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Squillions: How money laundering won

lrb.co.uk

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Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#201

Post by nntlol »

Nowadays banks spy on normal people in the disguise of reporting to government about illegal activity. The people who are in the illegal game always have their own ways to hide money and that is so sophisticated that no one can know they have that much money so the spying only de-anonymize the common peoples.

People do think bitcoin as option but nothing is private they also can be tracked by chainalysis.com

One thing i know is private is Monero and its heavily censored and its not easy to get as of i know

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#202

Post by UltraSane »

titanomachy wrote: post #192
mercutio2 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This used to be true. But the 2025 Interchange Fee Settlement abolished the “Honor All Cards” regime. Perhaps, I know it’s crazy, but… perhaps segmenting the market into extremely high-spending customers, normal pay-every-month-relatively-low-fees, and no-frills, was a smart move by the big issuers? My sense is that alienating big spenders (whose interchange fees tend to be in the 4% range) is just not worth it? All…

Costco in the US has, for as long as I’ve shopped there, only accepted visa or debit.

I'm pretty sure this is because they negotiated a very good rate with Visa in exchange for being exclusive.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#203

Post by UltraSane »

bhelkey wrote: post #168
SkiFire13 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of your cash back money actually comes from fees that merchants pay. In the US and especially for credit cards with cash back those fees can be quite high, and unfortunately it's illegal for merchants to discriminate against credit cards with high fees.

> it's illegal for merchants to discriminate against credit cards with high fees Do you have a source for this? Often times merchants don't accept American Express because it charges higher fees [1]. [1] https://www.bankrate.com/credit-cards/business/why-american-...

It isn't illegal but it is against most credit card companies merchant agreements. But I do rarely see it like in some vending machines.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#204

Post by UltraSane »

lxgr wrote: post #198
elteto wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the time it’s the other way around, at least in the US: because cash and credit card prices are almost always the same it is the cash users who are overpaying, to the tune of 2-3% of the purchase price. It makes no sense to use cash.

Sure, but somebody is still paying more in aggregate than what you get out as rewards, or this industry would not exist.

Yes, the 12 to 30 percent interest the credit card companies charge.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#205

Post by AnthonyMouse »

air7 wrote: post #172
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems pretty obvious that cryptocurrency can be used to transfer funds. The question is whether this is actually an innovation or just method #373453 of doing the thing that was always possible a million other ways. Suppose someone has a million dollars in cash and wants to turn it into "clean" money in a bank account, or transfer it to another country. They pick any goods with a high cost to weight ratio and a th…

I don't get it. The IRS sees a clean million dollars in your bank account. They ask "how did you get that?" You answer "Oh I just sold this super expensive thing on a marketplace". Then they ask "Ok, but how did you get/buy this expensive thing?" What do you say?

> They ask "how did you get that?" You answer "Oh I just sold this super expensive thing on a marketplace". Then they ask "Ok, but how did you get/buy this expensive thing?" What do you say?

This is not the part cryptocurrency replaces. If you suddenly have a million dollars and you say it's because you sold some Bitcoin, they're just going to ask where you got a million dollars worth of Bitcoin.

Moreover, the answer in practice is that they make something up. Pretend they're playing Storage Wars and finding treasures when they're actually buying worthless storage lockers with a tiny amount of clean money and expensive items with dirty money, or sell things they could plausibly claim to have made themselves or restored/repaired themselves. There are tons of real companies whose business is to haul away some other company's junk and then try to sell it, but then who can say whether or not all the TVs they're selling were among the pallets of junk they were paid to haul away from a dozen different corporate offices?

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#206

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mercutio2 wrote: post #174
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The credit card companies tell you that the merchant pays. Cost incidence doesn't work like that. If every seller in a fungible commodity market has the same additional cost, the price is going up by that amount.

Yes, but you’re perhaps missing OP’s point? Incidence is very much on customers, but (high interchange fee) credit card users are getting a rebate of most, if not all, of that. It’s the cash users who AREN’T getting a rebate, and thus the incidence is on them (and people using other low-or-zero cashback payment methods).

The incidence is on everyone. Paying 3% more or, for small purchases, >10% more is a net loss even if you get 2% back. Meanwhile merchants are increasingly offering a lower price for paying cash, and the ones offering that will generally have the same credit prices as the ones who don't, so paying with a card is paying 3%+ more to get 2% back -- and not everyone even gets 2% back. People with poor credit typically aren't offered those cards.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#207

Post by AnthonyMouse »

CPLX wrote: post #177
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlines also sell "points" for cash and you can get them for essentially the same cost as the credit card companies do. They're just using the 2% cash back to buy them for you, so even if you want flights, getting a 3%+ discount and using the money to buy points puts you ahead. It also lets you time your purchase (there are sometimes temporary "deals" on points), collect interest on the cash until you exchange it fo…

That's not really true on a practical level. For the most part, you can't just buy airline points at the one to two cent price that you effectively get them for in credit card transactions or the even lower price that the credit card companies themselves are likely paying.

Airlines do regular promotions where you can buy miles for less than 2 cents per mile. If you get 2% cash back or pay with cash and get a 3% cash discount and can then buy miles for 1.2 cents/mile during the promotion, you're losing 0.8% or 1.8% respectively by using the card that gives you miles instead.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#208

Post by __david__ »

titanomachy wrote: post #192
mercutio2 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This used to be true. But the 2025 Interchange Fee Settlement abolished the “Honor All Cards” regime. Perhaps, I know it’s crazy, but… perhaps segmenting the market into extremely high-spending customers, normal pay-every-month-relatively-low-fees, and no-frills, was a smart move by the big issuers? My sense is that alienating big spenders (whose interchange fees tend to be in the 4% range) is just not worth it? All…

Costco in the US has, for as long as I’ve shopped there, only accepted visa or debit.

That’s only fairly recently at my Costco. For years and years it was only American Express and debit.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#209

Post by phil21 »

happymellon wrote: post #197
dmantis wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies say otherwise: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-40654-6_... Cash is actually faster in many cases, the 'slowness' is the matter of perception and the need to make a cognitive operation of 1st grader counting, which is apparently a daunting prospect for many people. And even if it were slower by 20-30 secs, the advantage it gives in control and privacy is such enormous that I don't understan…

All of those talking points appear to be some preprepared copy pasta, because they don't appear to relate to my comment at all. I never spoke about speed. > the need to make a cognitive operation of 1st grader counting, which is apparently a daunting prospect for many people. Don't be a condescending prick. The fact that counting exists at all is a cost that people don't measure. > due to the AML surveillance from th…

> Or if you read the fine article you would realise that AML rules generate so much noise that there isn't any analysis.

Which is even worse, since the only practical use of that data is now selective enforcement and/or parallel construction.

Not to mention the constant hassle such laws have for regular folks trying to transact in cash while barely being a speed bump for those engaging in actual money laundering at scale.

> The fact that counting exists at all is a cost that people don't measure.

When cash skills were common and regularly utilized, the average cashier could count out most change in about the time a card swipe or dip happened. Tap makes it considerably faster though.

Today I agree - the average cash handling skills are effectively nonexistent to the point I comment on it when a cashier understands how to count back change correctly, much less do it from muscle memory.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#210

Post by handle584 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #207
CPLX wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really true on a practical level. For the most part, you can't just buy airline points at the one to two cent price that you effectively get them for in credit card transactions or the even lower price that the credit card companies themselves are likely paying.

Airlines do regular promotions where you can buy miles for less than 2 cents per mile. If you get 2% cash back or pay with cash and get a 3% cash discount and can then buy miles for 1.2 cents/mile during the promotion, you're losing 0.8% or 1.8% respectively by using the card that gives you miles instead.

So do credit card companies run transfer bonuses. There are only a handful of airlines who sell pts Also the big part of this game is sign up bonuses, like spending $5,000 and get 100,000 points instead of the 2% daily rate.
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