Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use Monero
Monero is not completely untraceable either.
Can you elaborate? I know very little about Monero.
Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says
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Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says
#62I am morbidly curious how much being a hit man pays. I don't want to look it up for fear of finding myself 'on a list' :) but it's such a high risk occupation that one assumes it's pretty profitable. In the US, anyway. This brings me to bitcoin. Would it be smarter as a murderer-for-hire to ask to be paid in a less-expensive (for now) but growing currency such as Etherium or Litecoin? I mean, ask the 'client' for X d…
From my reading of probably unreliable/fake sources, a "hit" on a normal civilian typically ranges from $10-50k. Cost increases with difficulty of accessing target, risk of detection and making it look accidental.
A hitman may wish to delay use of payment for opsec reasons, but I think it's odd to think their desire for speculative risk would be much different than the general public.
Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there is a good chance your grandchildren will be able to see what you did with Bitcoin by just looking it up on a public website in half a century. That's all of the internet, forget blockchains.
No, it isn't, if a service is properly secured and does not sell it's data then there is no reason to think this. Please stop spreading FUD like this, it only makes people think that privacy is impossible. Even if you are talking about dragnet collection and you assume that for example NSA can store all traffic on the internet (which is basically impossible) in Utah (or wherever) for future decryption with post-quant…
I don't think that's privacy fatalism? Did you know that Reddit's entire graph has been cached on some dudes servers and up until fairly recently allowed search by username? That includes deleted posts and edits.
Reddit is not unique. People do this with Twitter too. I forget the name but there's an entire service for caching changes to your Twitter bio.
> No, it isn't, if a service is properly secured and does not sell it's data then there is no reason to think this
Citation needed. Reddit and Twitter aren't selling data to those people. It's an open API.
Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use Monero
Monero is not completely untraceable either.
Almost the entire comments mix "crypto" with Bitcoin or "all cryptos are the same" which is factually false. Please explain how different it is in comparison, the thread is flooded with baseless claims. This is analogous to placing your money under the bed vs. in a bank vault, they're both unsafe technically, but the difference is vast.
Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there is a good chance your grandchildren will be able to see what you did with Bitcoin by just looking it up on a public website in half a century. That's all of the internet, forget blockchains.
No, it isn't, if a service is properly secured and does not sell it's data then there is no reason to think this. Please stop spreading FUD like this, it only makes people think that privacy is impossible. Even if you are talking about dragnet collection and you assume that for example NSA can store all traffic on the internet (which is basically impossible) in Utah (or wherever) for future decryption with post-quant…
It's not privacy fatalism. I'm referring to the public internet, which is now mined and stored as input for AIs, if nothing else.
We can only speculate that data breaches will be used for such purposes eventually too.
The best you can get is E2EE communications. I find it ironic someone commenting on a text based public forum would argue this.
Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin's usefulness comes from being able to transact value without a centralized authority. There are no gatekeepers to determine who can transact with whom, to assign value to a medium, or to take that value away. It is democratization of financial power.
I mean pragmatically not abstractly. Bitcoin transaction fees were >$50 recently, so it's useless as a form of payment, and nothing is keeping it from being worthless tomorrow so it's a poor parking spot for money.
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Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says
#67Bitcoin is a dream come true for the FBI/CIA. There are companies building sophisticated software to track the routing of shady payments through the blockchain (wouldn't be surprised if Palantir does this). Eventually, crypto finds it way towards a tangible asset that can be tied to somebody and it's just a matter of a paper trail.
Serious question, I thought BTC's only usefulness came from its usefulness in laundering money. Is this not true?
I wouldn't say laundering money is its only utility, but the value of BTC is quite likely a reflection of the economic value of illicit activity (or black-market savings, if you prefer). Given how relatively difficult BTC is to use for the average person, it's the simplest explanation (per Occam's razor) for why it's worth so much in aggregate.
Think about it: If you were a criminal, would you rather keep your cash under a proverbial mattress like in the old days, or in properties that could be seized by the local government? Or in BTC, where it can't really be seized, is semi-anonymous, and where there is a (imperfect but decent) exchange market for fiat currency (and, rarely, goods and services) when you need it?
I know what I would choose.
Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says
#68How did the BBC know about this plot? This is something that the story does not explain.
Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like it worked just great for one of the criminals... From TFA "The FBI has not, however, been able to identify the hitman as yet. The reason is almost certainly because the hitman did not use a commercial service like Coinbase, which must comply with know-your-customer laws, for the Bitcoin transactions but instead relied on his own personal wallet—one that did not reveal any information about his identity."
I wonder if the hitman is the one who notified the BBC. Seems like a better way to make some money than actually, you know, doing the job. (not implying that the bbc gave him any money)
To me, it sounds like BBC knows more then they let on. Could BBC have been running a undercover investigative story? It just seems too unlikely they could get the hitmans bitcoin address without being somehow involved.
Re: Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says
#70Bitcoin is a dream come true for the FBI/CIA. There are companies building sophisticated software to track the routing of shady payments through the blockchain (wouldn't be surprised if Palantir does this). Eventually, crypto finds it way towards a tangible asset that can be tied to somebody and it's just a matter of a paper trail.
That is the ultimate problem of Bitcoin that it is non-fungible, which means it's not a real currency if 1 BTC != another 1 BTC.
If you get paid in BTC you never know if you receive tainted coins and have them confiscated by exchange at the withdrawal attempt.