Can't anyone basically sanction entire wallets, and mark them, and make some legislation that any transaction involving coins originating from those wallets be rejected by all payment processors and exchanges in regulated markets?
I mean, they obviously can, but probably they have elected not to do so. But if crypto becomes a tool in the hands of enemy nation states, such regulation can't be soo far off.
Though that would create a secondary market for these 'tainted' coins, and would probably have far-reaching consequences into the crypto ecosystem.
OFAC already sanctions crypto wallets. https://ofac.treasury.gov/faqs/594
You can't track individual coins, so you'd have to "taint" entire wallets. Using a mixer would taint the mixer and every wallet it sent to. I'd think this would end up tainting almost everything before too long.
Bitcoin also doesn't require the receiver to authorize a transaction, so if you had control of a tainted wallet, you could taint other wallets at will, wielding it like a weapon.
Doesn't seem feasible. Not that this always stops legislators.
> Using a mixer would taint the mixer and every wallet it sent to. I'd think this would end up tainting almost everything before too long.
Is that actually an issue? I am looking for it but I can't see a downside.
It was at least in theory an issue when they tried to sanction mixers. In fact people would purposely send tainted crypto to well known wallet addresses of celebrities etc. making them technically run afoul of OFAC
Depends on your goal. If you want to keep the system going while blocking "dirty" money, it's not going to work. If you want to use that as a stealth method of banning the whole system, then full steam ahead.
Would banning the whole system have any downside? It's still unclear to me what crypto is supposed to be useful for.