major-philippines-bank-union-bank-launches-two-way-crypto-atm-report

I keep forgetting to report on this but it is super important. The bottlenecks of crypto will soon™ be broken. Two-way crypto ATMs are just the beginning.

The establishment continues to attempt to control this technology at critical locations. The most obvious critical location is turning crypto in to fiat. So far, there hasn't been much worry in the act of turning cash into crypto. It's seen more of an investment. You're paying for a product. Anyone can spend their money how they want. Capitalism; yada yada yada.

However, turning crypto back into cash is another matter entirely. The government doesn't want to give new-money Bitcoin millionaires the ability to anonymously turn their gains into yet another untraceable asset.

So what do they do? Impose regulation at the bottlenecks. Monitor the big money exchanging hands on Coinbase and other centralized exchanges. Only allow value to flow one way through crypto-ATMs. Track wallets on the blockchain using information mined by tech corporations.

Strategies like this have always worked in the past, so most people go on believing it will continue that way. What happens when decentralized exchanges become the standard? What happens when vendors begin to accept crypto directly for services? What happens when the regulations imposed by the SEC create a black market that gives everyone a financial incentive to operate outside the system? What happens when privacy technology is valued highly even when the underlying transactions are legitimate? What happens when so many people are using crypto that tracking wallets becomes exponentially more difficult? What if we can begin to buy property and pay our utility bills anonymously in a decentralized manner? KYC and AML laws are on the verge of being completely undermined.

Already we see these crypto-cities popping up all over the world. They exist to embrace cryptocurrency. They are well on their way to providing a platform to do all these things. While Hong Kong hasn't embraced crypto as much as these other places, I believe simply its existence as the most famous and well established city-state in the world will bring it much fortune as blockchain begins to go mainstream.

Many see crypto as a purely speculative asset with no intrinsic value. What happens when crypto is seen worldwide as an exit to central banking? What happens when the dollar starts to lose its grip as world-reserve currency? Just like in Venezuela, Iran, and India, the government will try to crack down and impose even more regulation on these assets.

However, by that time it will probably be far too little too late. Even when the Internet was invented, we still had to place it on top of our broken economy controlled by central bankers. What happens when the most corrupted and foundational level of the economy gets replaced by an infinitely superior product? The human brain cannot even fathom all those variables as we experience them in this simulation.

Conclusion

Even though these two-way crypto ATMs are only in the Philippines (so far) and they are littered with KYC and AML regulation, it still signals the start of a monumental shift. Eventually, KYC and AML will make zero sense and simply be phased out just as easily as the highly inefficient and unfair system they bolster.