A legal tactic to be aware of is to make unfollowable laws, and then selectively enforce them. So for example with this FinCEN proposal, add a ton of reporting requirements for all sorts of noncustodial transaction types, which puts tons of normal operators at risk and heavily disincentivizes them. It’s so broad as to apply to almost everyone, and even things they can’t report technically could be argued to be reportable (eg Lightning node router operator- report everyone you are routing for!). Now, everyone is a criminal; everyone has legal leverage against them which can be selectively deployed. And if a “class of transactions” can be labeled under Section 311 of the Patriot Act as reportable, then why not also ban-able? Instead of sanctioning an actual entity, why not sanction a concept, a class of transactions, an expression of math? Dangerous precedent.

Replies (6)

I tend to find conspiracies in everything... Making noncustodial transactions illegal / frowned upon... Would guarantee a surge towards institutional services... Something like a brand new bitcoin ETF?
Amadee's avatar
Amadee 2 years ago
Outside world often sees almost despotic enforcement of US financial policy. US citizens about to feel some too. US Gov will stop at nothing when it comes to the $ and preserving its dominance. There's bad "legal" news all over and when you put it all together, code in the UK, CBDC in Europe, now this in US. We could be talking about implications "post event" already, its possible were further into this "agenda" than we thought.
Weed was illegal nearly everywhere and it was only enforced when someone wanted to. Some got the book thrown at them. Some got fined. A lot of subjectivity
I think it’s a reasonable legal approach. Lawyers I have spoken to say there are numerous legal approaches to consider. Protecting the privacy of your customers is a reasonable one. When the state tries to overload users with unfollowable laws, a good reaction is to overload the state with all of the contradictions and problems it creates and various legal challenges in support of those other things.