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The rise of crypto laundries: how criminals cash out of Bitcoin

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Re: The rise of crypto laundries: how criminals cash out of Bitcoin

#121

Post by wpietri »

seanhunter wrote: post #119
rmah wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money laundering is not always linked to criminal activity except in so far as money laundering it itself illegal. Many nations (and not just "third world" nations) have some pretty onerous restrictions of flow of capital. A lot of money laundering activity is simply people moving money between jurisdictions. Admittedly, sometimes (usually?) with illegal goals such as tax evasion, but not always.

Money laundering is linked to criminal activity by definition. It literally means introducing the proceeds of criminal activity into the legitimate financial system. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/moneylaundering.asp

I think that's a good general definition. But sometimes people want to move capital unlinked to crime across borders. They then use exactly the same mechanisms money launderers use. If you have a term for that you like better, I'd be interested to hear it.

Re: The rise of crypto laundries: how criminals cash out of Bitcoin

#122

Post by seanhunter »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #37

I am fascinated by the rise of 'chain analysis' companies - that started as 'aint it fun' and became 'hey we can help the cops track ransomware' quite quickly. The thing that fascinates me is ... we could do (very similar) analysis on "normal" bank accounts - on a much larger scale but still. I wonder how much criminal activity would be revealed?

Banks are required by law to do this type of tracking on their normal bank accounts and file reports of any suspicious activity they see. The fact that the transactions aren't public means there isn't a third party that can do it and one bank can't follow the chain once a transaction goes to another bank. That work has to be done in the context of a legal investigation.

Re: The rise of crypto laundries: how criminals cash out of Bitcoin

#123

Post by seanhunter »

wpietri wrote: post #121
seanhunter wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money laundering is linked to criminal activity by definition. It literally means introducing the proceeds of criminal activity into the legitimate financial system. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/moneylaundering.asp

I think that's a good general definition. But sometimes people want to move capital unlinked to crime across borders. They then use exactly the same mechanisms money launderers use. If you have a term for that you like better, I'd be interested to hear it.

If it's not the proceeds of crime, but just money leaving because of unfavourable domestic policies, it's normally called "capital flight" rather than money laundering.

Re: The rise of crypto laundries: how criminals cash out of Bitcoin

#124

Post by iSloth »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #114
MikeDelta wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your point. However, privacy cannot shield one from tax and legal obligations. It is not just the proceeds from criminal activities, but also tax evasion (from the rich or companies) and terrorism financing.

If a tax requires the entire citizenry surrendering all of their financial privacy, it should be abolished.

And shortly after all countries would collapse...

Re: The rise of crypto laundries: how criminals cash out of Bitcoin

#125

Post by meowface »

wpietri wrote: post #117
ccity88 wrote: post #14

I get that money laundering is always linked to criminal activity, but how have we always just accepted the lack of personal privacy when it comes to finance? Privacy is a feature, not a bug; and whilst crypto may not be the way forward, I hope one day we can reach a solution that has both privacy and also safety. The language used by law enforcement is quite alarming, it suggests that they should be privy to ALL tra…

There's a difference between privacy and secrecy. If I'm involving my bank, what I'm doing is already not secret. My bank knows. But normally they keep those things private, because it's generally not anybody's business. There are occasions where society's interest in preventing crime outweighs personal privacy, and one way to look at that is that when something (like, say, ransomware) has an effect on other people,…

I think this is a valid argument. I also think a corollary argument is that it's also valid to decide not to use a bank, though, and do a lot of things purely through cryptocurrency even if you're not doing anything shady or illegal, since, as another comment says, "as long as there are reasonable checks and balances" isn't necessarily a guarantee you can always rely on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27315773

>> but how have we always just accepted the lack of personal privacy when it comes to finance?

>We didn't. This is something that has changed in the UK in my lifetime. Unless you were the subject of an investigation you didn't have to provide much detail to the tax authorities, and what you did provide was kept strictly separate from other areas of government.

>There was an attempt to strike a balance with the emphasis on privacy. Nowadays the government thinks it is entitled to all the data all the time.

Re: The rise of crypto laundries: how criminals cash out of Bitcoin

#126

Post by vyrotek »

After learning about how expensive stolen art is exchanged as a proxy for cash from "This is a robbery" on Netflix I started to wonder if laundering is really needed with crypto. There are probably clever ways to just exchange wallet ownership instead.

Re: The rise of crypto laundries: how criminals cash out of Bitcoin

#127

Post by celticninja »

ectopod wrote: post #101
ccity88 wrote: post #14

I get that money laundering is always linked to criminal activity, but how have we always just accepted the lack of personal privacy when it comes to finance? Privacy is a feature, not a bug; and whilst crypto may not be the way forward, I hope one day we can reach a solution that has both privacy and also safety. The language used by law enforcement is quite alarming, it suggests that they should be privy to ALL tra…

> but how have we always just accepted the lack of personal privacy when it comes to finance? We didn't. This is something that has changed in the UK in my lifetime. Unless you were the subject of an investigation you didn't have to provide much detail to the tax authorities, and what you did provide was kept strictly separate from other areas of government. There was an attempt to strike a balance with the emphasis…

That's not the case at all. HMRC is very proscriptive about what you can do with their data, that's if they let you near it all, even then client consent is absolutely required for each access.

Re: The rise of crypto laundries: how criminals cash out of Bitcoin

#128

Post by vmception »

The XMR to sXMR bridge is live and applauded by both the Monero community and Secret Network community

Secret Network also has an AMM called SecretSwap for exchange to any other asset

All smart contract execution on the secret network is private, as in the variables and current state is not stored on chain for perusal, all assets are smart contracts

Re: The rise of crypto laundries: how criminals cash out of Bitcoin

#129

Post by jayd16 »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #76

I may be biased since I am holding and mining crypto, but I find recent slew of articles talking up the evils of crypto amusing. From eco evils to national security. Crypto is the culprit and banning it will bring salvation. Just today my superior shared WSJ opinion piece saying it should be banned altogether. I genuinely chuckled. It was ignored for so long, but only now when it may be genuinely hard to just put dow…

>It was ignored for so long, but

Its easy to ignore a bad but unpopular thing. As the bad thing gets popular, more will be written about it. Pretty straight forward process.

Re: The rise of crypto laundries: how criminals cash out of Bitcoin

#130

Post by digianarchist »

vmception wrote: post #128

The XMR to sXMR bridge is live and applauded by both the Monero community and Secret Network community Secret Network also has an AMM called SecretSwap for exchange to any other asset All smart contract execution on the secret network is private, as in the variables and current state is not stored on chain for perusal, all assets are smart contracts

Is the Monero community still working on atomic-swaps? If the can pull that off it would make it very difficult to trace money laundering activities.
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