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Nifty3929yesterday at 1:57 PM4 repliesview on HN

A lot of people keep looking for technology solutions to political problems. The fact is that privacy, especially of financial transactions, is becoming illegal. Any technology that allows you to send or spend money anonymously will be attacked by our governments. They won't be allowed.

You can argue about whether you can get away with it due to difficulty of enforcement, but all that does is turn us all into criminals. They won't put ALL of in jail, but they can put ANY of us in jail - the ones they don't like.


Replies

ddtayloryesterday at 3:58 PM

> The fact is that privacy, especially of financial transactions, is becoming illegal. Any technology that allows you to send or spend money anonymously will be attacked by our governments. They won't be allowed.

It's probably a bit worse than that. It's not specific to transactions or spending.

Eventually any IP talking to another IP without the mandatory metadata to link it to a physical identity will be illegal.

Right now there is a hodge-podge of solutions that piggy-back on the phone networks, wires, etc. that used to give LEO enough actionable information to track some criminals. But most of that has been obsoleted by modern cryptography.

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ozgrakkurttoday at 3:34 AM

This is a very narrow way to see it. Technological advancements can and did massively affect politics and other parts of life.

Today you get away with it, they make it harder but it would still be better than the old one.

People manage to corrupt and hack things inevitably as long as it is static, changing systems can obviously be good just for this reason only. It also brings questions about why the current system is the way it is.

user34283yesterday at 2:28 PM

Spot on.

Some think we need financial freedom, but in reality it's the freedom to fund scams and malware, launder money, dodge taxes, and buy stuff that’s illegal.

That won't become legal just because you use "Monero" or whatever. Obviously we can't have privacy for financial transactions.

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j2kunyesterday at 9:34 PM

Except, you know, the dollar bills the government itself prints.