I was thinking a little about the 30,000 odd signups in the last 5 weeks and was wondering what would cause it.
I would assume it has to do with the threat of forking Steemit's stake away and the need to anonymize their stake. If those accounts magically power up a significant amount of Steem and don't interact with the platform much it will be a dead giveaway.
KYC
There are many reasons for and against this but the positive use cases for anonymity are very narrow and provide lower benefit in comparison to the negatives of anonymity.
Hard disagree. Anonymity is the absolute most important thing of this movement. In reality, there is no real argument here because KYC can't come to Steem.
KYC is expensive and it centralizes all the information in one place to be accessed by an authority. Who's going to pay for it? Who's going to secure it? KYC isn't scalable in a decentralized atmosphere. It literally can't happen.
The best way to employ KYC in a decentralized setting is to have a solid system of reputation. The account might be anonymous, but the account's reputation is transparent.
It's not easy to build reputation and get people to trust you. The act of burning an account's reputation to exploit the system and then create a new account would not be worth it with a valid reputation dynamic.
I don't think that in the long run anonymity will hold as the most important thing, transparency will. As far as it goes for who will pay for it, there is likely going to be a whole range of services that will spring up to leverage it that anyone with a bank account or verified twitter or something will be able to utilize. Is it what you find important? maybe not but most people in this world don't care about anonymity. Pseudonimity possibly.
That's exactly why it can't operate in such a way. The cryptosphere gives the most benefit to the people who aren't even banked in the first place. It is a network that deals in trust in places where corruption is the highest. It is an escape for hyperinflation.
The last thing anyone is going to do is identify themselves as their fiat currency is being printed into the dirt and the men with guns are looking for citizens trying to escape the clutches of central banking. These things are happening right now, today. India, Iran, and Venezuela are not pleased by the exit that crypto provides.
It doesn't matter what I think. The implementation of KYC is digitally incompatible with the most valuable crypto applications. The only customer worth knowing is the digital reputation of the "anonymous" account in question.
One doesn't build reputation in the cryptoshpere by linking a fiat bank account. There will be an @edicted reputation and a @tarazkp reputation. Our reputations will take years to cultivate and, in all likelihood, we aren't going to sacrifice our account's reputation for some paltry short-term gains.
Centralization continues to melt away over time as decentralized features are put in place. Consolidated power structures can not be built on these shifting sands and expect to stand the test of time.
The bank verification was used as an example but it is about proof of human not identity. This is getting more and more difficult these days.