If a population really did adopt a single payment network, the goverment could issue a blacklist of accounts that you can be punished for transacting with.
think of the power the US government has to freeze the funds of russian oligarchs - blockchain allows at least a version of this: not to freeze the funds, but to prohibit sending or receiving funds from a certain address
vendors could happily subscribe to this blacklist to ensure legal compliance (an RSS feed will do but thats just me)
with what money? the blockchain is the all seeing eye, if you move a penny from one wallet to another, that wallet gets blacklisted too. (not to mention you eat the transaction fee every time you try it!)
Bitcoin is perfectly fungible, if you know what you're doing. Even beyond this, there are no "accounts" or "addresses" on the Lightning Network - its privacy is superb.
I haven’t looked at lightning since it was vaporware so I’ll have to check that out… I don’t know much about channels, is there really no public ledger in that case?
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If a population really did adopt a single payment network, the goverment could issue a blacklist of accounts that you can be punished for transacting with.
think of the power the US government has to freeze the funds of russian oligarchs - blockchain allows at least a version of this: not to freeze the funds, but to prohibit sending or receiving funds from a certain address
vendors could happily subscribe to this blacklist to ensure legal compliance (an RSS feed will do but thats just me)
Wouldn’t that be incredibly easy to circumvent? Just create a new address for each transaction?
with what money? the blockchain is the all seeing eye, if you move a penny from one wallet to another, that wallet gets blacklisted too. (not to mention you eat the transaction fee every time you try it!)
If that's really how it works, then you can get everyone's addresses blacklisted by just sending tiny amounts of money to them.
…you got me there! probably not a smart thing to automate, but I’m sure they will try
Transactions on Bitcoin's layer 2 (the Lightning Network) are extremely private and there's no way to blacklist anything.
Bitcoin is perfectly fungible, if you know what you're doing. Even beyond this, there are no "accounts" or "addresses" on the Lightning Network - its privacy is superb.
I haven’t looked at lightning since it was vaporware so I’ll have to check that out… I don’t know much about channels, is there really no public ledger in that case?
Same thing, tried dipping my toes a couple of years ago, payments would often fail, gui inexistent, etc. But we've come a long way since then.
For starters, download bluewallet and get some free sats to play around with:
https://lnfaucet.com
https://fixedfloat.com/lightning-faucet
Quite a rabbit hole you're falling into. And no, there's no public ledger.