The group responsible is “Collective Shout”, the same org has targeted Steam before.

There are calls on social media now to contact Mastercard, Visa and co. and file complaints.

  • hisao@ani.social
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    4 days ago

    Crypto goes somewhere that they don’t like? Crypto is seized when it reaches an exchange and they ask for ID and source of funds

    I don’t understand. Lets say I have a normal bank card, I paid taxes for all the money I got there. Sometimes I buy crypto using p2p on some platform using this card. I trade this crypto with some other crypto on the same platform. Periodically I send crypto to my personal wallet from there. From my personal wallet I buy porn games for example. At which point someone comes in and seizes anything?

    • ipitco@lemmybefree.net
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      4 days ago

      They would not, but you would not be anonymous this way. You get problems when:

      • The crypto you received is through a shady source (it could be any individual which pays you with dirty coins)
      • You engaged in pro-privacy activity, which links you with illegal activity, like coin mixers to blur the origin and destination of crypto
      • You received more crypto than you bought

      As long as you stay with centralized exchanges and directly send crypto to some websites, you should in theory always be fine (as long as you don’t send them to criminal or pro-privacy services), but that’s not the original goal of crypto

      Apart from that, some countries straight up force you to declare every transaction you make with crypto, which isn’t doable for most people and puts them in illegality

      • hisao@ani.social
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        4 days ago

        You don’t have to send crypto from exchange directly to websites. You can send it to your external wallet (outside of any platform), and spend from there. And no one’s ever going to be able to prove that wallet belongs to you.

          • hisao@ani.social
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            4 days ago

            No, they don’t know who that wallet belongs to and even though they may hypothesize its yours they don’t have any way to prove it. Moreover, anyone, including sellers can use unlimited amount of wallets and register them at rate 1000x faster than even the advanced CIA group would be able to tie even a single address to a particular person/company. So if Steam operated in crypto, it would take days/weeks of some of the most advanced feds in the world to try to prove that you bought something from Steam using your crypto. And they might even fail at that if you or Steam’s wallet are handled carefully, and they wouldn’t even know what exactly you bought.

            • ipitco@lemmybefree.net
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              4 days ago

              Following crypto trails is easy when there’s only one destination…

              You’re putting too much trust in the system. If there’s a doubt you will be asked to clear it, they won’t do it for you

              • hisao@ani.social
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                4 days ago

                Who is gonna ask? It is not your bank account, there are no rules where you send your crypto and you don’t have to explain to anyone. And there are no ways to enforce any of this. Also, a lot of crypto payment services and exchanges automatically generate unique intermediate wallets for every transaction. There is a technique to wallet management called “Hierarchical Deterministic Wallet (HD Wallet)” which seems to be golden standard nowadays, not only it makes it hard to compute your total balance, it also makes it easier to achieve “public address changes with every transaction”. So this is what most exchanges use for those intermediate addresses I assume.

                • ipitco@lemmybefree.net
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                  4 days ago

                  Who is gonna ask?

                  The exchange, the website… It happens frequently

                  there are no rules where you send your crypto and you don’t have to explain to anyone

                  AML and KYC procedures are a thing in crypto, just make a few searches

                  • hisao@ani.social
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                    3 days ago

                    AML and KYC

                    Ofc KYC is everywhere. But that is only relevant to inputting fiat to crypto. Are there precedents of exchange asking its user about the address where he sent his crypto? Even then, what exactly happens if you answer them with whatever, like you donated to some guy, or it was a present? Regular money laws don’t apply to crypto -> crypto transfers, they are not subject to whatever taxes for presents, charity, etc, and even if they were, that wouldn’t be for the sending side.