After Banks Froze Their Accounts, Some Adult Entertainers Turned to Cryptocurren...
source link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/02/07/020253/after-banks-froze-their-accounts-some-adult-entertainers-turned-to-cryptocurrencies?sbsrc=md
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by mkone_13 ( 9353991 ) on Monday February 07, 2022 @07:42AM (#62245587)
Isn't this what Bitcoin was supposed to be about? Transactions with anyone anywhere with no central authority to block it?
Now it's all about the speculators.
PayPal used to prohibit buying Bitcoin using their system. Now they advertise the service. Wankers.
Maybe we should stop being prudes and de-criminialize/legalize sex work. Why shouldn't these folks be able to have a Square account like any other small business?
Lot's of banks and industries partake in "legal" economic activity that I find distasteful but they are still allowed to do it.
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Maybe we should stop being prudes and de-criminialize/legalize sex work.
That's the thing. It already is legalized, or at the very least decriminalized, on most places. The problem is that governments still don't like it, so instead of explicitly forbidding/recriminalizing it, which would cause public discussions and risk making it all even more legal and accepted, they ask private companies to pretty please restrict it. They don't order it, something that would violate the 1st Amendment and stuff in the US, no, they just ask for it, as a favor. And the banks etc. do them this favor on a perfectly, purely voluntary basis. Which is why con Constitutional violation is involved. After all, those whose accounts were closed because the banks just felt like it out of nowhere, can build their own banks if they really want to have bank accounts, can't they?
Any similarity with the US government asking pretty please for Twitter, Facebook, Google etc. to shadowban, demonetize, and restrict wrongthink isn't mere coincidence. No censorship is happening, after all, they're all private companies. Sure, the government just asked for a few favors and the like, but that's no big deal really, after all, friends can ask their friends favors, can't they?
And so on, and so forth, as respecting the letter of the law while violating its spirit is the true law of the land nowadays.
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Is it though? Outside of a few counties in Nevada prostitution is still illegal in every US state. Not exactly voluntary for banks not engage in services for something that is not just defacto-illegal but illegal-illegal, unenforcable as it may be. If I am a sex worker I am not able to incorporate, form an LLC and do the work out in the open. There are loopholes for sure but by the letter of the law the work I would do is still at the very least a misdemeanor across the greater US.
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That's the the point. Sex work is NOT in violation of US law. It's up to each state to decide. And since federally chartered banks must only comply with US law, they can (if they choose) do business with anyone operating legally. Which pretty much means Nevada.
So I wonder why more prostitutes just don't get a PO box and open their accounts in Pahrump's state banks.
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There's a lot of sex work that isn't prostitution. Pornography and phone sex, for example.
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Absolutely and that only makes it more illogical and silly that solicitation (what we are talking about when talking about women charging $1700 an hour) is still a crime. If I just agree to pay a woman for sex it's a crime. If I pay her to film us having sex it's all nice and legal.
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Isn't the market supposed to sort this out? Shouldn't someone be offering credit card payment processing for sex workers?
The issue is regulatory capture.
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In theory, the market is supposed to work this out. In theory market stabilizes these issues, but it only does if there are enough players.
In practice, the banking industry is SO large that it is impossible to compete with visa and mastercard unless you have hundreds of billions to throw at the problem.
The barrier of entry is SO high that very few institutions have the size necessary to make that entry in the market. And if they don't deem it profitable enough for the risk (which it probably isn't) then the
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Plenty are. Then the government knocks on the door and ask them to pretty please stop that. For those who reply "sorry, can't do that", the government smiles sweetly, says "oh, no problem!", and walks away. The next day, though, and for as long as the provider continues refusing, it notices a massive expanse of governmental audits, investigations, audits, investigations, audits, investigations... until they change their answer to "yes, sure, all for a friend!"
Undoubtedly.
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Yes, that's what should happen, in a free market.
The problem is (as it usually is) that there isn't a free market here. Go ahead and try to start your own payment processor to compete with Visa and Mastercard. We'll wait. Even if you do, Big Tech can crush you like they did Parler.
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this is the credit card processors and banks. And they only care about money. The reason they're making trouble is because of the prudes, who'll run a bunch of stories about it. Also the mega preachers and televangelists, who'll organize boycotts against them ("cancel culture").
The gov't got out of the business of policing porn in the 80s. There's a few spots in Texas that still make trouble for the local sex toy shops, but it's only because of the religious extremist voters.
The gov't is seldom your problem. The problem is usually the community, and even then it tends to be a tiny but very loud minority (who insist on calling themselves the "silent majority").-
While the hyper-vocal minority as I like to call them is a big part of the problem, it goes deeper than that.
The dark side of the adult industry (sex/human trafficking, rape, pedo shit, etc.) certainly exists despite a plethora of laws attempting to prohibit it. Since most governments long-since realized that laws often need to follow the money to be effective, plenty of them intentionally include anyone who deals with $$ related to adult work. Granted, many of these are just feel-good laws that actually do the opposite of what they intend (ahem SESTA/FOSTA).
Some rapist pervert in a developing country won't care about the threat of a million $ fine or the bad publicity for being associated. You can bet Visa and M/C do though - and the government has the ability to massively impact their business depending on how hard it wants to smack their hand. So in the end, banks and CC processors become the enforcement arm for all the ill-planned laws meant to "help people" that generally do anything but.
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of trying to force it all underground. Same thing with our Drug War. On the plus side it keeps cops employed (both of them).
And if we care about sex trafficking the solution is to go after underlining causes. Poverty, general strife and war (a lot of which is caused by our drug war, and our mega corps trying to keep the price of bananas in line with their profit forecasts).
Going after sex trafficking like we do is like lancing a boil on a person with bubonic plague. It's not really gonna do all that -
While that side of the sex industry should be stopped that should be done through laws not financial institutions deciding. Also I think a large part of the bad things about the sex industry are caused by it being illegal in the first place, it causes the type of people who are willing to break the law to get involved in the first place.
While on the subject, the manufacturing industry also has a dark side of paying people that they can barely survive, and are poisoned, or poison the environment. Why aren't
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Its the same as the online casino laws.
The US knew it couldn't stop online casinos in the Caribbean and elsewhere so it passed laws that target the banks and force the banks to stop doing business with those online casinos (or something similar at least, not sure exactly how the laws work)
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Wrong. Operation Choke Point was a Department of Justice operation under Obama [thefederalistpapers.org] that deliberately and with malice aforethought tried to cut off porn stores, escort services, and drug paraphernalia shops from their bank accounts.
The gov't is seldom your problem.
When did the hard left start shilling for the US government? Aren't we supposed to #resist? The same US government that genocided native americans? Slavery of africans, native americans, and asians. Indentured servitude for immigrants. Using your own population to test everything from drugs, to dangerous chemicals, to disease. Purposefully flooding poor, black areas with crack. Illicit arms deals with terrorist states. Starting wars over resources while claiming moral high grounds. The US government that you claim is "seldom the problem" have literally lied to world in order to get a UN approval to invade a sovereign nation, with the only motive of profit for the military-industrial complex. You can look up videos of Rumsfeld and Bush presenting or referring to evidence of WMDs they know is fake. How can anyone with a brain trust them?
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Not quite true. While I do admit that most of the time it is not government causing the problems, this is one of those times it is.
The government punishes banks that deal with criminals. HEAVILY.
The banks are acting this way out of fear that the customers are criminals, despite having zero evidence of it. It is not worth their time to figure out who is and who is not a criminal, so they simply shut down any business that has enough red flags.
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by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Monday February 07, 2022 @11:29AM (#62246297)
And so on, and so forth, as respecting the letter of the law while violating its spirit is the true law of the land nowadays.
We allowed our large corporations to become Not-A-Monopoly MEGA-corps, so eventually both the letter and the spirit of the law will be replaced with Fuck You That's Why, because even when they're dead wrong, there won't be a fucking thing you can do about it, because Control.
And soon, there won't be a fucking thing Governments can do about it either, because Greed.
And by "soon", I mean we're already there. Too Big To Fail, is now enshrined into the halls of Precedent. It's rather obvious who's running who.
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Considering our choices when voting are:
(1) The party of unabated capitalism
(2) The party of crony capitalism
(3) The party that never winsYeah, we're there.
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Politics exists for Greeds sake. You either understand it to be the Mass Distraction tool that it is for Greed N. Corruption to execute what it wants, or you pick up your pom poms and keep cheering your flavor of distraction on.
We don't need three parties in America, because we don't even have two. We have one, and the entire justification for politics is clear now. It sure as hell isn't representing you.
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Neither to someone else's financial services. The US has paper bills and coins as legal tender. You can always use those... provided, evidently, you also keep detailed records for the origin and destination of every single individual paper bill and coin in your possession, as you don't want to risk having it forfeited then sued into oblivion. The money, not you, so you don't have legal standing to reclaim it back.
See how nice that whole "freedom of association" is? As the saying goes, everything is funny as
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by i.r.id10t ( 595143 ) on Monday February 07, 2022 @10:02AM (#62245913)
Because banks aren't forced into something similar to "common carrier" status.
Try owning a gun shop - complete with Federal and State licensing, etc. - and getting a business bank account with BoA, Chase, etc.
Perfectly legal business, but due to politics you won't get service, or if you do you'll be paying tons of extra fees, etc.
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You don't even have to sell firearms - I own an engraving shop that occasionally does work on firearms, and it's just as bad there. PayPal, Square, all of the big online payment processors are very clear that NO firearms-related transactions are allowed. My bank itself doesn't give me any grief, but their chosen payment processor sure does.
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Because this is the future we've chosen. Megabillion dollar corporations are going to decide on their codes of conduct, and you had better obey them or they will cease doing business with you. It's better than any government control could ever be. When you can't take payments with Visa, Gofundme steals your donations, Youtube shuts down your channel and Bank of America shuts down your account, what are you going to do? If government were doing this, it would be illegal, but they've outsourced the role to private industry.
Say, what's it called when government and corporate interests merge? I'm certain I had a class on this once.
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The work isn't illegal. The problem is that banks aren't regulated as utilities and forced to provide a service. And an old white man's morals decides yet again what some woman can do with her body.
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There's your actual problem. The US doesn't need an underground currency, it just needs some sensible regulation of critical industries.
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Stop it, stop blaming white men. I can't see why men would want to make something they do illegal. Prostitution is probably looked down upon because of women, not men. Sure men are the ones that enact it but probably because they don't want to look like they support that sort of thing in front of their partners and wives.
How would women control men through sex, if it was socially acceptable to just go out and hire a prostitute. The best way to control men is through sex.
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I'm not blaming white men. If you're a young white man you're fine. If you're an old white man not deciding on other people's lives based on a fictional story used to brainwash you as a child you're fine too.
I'm blaming old white men who have their moralities guided by religion because... they are objectively the problem.
That's an advert for Specsavers right there.
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Lots of public speakers partake in "legal" speech that I find distasteful but they are still allowed to do it. Er... except they aren't, really, because, as you note, "private companies" can deplatform them.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, I guess. Did you think this would only be used against stuff that you don't like?
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Is it illegal in all 50 states to run a social media platform? Because soliciting and engaging in prostitution is illegal in all 50 outside a few counties in Nevada.
This is pretty analagous to cannabis, where despite the state laws the Federal law is enough to keep banks away since banks are fairly risk averse when it comes to the law. Otherwise much like social media I would imagine for cannabis and prostitution that even if Bank of America and Wells Fargo don't want to engage with it other banks would se
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I'm still wondering how the banks find this out to begin with. Are they secretly investigating their account holders? I mean, when somebody writes me a check, assuming they don't write "THX 4 TEH SEXY THINGZ", how would the bank know what it's for?
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Well you dont do what Jerry Springer did back in the day and pay your escort with a check in the first place
https://www.cincinnati.com/sto... [cincinnati.com]
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