Crypto Exchanges Consider Ukraine's Call To Freeze Russians' Bitcoin (cointelegraph.com) 126
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinTelegraph: As the West continues to impose more sanctions against Russian banks following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, one Ukrainian official has called for sanctions on Russians' cryptocurrency holdings as well. Mykhailo Fedorov, minister of digital transformation of Ukraine, took to Twitter on Sunday to urge the global cryptocurrency exchanges to block addresses of Russian users. He emphasized that exchanges should freeze not only the addresses tied to Russia and Belarus officially but also to "sabotage ordinary users." Fedorov subsequently pointed out that some industry-related services have already moved to freeze assets from Russia and Belarus, including the nonfungible token platform DMarket. "Funds from these accounts could be donated to the war effort. Nowadays Robin Hoods. Bravo," Fedorov stated. He also cited the ongoing measures taken by the social media giant Meta regarding Russia's attack on Ukraine. Fedorov's appeals could potentially be catastrophic for the Russian cryptocurrency market, as Russians were estimated to hold more than $200 billion in crypto as of early February.
Binance does not plan to freeze assets by Russians because this would contradict cryptocurrency's main principles of financial freedom, a spokesperson for the firm told Cointelegraph on Monday: "We are not going to unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users' accounts. Crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe." The representative added that the exchange is taking measures to ensure that sanctions are against sanctioned entities in Russia while "minimizing the impact to innocent users." "Should the international community widen those sanctions further, we will apply those aggressively as well," the spokesperson added.
Some crypto executives believe that sanctions against Russia are eventually inevitable. However, they should target only select persons as the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control usually does. "We think that the sanctions will be inevitable by naming new sanctioned persons as US/OFAC has done in the past. However, banning all crypto companies from offering services to ordinary Russians would not make sense and would cause more harm for everyday people than good," LocalBitcoins chief marketing officer Jukka Blomberg told Cointelegraph. Kraken CEO Jesse Powell also said that the Kraken exchange will not be able to freeze the accounts of the exchange's Russian clients without a legal requirement. "Russians should be aware that such a requirement could be imminent," he added. Powell previously recommended Kraken users move their crypto assets out of the exchanges, referring to Canada's Emergency Act freezing the crypto of dissidents.
Binance does not plan to freeze assets by Russians because this would contradict cryptocurrency's main principles of financial freedom, a spokesperson for the firm told Cointelegraph on Monday: "We are not going to unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users' accounts. Crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe." The representative added that the exchange is taking measures to ensure that sanctions are against sanctioned entities in Russia while "minimizing the impact to innocent users." "Should the international community widen those sanctions further, we will apply those aggressively as well," the spokesperson added.
Some crypto executives believe that sanctions against Russia are eventually inevitable. However, they should target only select persons as the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control usually does. "We think that the sanctions will be inevitable by naming new sanctioned persons as US/OFAC has done in the past. However, banning all crypto companies from offering services to ordinary Russians would not make sense and would cause more harm for everyday people than good," LocalBitcoins chief marketing officer Jukka Blomberg told Cointelegraph. Kraken CEO Jesse Powell also said that the Kraken exchange will not be able to freeze the accounts of the exchange's Russian clients without a legal requirement. "Russians should be aware that such a requirement could be imminent," he added. Powell previously recommended Kraken users move their crypto assets out of the exchanges, referring to Canada's Emergency Act freezing the crypto of dissidents.
cryptocurrency's main principles of crime! (Score:1)
cryptocurrency's main principles of crime!
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It's probably time for Western financial oversight bureaucracies to start reigning crypto in. If they won't do it out of the goodness of the heart, then it should be thrust upon them.
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You will only move cryptocurrency trades underground and force people to do person to person exchanges. You can't "regulate" something that is decentralized in nature.
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You will only move cryptocurrency trades underground and force people to do person to person exchanges. You can't "regulate" something that is decentralized in nature.
Of course you can. First, you go to every crypto exchange, tell them to turn their servers off or get arrested and then their servers get turned off in a less gentle way. That's most of the work done.
Would you want to trade bitcoin with some individual who you don't know? Go ahead.
Re: cryptocurrency's main principles of crime! (Score:2)
Localbitcoins.com has existed for almost a decade and has facilitated in person exchanges. It's not strictly needed though.
Just a friendly reminder (Score:1)
Incidentally this also means the exchanges are vulnerable to being coerced by governments. And these are very large companies so it won't take very much coercion.
The point is anytime governments want to stop the money laundering spigot that is cryptocurrency they can. As soon as I can tell they have been h
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hold enough currency they can do a 51% attack.
Isn't it the miners [investopedia.com] who do the 51% attack? The holders can't do much about it.
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See my post above (Score:2)
This is possible because the only way to move large amounts of currency safely (like a legit business like a mining op needs to ) is with the exchanges. Yes, they can say "fuck it" and trade on their own... and go out of business after a few bad trades. Remember Valve got out of crypto because 50% of their transactions were frau
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If all else fails they hold enough currency they can do a 51% attack.
and OP has been corrected about that before *sigh*
explaining how an Exchange can orchestrate a 51% attack
You're conflating holding the currency and being the exchange. While "splaining" blindly into a correction of your mistake. Are you a fucking moron, or just a dumb-fuck?
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What about proof of stake coins, would this be a flaw there?
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I'm cutting out a step (Score:2)
So the exchanges can (and will, and have) go to the big miners and tell them "we need you to play ball". Since the market is "mature" (meaning there's been a ton of consolidation as it's become a multi-billion dollar industry) this is practical.
Before the exchanges there wasn't anyone who could put much pressure on the miners. The miners though can't make any money without the exchanges. They need them to reliably turn t
Re: Just a friendly reminder (Score:2)
Correct. Also the attacker always loses more money due to rates crashing than they can make by any potential bad actions or fraud or cancelling transactions etc.
Re: Just a friendly reminder (Score:2)
You could make money if you manage to short that crypto in huge volumes but that market is not so big like the stock market F&O so it's only in theory. Also the buyers will later take you to court for fraud.
51% attacks will never have commercial / financial benefit.
So only if you are a nation state willing to waste a Trillion dollars to prove some point then you could do it. In theory.
Exchanges can anyway just forfeit all your crypto, it belongs to them if they have the private key. Just like banks can
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But probably not in practice because the specialty cheaps needed can only be produced by a handful of fabs. There is no way a nation state could do this without the others finding out and then you don't get a 51% attack, you get an international crypto war.
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Supposing cryptocurrency actually became a currency, if you were a state that didn't use it much you could do some nasty things to a state that did. Taking over a significant fraction of the mining pool would mean you could mostly block transactions from wallets you didn't like. If you caused enough chaos to drop the value, as the GP suggested, you'd also be causing massive inflation in the target nation. Just like the west is doing to Russia right now, except much more directly.
Re: Just a friendly reminder (Score:2)
Isn't Etherium working on converting to proof-of-stake? So in the future this may at least be relevant for Etherium.
Re: Just a friendly reminder (Score:2)
It's neither miners nor those who control the exchanges. It's the nodes in the network.
Anyone who controls 51% of the blockchain nodes, even if it's just on one computer, controls the blockchain.
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Anyone who controls 51% of the blockchain nodes, even if it's just on one computer, controls the blockchain.
A system so trivially vulnerable to such Sybil attacks would not have survived this long. No, the "51% attack" is based on controlling over 50% of the hash rate—not the number of nodes, or the number of miners, or exchanges, or a quantity of bitcoins (that would be proof-of-stake, not proof-of-work), but the rate of computation. This roughly corresponds to the amount one is able and willing to spend on efficient mining hardware and the electricity to power it. And even if you pull it off, at great exp
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That's incorrect. The blockchain is decided by a majority vote. That is how it heals itself. And it was indeed vulnerable to such attacks when it started off.
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It is a simple application of the Byzantine General's Problem, a technique also used in the Space Shuttle to guarantee the accuracy of the computers in space. It works by majority vote.
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Just a quick note that for the 51% attack you need mining power, not amount of coins, so exchanges are useless there... but they can grab all the coins and cash at anytime and close the site. if well planned, they could have sold already all the coins in other exchanges... so yes, you can trust them as much you trust a non official bank (even official ones, while following many security laws to protect end users, can take your money, usually only a part of the money is secured and investments are usually no
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Crypto exchanges have mining power (Score:2)
Basically like all markets crypto has begun to consolidate. This is natural. As some people are more successful (either due to luck or smarts) they can and will leverage that success for more success. It then becomes harder for new players to enter the market and when they do they tend to get bought out early on.
Heavy regulation can prevent that,
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The takeaway being that if the United States were to go and do something horribly unpopular (invade Canada, perhaps? Don't blame me, I've been binge watching South Park), you'd only be able to sell your Bitcoins on US-based exchanges? That's not really anything new. If you keep your money in an overseas account and diplomacy breaks down between your country and the one where your money is stored, you might never see your money again.
Cryptocurrency does at least have an advantage over fiat in that you don
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At the end of the day you still have to find people who will accept your coins as payment. Currency is only useful so long as it is useful as a means of exchange (in a way, so are longer term investments like real estate, as the Oligarchs are about to find out), but if your currency starts to lose utility, either through a lack of value (think of hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic or in Venezuela a few years ago) or simply because you can't actually do anything with it, or at least your options as to how
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At the end of the day you still have to find people who will accept your coins as payment.
Which can quickly become a dicey proposition when you're the aggressor in an unpopular war, regardless of whether it's crypto or fiat.
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That isn't what the 51% attack is or means. You have to control 51% of the mining power not the balance and nobody controls 51% of the mining power. There was a small risk of that during the early days of ASIC mining but the companies developing the new chips weren't foolish enough to do it because they'd instan
Re: But Decentralized!!!! (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/O7vC8T0umig [youtu.be]
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How can it be that I'm unable to achieve ultimate financial freedom by running a old Pentium 2 box in a dusty corner of my basement?!?!
Because you don't have the funds to promote your "Pentium 2 Box in my Dusty Basement Coin". If you ran a Superbowl ad telling everyone that it is the next big thing that they need to go all-in on, yesterday, you'd be raking in the bucks.
Monaco to cut off Russia's elite (Score:2)
Following behind Switzerland, Monaco is freezing all assets [twitter.com] of Russian oligarchs and imposing sanctions against Russia identical to that of European countries.
What's left? Cayman Islands? Cyprus? Virgin Islands? Malaysia? What others are out there? At this rate, Putin and his cronies won't have a kopek to their names by the end of the week.
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Yup, Switzerland freezing Russian assets is a body blow for the Oligarchs. If the Brits follow through by seizing all those properties in London that the Oligarchs have been buying up for years, then they lose all those fixed assets they've used to move cash out of the country. Let's see how long they love Putin when their net worth collapses. I imagine that China will help them out, though I wonder what the price will be. If China becomes Russia's main point of money laundering, I imagine Beijing will have
China will absolutely help them (Score:2)
What do you think HSBC is? It's basically the 1 stop shop for money laundering in and out of the West. They don't manipulate stock markets, they knowingly move money for sanctions violators, oligarchs and major drug cartels.
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It benefits European banks if Chinese banks are less connected, the competition for legitimate financial services doesn't really like competition from outside the club.
Americans would have a hard time saying no after insisting on the toughest response that can be mustered.
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Russia's economy basically works like this: the oligarchs make money in Russia and move it out of the country and export to the West. in many regards, Russia is a colony of the West. somehow I doubt it very much the West is going to go far to dismantle this system and have the Russian money stay in Russia instead.
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somehow I doubt it very much the West is going to go far to dismantle this system and have the Russian money stay in Russia instead.
True. Though Russia is expected to make less money in the near future - due to all the sanctions. And Russian money is going and breaking up / burning in Ukraine if you notice all the tanks, planes and vehicles being destroyed by Ukrainians.
So, the West is more likely to let that reduced money stay in Russia for some time. Not certain, but more likely than before.
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Losing Monaco to civilization is a huge blow for Russian criminals.
These island countries can be good sources of shell paperwork, and it is hard to imagine stopping them within the norms of the international financial world. But being a banking shield is a whole different ball of wax, and Prince Albert in Monaco has only been able to do it because of maintained historical relationships. Cayman Islands can't really do that. They need access to western banks.
What's left? Dubai.
Great start! (Score:3)
Now that they've covered the war crimes committed by the Kremlin by punishing anyone in Russia & Belarus regardless of their relationship with the Kremlin or their responsibility, AKA collective punishment, perhaps they can do the same for other criminal acts taking place via blockchain asset trading. Could we agree on freezing the accounts of anyone who might be associated with any organisations involved in human trafficking & child pornography? How about narcotics & arms trafficking? How about money laundering? But of course, only if they live in the same country - They shouldn't make their judgments overly broad now, should they?
Does this mean they've also established the precedent & that gives them the power & responsibility to police who is allowed to trade & what they are allowed to trade? If they choose not to prevent any of these people from committing crimes, does that make them accomplices, you know, turning a blind eye?
Give me rule of law & regulation any day. This blockchain nonsense has got to stop soon.
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Give me rule of law & regulation any day.
When the gaze of government agencies is cast towards the exchanges because of sanctions requirements, it may turn out that there already a bunch of other regulations that they will want to enforce at the same time. Because without that sort of accounting, they won't be able to do the sanctions enforcement.
The government has always said that the existing rules already apply to any new sort of currency somebody creates, and any sort of security somebody decides to trade. If it works like a currency, it is alr
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Give me rule of law & regulation any day.
When the gaze of government agencies is cast towards the exchanges because of sanctions requirements, it may turn out that there already a bunch of other regulations that they will want to enforce at the same time. Because without that sort of accounting, they won't be able to do the sanctions enforcement.
The government has always said that the existing rules already apply to any new sort of currency somebody creates, and any sort of security somebody decides to trade. If it works like a currency, it is already has regulations that they're supposed to be following. If it trades like a currency, there are also rules. If I sell you tulip futures, that's a security. Digital tulip certificates are exactly the same type of financial instrument as tulip bulb certificates, regardless of the underlying property. If we then get stores to accept digital tulip bulb certificates as generic payment to settle debts, then it is also a private currency.
It's a pity then that the US regulators have had a "light touch" policy of regulation for at least the past 40 years. Crimes are being committed but the regulators don't want to investigate & prosecute them. Of course, all that can change in a heartbeat if the political will exists.
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Now that they've covered the war crimes committed by the Kremlin by punishing anyone in Russia & Belarus regardless of their relationship with the Kremlin or their responsibility, AKA collective punishment, perhaps they can do the same for other criminal acts taking place via blockchain asset trading.
This is war, and war is collective punishment.
You want to avoid hurting innocent civilians on both sides, but when given the choice between letting Putin kill Ukrainians and inflicting fiscal pain on ordinary Russians then sanction away.
If they really want to avoid sanctions then they can get off the collective *sses and depose Putin. Or are they still too grateful for him for the last time he invaded Ukraine and annexed territory?
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But of course, only if they live in the same country
But the association here is not "living in the same country". Russians did actually elect Putin to lead the country, and as far as I know a lot of Putin's support in Russia is real, even if elections were rigged.
So, does anybody here still trust Bitcoin? (Score:2)
Let Putin have his Bitcoin. He can use it
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Maybe Trump can figure out a way to exchange rubles for gold toilets.
Re:So, does anybody here still trust Bitcoin? (Score:4)
Orange man still living rent free in your head? It must really suck with the whole world spiraling down the shitter and what comes to your head is, somehow, its Trump's fault.
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Re:So, does anybody here still trust Bitcoin? (Score:4)
I'm watching Tucker Carlson right now and at no point has he said anything about being on Putin's side. What he has said is maybe starting shit with a fucking nuclear power is not a good thing. An he is fucking right. Especially, since that person seems to be mentally unbalanced.
He never does (Score:2)
So instead he goes on a carefully constructed rant that says to anyone listening that Putin's invasion of Ukraine and by extension all the death it causes isn't nearly as bad as Joe Biden, Canada arresting people for blocking roads, trans people wanting to be called their preferred pronouns, or
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I get it, you find Tucker and Fox entertaining.
No, I find Tucker entertaining. I find the rest of Foxnews as annoying. I don't know how any one can stand Hannity. His voice just makes my teeth hurt.
Now as for Tucker, tonight show he was correct. We can not involve ourselves in a direct confrontation with Russia on this. Not with nuclear armed Russia who's leader's mental stability is in question. Sanctions, economic pressures, and encouraging the Russian people to remove him are the best options we have.
It sucks, but we have to tread ve
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You're weak, and soft, and ready to fold.
As a great American once said, "Nuts!"
We don't need a direct confrontation (Score:2)
At this point we can cut Russia off from the rest of the world and that's what we need to do. Appeasement didn't work for Hitler and it won't work for Putin.
You should turn off Carlson. It's bad for you.
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The treat of nuclear war is very real. If you chose to disregard it because it was Tucker that brought it up, that is your problem. But there was other talking heads on different channels, cnn and msnbc, that are basically stating the same thing.
Lets review what has happened since Sunday. On Sunday Russian nuclear forces went on high alert. If that doesn't "raise your hackles" alone then you are a idiot. There are people calling for escalation and direct conflict with Russia now. That should ala
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Typical rslivergun argument. Excuse the infringement of actual basic liberties like bodily integrity. Try to paint a bunch of deranged weirdos who are actively seeking to destroy the core social institution (the nuclear family) that serves as the corner stone of individual liberty and success and use but but Putin is worse whataboutism to absolve his lefist twits of any consequences.
Canada freezing peoples bank accounts and arresting and beating people over a peaceful protest IS as bad as Putin - you know
Re:So, does anybody here still trust Bitcoin? (Score:5, Informative)
Tucker Carlson's transcript from Fox News
https://www.foxnews.com/transc... [foxnews.com]
It's a lot of rambling about how since Putin didn't have Carlson's family thrown out of a window, why dislike him?
Conspiracy theories about Biden protecting Ukraine because of the non-existent evidence they had against Hunter (remember that Trump withheld aid to Ukraine wanting them to announce an investigation into Bidens).
It is blatantly pro-Putin, where he claims anti-Putin sentiment was an extension of anti-Trump sentiment. Prior to replying to you I only saw highlights if this rant, but to reply to your comment I read the whole thing and it's freaking bananas.
---
Tucker Carlson:
Very soon, that hatred of Vladimir Putin could bring the United States into a conflict in Eastern Europe. Before that happens, it might be worth asking yourself since it is getting pretty serious: What is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle class job in my town to Russia?
Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity? Does he eat dogs?
These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is no. Vladimir Putin didn't do any of that. So why does permanent Washington hate him so much?
If you've been watching the news, you know that Putin is having a border dispute with a nation called Ukraine. Now the main thing to know about Ukraine for our purposes, is that its leaders once sent millions of dollars to Joe Biden's family. Not surprisingly, Ukraine is now one of Biden's favorite countries.
Biden has pledged to defend Ukraine's borders even as he opens our borders to the world. That's how it works. Invading America is called equity, invading Ukraine is a war crime.
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To clarify since there's no Slashdot edit button, that was only a segment of the transcript. Please read the whole thing, especially where he implies that Trudeau is worse than Putin using sarcasm.
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Now that you know what sort of creature he is, perhaps you'll be wiser than to risk a transcript next time. They're usually safe, but terrorist sympathizers write dangerous things, and are not a safe input to consume.
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Uh thanks for your concern but I think I survived the experience.
Every now and then I go straight to the source to make sure the more opinion based reporting isn't exaggerating things, taking out of context etc - maybe the right isn't so bad, you know there might be a legitimate logical reason why so many people think it's the correct side and it's more than just making your tribe happy.
Then I read the stuff for myself, from their champions of Trump, Tucker, Bannon : and they're clearly just insane idiots.
I
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Sorry Vladi, my liberal freedom is worth more than all our lives.
How is this for a threat? You want there to be non-rodent mammals on this planet? Stop trying to take Freedom from the West, because our Freedom is worth more than your life, more than all lives forever, into history.
You can't take our Freedom with nukes.
You can't take Ukraine's Freedom with nukes.
Why? Because their Freedom was already Agreed To! And that matters more than your life.
https://larouchepub.com/eiw/pu... [larouchepub.com] (The Budapest
Memorandum of
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I'm watching Tucker Carlson right now and at no point has he said anything about being on Putin's side. What he has said is maybe starting shit with a fucking nuclear power is not a good thing. An he is fucking right. Especially, since that person seems to be mentally unbalanced.
Not sure if you're playing dumb or just... not playing.
Carlson never says anything directly, he talks about how Putin is a doing great things without saying he supports him, he wonders why we're bothering Putin with sanctions and criticism without saying that he's happy that Putin is interfering in your electoral system. He shows video after video of black people doing bad things but never says he dislikes black people. He bemoans that white people are becoming a smaller fraction of people in the US... but
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That's his entire game, lay out all the arguments for white christian supremacy, celebrate leaders who endorse white christian supremacy (Putin, Trump, Orban), but leave the viewer to make their own conclusion so you can't be accused of being a white christian supremacist.
Okay, you are an idiot. You are out. It is best that you do not comment any more.
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The internet does not forget.
Here's one compilation [twitter.com].
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I just looked up what Trump said an at no point did he state he was on Putin's side. What he said was, "Putin is playing Biden like a drum and it's not a pretty thing to watch."
Trump is correct. Putin is playing Biden and the west like ad drum. Putin has out maneuvered everyone on this one, for now. Putin knows that we can't push back to hard with out risking a all out nuclear war with Russia.
This doesn't condone what Putin is doing or has done. It's just stating that Putin has thought this tho
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We're providing weapons and using maximum sanctions, we're doing everything there is to do short of direct combat.
Don't go nutter on it. It's a disgusting betrayal of western civilization to play back-stabbing internal politics on this.
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Evidence is suggesting that won't be the case. He's losing the PR game. He can generally get sycophants in most of western Europe to keep things relatively calm for him. He's notably failing that now, with even Switzerland, fucking shockingly, in on the blockade of anyone touching the Kremlin.
I'd say Biden, and the rest of the world, have probably just successfully faced off against a Russian leader for the fi
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I never said Putin would come out on top of this. I simply agreed with Trump statement at the time that Putin was playing everyone rather well. What Putin didn't count on was the resistance of the Ukraine.
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Regardless of how Ukraine ends up, Russia is demolished economically. Their currency isn't worth the paper it's printed on, and their base interest rate for their central bank is now above 20%.
They'll be wiping their ass with rubles before the week is out.
This is the strongest response that has been leveraged against Russia since 1962.
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I never made that statement, I just agreed with it. An when that statement was made, a few days ago, it was correct. He was playing Biden and the west like a drum. Now we are several days in to this and that statement no longer holds true. Putin is done at home no matter how this ends up.
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Maybe Trump can figure out a way to exchange rubles for gold toilets.
Putin already knows that. You know he built a Winter Palace near Sochi, in the mountains? It has gold toilets, throne rooms, everything.
What he really needs to be able to do is turn rubles into toilet paper.
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What is the "Fireball at Coney Island"? Possibly you mean the Coney Island Cyclone [wikipedia.org] roller coaster?
In Crime We Trust (Score:1)
I think we're stuck with it so long as the seedier members of society have no other way to move their money/get paid. As for the people who gamble/speculate on cryptocurrency, the morality issues are easily dismissed so long as there's a potential for profit.
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the western crypto exchanges claims of being "decentralised and deregulated"
The exchanges have never been "decentralized" OR "deregulated". Exchanges operate at the edges of the crypto ecosystem. They are not crypto itself, just one group of users among many. Because they interface with the traditional finance system they are both centralized and highly regulated.
It will be interesting to see whether certain organizations facing increasing difficulties with traditional markets start trading goods and services for crypto directly, rather than going through any exchange. Especially n
daily reminder (Score:3)
do not use an exchange as a wallet
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do not use an exchange as a wallet
for truth
How Long Ya Gonna Think About it? (Score:2)
Crypto Exchanges on the right side of history (Score:2)
Oh boy, aren't we all trying to be on the right side of history?
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Oh boy, aren't we all trying to be on the right side of history?
Not Putin. He's trying to be an old-school conqueror, and doesn't care how he will be remembered.
Russia has a significant number of very well educated people and as such could accomplish quite a lot if all the money wasn't being run off with by Putin and the Oligarchs (which in a decade or so may be a great band name.) But since they're looting the coffers in an attempt to live the same lifestyle as the big turds in the western toilet bowl, and failing by the way as they still have a whole lot less money to
Re: Crypto Exchanges on the right side of history (Score:1)
I would say he is trying to be USA. But he forgot to show some fake destructive weapon of destruction at ONU before so it's a fail. He doesn't have a free pass to carpet bomb whoever he want.
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Not Putin. He's trying to be an old-school conqueror, and doesn't care how he will be remembered.
If he wins he will be on the right side of history, the guy who restored the glory of Russia. I just hope he doesn't win, and there will be people left to remember.
This is great news for DEX'es (Score:3)
This will finally make people aware why they should use decentralized exchanges & p2p exchanges instead of keeping their money with unreliable cos running centralized exchanges just because it's slightly more convenient.
Full disclosure: I have very tiny amounts, like $100, of crypto for some testing purposes and mostly it is with a centralized exchange! :)
Do as I say, not as I do ?
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Mob justice at its finest (Score:2)
Leaving aside for a moment how this undermines all the "cryptocurrency is resilient ti central control" talking points, and just making believe this is how it's supposed to work;
A private, undemocratic entity, unelected by anyone and with zero oversight, blocking financial assets and liquidity of whoever it likes - not only a foreign country, but its actual citizens, who may of may not live in that country, may or may not actually be its citizens, and may or may not condone their government's actions.
And be
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A cryptocoin exchanger to even insinuate it belongs in the same decision making level is the pinnacle of hubris
You mean kind of like crypto miners insinuating that they belong in the same decision making level as governments, which operate mints?
and essentially all the way round back to good ole' mob justice on the market square.
This is exactly what cryptocurrency leads to. The whole point of government control of currency is stability and following of rules. The whole point of cryptocurrency is to avoid having government control and rules. Anything technically possible is legitimate as far as the crypto scene goes.
The whole idea that crypto exchanges should not play the same role as governments is
Re: Mob justice at its finest (Score:2)
This is different. Anyone who participates in cryptocurrency accepts the rules as they are, and more or less agree to subject themselves to those.
Here somebody looks to subject somebody else to rules they've unilaterally set up.
While we do have mechamis that work this way, they're usually the domain of (agreed-upon) forms of governments. Even more, we usually regard governments as disfunctional if they're not "democratic".
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This is different.
It isn't.
Anyone who participates in cryptocurrency accepts the rules as they are
Rules? What rules?
Here somebody looks to subject somebody else to rules they've unilaterally set up.
Everyone is subject to rules someone else set up. And usually not entirely for their benefit either.
Even more, we usually regard governments as disfunctional if they're not "democratic".
Who is we? I don't want to live under a non-democratic regime (although I totally do, and America has in fact always been run by oligarchy regardless of what it says on the box) but to me dysfunctional means not functioning. If it's sustainable then it's functional.
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Until Russia stops the war (Score:2)
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Likewise there are no "innocent" Americans, or Brits, or Europeans (apart from maybe the Swiss).
Correct.
Just as many people said "I didn't vote for him" or "he's not my president", or "I protested against the war" or whatever else, they're still as collectively guilty as any russian is for the actions of Putin. Be careful what you wish for.
So long as the punishments are collective, they are fair.
Sigh. (Score:2)
Almost sounds like some kind of regulation and control, doesn't it?
Did you really think Bitcoin was free to do what it liked?
reminds me of american election time (Score:1)
but im still looking for russian bitcoin reserves - all i find is the money thats owned by Crotter Inc. (bc how else are they gonna block it - all current morals aside i think that raises another question if these things can be locked unilateral)
https://www.statista.com/chart... [statista.com]
usually does? (Score:2)
Some crypto executives believe that sanctions against Russia are eventually inevitable. However, they should target only select persons as the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control usually does.
OK, but right now there are economic sanctions against all of Russia. Why would they not sanction all Russians' bitcoins at this time, as well?