This is what life is like for the less privileged under the anti-money laundering regime:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MakerDAO/comments/de0sys/kyc_is_abs...
1. Engaging in human trafficking, which is really unfortunate for the poor and often non-white females who are being trafficked
2. Sponsoring terrorism, which sucks for the again young and often non-white females in schools that are being blown up, the women in markets getting shrapnel wounds, and the children losing parents
3. Funneling arms to terrorists, which allows them to resist police forces and continue forcing young people to be unwilling participants in the drug trade, prostitution and other pretty subpar life outcomes
So yes, it's really inconvient to have to deal with KYC and miss out on that sweet stock growth on foreign markets - I encourage your example to work with his local government to pass the appropriate laws to join the world economy.
3. That is also the argument the Chinese Communist Party makes for its various totalitarian surveillance/control measures in Xinxiang. Anyone with a basic respect for liberal democratic principles like privacy and presumption-of-innocence/due-process will reject warrantless mass-surveillance of financial transactions and the presumption of guilt inherent to disallowing individuals who haven't proven their innocence, by disclosing private information, from conducting certain classes of financial transactions.
>>So yes, it's really inconvient to have to deal with KYC and miss out on that sweet stock growth on foreign markets
That is incredibly daft. Individuals being able to generate/accumulate wealth has massive knock-on effects for the people around them and the countries they live in.
But here is a story about poor women of color who you seem more concerned about:
https://www.coindesk.com/money-reimagined-ugly-side-kyc-aml-...
>>At a 2015 blockchain event, Nairobi-based bitcoin pioneer Elizabeth Rossiello answered an audience question about the impact on Somalians of a recent shutdown in remittance inflows after the U.S. government had labeled the country a “high-risk jurisdiction.” The AZA Group CEO’s answer was blunt: “They starve.”
I guess just more collateral damage according to the insiders in the AML/KYC compliance sector.
>>I encourage your example to work with his local government to pass the appropriate laws to join the world economy.
Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state.
And until he can transform Uzbekistan into, first, a democratic state, and second, a compliant organ of the global AML mass-surveillance regime, it's okay for insiders like you that he is a global third class citizen. All of the poverty alleviation that being presumed innocent, instead treated like a suspect/criminal by your discriminatory policies, would bring about, will be conveniently dismissed by you.
Poverty existed literal millennia before KYC. Sure, it'd be great to just end poverty, and when you do that we can talk about ending KYC. Before you end poverty, it turns out it's pretty easy to implement KYC and stop a bunch of harms.
> That is also the argument the Chinese Communist Party makes for its various totalitarian surveillance...
There's a difference between putting a Muslim ethnic minority in concentration camps, and telling people they're supposed to identify themselves before wiring around tens of thousands of dollars internationally or opening foreign bank accounts. If that difference is lost on you, your issues run deeper than KYC.
> the impact on Somalians of a recent shutdown in remittance inflows...
The ideal fix here is for Somalia to stop funneling money to terrorist organizations.
> The report titled "Following the Money", authored by former UN Expert panellist for Somalia, Jay Bahadur, said illegal payments were as high as $3.7 million between 2014 and 2020... Amal was particularly accused of handling cash sent to Abdulrab Salem al-Hayashi, who was in October 2017 sanctioned by the US Treasury for "assisting in, sponsoring, or providing financial, material or technological support for, or financial or other services to or in support of" Al-Qaeda-linked terror groups in the Arabian Peninsula.
https://allafrica.com/stories/202010110025.html
And yeah, that sucks for the people who were just trying to survive, but that failure is entirely on Somalia and Amal who should of followed the required measures. Either follow the measures or you get expelled from the cooperative system.
It sucks to live in places like Somalia and Uzbekistan. I recommend leaving if you can, we have an international asylum process for a reason. It's not the duty of the US to help their citizens, nor is the US in a place to do so.
Maybe you're not understanding what I'm saying, because the above has absolutely no relevance to the point I made.
Another attempt:
Poverty declines faster when economies grow faster. The financial exclusion created by the crude AML/KYC surveillance/risk-management measures you're advocating harms economic development and thereby slows poverty eradication. This in turn slows the eradication of vices like human trafficking, which are largely an outgrowth of poverty.
>>There's a difference between putting a Muslim ethnic minority in concentration camps
Strawman. The Communist authorities who you are emulating do more than just put a Muslim ethnic minority in concentration camps. They also impose a mass-surveillance system on them.
https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/interactive/2019/05/02/chin...
They justify these invasions of privacy with the same kind of anti-terrorist rhetoric you're using. You're in the same ideological boat as them, and display the same callousness, which is characterized by comments like this:
>>And yeah, that sucks for the people who were just trying to survive, but that failure is entirely on Somalia and Amal
KYC goes against liberal democratic principles like privacy and due process, and should be opposed if you believe in these principles. It stands to reason that it does far more harm, in all respects, than good.
Human trafficking is not just a symptom of poverty, it's typically a symptom of a lack of law and order with strong systems that can deter human trafficking through a penal system. Giving human traffickers a bunch of cash isn't going to stop human trafficking.
> KYC goes against liberal democratic principles like privacy and due process
People in Somalia and Uzbekistan do not in any legal sense have privacy and due process. They do not live in Democratic regimes. Full stop. They have a moral right to those things, but it's on them to obtain it.
The US is not responsible for making sure non-citizens/non-residents have those rights. The US is not the gatekeeper of the world. The US is responsible for guarding it's citizens and residents - and there are KYC controls in the US that enable due process and privacy. Yes, if you're outside the US you don't get those protections but you never had them to begin with. You are welcome to come to the US or our allies and gain those things.
You can't force other people to transact with you. If we're freezing you out of an economic system because you keep giving money to extremists to kill women and children with, well, that just sucks to be you - you don't get to force us to trade with you. Take it up with your government.
It's obviously a result of multiple factors, but poverty is one of the major ones.
And law-and-order generally improves as economies develop. A law that excludes countless people from the mainstream financial system inhibits economic development.
>People in Somalia and Uzbekistan do not in any legal sense have privacy and due process.
They have some degree of privacy and due process, and the industry you are championing reduces that for them, using the US's dominant role in the global financial system as a pressure lever.
>You can't force other people to transact with you.
You're forcing people in the US to not transact with people in Somalia. You're not a libertarian here.
And AML/KYC laws violate privacy and due process rights domestically as well. It's not just international transactions that are affected by these laws. They are fundamentally laws that institute warrantless mass-surveillance.
>If we're freezing you out of an economic system because you keep giving money to extremists to kill women and children with, well, that just sucks to be yo
Once again, condemning people who have done no wrong, based something as crude as national association, and moreover, pretending you care about "women and children", while callously dismissing the devastating effect of financial exclusion caused by the policies that you are advocating remain-in/be-put-into effect, on millions of women children.
True or not, this argument is essentially orthogonal to Bitcoin's usefulness and success.
As others have pointed out, there are many financial institutions / instruments that also fit the bill and that does not diminish their utility.
To make the point maybe more salient: a moving vehicle can be used to kill a person, that doesn't mean cars should be eliminated.
Ethereum is also an absolutely fascinating technology.
Some people become “experts” and refuse to see innovation when it is staring themselves in the face. The world can’t change to these people.
Also regulation has been in the crypto space for years, dunno why these guys think it is some sudden new thing.