What nonsense. I thought Netherlands were big on the whole "personal freedoms" thing? And now they are introducing KYC for your own addresses!? No transactions allowed unless the government can put a name and a face on it. This is the next step on a very slippery slope towards governments taking control of bitcoin.

I note as well that Bitstamp "automatically enabled" (i.e. forced) this feature without any prior warning, essentially seizing their customers' coins and holding them ransom unless they comply with this incredibly invasive nonsense.

People need to stop accepting this kind of ridiculous snooping like they do with Coinbase, BitPay, Binance, Bitstamp. As long as we keep giving money to these unethical companies, they will continue to abuse us and keep trying to turn bitcoin in to something that makes them money and that governments can use to oppress you. Stop it. Trade peer to peer, eliminate third parties, and use bitcoin in the way it was intended to be used.

It's not the exchanges doing it. It's the Governments of these countries.
Yes the rules suck. Yes places like Bitstamp Coinbase etc. should be fighting against it. But, for them not to do it would be insane.

In the US could you picture what would happen if Chase decided to let people open accounts with no ID?

Sadly it has come to this, looks like the US will be the next on the list of these insane requirements.

-Dave

Absolutely. I assume such rules will probably spread through Europe, and I've been reading suggestions that we will soon be facing a similar situation in the US. Governments aren't just going to let you break free of their easily manipulated fiat system to something they have no control over without putting up a fight first. However, that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't rail against these exchanges for enforcing the government's draconian laws. If an exchange enforces this, then its time to leave that exchange. I guarantee that if everyone stopped using Bitstamp because of this, they would pretty quickly find some way around it or challenge it in court, but unfortunately that is never going to happen.

When this becomes widespread there will be a big uptick in mixer traffic, since everyone who withdraws to a KYC address would be crazy to not immediately mix or coinjoin their coins. And there will be ever more DEX volume, which is never a bad thing.

If I understood the whole thing well, the user has to prove that he is the owner of the address to which he will withdraw the transaction - by sending a message from that address or by taking a selfie of himself and the coin address? What follows is a signed and certified statement that withdraw coins will not be used for anything illegal under threat of imprisonment or payment of some high fine

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There are those who have been saying this for years, especially since they introduced the insanely strict KYC and all the possible checks that come to their mind.

Is Bitstamp still a good exchange for trading?

the biggest problem we are facing is that people still don't want to treat bitcoin as a currency and only are interested in trading it to make more fiat out of it.
otherwise if people started "earning" bitcoin, we no longer would see issues like this.

the problem is that sadly we don't have that alternative. we only have decentralized P2P methods of trading bitcoin that are hard to use, have low liquidity, big price spread and are slow to fill an order at times.

While not decentralized, LocalCryptos is still a far better option due to not requiring KYC. We also have Bisq, but barely anyone uses it so it's really not that much of a viable option today.

Which is ridiculous, when you think about it, given how easy it is to fool a selfie. I can import any address in to a wallet like Electrum and then take a selfie with it. That proves nothing. If you are using a web wallet then it is even more trivial - just open developer tools and you can change the address which appears in your wallet to anything you like. Lets say I want to withdraw from Bitstamp directly to a gambling site. I can just create a brand new blockchain.com wallet (for example), change the address which appears to the gambling site's deposit address in <10 seconds, and take a selfie with it. The whole thing is pointless. It will achieve exactly nothing in the fight against money laundering, will achieve a great deal in every government's pursuit to monitor all their citizens.

If you are interested in day trading, then what is stopping someone from using a P2P platform such as Bisq or LocalCryptos to on-ramp from fiat in to bitcoin, and then transfer that bitcoin to a non-KYC exchange to trade between bitcoin and stablecoins or altcoins? As much as I hate stablecoins and most altcoins, if I were a day trader I would see trading pairs using them as the far lesser of two evils when compared to completing KYC somewhere. Of course, there is still the risk that the non-KYC exchange you are using suddenly turns round and demands KYC, however.

If this is coming to The Netherlands, then I suppose it's coming to the EU and the US soon as well?! I mean, there was a rumor that the US gov was planning to do exactly this - and here we go!

This is so close to the "virgin coins will be more expensive than tainted ones" narrative it's scary. I just wish Bitcoin users wake up before it's too late. Ditch them privacy-stripping centralized exchanges - ditch them all!

Brought to you by the same idiots who came up with "Let's ban encryption!"

The fact that one EU member state implements something does not necessarily mean that it will be adopted by other member states, so AML5 is not applied in all member states, and it has been more than 1 year since it was supposed to enter into force. I live in the EU, and luckily I can still buy and sell significant amounts of crypto without any KYC or fear of tax because there is a loophole in local law that allows it.

The Trump administration initiated the procedure, but Biden already froze the decision and sent it for review.


Of course, this does not mean that this decision will not be implemented, nor that there will be no other decisions that the crypto community will not like. Trump did not have a positive opinion of Bitcoin, but he clearly did not have people around him who could make a significant difference - it remains to be seen how capable or not the people from the new administration are.