Good morning! It's January 3rd, which means its not your keys, not your coins day.
Unfortunately, this year the EU has decided to make withdrawing from exchanges a hell of a lot harder by extending FATF's Travel Rule to digital assets.
The FATF Travel Rule is not just a remarkable shitshow for your financial privacy and security – it's also a law to which authorities appear to have no data on its effectiveness to prevent financial crime.
What this means for you: If you want to withdraw funds exceeding €1.000, you'll need to prove that you own the address you are intending to withdraw to to your custodian.
It also means that exchanges are required to forward your personal information, including things like your name and address, to any custodian you are transacting with, and that an exchange may collect information on whom you are sending funds to and whom you are receiving funds from.
The Travel Rule does not just make withdrawing from exchanges harder, as custodians will need to employ third party software, employ a signing protocol like AOPP, or have you conduct a micro transaction to the custodian before making your transfer.
It also poses an incredible risk to your financial privacy and security, as your KYC info will not just be stored with a custodian you trust, but with any custodian you transact with – increasing the risks of hacks and identity theft.
In its current form, the Travel Rule has been mandatory in tradfi in the EU since 2012 – But nobody seems to know whether it actually works to prevent money laundering or not.
That's why I filed a FOIA request with German authorities last month, requesting data on all money laundering convictions in Germany since 2008.
Interestingly, the Ministry of the Interior responsible for national security and overseeing Germany's law enforcement, responded that it had no such information - instead asking me to file FOIA Requests with the German Ministry of Finance, the German Customs Authority, as well as with every public prosecutors office...
...which means that the updated Travel Rule is the extension of a law to whichs effectiveness law enforcement appears to have no data.
(FOIA Response in picture translated with ChatGPT)
Full Story:
The Rage
Travel Rule: As Surveillance Increases, EU Not Off To A Great 2025
The EU is ringing in 2025 with a truly remarkable shitshow for your financial privacy and security.
Replies (39)
It is more surveillance state terror.
Wow, these clowns. Thank you for investigating and keeping us informed on this
Tell me why self custody is harder? You just need to make a screenshot that it’s your wallet… nothing too difficult about that
If you don’t want to dox yourself you just send your sats to a lightning wallet and back to self custody. Fixed it
Good point, thats not more complicated than it was before at all!
That's a nice option
@Humble Bitcoiner exchanges needs to dox their customers. the customers also stand the risk of having more of their stack exposed if an exchange's data is being lost/ hacked.
View quoted note →If anything this just implies that bitcoiners in EU member states, must involve themselves politically.
Suggestions:
1. Vote, vote, vote - for privacy & decentralization
2. Get involved in political orgs & affect them
3. Write articles & talk about privacy online and IRL
IRL
4. Find & promote suitable candidates to public office
5. Run yourself for public office if it's your kind of thing.*
*maybe we need a bitcoin fidaz social media influencer parliamentarian.
These are counter to what many bitcoiners are interested in, I know, I know... but it's not good if the political system don't have any reflection of our interests. Since nostr we also have our own social media to coordinate & rally on so... why not?
As usual, the solution is voting harder 🤪
I don't really think there's been any voting block behavior from the privacy / bitcoin people yet.
So it's not about voting harder. It's about voting with it as a preference as a start.
But Mainly influencing the zeitgeist to realize the importance of privacy and care for it more. Making a cultural shift.
#DontRiskItBisqIt
...and then what happens after the cultural shift..? More people vote harder?
Fine, I'm sorry for having come off as tranchant with my previous reply, I'll be clearer.
I don't know if you are familiar with the works by Rothbard or other eminent exponents of the austrian school, but even if you are not, you will probably agree that, once you give to someone the power to make laws that you will be enforced to obey, they will very likely not act in your interest, but their own. That's human nature 101.
In my opinion, voting only strengthens the perception of legitimacy of the politicians, or, to reduce it to minimum terms, wastes the 30 to 60 minutes needed to physically move yourself to the place where you vote and then get back, without having really accomplished anything useful.
The most important vote is the one you do with your choices, for once getting rid of fiat and buying btc, and disobeying stupid laws as much as you can and as long as you can do it by escaping the imposed consequences.
Or, as Larken Rose says it, simply stop to believe in the superstition.
Criminal mafia
Voting in EU doesn’t matter. The bureaucrats follow the rule of the greatest theorist of democracy Josef Stalin: more than who count the votes matters presenting the right alternative. Look what happened in Italy then now Romania.
Does it mean withdrawing less than 1000€ won’t get me flagged? In such case I can just stack them back again at the destination?
Good morning
vote with your money. 👏🏻
Fuck that shit! Mafia EU!
I'm already looking for another option to buy #bitcoin
L0la L33tz
Good morning! It's January 3rd, which means its not your keys, not your coins day.
Unfortunately, this year the EU has decided to make withdrawing from exchanges a hell of a lot harder by extending FATF's Travel Rule to digital assets.
The FATF Travel Rule is not just a remarkable shitshow for your financial privacy and security – it's also a law to which authorities appear to have no data on its effectiveness to prevent financial crime.
What this means for you: If you want to withdraw funds exceeding €1.000, you'll need to prove that you own the address you are intending to withdraw to to your custodian.
It also means that exchanges are required to forward your personal information, including things like your name and address, to any custodian you are transacting with, and that an exchange may collect information on whom you are sending funds to and whom you are receiving funds from.
The Travel Rule does not just make withdrawing from exchanges harder, as custodians will need to employ third party software, employ a signing protocol like AOPP, or have you conduct a micro transaction to the custodian before making your transfer.
It also poses an incredible risk to your financial privacy and security, as your KYC info will not just be stored with a custodian you trust, but with any custodian you transact with – increasing the risks of hacks and identity theft.
In its current form, the Travel Rule has been mandatory in tradfi in the EU since 2012 – But nobody seems to know whether it actually works to prevent money laundering or not.
That's why I filed a FOIA request with German authorities last month, requesting data on all money laundering convictions in Germany since 2008.
Interestingly, the Ministry of the Interior responsible for national security and overseeing Germany's law enforcement, responded that it had no such information - instead asking me to file FOIA Requests with the German Ministry of Finance, the German Customs Authority, as well as with every public prosecutors office...
...which means that the updated Travel Rule is the extension of a law to whichs effectiveness law enforcement appears to have no data.
(FOIA Response in picture translated with ChatGPT)
Full Story:
The Rage
Travel Rule: As Surveillance Increases, EU Not Off To A Great 2025
The EU is ringing in 2025 with a truly remarkable shitshow for your financial privacy and security.
Followed! Ich brauche dringende Updates zu deiner Nachfrage und weiß nicht mehr wie ich mich im neuen Jahr verhalten soll. Habe Strike benutzt und war sehr zufrieden, habe jetzt aber sehr Angst um meine Privatsphäre.
“We’re ruling—Do not disturb!”
There is a book in Czechia on a ruling party closing a deal with the opposition to not oppose. Which seems to be somehow happening in the EU since we’re withnessing decades of turning the screws more and more with no friction at all.
https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/a16cbf37-db82-44d3-bd0e-86698127eca1Strike surprised me on dec.31. at 5 pm with an email telling me about that FATF crap.
I withdrawed all my funds from strike immediately, strike was my backup plan after I had some issues with my local Bank ( FATF related)
cynicism doesn't matter, never has.
Also there are more to democratic processes than voting, and those tings matter a lot to be engaged in.
An average European is a mental prisoner of the welfare state. Most see Swedish "third way" as heaven. Ageing society, pacified by walfare
Justo lo mismo voy a hacer yo. Avisaron muy, muy después. Tendré que revisar una nueva manera de comprar Sats.
Guilty until proven innocent is always bad because it's based on a lie and not the truth.
You know you need to talk to people to stir some new ideas into the system right? xD
I would argue cynicism is a mental prison that have people give up before trying. The freedom lovers need hope and faith in thier ideas being good in and of themselves. Go out talk about them and activate people, help the ideas get more traction.
Please share when you found a solution. 😎
If you prefer how things are now you may keep it that way.
Personally I prefer cultivating a culture of freespeech, both through providing tools like bitcoin & nostr development but also engaging my friends and surroundings in the importance of it.
Voting for freespeech policies is symptomatic of people who care about it. What I truly want to see more of is people to care about it.
Personal choices!
Free to choose :)
I sense we have more agreement than one might first think. What's important in the end is the personal choices.
But I do see to much of a tendency of individual isolationism among the hyper freedom people, and I think it would be really valuable if more of them/us thought in terms of social networks.
It's important that the nodes partake in spreading the ideas among other nodes. Not just that a node adopts the ideas and then retreat to never engage others again cuz f society! or something.
And if people also happen to be politically active, culturally active, or anything of the sort... that doesn't really hurt either.
I sense it's good encouraging things working in the right direction.
I care about it so much that I've gone all the around the bend into realizing voting is a speech-destroying antipattern
I'm sooo fuckin bullish on freedom tech & P2P Bitcoin usage!!!
Just disconnect from the shitshow.
#livefree
View quoted note →This is not cynicism, this is realism. I have spent countless hours educating people/friends on psyOps. Later to see them outraged we still didn’t vaccinate or escaped the confinement to the mountains. This is mass formation. We couldn’t stop it in early XX century we won’t be able to do it now.
Use Swiss services when in EU...
Switzerland has had the travel rule since 2020. Next time try reading the article.
Thanks for enlightening me. I rather save the time to read the whole article.
