Recently, it has come to my attention that Michael Saylor has been misleading investors to make a fraudulent gain. He makes the claim that bitcoin cannot be taken. Which is false. He makes the claim that you cannot freeze Bitcoin transactions, which is also false. When I added the alert key to Bitcoin, it did not present a change to the protocol. Bitcoin is a financial system, and it doesn’t matter whether systems on the network ‘want’ a transaction; it only matters whether something can be legally processed and enforced.
There are less than eight nodes that have any say on the network. All the systems are subject to regulation. Proof-of-work allows the ultimate proof-of-truth system, because it is the ultimate deanonymisation strategy. The nodes processing the network can come and go at will, without having to be indoctrinated or authorised. The nodes don’t need to be licensed by any particular company or government. They just have to follow the rules, and rules include law.
Saylor makes the false claim that banks will compete to the bottom. He says that if a New York bank refuses to take your bitcoin, you could go to Singapore, and a bank there would take it. In his misleading analysis, he is encouraging the avoidance of tax and other financial frauds. He is inciting people to move criminal proceeds using Bitcoin. In a way, it is a good thing. Because once such criminal proceeds are in Bitcoin, they can be frozen.
But, for the purpose of today’s post, I will explain that there is no race to the bottom with banking. A court order involving proceeds of crime and that applies in the USA can be enacted and enforced in Singapore. So, you move your BTC into a Singaporean bank, and the Singaporean bank hands it over to the authorities in the USA. Such is the truth of the matter. In fact, a freezing order would allow the transfer to be stopped before it even gets to Singapore.
Bitcoin is a system that does not even need tracing rules. The ledger is so complete that the rules of following apply. But, it needs to be noted that if assets were transferred into a foreign bank, the rules of tracing would apply. You see, tracing presents a change of the asset class. Under tracing law, the asset that has moved can be traced to the point of another asset. Such an asset may be seized. The law of following means that the original asset, including the fully traceable bitcoin tokens, can be seized. If you are told that it cannot happen, you are being lied to.
Bitcoin is not encrypted.
The misleading and fraudulent information that is passed on about Bitcoin is based on the concept of an encrypted system. But the nature of the ledger of Bitcoin is such that it cannot be encrypted, and as a result, there is no way possible to stop coins from being traced, frozen, recovered, and seized. The nature of it was intentional.
So, anyone who tells you that your assets can be moved around the world without paying your taxes, without the enforcement of court orders involving proceeds of crime, and with utter secrecy is lying to you if they are telling you that you can do so with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a completely transparent system. Bitcoin is the simplest system ever invented to enforce court orders upon. Bitcoin is the simplest and most open system to allow criminal proceeds to be seized. The blockchain is not friendly to crime, and within the year, the government will start learning that it is not. And so, any criminal found using Bitcoin will just have their assets taken.
Then again, it will not be the first time that Michael Saylor will have misled investors. He has been investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) multiple times.