back
2 comments
The amount of effort crypto people put into circumventing know your customer reflects very badly on their ultimate motivations. In the real world, we're often told that if you're not doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to hide. I know that isn't true, but it is trotted out all the time. Senator Hawley just made some rhetorical gestures in that direction. What are crypto people doing that they need to hide?
It's kinda the reverse. The ones with the most motivation to get crypto rolling are the ones seeking to circumvent the law.

For most people, even in the best case crypto is breakeven for them. They'd use it if it were easy, but there's little in their life that it makes dramatically easier. It's not true that they have nothing to hide, but the existing system feels safe enough to not merit much additional inconvenience.

So the ones who care most are the ones who very much have something to hide. Some have very good reasons for it, like dissidents and refugees, but they tend not to have a ton of money to put into the effort. The real effort tends to come from people who acquire a lot of money in ways that they don't want anybody to know about.

Maybe we'll all regret not helping them more, but at the moment it means that people have reason to be suspicious that the ones doing the most to hide are the ones doing something wrong.