Thread

The US Treasury has proposed a rule so broad that it would effectively make sending a #Bitcoin transaction illegal. After a 90 day comment period, this rule will likely become active. The kicker is they don't even need Congress to pass a new law. They are using a specific section of the Patriot Act to take more of your freedoms. What is one to do? Do you sell all your Bitcoin and accept fiat slavery? Do you try to obfuscate your KYC stack to give you more plausible deniability? I'm not sure what the right answer is exactly, but I do know you should be thinking deeply about this now. You don't want to look back 90 days from now and wish you took some kind of action that would put you in a better place after this rule is in effect. So I encourage you all to take time to figure out this problem. Figure out what you're going to do. Because they're done laughing at us. Now, they're fighting us. And you know what happens next.

Replies (15)

Obfuscation seems like an admission of guilt, but being easily KYC trackable seems risky 🤔 either way, I will hodl. If they come for my sats I'll fight them. It would be David versus Goliath, but my five smooth stones are uncensorability, permissionlessness, statelessness, peer-to-peer transferability, and unconfiscability. View quoted note →
Or... Since this wouldn't discriminate hodling (nay, quite the opposite) then the outcome would just be felt at merchants... Many in the US would indeed stop accepting BTC publicly. (Poor bitcoin Sign industry!) But let's face it. Merchant adoption in the US is abysmal. The rest of the world is where the good stuff is happening on this front. All these startup economies like bitcoin Beach, bitcoin Lake, Bitcoin Ekasi, etc... Those will all shine like a beacon to the whole world as they grow. Americans who still want to use it will then be incentivized to use more permissionless tools. This part is very good for bitcoin. Ideal, in fact. It takes bitcoin back to it's cyberpunk origins in the mind of all americans. The price may take a small hit at some point, but this really isn't unwelcome news.
Or... Since this wouldn't discriminate hodling (nay, quite the opposite) then the outcome would just be felt at merchants... Many in the US would indeed stop accepting BTC publicly. (Poor bitcoin Sign industry!) But let's face it. Merchant adoption in the US is abysmal. The rest of the world is where the good stuff is happening on this front. All these startup economies like bitcoin Beach, bitcoin Lake, Bitcoin Ekasi, etc... Those will all shine like a beacon to the whole world as they grow. Americans who still want to use it will then be incentivized to use more permissionless tools. This part is very good for bitcoin. Ideal, in fact. It takes bitcoin back to it's cyberpunk origins in the mind of all americans. The price may take a small hit at some point, but this really isn't unwelcome news.