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Comment by nickysielicki | Hacker News Reader

If you exchange Bitcoin for cash, the IRS can retroactively look at every wallet that this money originated through. If they decide that they don’t like how certain coins were earned, they can mark them and any wallet they touched as poisoned, and put you in jail if you try to exchange them further.

Monero transactions are inherently obfuscated, which solves this problem. If you want more details, the Monero whitepaper is well written to be accessible for the common reader.

The tldr is it works atop ring signatures: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_signature

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> Monero transactions are inherently obfuscated, which solves this problem.

It solves the problem by making all participants culpable. The blockchain community is very good at imagining they have technical solutions to social problems.

I don’t believe US courts would see it the same way, if you use Monero for legitimate transactions you will not go to jail.

Can you elaborate?

By your logic, anyone using cash would be culpable for illegal transactions. Same with VPNs/Tor.

I think speech is not the same money, and that any kind of property you expect others to respect comes with obligations. Why should I respect your property claims if you can't show me you didn't steal your property?

But that's really beside the point, because it isn't me who will come after you, it's the IRS (or equivalent). If you spend a lot of money, you're in trouble if you can't explain how you got it. And if you explain that you participated in a network which has as its only purpose to destroy evidence of how you got it, you're usually in extra big trouble.

There's a little bar in Cupertino, Paul & Eddie's Monta Vista Inn. They only accept cash. Should they be shut down and have their assets seized? After all, what possible reason could they have to operate as cash only, in Silicon Valley, other than that they want to destroy evidence of how they earned it?

Again, it's beside the point what they should. Small businesses have "know your customer" requirements too, and if this little bar made suspiciously much money from cash sales, the government will come looking to make sure it isn't a money laundering operation.

If you think it shouldn't be that way, you are faced with a problem. A social political problem. Which Monero does nothing to solve. Which is the point.

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