This message from CoinCube was too important to leave in private message. Hope he won't mind if I reply publicly.
I can't think of a single crime that can be enabled by anonymity. Can you list one?
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Why are you against privacy?
I am not against privacy at all. However, I do have some concerns about the extreme case of unbreachable anonymity.
I can think of lots of crimes that are enabled by anonymity. Here are just a few.
1) Facilitation of breach of contract as the contracted individual can disappear without consequence.
2) Creation of marketplaces that encourage and drive undesirable behavior. 1) pedophilia, rape, murder, assassination.
True there are ways to mitigate some of these but only partially. Formalized justice and vengeance are two of the tools used by socialism to drive convergence. The above failures represent more examples were dynamic systems composed of completely autonomous actors do not converge on desirable behavior. There are likely many others.
I consider true anonymity in an economy to be not much different from desperate romans burying their gold in the ground. It makes sense, and it is the smartest option available, but it is also expensive and inefficient.
Anonymous crypto is definitely a much better choice than burying capital in the ground. Nevertheless, I view it as a high cost and inefficient solution made palatable only because the alternative socialism collapse and megadeath is much worse.
Hence my comments that I hope that someday once we have successfully transitioned to a knowledgeage and socialism is caged we can mostly discard anonymity and the downsides (crime, ect) that come with it.
1) Contracts shouldn't be designed to require the courts for restitution. This drives collectivism as you duly noted. For example, futures and options contracts should have sufficient collateral attached, and the contract automatically settles when the collateral limit is breached.
Remember my theory about how the
Knowledge Age will drive away debt contracts and fractional reserves.
Note even in a contract that requires identity (e.g. photographs and fingerprints) for restitution, the individual can not disappear. He still has a body and that body can be tracked down. This is the way crimes were solved since Mesopotamia. Anonymous internet communication doesn't make it more difficult to hunt down individuals as compared to the way it was done before the internet. There was always anonymous money and transactions in the past. Whereas, if we give the State the power to make all transactions trackable in the imminent switch over to digital currency, we will surely all die in megadeath 666.
2) Pedophilia, rape, murder, assassination have been going on since Mesopotamia. Communications were always anonymous in the past. You want a 666 control system to try to stop what has always existed and you will get instead your nirvana of megadeath.
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Internet anonymity is nothing like burying gold coins. It doesn't have to be cumbersome nor cost more (but there is a lot of programming work that needs to be done to make it so). It doesn't have to decline the velocity of money and can in fact increase the velocity which has been collapsing, by providing an outlet for the private sector to grow and interopt without the oppression of the State.