A new hoop was dropped on my path this morning. The routine KYB update from a crypto exchange added a new requirement. Obtain a Legal Entity Identifier: apply through an accredited broker, submit the data, pay the fee.
Benefits to me: zero. Risks: one more company holding my information, one more chain of sub-processors, one more breach surface in a world of daily data breaches.
GLEIF - the non-elected entity you have never heard of who oversees the entire LEI framework - calls it enabling “smarter, less costly, more reliable decisions about who to do business with.” What it enables is a new gate. New gatekeepers. A new fee to pass through both.
Squealer would recognize the technique.
The institutions that designed this carry none of the privacy risk. You do. They collect the data. You absorb the breach. They decide who does business. You pay for the privilege of asking.
The permissioned economy doesn’t announce itself as control. It announces itself as standards, and requests your compliance.