Three years ago we started warning of the looming specter of burdensome regulations stemming from the Financial Action Task Force's travel rule guidelines that are being widely adopted by financial regulators around the world. If the Financial Action Task Force (a supranational regulatory guideline agency filled with unelected officials) gets its way it will make the ability to comply with the guidelines they put forth so burdensome that "virtual asset services providers" (VASPs) will stop allowing their customers to send their bitcoin to wallets that aren't controlled by other VASPs. As we've been saying for the last three years since the travel rule reared its head, the light nudging of regulatory compliance is slowly but surely degrading the privacy of users and creating a path for the incumbent exchanges to establish regulatory moats.

What's particularly bad about travel rule compliance across the "crypto" exchange is that it is being driven by many of the exchanges themselves via something called TRUST, or Travel Rule Universal Solution Technology. These exchanges have bent the knee and decided to bend over backwards for regulators pushing egregiously invasive compliance measures that put end users in harm's way under the guise of preventing criminal activity. A very successful framing tactic for every government and regulator when they wish to trample on civil liberties.

It has been made abundantly clear that KYC/AML regulations are wholly ineffective at stopping crime and very effective at adding ongoing costs to businesses and putting end users in harm's way by allowing their data to be collected and stored across many insecure databases controlled by the financial intermediaries they interact with. As many have said throughout the years, KYC/AML data collection is the illicit activity. These regulations have completely morphed into mechanisms that effectively assume each individual that interacts with a financial intermediary is guilty until otherwise proven innocent. They must completely doxx themselves to interact with institutions.

This type of data collection is something that runs completely against the free and open nature of the bitcoin protocol. Bitcoin was created as a response to the overreach of governments and central banks who are prone to abusing their ability to create money and determine who can and cannot receive or send that money via their rails. It is a great shame to see that dozens of exchanges within the bitcoin industry are not only not fighting back against these insanely Orwellian data collection mandates from unelected officials, but are welcoming them with open arms and forming a coalition to be as compliant as possible as to not upset the power drunk regulators. To make matters worse, they went and created a coalition using the acronym TRUST to create a nice palatable brand that caters to the lowest common denominator of human instinct. Truly disgusting.

This industry needs some more backbone. It has become glaringly obvious to anyone with more than two brain cells that the governments and central banks of the world have gone completely off the rails in every way possible.

They are printing more money than ever before. They are in more debt than ever before. They are more corrupt than ever before. They are more bloodthirsty than ever before. They are older and more out of touch than ever before. They are more disliked than ever before. They are more brazen than ever before. Especially when it comes to looting the public for the benefit of a very select few.

And the adoption of one of the most potent technologies that we have ever had to take back control and begin fixing the problems created by the over-indebted warmongers who couldn't care less by the Common Man is being actively hindered by many of the people who are building companies that leverage that technology. If bitcoin is to succeed to its full potential the companies involved in TRUST need to grow a set of balls, draw a line in the sand and push back against these nonsensical and tyrannical regulations being pushed by the people who are currently destroying the world. Don't give them an inch. Put them in their place and let them know that they are parasitic cretins who are knee capping freedom and human flourishing. These people don't deserve our respect, let alone our compliance with their insane regulations.

Final thought...

Having to turn on the heat overnight and the AC in the afternoon is exhausting.