Your Choice To Make

TL;DR: Wakey wakey, give a crap about freedom, or accept the consequences.Another Sunday afternoon, another news item about Monero being delisted from a centralized exchange, this time in Australia.Last year it was OKEx and others.Just a few days ago it was Coinspot.It is sort of an open secret that Coinbase is not listing Monero due to external pressures. Today we're hit with news that Kraken will be ceasing Monero trading for AU residents.And you will also recall that Japan and South Korea have made similar moves.It's a near impossibility with me, especially when powered by caffeine, which is most definitely the case today, but I will try to make this brief, sweet and to the point.These are not isolated incidents. There is an International Organization™ in particular orchestrating, behind the scenes, the policies and requirements that financial institutions (crypto exchanges have since joined that category for this purpose) must follow, or else.Here is what bothers me about this.Have you been consulted about this? Anyone you know?Heard of it in the news?Yeah, me neither.You have to know where to look to find some information on what they would like to see happening (we'll get to that in a moment), and often you have to read PDFs with dozens of pages to find the good stuff too.I will leave that as an exercise to the reader. Suffice to say, I have been digging a bit deeper myself, and what I found shocked me.FATF wants nothing less than the complete elimination of anonymity and privacy in financial affairs, even going so far as to consider BANNING peer to peer transactions so that people are forced to interact with each other through exchanges, where data collection is more reliable and certain, effectively obliterating one of the major selling points of cryptocurrency (p2p-ness) with complete disregard for the millions of people who are already onboard with the vision.No privacy and no anonymity, imagine that.Many of you probably already use plastic cards for everything, day in day out, and don't think too much about this stuff.But the fact that an international organization that you have little to zero democratic control over is planning to get rid of class of financial tools that 99.99999% of people don't even realize exists yet should give you pause for concern.The tools I speak of are, of course, digital cash-like cryptocurrencies like Monero.I would like you to PAUSE, daydream a bit, visualize and imagine, what a world without zero financial privacy/anonymity would look like.Consider, this has certainly not been the case in human history, ever -- yes, even today.Today most of you still have cash as a choice. But what happens when that goes out of the window, and the only options are CBDCs, CorporateCoins, and transparent cryptocurrency ?Needless to say, both in the case of CorporateCoins and CBDCs, there will be little to none privacy/anonymity, and even if there was (in the case of CorporateCoin), the state would obviously bully its way into it and force them to do otherwise (without being asked to do so, of course).So, imagine that world.Every donation you make. Every $50 transfer to a friend or family member. Every item you buy. Every service you purchase. Every money you send to help a friend you.All of it stored, forever, to be accessed later at will for whatever reasons.Would you make the same choices, knowing that your entire financial life is entirely exposed to powerful organizations of which you likely know very little about and almost certainly can hardly ever influence at all?Does that seem like a good recipe for a free society?ConsequencesThe people at the top either don't care about the consequences of what they're imposing worldwide, or they don't understand.Sounds highly concerning to me either way - It comes down to either bullying or ignorance.Would you ever have truly heart-to-heart conversations if you knew your worst enemy was potentially watching and recording everything?Could you make passionate love knowing hundreds of strangers are analyzing your every move?Can you be spontaneous knowing you are being recorded?What if you did not have a choice in those matters ?!What if someone has already decided for you, your friends, your family, your neighbors, your country, that you are all potential criminals and the thing to do is to keep records on everyone, just in case ?Newsflash: It already happened.It's been happening for awhile, and it seems to be picking up pace; the technology that was going to liberate us, slowly enslaving us instead -- because the general public largely does not understand the issues at hand, while the elite certainly does, and boy oh boy, are they thrilled with the technological advancements that help them cement their power.What do I mean by cement?Imagine trying to kick-start civil rights in a place where every social map is known, everything a person is interested in is known, every transaction they make is known, every website they have visited is known, every time they step on the street, an AI-powered camera automatically identifies them and tracks their movement.You would be unable to organize. To exchange value. To discuss behind curtains, so to speak.You would not have any privacy, and you would not have any anonymity.Could you be free under these circumstances?ConclusionIt's been a long road towards more freedom, but nowdays it is disappearing fast. Stopping to consider the implications is a most pressing issue.They want Monero(-like tools) GONE because Monero ACTUALLY would change the paradigm.By the time they are done with their "recommendations" (which really mean: comply, or else...), mark my words, there will be a name behind every Bitcoin address in some centralized database, query-able by partners in deciding who can and cannot use the system.Merchants will be forced to perform chain analysis and by law they will be compelled to reject/refund/report transactions coming from "anonymous clusters" (addresses that are not known to have an identity tied to them).This is what the normalization of the lack of privacy has brought us.The possibility was there, and they took it. Of course they did.I repeat, it is no accident that it's not Dogecoin and Nano, Bitcoin or Litecoin being delisted.The star of the show (for better or for worse) is Monero, and that is because it works.It lets you transact anonymously and privately, like cash - why the hell should FATF know that you sent $500 to your mother last week? in fact, why the hell should they know your entire financial history?!When cash goes (and we can be fairly certain that it will be gone; would already be gone if this sort of authoritarian mindset had its way), Monero or tools like Monero, will become the only way to make any transaction outside the eyes of the state.It's not because you have anything (nefarious) to hide. It's not because you're a criminal.Rather, it's because to accept anything else is to bow to tyranny.It's your choice to make - are you meekly going to accept that in perhaps less than a decade there will be zero privacy and anonymity in financial matters, or are you going to fight back?Will you organize, campaign, email, discuss, spread awareness?Will you spend precious summer Sunday afternoons writing for strangers on the Internet trying to help a few more see the major shit-show we're headed into?Or will you be a good boy and do what you're told?Tomorrow, by the way - if left unchallenged - it won't just be financial privacy that disappears.One of the most prominent examples in the introductory part of this post (Australia) has already made quite clear that they don't like the fact that people can hide things from them (encryption).In other words, either they know about it (and archive it forever), or you better let them know. After all, a threat - any threat! - could be lurking somewhere in that encrypted data. And you have nothing to hide anyway, yes?This is a cryptocurrency sub though so let's not steer too far from that. It is important to remember that ultimately the issue is the same though - totalitarian control over everyone's life; mass-surveillance, and the ability to rewind and see someone's entire life exposed for the benefit of the state.Their actions are letting you know what really works and what really threatens the status quo. That is useful information.If you care at all about the freedom and privacy of your future self, your friends and family, children present or future, I think you would do well to think long and hard about these issues.Because the direction assumed by the most prominent regulators seems to be headed in a uniform direction - that is no surprise, seeing as how they meet with each other.You have to ask yourself though, is this for your benefit, your safety?Or is it to keep the statuo quo?How would the world be different if human beings - regardless of color, nationality, age, sexual orientation, political beliefs- with an Internet connection could freely exchange value privately and anonymously (the way we can still communicate private and anonymously in most places today - though not so in authoritarian places like China, AND THAT IS NOT A COINCIDENCE)?It would be instant, like an instant message. It would cost very little.Well, I have news for you: It's already possible, and a growing number of people are realizing this.This tool is called Monero. It exists today, and the cat is out of the bag. The technology will only get better, and more interesting tools may even come along later.In fact, barring mass persecution of open-source developers, that is very likely what is going to happen, as ultrasmart people everywhere congregate in virtual spaces to discuss better ways to do stuff.If we keep losing our right to be left alone until suspected of a crime, life will increasingly come to resemble what the regulator types are - consciously or unconsciously - creating: a Panopticon society.If you don't speak up, then the decision has already been made - and you're probably going to live to regret being complicit in it.Freedom or Tyranny. It's your choice to make.p.s: Yes, totally failed at making this short. I guess it's just not my thing.

Submitted August 31, 2020 at 12:31AM