A legal tactic to be aware of is to make unfollowable laws, and then selectively enforce them.
So for example with this FinCEN proposal, add a ton of reporting requirements for all sorts of noncustodial transaction types, which puts tons of normal operators at risk and heavily disincentivizes them. It’s so broad as to apply to almost everyone, and even things they can’t report technically could be argued to be reportable (eg Lightning node router operator- report everyone you are routing for!). Now, everyone is a criminal; everyone has legal leverage against them which can be selectively deployed.
And if a “class of transactions” can be labeled under Section 311 of the Patriot Act as reportable, then why not also ban-able? Instead of sanctioning an actual entity, why not sanction a concept, a class of transactions, an expression of math?
Dangerous precedent.
LynAlden / Lyn Alden
npub1a2…cw83a
2023-10-24 00:36:28
Author Public Key
npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83aPublished at
2023-10-24 00:36:28Event JSON
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"pubkey": "eab0e756d32b80bcd464f3d844b8040303075a13eabc3599a762c9ac7ab91f4f",
"created_at": 1698100588,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [],
"content": "A legal tactic to be aware of is to make unfollowable laws, and then selectively enforce them.\n\nSo for example with this FinCEN proposal, add a ton of reporting requirements for all sorts of noncustodial transaction types, which puts tons of normal operators at risk and heavily disincentivizes them. It’s so broad as to apply to almost everyone, and even things they can’t report technically could be argued to be reportable (eg Lightning node router operator- report everyone you are routing for!). Now, everyone is a criminal; everyone has legal leverage against them which can be selectively deployed.\n\nAnd if a “class of transactions” can be labeled under Section 311 of the Patriot Act as reportable, then why not also ban-able? Instead of sanctioning an actual entity, why not sanction a concept, a class of transactions, an expression of math?\n\nDangerous precedent.",
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}