SEC crackdown???

Hey guys! I’m pretty new to the community. Just getting my feet wet, but really love the driving principle of this community and have been entertaining the idea of getting more invested. I am troubled by Janet Yellen’s recent proposal towards crypto and what it means for this particular coin. As I understand it she is proposing to enact laws that require every wallet to be linked to an identity in the US? Would this essentially make me participating in the PRV network in America illegal? Is there any way they could actually stop me from doing so? Can anybody give their perspective on this? I am hopeful for the future of PRV, and really want to be in the numbers.

2 Likes

Sounds like something that can only be performed by a centralized organization, like a wallet on Binance. On a decentralized chain anyone can run their own app, script, or whatever code to interact with the chain. Who would you show your passport to?

Other than that, if your laws forbid you to interact with wallets that lack the linked id feature, then yes it is illegal to use Incognito wallet, and many others.

Just my 2cts, I am in Europe btw.

7 Likes

Thanks for responding! I think as I understand it, a user could use VPN to trade and access coins. The real challenge would then be if and when a user wanted to liquidate any positions for an actual payout, as most of the wallets that allow any sort of withdrawal to fiat currency are centralized, at least as far as I know. I assume big companies that utilize crypto such as PayPal and Amazon will adhere to this US legislation if it passes. Appreciate the dialogue!

1 Like

The issue of regulation is a much greater challenge for Central Governments than citizens and companies they seek to regulate. For instance. In the US it is illegal for a company to offer leveraged crypto trading. Companies just simply geo lock IP addresses from the US. However despite it being illegal for companies to offer these services it is NOT illegal for citizens to engage in leveraged crypto trading. It is then perfectly legal for a US Citizen to connect to a VPN, open an account on one of these exchanges and start trading. My feeling is that requiring KYC will end up working much the same way. The US can regulate the US market but not the world market.

5 Likes

Hey, @DreadPirateRoberts are you referring to this comment ?

If so there is not much concrete info yet. Probably they will need more time to figure out what’s going on and how to react to it.

Meanwhile, we also have time to think about possible scenarios of the future and try to answer those questions:

  • How will privacy networks be classified?
  • Is it correct to put Incognito on the same plate as Monero?
  • How will storing Bitcoin on layer 2 solutions be handled?
  • etc

Regarding possible regulation that might obligate US citizens to have verification for self custodial wallets:

If this situation happens Incognito wallet will have 10X advantage for storing and transferring BTC, ETH, USDT/C compared to all public wallets on the market.

Here is a quick comparison on why I think so

Incognito wallet Public crypto wallet
Link Identity to wallet addres yes yes
Wallet balance if the owner allows (read-only key) public for everyone
Entire TXs history if the owner allows public for everyone
Risk of leaking Identity data switch wallet and remain data private your entire wealth is public and linked with future TXs

In simple words storing and transferring crypto with Incognito has the same attributes as using cash for making payments, trades, etc. Simply put – you have control. You have the option to keep it private and you have the ability to disclose information if you want to.

12 Likes

Thank you for your input Andrey. You have wisdom beyond your years.

Be aware that Pay Pal in addition to being essentially a mafia run organization, does not allow crypto cashouts. Once you buy crypto on Pay Pal you cannot turn it back into fiat. Nor can you send your crypto to any other wallet. Crypto on PayPal isn’t really crypto. It’s just another scam utilized by the Pay Pal mafia to enslave it’s users.

2 Likes

Thanks for your insight! Reassuring!

1 Like

I agree. Sadly I feel this way about many big organizations and am therefore suspicious of pretty much all of them. Is there a platform you suggest for exchanging from fiat to crypto and vice versa?

1 Like

The easiest thing i can think of is:

  1. Buy usdc on coinbase (to avoid there high fees)
  2. Transfer it to incognito
  3. Buy cryptocurrencies you are interested, use pdex, uniswap and pstore for dapps loans etc…
  4. Make mad gains privately
  5. Cash out only as much usdc as you put in.

All uncle Sam sees is fiat in and out. No capital gains.

If you want to buy crypto besides usdc with no fees use voyager app.

8 Likes

You may never need to cash out. Take out stablecoin loans against your btc.

Eventually I think fiat may be able to be made obsolete. Like pagers

3 Likes

I agree with this one. We need to focus on being able to stay within the crypto world and enhance the options to do so. This goes for the whole crypto world, but since my heart is with Incognito, especially for the Incognito environment.

Lately, it seems the people who want to use Incognito as a mixer are more present, or just louder, than the ones who see value in the project and keep their coins within the system.

Earning money is great, I understand that, but it would help the project forward when more suggestions made, concerned security, privacy and usability. The “hey we should do this to make … (validators, traders and so on) earn more” are a little disheartening.

How about making Incognito wallet funds spendable on those many many webshops that use Woocommerce, for example? The number of non-crypto users is still way bigger than the number of those who do.

The low internal fees, the great app, and a very supportive community are the perfect ingredients to onboard these new users.

When I joined the Incognito project during testnet, this seemed to be a priority, tap into that world of non-crypto users. That was the reason for developing the pNode. To create a low entry level for those who consider cryptocurrency a scary new world.

I hope we are not going to miss out on this opportunity by just chasing the money.

8 Likes

I agree with the sentiment. I am more in this for the concept of powering privacy and decentralization than to make any major monetary gain. I’ve been involved with crypto for quite a few years now. Not to make money, but because as a person who is suspicious of our government and centralized financial system I believe it has some real potential to power the free world. As such, PRV is right up my alley! At the same time, I understand the speculative risks associated with jumping into this brave new world. I am not necessarily concerned with the value of the coin going up or down; my concerns are more over whether Big Brother could potentially prevent me from accessing or using certain coins altogether through regulatory action. Thanks for the dialogue!

7 Likes

I live in the US and it is my opinion that the government and wall street have finally overstepped their usefulness. They have proven the entire system is rigged and they’ve been screwing every US citizen forever. The IRS is 100% illegal, the Federal Reserve is 100% illegal and Wall Street is 100% rigged to make them rich and steal our money. They are in the process of crashing the dollar bill and they plan to leave all of us broke and without a place to live.

So I for one am ready to cut totally over to Monero and not deal in FIAT monopoly money any longer. My only concern is, is there a way for them to stop us paying each other? I’ve been researching the network and processes but still not 100% on how things work enough to say one way or another.

But if we all sit here and wait for the dollar to crash to figure out what we’re going to do it will be too late.

3 Likes

To quote Max Keizer:
“Bitcoin is an engine that transforms greed into peace”

People come for the gains, stay for the freedom.

Because fiat is by force, by nature, a peaceful society is impossible. If your monetary system is cohersive.
But a voluntary system will at least incentiveise voluntarily.

As it turns out, with more efficiency comes more gains Because of less friction. The most frictionless system will feel like perpetual gains for the most amount of people

So long as gains are sustainable I think its great that people come for the gains. It means there is more freedom here then where they are coming from.

Don’t look down on people who want to maximize profits. We need them. Actually, if we want incognito to succeed we need good “pumpamentals” we need hype.

How many superior products failed because of low network effects?

Metcalfe’s law states that the effect of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2).

In other words If we want incognito to be successful we need to show the gainz!

7 Likes

That wasn’t what I was saying. I see no value in optimizing the system for those who walk in and out just to break the link between accounts, nor for those who join just for the profit. These people will flee to another system when they feel the grass is greener on that side.

Make the funds easy to use in everyday life and you have a big advantage over every other wallet/system. If you want crypto to replace fiat, you have to make that people can use it as fiat. That is what they know. Right now, in most cases, crypto is just an alternative stock exchange system. That is not something everyone uses. Focus on that and it will stay a niche.

Bring it to the average man in the street. Once you have that, other coins will be “begging” to join, instead of the other way around.

8 Likes

What they just did with Silver says otherwise. These shorts that happened today are a boon to the USD and was a worldwide effort to do so. Things are changing but the world isn’t ready to see any other currency in the lead just yet. Way too many people around the globe including crypto enthusiasts are heavily invested in USD.

What do you mean “what they just did to silver”? Everyone keeps talking about silver but I don’t really see much change in value. Seems media is lying again about what is really going on.

I also fail to see how the dollar is going to maintain its value at the rate the FED is printing the paper. At some point everything is going to come to a head.

1 Like

Jamie, I agree completely. I love the concept behind Monero but at the moment we need to be making terminals and keys that work fluidly with each other. ie: I want to pay you for fixing my plumbing, I pull out my hardware key and old up to yours and it asks how much I want to pay you, I enter the amount and the keys are transferred between us without me having to even know anything about it.

If I want lunch I walk up to the counter, they tell me how much it was and I hold my device next to theirs and it again, asks how much, I enter the amount and it is transferred.

However, I have an entirely different fear with ALL crypto currencies. That is of the ledger itself. I’m not sure any of these currencies would be able to handle its ledger when everyone starts using it as fiat. At what point does the ledger become so large that no one has the disk space to store and support it? Are their mechanisms for breaking the ledger up? Like, transfer all wallet info containing values to new branch of ledger and start over?

Otherwise you will reach a point that supporting the ledger becomes unmanageable.

1 Like

Interesting question. DNA data storage sounds a bit like sci-fi, but today’s sci-fi is tomorrow’s reality. Every time I read about DNA data storage applications I can’t help but think about block chain data. I mean it does sound easier to just start a new chain though🤣. Or to use like checkpoints, but still have the chain archives backed up many places.