HitRed wrote: Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said during a press conference on Thursday that crypto wallets have been frozen.
"The names of both individuals and entities, as well as crypto wallets, have been shared by the RCMP with financial institutions and accounts have been frozen, and more accounts will be frozen," Freeland said.
So, can banks freeze wallets? I thought they were in your home computer.
No entity can freeze, control, take from your wallet... unless they have your private key which some people store in stupid ways that make that possible.
What they are really talking about here, is money you hold in a centralized exchange like coinbase/kraken/Gemini ect. You are letting them hold you coins in a wallet they control (on your behalf) in order to facilitate easy cheap trading. For the record 'centralized exchanges' go against the whole point of crypto/blockchain, but they are the easiest way for beginners to access crypto.
The CEO of one such exchange (Kraken) tweeted this yesterday (basically suggesting you shouldn't use his product if you are worried about gov't seizures because he's forced to comply with gov't orders)
https://twitter.com/jespow/status/1494458245259272192"100% yes it has/will happen and 100% yes, we will be forced to comply. If you're worried about it, don't keep your funds with any centralized/regulated custodian. We cannot protect you. Get your coins/cash out and only trade p2p."
Long story short, you hold coins on coinbase, those coins aren't decentralized you are allowing a regulated company to hold you assets which means they could in theory be frozen. If you hold them in your own wallet you are safer. That said there are other risks, some coins you might be holding may be regulated (thinking stable coins like USDT/USDC here). That doesn't give anyone the power to 'take' those coins, the risk is more in the idea that a gov't could try to render the coins valueless. Holding BTC/ETH or something like that instead of a stable coin greatly mitigates that risk. You could also own a truly decentralized stable coin like MIM (magic internet money haha) or DAI which was created to be decentralized but has kinda been 'selling out' and isn't really living up to its' initial vision.
Also... "I thought they were in your home computer.", the wallet is accessed from your computer, but it doesn't 'live' anywhere but on the blockchain. Your house and computer could burn down, as long as you have your private key you can regain access to your wallet from Siberia the very next day. Also banks have nothing to do with this at all whatsoever, gov'ts oversight of exchanges is what is being referred to.
Think of BTC network as like quadrillions squared of safety deposit boxes that only live on the BTC network. Your private key is you access to your box. There are more possible private key/box possibilities then there are atoms in the universe so the same key will never be created twice. As long as you have your key + internet no one can access/restrict/regulate your box.
There is a decent new documentary on Prime called 'Cryptopia'... it's already sore of 'out of date' even though it's from 2020, but it does a good job to help visualize how the BTC network works
Plus, with my luck, he'd seduce me and I'd end up living in some fishing hut in Valle de la Pascua. FML.
