Covered two astonishingly stupid reports this week for TheRage:
Two February 2026 reports, issued by the J5, a tax crime and anti-money laundering alliance, suggest that cryptocurrency services might harbor countless transactions of tax evasion and criminal activity. The law enforcement advisory reports “Over-The-Counter Cryptocurrency Trading Desks” and “Demystifying Cryptocurrency Payment Processors,” state that the anonymity and reliability provided by cryptocurrency potentially make them a hidden tool for tax evasion and money laundering.
Because everyone knows that the threat to the financial system comes from CRYPTO... all those Russian baddies buying Ferraris with "crypto"
The J5 is a coalition of tax authorities from Australia, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, and the United States, born out of long-running pressure from the OECD to close the “gaps” in global tax enforcement.
So much potential for money laundering, so much anonymity and HIDDEN STUFF. Gotta be nefarious, we all know that.
These statements are so vague and all-encompassing that they would apply to any currency over any payment rails. It trivially condenses to saying anyone using a tool for good may also use it for bad. It’s almost trivial to point out that if a system is genuinely faster, cheaper, and more accessible for ordinary, law-abiding users, it will also be faster, cheaper, and more accessible for those with illicit intent. Criminals don’t live in a parallel universe without access to convenient tools.
Yay! We've reached the point where tax authorities define illicit or nefarious transactions as all those transactions they don't know about (or don't have enough details about).
I am routinely startled by how many normal people in the US think this is a good way to proceed. They seem shocked when I express concern that the government requires reporting on such a wide swath of transactions. As long as the government doesn't make any sudden moves and just continues to slowly increase surveillance and control, I don't believe society will put up much resistance at all to our happy new 1984 lifestyle.
It's not that hard to convince most people.
Simply tell them that all the others aren't "doing their bit," are a burden to you, society, and national security. Oh, and probably the children too.
Brave New World, more like it.
If only someone could invent a drug, or a machine, or a screen, that makes us feel as good and suggestive as soma
I really encourage people to think through how "official reports" measure things.
It's often a government declaration to categorize things into A or B, and then anything that didn't follow the official process of getting labeled A is now labeled B.
It doesn't often reflect the reality of what A or B is trying to measure, only the process by which something gets labeled A or B.
Kinda like COVID deaths and how hospitals were incentivized to report every death as a COVID death.
If a person thinks carefully about "how was this data generated?" they will have a better understand of how the world runs and how information gets reported.