Riding The Wave News Summary 88
Crypto Means Absolutely Nothing Without Censorship Resistance, Spain overtakes El Salvador to become third largest crypto ATM hub & more
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Crypto Means Absolutely Nothing Without Censorship Resistance
Spain overtakes El Salvador to become third largest crypto ATM hub
Japan is losing its place as the world's gaming capital because of crypto hostility
Hacker Steals $300K From Olympus DAO, Then Returns It All the Same Day
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Crypto Means Absolutely Nothing Without Censorship Resistance
Censorship resistance is fundamental to any functioning cryptocurrency or blockchain project.
So there’s zero surprise that Sam Bankman-Fried (the crypto billionaire known as SBF) kicked up controversy when the FTX founder and CEO published an article last week on crypto regulation. He talked about implementing blocklists – aka a roster of wallet addresses banned from interacting with a blockchain because they’re suspected of being used for nefarious purposes – and, relatedly, respecting the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control’s (OFAC) sanctions lists by maintaining “an on-chain list of the sanctioned addresses … maintained by either OFAC or by a responsible actor.”
Yet, even as SBF talks about how things should go down the line, censorship resistance is already being undermined. Just look at the news on Ethereum, where, following the Merge, more than half of blocks in one 24-hour period recently were processed in accord with OFAC compliance recommendations.
To SBF’s credit he does include an important hedge to his proposal, writing that “all of commerce breaks down if you require a[n] allowlist to transact.” This is completely true. Imagine having to prove who you were to buy anything at all.
But, of course, we should take this at least one step further. Censorship resistance without privacy also doesn’t really matter. And that has been an issue with transparent networks like Bitcoin (which is very critically not anonymous; Bitcoin maintains a public ledger of transactions complete with identifying addresses and balances. It is quite literally the opposite of anonymous, especially if you are new to using the network).
This is something we saw in February 2022 when Canadian truckers protested a vaccine mandate. While the protestors were able to receive funds via Bitcoin, Ethereum and other networks, the transparency of these blockchains made it practically impossible for the protestors to withdraw that money for fear of the Canadian government freezing or suspending their bank accounts.
I agree a solution needs to be found, but there must be a way to block bad actors from anonymizing funds, specifically thieves. In terms of politics, I believe it shouldn’t be brought into what is and isn’t blocked within crypto.
Spain overtakes El Salvador to become third largest crypto ATM hub
The European country of Spain is officially home to the third-largest network of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency ATMs after the United States and Canada.
Spain currently hosts 215 crypto ATMs, pushing El Salvador — with 212 crypto ATMs — down to the fourth position after surpassing the country by 3 crypto ATMs. Data from CoinATMRadar confirms that Spain represents 0.6% of the global crypto ATM installations.
Moreover, the revelation places Spain as the highest contributor to crypto ATMs in Europe, which represents 14.65% of total installations in the continent, followed by Switzerland (144 ATMs), Poland (142 ATMs) and Romania (135 ATMs).
On the contrary, global crypto ATM installations saw a negative growth since September 2022 and are on the path of slow recovery at the time of writing. Calculations based on data from the last 60 days show that around seven crypto ATMs are being installed daily worldwide.
Japan is losing its place as the world's gaming capital because of crypto hostility
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