Yes, except you are 100% in control of what goes on on your server and could easily falsify data. The _whole_ point of cryptocurrencies is to avoid that.
You may not need to trust that the central bank won't fire up its printing press, true. But you're absolutely trusting that someone somewhere will want to exchange your bitcoins for something other than bitcoins, and there's no inherent reason why they would.
I guess it depends on the technical savvy of the user and whether “running your own electrum server or cross checking transactions with a third party” is really going to happen.
The project website doesn't advise taking these measures, nor disclose the possibility of this scenario. That's what bugs me the most here.
If their intended user is a knowledgeable Bitcoin hobbyist, who knows how the currency works inside and out, maybe it isn't a big deal, but just speaking personally as a Bitcoin newbie, the lack of disclosure/accountability suggested I stay away.
While I'm not implementing a crypto currency exchange, I will still have to disburse float based funds over short periods of time. As the site code will be responsible for this, there exists a hypothetical opportunity for a bad agent to break in and siphon off those funds. I'm toying around with making it impossible to withdraw funds once they are deposited by a user. If funds were limited to penny value drips to keep instances running, the site could be made aware of larger transfers of value out of given addresses. If that was noticed by the system, another secret system could 'pull the plug' on the API tokens for the Coinbase API. I'll need Coinbase to implement token revokes in their API...
Better, if the code is Open Source, I can have more eyeballs on it to prevent such an eventuality. You can review my code here: https://github.com/StackMonkey. The pool controller is the one which will need to be closely scrutinized. The appliance can only watch incoming payments, so it's not really that venerable. I choose to make all this code Open Source because it will be in charge of customer funds and, more importantly, the infrastructure of the Internet.
Moving forward, I don't think it's a good idea to use anything hooked up to your Bitcoin float that isn't Open. Still, it's a choice people can make freely, even if it's a poor one. Education matters.
- fighting someone who controls Stripe well enough to browse transaction logs
- or you are fighting someone who can access your bank transactions (more likely in this case) and manage to correlate them correctly with Telegram account creation time
Both seems like huge steps forward compared to sms validation.
Furthermore: Bitcoin is not much safer for the ordinary citizen. If anything it is way easier to trace than cash and I guess slightly more different to trace than bank transfers.
Except in one aspect: Because cryptocurrency for these purposes at best use a loophole in AML/KYC laws, at worst just plain break them, if you do it right there's less risk of getting caught (guilty or innocently) in mandated money laundering tripwires.
I've had banks call me about source of funds, and sometimes require proof, for large "unusual" transactions. I was an innocent victim of these audits. It delayed my transactions by maybe minutes.
Yes, probably some percentage of people who've lost money, through no fault of their own, to these extra checks. But for every single one of those there are at least thousands who've lost cryptocurrency due to them not having these checks and audits.
And on top of that of course cryptocurrency transactions are much fewer and move less value.
Of course not: if you are fined heavily if you use them, most people won't use them and that's it. Follow the crypto through the chain and if it seems to originate from you, you pay 100x whatever is in the address. Or jail if you cannot pay that. Would work no? You do not need technical measures if you are a resident of a country. But you catch them at the point of conversion to fiat. And then it becomes too much risk and hassle.
I think it would weaponize blockchain: the fact you can be lifted from your bed in 20 years for an illegal transaction because it is on the chain would be enough for most to never touch it.
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