic is over.

http://www.droidforums.net/threads/veriz...ou.275527/
If this spreads to all ISPs you are scrood if not using VPNs for crypto, regardless of type.

With the NSA system monitoring all net traffic, with metadata alone it does not take a real sophisticated algorythm to see who is accessing what sites.
Even with a VPN, with a large enough databank and petaflops, you can distill timestamps and IPs, to establish probable relationships if the site is visited more than a few times.

On a very basic level this is what the IRS is already doing with BitCoin.

[hyp]

There is a reasonable level of safety with double encryption stuff like Monero as long as no cryptos are ever associated with a bank account. As long as the cryptos stay isolated in the cryptoverse there is a modicum of security.
As soon as it translates into fiat, the magic is over.

How can you realistically do this though? You can route your money through paypal or some other service and then use that balance to buy crypto but wouldn't there always be a paper trail leading back to where the money came from in the first place?

[ill88eagle]

There is a reasonable level of safety with double encryption stuff like Monero as long as no cryptos are ever associated with a bank account. As long as the cryptos stay isolated in the cryptoverse there is a modicum of security.
As soon as it translates into fiat, the magic is over.

How can you realistically do this though? You can route your money through paypal or some other service and then use that balance to buy crypto but wouldn't there always be a paper trail leading back to where the money came from in the first place?

Paypal has banned most of west africa but you can invest in bitcoins through network providers and/or banks, delivering cash- wether you need I.D. depends on the gender of the clerk and your flirt skills - OR - the envelope you are handing under the table. Get a good friend you can trust in say Nigeria or Ghana (I know rite) and have him set it up for you. Lots of scams are set up this way. I was with people who did it for a living