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21 sats \ 2 replies \ @sethforprivacy 23 May 2022 \ parent \ on: Any thoughts on if this is a good way of un-KYCing Bitcoin? bitcoin
Yes, the main issues with KYC are:
- Gov/exchange knows how much you purchased when, so could easily knock on your door to confiscate or force you to disclose what you did with the sats
- Allows governments to build nice, tidy lists of Bitcoiners to go to if they decide Bitcoin is too problematic for them and they want to stop it's use
- Allows hackers/criminals to steal KYC data from exchanges (who are notoriously poor at cybersecurity) and then hit you with a $5 wrench attack to send them all your sats, as they have an address, face, and amount of Bitcoin purchased/withdrawn to leverage
- Allows govs/exchanges to easily surveil Bitcoiner's usage of Bitcoin post-withdrawal and build deterministic links between IDs and on-chain activity
If you use proper privacy practices after withdrawing, it only prevents the simple surveillance that exchanges/governments are doing today on Bitcoin post-withdrawal, but it doesn't prevent the other three issues.
As for your other question -- so far there are no known cases of exchange accounts getting shut down for withdrawing to Samourai Wallet as far as I am aware. The only known case of exchange blacklisting is one user at Bottlepay getting their deposit rejected post-mix:
https://sethforprivacy.com/posts/fungibility-graveyard/#samourai
At this point it doesn't seem to be a major issue for people, but that could rapidly change. Just another reason to stop asking permission and go no-KYC-only ;)
Thanks Seth, and thanks for your work in this space.
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Of course, thanks for the kind words on what I do and my pod :)
Hoping to focus next season on Bitcoin/Lightning/Monero and do some deeper dives on topics like sender privacy, receive privacy, circular economies, avoiding KYC, etc.
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