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Why the feds took down one of Bitcoin’s largest exchanges

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Re: Why the feds took down one of Bitcoin’s largest exchanges

#71

Post by louithethrid »

rothbardrand wrote: post #52
basketbasket wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem with the internet in general. In the future, we will have an archive of everything everyone did on the internet and can use stylometry, Facebook likes and clicks, and temporal association to uncover individuals. The only way to opt-out is to just stop participating. All newer cryptography based systems for preserving privacy, like ZCash and Monero, are based around elliptic curve math that will one…

How soon is that day when elliptic curve cryptography will be broken? AFAIK RSA is still mostly unbroken and it has been decades. EC could last 50 years or 500 years, right? And if one were to, say, take some transparent ZEC, send it to an invisible location, then take it out to a transparent location and do the same again to a third transparent location (to then convert to bitcoin or whatever)... EC would have to be…

Actually, i think the walled garden internet will collapse spectacularly, as any mono-culture has done before- beeing prone to viruses and attacks.

Linux and Open Source might be the users last choice, but might be the last man standing one day- if for example sb would write a maschine learning virus able to detect and exploit new weaknesses in a dormant form.

Re: Why the feds took down one of Bitcoin’s largest exchanges

#72

Post by FRex »

MichaelGG wrote: post #60
FRex wrote: post #30

>Money laundering is the process of transforming the profits of crime and corruption into ostensibly "legitimate" assets. >A cryptocurrency tumbler is a service offered to mix potentially identifiable or 'tainted' cryptocurrency funds with others, with the intention of confusing the trail back to the fund's original source. English might not be my native language but I can see lots of parallels. I never actually cons…

If all serials on cash were pervasively tracked, then we'd have and need such services. From criminals hiding their money, to a husband not wanting his wife to know he bought a gift at a jewelry store, everyone deserved privacy if they desire. Money laundering is simply a term used by lazy prosecutors that can't find real crimes. Fundamentally it's criminalising the act of daring not to tell the government everything…

Sequential bills is movie slang for marked/traced bills cops use to pay off ransoms and such.

And 'the government' isn't going after anyone who 'dared to not tell the government everything they did' or even after all the clients of this mixer or all bitcoin users but after a guy who ran a specific large mixer that was used in mixing bitcoin from a large theft and several small thefts and sketchy in general (whatever that means in context of a tool like Bitcoin that on its own is quite notorious).

And it's actually few governments together that are on this wider Mt. Gox case, including Japanese one (Mt. Gox location), Greek one (where Vinnik was arrested), etc.

They also said he possible played a role in the theft itself - we will see what comes of it.

Re: Why the feds took down one of Bitcoin’s largest exchanges

#73

Post by MichaelGG »

dboreham wrote: post #65
MichaelGG wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's privacy. Money laundering is a fake crime and propaganda by governments with prosecutors unable to find real crime. It's as bad as calling copyright infringement "theft" or even "piracy", though the later term has been pretty watered down. Or how banks push the idea of "Identity theft" as if someone stole your identity versus the bank failing to verify your identity. We don't call encryption "information launder…

The real crime is tax evasion.

If I collect money for my illegal pharmacy, then launder it through some retail front, am I not paying all taxes at that point?

Re: Why the feds took down one of Bitcoin’s largest exchanges

#74

Post by empath75 »

MichaelGG wrote: post #51
rkowalick wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically money laundering, right?

It's privacy. Money laundering is a fake crime and propaganda by governments with prosecutors unable to find real crime. It's as bad as calling copyright infringement "theft" or even "piracy", though the later term has been pretty watered down. Or how banks push the idea of "Identity theft" as if someone stole your identity versus the bank failing to verify your identity. We don't call encryption "information launder…

People go to prison for it all the time. It's as real as any other crime.

If you are acting in a way that's indistinguishable from someone who is attempting to hide evidence of a crime, don't be surprised when people think you are doing something wrong.

Re: Why the feds took down one of Bitcoin’s largest exchanges

#75

Post by MichaelGG »

FRex wrote: post #72
MichaelGG wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all serials on cash were pervasively tracked, then we'd have and need such services. From criminals hiding their money, to a husband not wanting his wife to know he bought a gift at a jewelry store, everyone deserved privacy if they desire. Money laundering is simply a term used by lazy prosecutors that can't find real crimes. Fundamentally it's criminalising the act of daring not to tell the government everything…

Sequential bills is movie slang for marked/traced bills cops use to pay off ransoms and such. And 'the government' isn't going after anyone who 'dared to not tell the government everything they did' or even after all the clients of this mixer or all bitcoin users but after a guy who ran a specific large mixer that was used in mixing bitcoin from a large theft and several small thefts and sketchy in general (whatever…

The US government goes after all sorts of people that do things even remotely looking like money laundering. They make banks report $10K+ transactions, then invent a new crime if you avoid making such transactions. Small business owners get bit by this and end up fighting for their own money.

Re: Why the feds took down one of Bitcoin’s largest exchanges

#76

Post by eropple »

MichaelGG wrote: post #73
dboreham wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real crime is tax evasion.

If I collect money for my illegal pharmacy, then launder it through some retail front, am I not paying all taxes at that point?

...No? You haven't paid taxes on the first transaction at all.

Re: Why the feds took down one of Bitcoin’s largest exchanges

#77

Post by MichaelGG »

empath75 wrote: post #74
MichaelGG wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's privacy. Money laundering is a fake crime and propaganda by governments with prosecutors unable to find real crime. It's as bad as calling copyright infringement "theft" or even "piracy", though the later term has been pretty watered down. Or how banks push the idea of "Identity theft" as if someone stole your identity versus the bank failing to verify your identity. We don't call encryption "information launder…

People go to prison for it all the time. It's as real as any other crime. If you are acting in a way that's indistinguishable from someone who is attempting to hide evidence of a crime, don't be surprised when people think you are doing something wrong.

I mean it's a made up victimless crime that only serves prosecutors. It's on the moral level of asset seizure and worse than "crimes" like wire fraud.

Prosecutors are free to think someone's doing something wrong. Investigators might be able to get warrants under such suspicions (iffy but perhaps acceptable). But they should need to find actual wrongdoing to be able to convict people, and this last part is what is lacking today.

Re: Why the feds took down one of Bitcoin’s largest exchanges

#78

Post by celticninja »

MichaelGG wrote: post #73
dboreham wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real crime is tax evasion.

If I collect money for my illegal pharmacy, then launder it through some retail front, am I not paying all taxes at that point?

You are paying some tax, just not all the required tax. Specifically you are evading income taxes. As I recall in the US at least, there is an option on your IRS form to report any income derived from illegality so that the relevant tax can be paid. Whether anyone has ever done so I don't know but something like that could have kept Capone out of prison.

Re: Why the feds took down one of Bitcoin’s largest exchanges

#79

Post by MichaelGG »

eropple wrote: post #76
MichaelGG wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I collect money for my illegal pharmacy, then launder it through some retail front, am I not paying all taxes at that point?

...No? You haven't paid taxes on the first transaction at all.

There wouldn't be a second transaction (the front store) if it weren't for trying to pay taxes on the first. So that's not really a defensible line of reasoning. Only, perhaps, if the tax rates would differ.

Re: Why the feds took down one of Bitcoin’s largest exchanges

#80

Post by 0x4f3759df »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #41
ineedasername wrote: post #8

This is what I never understood about bitcoins's reputation, especially earlier on, about its supposed anonymity. I suppose that's much less the case now. But it always seemed odd that people considered it at all anonymous when the blockchain kept a record of everything. Sure it might not be immediately identifiable with a specific individual, but unless it was a wholly closed system, entry & exit points would always…

Monero[1] was created, among other reasons, to solve the privacy problem. It uses something called a ring signature[2], which is composed of a group 'decoy' public keys, plus yours, as part of every transaction which makes it impossible for an outsider to trace. Monero is fungible, whereas Bitcoin is not. [1]: https://getmonero.org/ [2]: https://getmonero.org/resources/moneropedia/ringsignatures.h...

Monero and Dash are both making a play at the anonymous space, do you have an opinion about Monero vs Dash?
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