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Bitcoin Black Market Competition Heats Up

forbes.com

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Re: Bitcoin Black Market Competition Heats Up

#12

Post by [deleted] »

gizmo686 wrote: post #10

It seems like this is a boom for law enforcement. One of the fundamental aspects of bitcoin is that every transaction is recorded and publicly view able. In order to anonomize your currency you bassicly need to go through a mixing service, which takes bitcoins from a pool of users, and redistributes them back to the same users, but at new accounts, so it would be 'impossible' for someone to follow the money using onl…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin Black Market Competition Heats Up

#15

Post by dlss »

contacternst wrote: post #2

I kept hearing about how Bitcoin was so often used for "money laundering" and illegal activities. Are these sites what all the fuss is about?

In general, money laundering is much a bigger problem than p2p drug sales.

Money laundering is anything that turns illegally acquired cash into seemingly legitimate funds. People do this because they are worried about the physical security aspects of having that much cash on hand, or would like to make a purchase where cash won't be accepted (eg house, car, stock).

I think real money laundering using bitcoin would be hard right now -- most current methods work by piggy backing on a real business, and just inflating earnings. (For example, you might buy a laundromat and then add +50% income from your dirty money, making it look legitimate to an auditor). As it stands now, after you'd transfered the illegal money, you'd still have some awkward questions about where you'd gotten it from if/when you get audited. (Perhaps someone with more experience can comment here, but it seems bad to me).

Re: illegal transactions, I think the biggest kind of illegal activity that bitcoin makes easier is illegal digital goods / services (eg, corporate espionage, buying bulk stolen credit cards, etc). This is because using bitcoin means you don't have to worry about masking your physical location or banking details from your counter party (basically the same reason people used liberty reserve before it was shut down).

I'm sure one day bitcoin will be used for larger scale money transfers, but right now it just wouldn't make sense to move cartel levels of cash (eg 100 million+/wk) through bitcoin -- that's just too high percentage of the network's total volume to be feasible

(mtgox volume is currently something like 20 million USD/wk)

Re: Bitcoin Black Market Competition Heats Up

#16

Post by Wingman4l7 »

qwertzlcoatl wrote: post #7
eightyone wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People should be allowed to put whatever they want in their body. The war on drugs is a seismic failure that does nothing but propagate the prison industrial complex. The most popular drugs on these sites are marijuana and psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin mushrooms that are by no means "hard" drugs. Making things illegal, especially drugs, doesn't make them go away. Your just pushing them underground where the…

“If the words ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ don’t include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn’t worth the hemp it was written on.” - Terence McKenna

While an admirable sentiment, it's technically incorrect -- the Declaration of Independence (or at least the copy in the National Archive) was written on parchment paper: http://www.usconstitution.net/constfaq_a8.html#Q145

Re: Bitcoin Black Market Competition Heats Up

#17

Post by qwertzlcoatl »

Wingman4l7 wrote: post #16
qwertzlcoatl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“If the words ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ don’t include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn’t worth the hemp it was written on.” - Terence McKenna

While an admirable sentiment, it's technically incorrect -- the Declaration of Independence (or at least the copy in the National Archive) was written on parchment paper: http://www.usconstitution.net/constfaq_a8.html#Q145

Taken from the source you provided:

"It is likely, however, that drafts of the documents were written on paper made from hemp. In that period, most paper was made from hemp or flax and a mixture of recycled rags and cloth."

So, technically, the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp. It was then transferred to a more durable platform provided by the Netherlands.

Re: Bitcoin Black Market Competition Heats Up

#18

Post by Wingman4l7 »

qwertzlcoatl wrote: post #17
Wingman4l7 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While an admirable sentiment, it's technically incorrect -- the Declaration of Independence (or at least the copy in the National Archive) was written on parchment paper: http://www.usconstitution.net/constfaq_a8.html#Q145

Taken from the source you provided: "It is likely, however, that drafts of the documents were written on paper made from hemp. In that period, most paper was made from hemp or flax and a mixture of recycled rags and cloth." So, technically, the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp. It was then transferred to a more durable platform provided by the Netherlands.

Technically, we don't know for sure, and technically, I said that the copy in the National Archives was not -- which is technically correct.

Technically, it doesn't really matter. I'm sure the founders meant that we should have "the right to experiment with your own consciousness", a sentiment which, FWIW, I wholeheartedly agree with.

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