I think Crypto has made easier for the amateurs, but I’m sure that Russian privateer hackers would have figured out some other approach.
I heard a something a few years ago, from a knowledgeable source on Crypto that I never really understood. The guy said that FBI or NSA was able to monitor the specific block chain ids (the lingo isn’t exactly right) of all the bitcoins that were paid in ransomware. So that if you bought a car or condo in the US or Europe with the ransomware bitcoins, they could seize the assets.
Does anyone know if this is true, and have the authorities actually done that?
Yup, it’s not completely anonymous.
Can’t say I’ve heard any seizure stories though.
Yes, it’s inherent that everything on the blockchain is immutable, so cryptocurrencies that record transactions on their blockchain make tracing those transactions easy, but there are also means of ‘washing’ a given transaction through splitting it into smaller and likely many thousands of subsequent transactions, and then again and again, to make tracking more difficult. And then NFT’s enter the fray, providing an avenue for transactions where it becomes impossible to define ‘value’ of a given ‘product’ and providing a basically infinite pool of digital resources to sell and buy and sell and buy again, all without ever leaving the world of cryptocurrency.
At some point the burden on LEO becomes too much, outside of the biggest fish.
Yes, they just arrested someone with a big bitcoin laundering operation. They got him because of tracking his initial service agreements that were done in his own name. But it’s doubtful that they will be able to tease out the beneficiaries of the bitcoins that were laundered.
We need to apply the same reporting requirements to bitcoin exchanges that we apply to cash deposits at banks.
“We” do, more or less. In the EU and UK, they’re covered by the Anti-Money Laundering Directive, as are wallet providers. Of course, they are rarely EU/UK based. In the US, I believe they are covered as money services businesses, but much of that regime is subject to a transaction size threshold which I expect is pretty abusable in practice.
Every crypto exchange in the US (and is hooked up to US bank accounts for the most part) is required by the IRS to report its transactions. So this already exists.
Reporting requirements only catch tax evasion for the most part though. If I wash the money well enough I just have to come up with a seemingly plausible enough explanation for how I made my money, because they would have to prove otherwise.
Indeed. And it’s not as if banks haven’t been involved in a shit-ton of money laundering over the years.
In other news that will get people mad
Exhibit Error: Integer Overflow in the case for “Unfettered Capitalism is an existential threat to the continuation of life on planet Earth”.
I have to say I’ve never consider vertical integration in the bitcoin business before. I think they missed an opportunity though to fully fuck the planet. They should reopen some dirty shale oil well, in Canada or North Dakota and use the oil to run an old abandon power plant use most of the electricity to mine bitcoin and use the heat generate by the server farm and power plant to operate a meat packing plant or maybe an Indian Casino.
Maximum CO2 and Maximum $.
This is alive and well here in Alberta. There are a number of oil and gas companies that pull stuff out of the ground just to burn it onsite to generate electricity to power and cool onsite server farms to generate bitcoin for the bottom line. Humanity truly is domed!
True we are doomed, but my faith in capitalism is restored. I knew that China and Russia were doing this with bitcoin, but you don’t hear of evil Canadian very often.
Thrag
1640
I mean, other then their geese.
CraigM
1641
Geese are assholes, it is known.
If you ever wanted more proof that crypto is full of pump and dump that’s going to have a lot of bag holders, and the schemers getting rich.
It costs a minimum of $20USD right now if you want to move ethereum from one wallet to another (smallest type of transaction). If you want to do a swap from one dumb coin to another you are looking at $160-200 in fees alone. I saw some more complex transactions where they paid $800 in transaction fees, but it wasn’t high enough for the load at the time so the transaction failed, which burned the full $800 amount (failed transactions have fees burned to attempt to lower spam).
So dumb.
Looking at you, Kentucky:
This was literally what happened very recently in Kentucky, where they converted a clean-energy subsidy into a tax break for Bitcoin miners because they think it’s great that this industry uses a lot of energy 24/7. And they wanted to save some jobs from the obsolete coal plants. So yeah, that’s also an interesting development where you have governments thinking of this as an opportunity to save obsolete fossil fuels and maybe save some jobs in the process.
Even though I don’t like the way it’s used, from an engineering perspective I find how Monero’s anonymity works fascinating
https://www.monero.how/how-does-monero-work-details-in-plain-english
Well, you know what they says, you gotta spend money to…*checks notes*…spend money?
