Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 236 posts

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

#151

Post by irtigor »

wpietri wrote: post #141
irtigor wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true if they are trying to avoid taxation, which is also ilegal (even if you think it is justified). Moving capital from a place to another doesn't use the same mechanisms of money laundering if done legally.

That's not the case. As mentioned elsewhere in thread, some places have limits on capital movement.

That's a good example that proves my point and the reason why I said "even if think it is justified", it doesn't matter if it is a cap/tax/whatever, it only uses the same mechanisms of money laundering because it is money laundering (they are trying to hide that that money is not clean/legal, that the reason it is illegal is because it was not supossed to legally leave the origin country instead of being drug money, makes no difference to the law, but morally could be ok to some).

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

#152

Post by Nextgrid »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #60
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?

> we could do (very similar) analysis on "normal" bank accounts I don't think so really, the fact that the ledger is public is really the thing that makes this is a credible model. In the absolutely general sense of "if all banks around the world opened all their books and banking secrecy laws didn't exist, and if we somehow had the ability to trace through cash transactions" then sure, theoretically (and again not a…

I'd argue that the problem isn't secrecy laws but just general incompetence and unwillingness.

Sure, banking secrecy laws could be a problem for large-scale frauds totaling millions, but smaller-scale operations typically stay within the same country where the law most likely already allows this kind of tracing, but it's so unefficient that by the time it's tracked down the money is already gone for good.

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

#153

Post by malka »

wpietri wrote: post #141
irtigor wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true if they are trying to avoid taxation, which is also ilegal (even if you think it is justified). Moving capital from a place to another doesn't use the same mechanisms of money laundering if done legally.

That's not the case. As mentioned elsewhere in thread, some places have limits on capital movement.

Then moving the capital is not legal.

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

#154

Post by vmception »

> Some criminals undertake what is known as “chain-hopping” — jumping between different cryptocurrencies, often in rapid succession — to lose trackers, or use particular “privacy coin” cryptocurrencies that have extra anonymity built into them, such as Monero.

Its kind of hilarious that an article in mid-2021 treats this as novel, or that it is novel to many people reading it now.

To me this is like reading about bearer bonds from a 1950s heist.

Chain-hopping is as old as crypto exchanges. It has some folly, because even if a chain analysis firm or armchair blockchain sleuths aren't inspired enough to consider or look on another chain, the records are still permanent.

Hopping over to XMR or privacy chains has been available since 2014. Even with older versions leaking some rings, the best practices from back then still mitigate that, and rotating anytime since 2017 ensures mitigation through now.

The article lacks anything coherent, providing maybe a tiny spark of inspiration for investigators and people enamored by the crypto phenomenon, but wasting everybody's time because there are other techniques fairly unique to the crypto space that are more accessible and efficient and not secret at all.

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

#155

Post by Empf »

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…

Tax fraud.

You would not benefit from it you would loose money

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

#156

Post by Ceezy »

vmception wrote: post #154

> Some criminals undertake what is known as “chain-hopping” — jumping between different cryptocurrencies, often in rapid succession — to lose trackers, or use particular “privacy coin” cryptocurrencies that have extra anonymity built into them, such as Monero. Its kind of hilarious that an article in mid-2021 treats this as novel, or that it is novel to many people reading it now. To me this is like reading about bea…

Well everybody is just not as in the loop as you are. Not sure what is hilarious about that...

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

#157

Post by atatatat »

tluyben2 wrote: post #30
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…

I don't think the public cares. And, of course, there are many news articles, like this but also about fiat, that show why 'privacy is bad, ok'; criminals will run rampant if we cannot track everything you do.

Right, because the art trade is so hard to notice.

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

#158

Post by GuB-42 »

xwdv wrote: post #64
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?

Once chain analysis becomes trivial, a major selling point of cryptocurrencies will be defeated. What then is the point?

The major selling point of bitcoin now is that it is a way to store value that is not controlled by a single entity.

Anonymity never was a design goal (even though it helped) and transactions are now too slow and expensive to make it a viable payment network. You can still buy drugs in Bitcoin, but it is not why people invest so much into it.

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

#159

Post by vmception »

Ceezy wrote: post #156
vmception wrote: post #154

> Some criminals undertake what is known as “chain-hopping” — jumping between different cryptocurrencies, often in rapid succession — to lose trackers, or use particular “privacy coin” cryptocurrencies that have extra anonymity built into them, such as Monero. Its kind of hilarious that an article in mid-2021 treats this as novel, or that it is novel to many people reading it now. To me this is like reading about bea…

Well everybody is just not as in the loop as you are. Not sure what is hilarious about that...

The point is that this article conflates several things and is describing some fairly outdated or inefficient obfuscation techniques of which launderers would be some of the users of.

It goes from Hydra market duffle-bags of cash hiders (lolwut), to chain-hopping and scant mention of privacy coins. It randomly talks about Wasabi wallet same-chain bitcoin mixers, and then talks about Bitcoin Fog's operator being arrested which is much much older technology. It doesn't acknowledge or provide awareness about people actually wanting the privacy coins to begin with or staying within the mixing system (or trading claims to assets in the mixing system), and just assumes people are trying to obfuscate briefly with the end goal of holding non-private coins or fiat.

I don't get the impression that they were avoiding describing useful techniques for criminals, I get the impression that they have no idea.

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

#160

Post by meowface »

wpietri wrote: post #147
meowface wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People definitely have differing views on what "reasonable checks and balances" mean; here in the US we have whole movements of people with... strong opinions on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement I agree it's valid not to use a bank; one could try to conduct all one's business in cash. But in practice, people doing that are often doing something criminal, so people using cryptocurren…

That's true. I personally don't mind using banks and don't mind them knowing what I do with my money and perhaps the government knowing as well. But I wouldn't necessarily judge someone who doesn't want to use one.
Post reply on HN