″...cryptocurrencies makes stopping the funding of terrorists basically impossible.”
No. Really, really, no. I could talk a lot more about this, but if you think terrorist groups can manage infosec well enough to overcome concerted attacks by the NSA, or Mossad, or FSB, etc., you’re fooling yourself.
“Impossible” might be an exaggeration, but it does seem to make it much easier. That’s also what the article you link to suggests. Edit: Are you skeptical because of the on/off ramps, the security of terrorist’s computer infrastructure or something else?
Other than the misunderstanding and conflating nodes for hash power, this is also not true. Has power is concentrated, so you’d need to somehow convince the biggest mining groups that they don’t care about countries keeping their operations legal, and as we’ve seen, they do. That means they will continue to run to embrace KYC/AMF regulation, and will do whatever else makes their investments go well—including cooperating with nation-states in almost any way you can imagine.
So far, the only serious KYC/AMF happens at the level of centralized exchanges. Nation-states cannot enforce KYC/AMF at the level of decentralized exchanges. They can also use chain-analysis and put pressure on mining groups within their countries to do KYC/AMF or to create address “black lists” but so far there hasn’t been much political will for this, and probably would lead to a big backlash from the crypto community. And this becomes impossible for privacy coins such as Zcash and Monero.
“Impossible” might be an exaggeration, but it does seem to make it much easier.
It’s not harder to stop, it’s easier—blockchain is far easier to trace than cash, which is what is used now. And I’m skeptical for both of those reasons.
They can also use chain-analysis and put pressure on mining groups within their countries to do KYC/AMF or to create address “black lists” but so far there hasn’t been much political will for this
NatSec people already have large groups working on this, and my understanding is that even the best BTC wallets and mixers aren’t actually much help. And despite limited political will, OFAC has added people and addresses, and as far as I’m aware, no one has successfully moved money out of any of the (very few) OFAC-blocked addresses. Maybe that’s not pools enforcing the rules, and obviously blocking individual addresses is incredibly naïve as a strategy, but I will note that pools and other key players have every reason not to want to piss off the US Government.
“Impossible” might be an exaggeration, but it does seem to make it much easier. That’s also what the article you link to suggests. Edit: Are you skeptical because of the on/off ramps, the security of terrorist’s computer infrastructure or something else?
So far, the only serious KYC/AMF happens at the level of centralized exchanges. Nation-states cannot enforce KYC/AMF at the level of decentralized exchanges. They can also use chain-analysis and put pressure on mining groups within their countries to do KYC/AMF or to create address “black lists” but so far there hasn’t been much political will for this, and probably would lead to a big backlash from the crypto community. And this becomes impossible for privacy coins such as Zcash and Monero.
It’s not harder to stop, it’s easier—blockchain is far easier to trace than cash, which is what is used now. And I’m skeptical for both of those reasons.
NatSec people already have large groups working on this, and my understanding is that even the best BTC wallets and mixers aren’t actually much help. And despite limited political will, OFAC has added people and addresses, and as far as I’m aware, no one has successfully moved money out of any of the (very few) OFAC-blocked addresses. Maybe that’s not pools enforcing the rules, and obviously blocking individual addresses is incredibly naïve as a strategy, but I will note that pools and other key players have every reason not to want to piss off the US Government.