171–180 of 199 posts
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Do you think people like Rosa Parks should have started their own nation? [0] What an incredibly frightening way of thinking. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks
Rosa Park fought to get equal rights. You want to have privileges. The fact that you don't see that is the only frightening thinking here.
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The problem actually seems worse on the Bitcoin side to new than in meat space. Someone might have a Saas business that receives a lot of payments in BTC. Interestingly there isn't all that much traffic. You know like in mani pedi salons that make surprising amounts of money despite never being really packed. It's harder to notice that with a Saas business especially if the logs aren't kept for long. However, it woul…
OK, so you just run your SaaS business as Nomen Nescio, using anonymously leased servers, managing them through VPNs and Tor, and so on. Then Bitcoin go somewhere.
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Government is the legitimate exercise of force. That's kind of the whole reason it exists.
That doesn't mean this particular use of force is legitimate. Unless you mean that all uses of force by the government are legitimate, in which case you'll have much to defend.
But whenever I see people upset government uses force, I think: of course it does. It's like birds using wings or Emacs users using the control key.
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That doesn't mean this particular use of force is legitimate. Unless you mean that all uses of force by the government are legitimate, in which case you'll have much to defend.
They're almost all legitimate uses of force by definition, unless the government breaks the law. This is orthogonal to moral or utilitarian concerns, however. But whenever I see people upset government uses force, I think: of course it does. It's like birds using wings or Emacs users using the control key.
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"It takes longer, but it's possible"? That's like saying decrypting RSA "takes longer, but it's possible". Yeah, good luck.
Isn't the ledger public ? Isn't it easier to track for the authorities than cash serial numbers ?
But yes, it's WAY easier to trace than cash
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There used to be ransomware that demanded cash by mail. RSA analogy? Way too harsh.
That's good to know, I wasn't aware. But cash by mail... at what scale? How many people were attacked? And I don't see why the RSA analogy is "too harsh". Impractical is impractical.
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And you'd still be wrong. There's nothing about bitcoin that makes payments untraceable (quite the opposite). It takes longer, but it's possible.
"It takes longer, but it's possible"? That's like saying decrypting RSA "takes longer, but it's possible". Yeah, good luck.
Like, it's more awkward but quite doable especially with decent resources.
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The last step doesn't work. I mean, you might as well declare the cash as income. You'd be pressed to explain where either came from. More useful would be to buy Bitcoin with cash, mix, and then invest assets somewhere anonymously. But it's a hard problem, because wherever assets appear in meatspace, there's typically the need to explain their origin. That's where many people get caught. Such as Tomáš Jiříkovský of S…
Make yourself a Bitcoin "lottery" and win it.
But maybe too obvious. Anonymous lottery, right? Suspicious.
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The problem actually seems worse on the Bitcoin side to new than in meat space. Someone might have a Saas business that receives a lot of payments in BTC. Interestingly there isn't all that much traffic. You know like in mani pedi salons that make surprising amounts of money despite never being really packed. It's harder to notice that with a Saas business especially if the logs aren't kept for long. However, it woul…
You can create credit cards on the fly and charge them with bitcoin. Another possible action is to use the money for advertising, product development, etc... and build a somewhat legitimate business. The business might not be quite profitable but that's the price you pay for laundering?
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OK, so you just run your SaaS business as Nomen Nescio, using anonymously leased servers, managing them through VPNs and Tor, and so on. Then Bitcoin go somewhere.
The money still isn't laundered though which was the premise of the money laundering operation.
Well, it could be an all-too-typical small startup, losing money to build market share. You could pose as the major investor, living in some war zone, and funding through Bitcoin. But I doubt that it would pass an audit.
Actually laundering money through Bitcoin is nontrivial. You can replace networks of agents, moving cash around, with anonymous Bitcoin wallets. But you may still need to explain where the assets came from.