EU Moving to Ban Privacy Coins: Report

Sad when some coins' privacy benefits just emerge naturally from an elegant design that hugely improves scalability [1].

[1] https://tromp.github.io/circle-research-mimblewimble.pdf

Cue the crowd of "you can't ban math and numbers!".

Yes I can. I might not be able to effectively stop it for operating, but I sure a shit can put big, fat roadblocks with long jail sentences at every on- and offramp to privacy coins within my jurisdiction, and coerce anyone who wants to do business in my jurisdiction or the currency I control (euro) to do the same.

* A crypto exchange offers privacy coins? DNS block it, force every banking and credit card entity to blacklist it. No swift, Bacs, visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Venmo, alipay, etc.

* Anyone offering services to exchange bitcoin or fiat to privacy coins is labelled a criminal.

This will shut down 99 percent of the volume, making it a lot easier to focus on tracking the remaining 1 percent of illegal money and actually catching criminals.

You can absolutely ban cryptocurrencies.

I don't think that the elderly EUthocrats really have thought this through

You can hardly ban a true, scalable, proof of work cryptocurrency. https://docs.grin.mw/

The EU is so far from reality it's astonishing that the HQ is even on land and not in the middle of the Ocean...or the Moon.