Japan To Lead Development of SWIFT Network For Cryptocurrency (reuters.com) 42
Japan's government is leading a global push to set up an international network for cryptocurrency payments, similar to the SWIFT network used by banks, in an effort to fight money laundering, Reuters reports. From the report: Tokyo aims to have the network in place in the next few years, the person said, declining to be identified because the information has not been made public. A team related to the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) will monitor its development and Japan will cooperate with other countries, the source said. It remains unclear how the cryptocurrency network would work. SWIFT is the international payments messaging system used by banks to send money around the world.
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We already have a system like this. It's called Ripple.
The problem with Ripple is that it allows private, anonymous transactions.
Governments want to prevent that.
They are disguising their attack on privacy as "crime fighting", since obviously only people with something to hide value privacy.
We should be decriminalizing consensual behavior, rather than inventing new crimes like "money laundering" to fill our prisons.
Why do these people not talk to some engineers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because then they could just have scrapped this unworkable idea right from the start. But no, politicians and business-side people think they define how technology (and reality) works.
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THINK about how USA Government controls supply/value of Dollar based on needs of USA economy!!!
Actually, to all intents & purposes, they don't. Think about banks. When they 'lend' money that money has not been created by the US Government, it has been created by the bank, essentially by altering a couple of values in a database. Before you instinctively disagree you might like to look up 'fractional reserve banking', and spend some time thinking though the implications...
ONLY Governments should/must have authority to issue currency!!!
I'm sure you have your reasons for saying this, but whatever they are they're not clear from your post. FUD doesn't count as a
Japan has bigger problems right now (Score:3)
Don't be TOO similar (Score:1)
similar to the SWIFT network used by banks
Just be sure it's not TOO similar, or you may get similarly hacked [wikipedia.org].
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No, the point of crypto is to have a zero-friction, zero-trust system to move arbitrary value. The whole point of the blockchain is to provide an immutable record of every transaction between all parties. Anonymity is a requirement imposed by the type of people that flocked to crypto. AML regulations get in the way of zero friction, but I don't think it's impossible to reconcile the two.
Wtf? (Score:2)
We already have dozens, if not hundreds, of those.