Reddit reviews Treasury's War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare

> [I]t becomes more important that we who believe fungibility is necessary ensure that laws guaranteeing it for all currencies are entrenched and protected.

In spite of my comments below, I wholeheartedly hope that you succeed.

However, as long as one is more than a few steps away from a bitcoiner under investigation, one might be in the clear, if some of one's satoshis trace back to Silk Road. After all, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials auctioned the things off.

With regard to this from the article:

> The debate about whether Bitcoin is fit to be a currency rather than a payment layer between currencies is as alive as it has ever been.

Actually, that debate is rather new, and it is driven by one specific development team, with very little input from miners and essentially no input from those who hodl the largest bitcoin hoards, i.e. people who have funded this enterprise and actually have skin in the game. (Oddly, altcoin promoters feature rather prominently in that debate.)

Considering that bank executives worldwide have been deputized by the US Treasury Department in the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism, the US dollar's fungibility has been broken for decades. Those interested this topic are encouraged to read Juan Zarate's Treasury's War. I know a bank executive who tells me that things have become even more so, since this book was first published.

As for this:

> “[Fungibility] is the idea that a 10 dollar note is the same as any other 10 dollar note. So if you receive a note that was involved in a theft 10 transactions go and the police investigated the theft, then they would have no right to take the note away from you,” according to Adam Back, the inventor of Hashcash.

It appears that Dr. Back is unfamiliar with Civil Forfeiture in the USA. One's $10 bill can be seized for any or no reason. It is so bad in the USA that CBC Senior Correspondent, Neil Macdonald, has warned Canadians visiting the USA not to carry cash.

If pure, perfect fungibility prevailed, then Source of Funds would be an empty concept. Also, if pure, perfect fungibility prevailed, then one might expect DHS agents to rain hellfire and fury on Bitcoin users.

I'm not saying that it is a good thing, but love it, hate it, or be indifferent to it, there it is.

You're using a text about "financing of terrorism" to state that HSBC execs knew about drug money. There is no connection between these.

To understand what's going on here, you should read a book called "Treasury's War" by Juan Zarate:

http://www.amazon.com/Treasurys-War-Unleashing-Financial-Warfare/dp/1610391152

During the period of time under discussion the US Treasury decided it was going to single handedly fight Bush's War On Terror. Its own staff members had inserted into the PATRIOT Act a new clause stating that it could designate any financial institution anywhere as being of "primary money laundering concern". This was effectively a death warrant for the institution in question. However, no requirements were put on these designations. No evidence, process or really anything was needed. And people like Zarate were determined to go home and tell the wifey that they were brave freedom fighters keeping America safe.

The book details their titanic screwups in enormous detail, which is kind of amazing because it is written by one of the guys most responsible. Even now he can't see how awful the book makes him look.

For example, your quote talks about Saudi banks. The Treasury liked to designate foreign banks as being key players in global terror networks based on ...... no evidence at all. Or sometimes just a single account. Yet it expected everyone to immediately cut ties with those banks on their say so.

One notorious case (documented in Zarate's book) involved a very old and respected US bank that happened to have many foreign embassies as clients. Zarate's team at the Treasury Dept decided that foreign embassies of middle eastern countries were inherently suspicious. No real justification for this view is provided in the book - they just felt sure those embassies were up to no good. So they designated the bank as of "prime money laundering concern" under their PATRIOT Act powers and it went bankrupt. Of course, now the US is screwed because suddenly lots of foreign embassies don't have bank accounts anymore and can't pay their employees. What's more, no other bank will touch them because they're afraid of the hit men at the Treasury. Cue minor diplomatic crisis. Eventually the State Dept had to intervene and give some other banks assurances that they wouldn't be prosecuted or forcibly bankrupted by taking on the embassies. All those embassies (except Cuba I think) got bank accounts back. So, net result: one dead US bank. No other impact. Repercussions on the Treasury staff who did this: none, because even though it was widely recognised as an epic fail, they were just fighting terrorists y'see? And in wars mistakes happen.

In short, after reading this book, I really can't see American statements about banks being involved in terrorist financing as anything meaningful. There are too many well documented instances where they simply made things up, or whacked random institutions just because they could.

If you're looking for a big-picture book:
https://www.amazon.com/Treasurys-War-Unleashing-Financial-Warfare/dp/1610391152

Saudi is an ally of the western nations. They took a hit to their economy in order to help the US in cutting funding to terrorists.

Read a book. Specifically this one.