Satoshi Nakamoto never envisioned cryptocurrency as a way for governments to collect private data. That's why blockchains are built to enable censorship-free financial access.
As CoinDesk noted in a recent analysis of the situation, there exists a revealing difference in the language used to refer to crypto wallets by regulators and crypto investors.
Regulators call crypto wallets unhosted wallets, whereas investors refer to them as self-hosted wallets. The difference here is all about privacy — crypto users believe in financial independence, freedom from oversight, and digital asset autonomy.
On the other hand, an unhosted wallet points to the view that such wallets lack hosting — a situation that should be remedied by regulation and the cooperation of centralized institutions.
This seemingly small difference in language does indeed point to a large divide in exactly how each side views the purpose of storing crypto assets.
Is the government banning crypto wallets? Not really
As Armstrong noted in his original Twitter thread, the crypto industry has been preparing for this eventuality for at least a few months. In fact, they've known long enough to form a lobby, and have responded to the rumors by sending the US Treasury a plea to leave crypto alone.
The regulation is expected to come into effect before the year's end, mostly owing to the US election results and the impending changing of the guard. As such, the rush is on for Mnuchin to push through regulations before time is up.
Does data-collection on self-hosted crypto wallets amount to the US government declaring a ban on cryptocurrency wallets we know them?
Not really.
Moreover, can the government enforce these regulations and push people onto the centralized platforms decentralized blockchains were built to avoid?
The answer there is clearer: certainly not.
from Hacker News https://ift.tt/37xustY
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