One of the brewing battles that will not go away in the next few years in my opinion, is that of KYC/AML.

The level of privacy and concerns over the breach of personal data are more immense in crypto than just about any other aspect of society. The topic of centralized versus decentralized exchanges is largely based around KYC/AML. The topic of people selecting between different centralized exchanges and their rules on anonymity center largely around KYC/AML. 

I'm talking about "Know Your Customer/Anti-Money Laundering" and it's a big thing in crypto.

Granted, when we sign up for a bank account, we do the same thing. When we sign up for an investment account or to trade our own stocks, we have to do the same thing. But, one of the things that has historically drawn people to Bitcoin at the very start of this little adventure was the huge benefit of anonymity while simultaneously having a perfect record of all transactions and importantly, a rock solid money transmitting service.

People can say "oh, blockchain is just a fancy spreadsheet" and that sounds like a strong talking point, but it's not true. Anything that is live, automated, handling public private key encryption running across a global network, managing difficulty for block hash rewards, verifying real vs. fake transactions, protecting a permanent record of who's keys recognize which balance of coins issued... is not merely Excel+BitTorrent. It's a heckuva lot more.

Now that we have that cleared up, it is true that there was a boom in Bitcoin use when Dread Pirate Roberts set up his thing. He regrets it. Satoshi regretted it. The entire community has moved on.

Then, accusations spread about Bitcoin being nothing but a speculative instrument, to which I have to ask regarding all those millions of retirement accounts, does anyone really genuinely care about what the majority of their money is actually doing in all of those IRAs, CDs, Mutuals? Bitcoin is still young, and the rest of the crypto space is a tiny baby yet to say its first words, which are bound to be "DeFi". We have projects transacting as money, providing platforms for decentralized video, text, music, we have digital art selling for thousands and millions, we have decentralized swap exchanges, people staking pools of funds of things that didn't even exist last year. It's crazzzzyyyyyyy but notice what I didn't include?

None of this is criminal!

I don't know anyone in my Crypto Twitter following/followers poking at us to come join their illegal money laundering discord server. I have not interacted with a single person who offered to sell me a person. I haven't used Bitcoin or other crypto to buy or sell arms, drugs, or even a natural, safe, effective cure for the symptoms of covid, the worst of all sins- lol.

I'm sure... I am CERTAIN, all of these things exist. But, it never crosses my path and until Lord please protect me, I am ever made a victim of one or the other (I feel terrible for anyone who would try to traffic me), I doubt I will ever interact with one of the above without going deep in search of them. Okay, there's a good chance some of the complete and total crypto strangers are doing drugs... a lot of them, and if they do them, there's a good chance the buy and sell 'em... Thinkin' out loud here. lol But, seriously, crypto is about the exchanges, the swaps, the stakes, the lending pools, web3 architectural thinking, AI bot trading, daytrading, longer HODLing, learning learning learning, people becoming interested in global politics, macro micro economics, studying history, thinking about the escape of tyranny, SO many important things far far far and long before it is about that seedy underbelly of crypto; people seeking its use to do bad things.

When governments get desperate, they start doing things beyond their legal reach, and suddenly we find that they are widening the definition of things that are frowned upon, taking regular human activity and placing it under the umbrella of illegality. It is coming, but very few see the writing on the wall.

So, I think a lot of us dislike KYC.

For those that don't know, Know Your Customer means an exchange platform has to gather and verify data on you before they can legally allow you to trade on their software or hold representative value on your behalf in a lot of countries. To do so, they need your name, phone, address, social security or govt issued thingy, driver's license or other govt id thingy, facial time-stamped picture, picture of you holding up your id next to your face, a recent bill proving it was paid from your address provided. Then, that info is handed to WHO knows where? You get approved, now you are blessed to pay them fees to control your investment in crypto.

There will be more of this, not less. The idea here is that no matter what crypto you dance in and out of, if a platform collects your KYC, that platform will also be expected to report a full history of transactions and provide it at will for all government agencies. The more they 'crack down' on laundering, trafficking and the sort, the more we are following these rules as if they are doing us a favor. But, how does my documentation being in the hands of goodness only knows what 3rd party flight-by-night 'trusted' parties, protect ME in any way, shape, or form?

If you were a professional money launderer, would you have some alternate plan for how to do so other than to use a public ledger of every transaction that will never go away? Dunno bout you, but I might actually use cold hard cash. They can track the numbers on bills, but 90% of places you can buy and sell money until it is clean, ain't gonna know a thing about who you are, where you came from, and where your bills came from. That's going to change, and that's the point.

I torture myself by going through and watching the senate committee meetings on the treasury and crypto, on the future of currency and stablecoins, I read the Pres's Working Group on stablecoins, and I study the stuff packing full the infrastructure bill, build back mountain... broke back better, whatever it's called, and the America competes or whatever that is. The things the U.S. is implementing are identical to what is happening in India, Russia and China and numerous other places.

The only thing both sides of the aisle in the U.S. agree on, is that KYC/AML in its present form is not enough, and that a RealID tied digitally to all accounts through a person's smart phone is the only way to go, for stablecoins and the government-issued CBDC. That means to use the up-and-coming digital dollar, the Fed, the Fed's Central Bank, and you, will be directly tied to your phone and whatever apps are installed, your iris, your face, your texts, phone records, and also your imaginary bank, because in their proposed world, there is no private intermediary any longer.

Sorry, but for the good folks that just want to be left alone and send crypto around wherever we wish, they will have us tracked for every single thing we do. The video game industry just released the first VR compatible mind-reading add-on to make gaming more fun, so don't you tell me it is tinfoil hat stuff to believe that they will be able to read thoughts soon enough. This has to get steered in a different direction and quick, but I don't believe that is going to happen.

So, if all of this was truly about catching human trafficking and money laundering, wouldn't we want to start with the Maxwell case and catch some of those guys? Wouldn't we want to take a stroll to Hunter Biden's pad and ask about the youngster touching and monthly Russia and China extortion funds? Wouldn't we start by actually going after criminals?

There is online blockchain surveillance and forensics, and there is a great deal of data on every one of us the government can collect, but the criminals always figure out away around counter-intuitive protective measures like this. I don't know what they use, but I guarantee you when they blackmailed us over the oil pipeline, that was not what happened. You think the same government that's too careless with security to get hacked would pay in Bitcoin and actually retrieve some of it back? Sorry- not buying it. You ask for a LOT more if you're going to take that risk, and you do not try to get paid in Bitcoin where they know your address they just paid to, even if it is going straight through a mixer.

So, here's the deal:

If you want something to work to catch criminals, you have to increase your intelligence on actual criminals. Attacking the trade system won't work. Attacking every private citizen in the hopes of sniffing out something suspicious won't work. Scaring people out of investments by making them feel as if they have done something wrong will not change the behavior of criminals. It only serves to make us feel watched, poked, pried, surveilled, naked and worrisome. These are not words I would use to describe a safer environment brought by security. What about you?

Let me ask...

Ted Bundy used a yellow VW Bug to kidnap, rape, torture and kill women. Do we need to ban VW's or more heavily regulate them?

Yesterday, somebody somewhere sold a human being for physical dollars. Is changing dollars bills going to stop the disgusting person who paid for that person? Will it stop the person who sold that person? So, why is the House Committee and President's Work Group report on stablecoins focused on merging the RealID with a digital ID for Congress to pass a bipartisan bill merging RealID with people's mobile phones, providing the Federal Government and FinCen legal access to track and trace you and enforce issues of your identity in any international court with extradition laws, specifically for the CBDC Digital Dollar?

This is not how you catch criminals. They will be the only ones you DON'T have surveillance on, including Hunter Biden.

If you want to catch criminals, you have to find out how they are evading you, infiltrate THEIR counter-surveillance efforts, and spend all of those trillions of dollars of  sustainability and social justice dollars meant for building bridges and roads, and use them for actual social justice to stop human trafficking!

I have a rule and it goes back 12 years now: if they wanted to end hunger, the U.N. would have ended it 20 years ago. There's no question it could be done for billions of dollars less than the extortion they have held over 179 countries, and still there are kids who starve to death.

If they wanted to improve illicit drug use that leads to prostitution, drop-outs, early death and a crippled corrupt financial system, they know that handing out clean needles and now crack pipe kits will simply encourage more Federally encouraged illicit drug use and prostitution. So, why don't they actually focus on improving the conditions for the people who need actual help?

Let me ask, if it is racist to request a national ID of someone when they vote, to prove they are who they say they are, why isn't it a problem for that same person to be required to enter their name, address, SS#, driver's license or passport, facial scan retinal scan recent bill history, to buy a pack of gum with a digital dollar? See, something's NOT adding up! It's time to learn how to think beyond party lines and realize it isn't right and left, it is right and wrong. This administration is so far beyond humane, they lack mere humanity.

So you tell me, do you think heavily regulating the financial tools we all use is the right way to catch criminals, or do you think it is a means to control society by connecting the data on their cell phones to their relationship with a digital Federalized Central Bank?

I do not have all of the answers, but I do know that they begin with honesty. If you are looking to solve a problem, it begins by being honest about what that problem is that needs fixing. Is it more about stopping crime, or controlling populations and capturing dissidents if they do not agree with your governance?

I leave it at that, a very perturbed Crypto Gordon Freeman, the "amIstill?" free man, for now... out.