Dark Future For Crypto? - EU Travel Rule

This decision that was announced yesterday could bring a very dark future towards the European Union and its crypto businesses. I am talking about the voting for a potential Travel Rule which purpose it is to fight terror and money laundering. In this article I want to talk about what happened, what the consequences could be and how it could even affect grandchildren from this generation. In the end we will talk about whether it is possible to protect yourselves from this rule.

What happened?

So why this apocalyptic tone in the intro? Let’s talk about what actually happened. On March 31st 2022, the EU parliament decided to bring a new law on the way regarding crypto currencies. This rule is supposed to require all of the crypto transactions to be tracked with KYC. So far so good, the problem with that is that this data is that it is supposed to be stored, meaning that this data might be seeable for anybody who needs to see it which means that privacy as we know it could be gone forever. Not only that, but because this law requires the exchanges to track every single transactions, they have to link the hardware wallets to the individual hosting them. This is hardly possible which rings the question whether hardware wallets will be forbidden in the future as well. The most annoying thing about this newly proposed law is that it will not help against illicit activity. According to recent data the illicit activity in crypto accounts only for 0.15% of all transactions. I would recon that normal fiat money has a similar rate. Therefore, this law would not bring any benefit in this direction but is just maybe a cover up argument for something else?

Consequences

In my opinion the consequences could be very severe. I mentioned already that the privacy how we know it would be gone and could be potentially abused in the future. We all do not know what the future has in store for us and we all know that there could always be a time where people without brains can get into the government. In my opinion these people could abuse this new rule and make every transaction trackable. With the idea of a CBDC in the back of our head this could even come sooner than later. Without the privacy and every transaction disclosed this could be a potential basis for a social grading system where for example, transactions like alcohol could be punished by higher taxes. Of course this is a very dark future but let’s be honest here, exactly this scenario is supposed to be evitable with a decentral monetary policy like Bitcoin.

The problem is that this is not the only bad consequence. As we all know the crypto industry brings a lot of new businesses and innovation into the tech sector. This is where the most innovative and flexible companies can succeed and bring wealth to the country it was funded in. With this rule the EU is shooting in its own leg because the companies and businesses can not operate properly under this rule. This benefits the competition in other areas of the world that are not operating under such a brainless law.

What To Do?

In my opinion there is only one thing to do in this situation: Get the crypto that you own off from the exchanges and into your hardware wallet as soon as possible. In this scenario the phrase “not your keys, not your crypto” cannot be truer. I think that if you really need to sell your crypto you will always be able to transfer it back to an exchange but the way from the exchange back will be very hard. Furthermore, I think that this rule can not be there consistently. Because countries that are adopting and embracing crypto will soon show positive results in their economies and overall GDP. This means that the EU will have to recognize their mistake and change the regulations again, because if they will not do that, people and big tech will just flee to countries that are allowing crypto without any restrictions.

Last but not least, I want to mention that there is still hope as this law has not been officially passed yet. Furthermore, I think that this law can not be sustainable and beneficial for the future of a whole continent. This is why although it looks very bad right now, I am looking very positive into the future!

Published by ga38jem on
Steemit
On 3rd April 2022