Re:Bill Gates AMA on Reddit
by handbanana on Wednesday February 28, 2018 @02:20PM
(#16485864)
Sure if a government adopted BTC... but I don't think that's likely, for many reasons including the one you outline.
Its more likely a government would use their own coin/token - whether they develop it themselves or use an existing platform/protocol is another discussion entirely. But this essentially means they could know which individuals/companies owned which address
I'm sure if a government decided to adopt crypto - one of the motivations would be enhanced tracking. So the adoption of it would be in such a way that would allow them to easily associate an address with an entity/person
To be clear, I'm not advocating that a government should adopt crypto
>So how will any govt be able to stop tax evasion and terrorist simply by knowing the public wallet / ledger address?
By doing their jobs and investigating, using existing tools, techniques, and laws?
How? Can you elaborate?
Just because the ledgers are public doesn't mean governments can track and prevent fraud and terrorism. It's common knowledge that there are just about 1650 bitcoin addresses that own > 1000 bitcoin (they are called Whales). But no-one knows which individual or company or group of people own those addresses.
So how will any govt be able to stop tax evasion and terrorist simply by knowing the public wallet / ledger address?