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Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme
41–50 of 92 posts
Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
So if the guy had ran a monero exchange he wouldn't have been arrested, I guess?
He's not wrong, Monero is the only crypto (currently) enforcing fully private transactions by default. In a reddit thread about the AB bust someone pointed out that they weren't able to determine the amount of Monero he had, vs. listing exact amounts of his Eth, zcash, etc. edit for clarification: I wasn't saying he wouldn't have been caught, only that Monero offers additional benefits beyond some of the other coins…
I have since seen it listed, so whilst it wasn't immediately known it didn't take long so I don't see how that protects anyone.
Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme
#43"Conventional financial institutions comply with anti-money laundering regulations that make it difficult for criminal organizations to use their payment infrastructure." Yes, yes of course. Just like how HSBC physically expanded their teller windows to make it easy for Mexican drug cartels to make cash deposits. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jul/17/hsbc-execut...
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Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a feeling that the informed, consenting adults who have funds in that exchange will soon discover exactly why dealing with an unregulated, secretive foreign financial company (Whose owners keep their identities secret, so that they won't be arrested) is a bad idea. HSBC has none of these properties (Which are more important to their legitimate users.)
If you're keeping coins on any exchange -- even Coinbase -- they are no longer your coins. You've just loaned them. And you may eventually discover why that is a very bad idea. No one thinks "It could happen to me" until it's too late. Stop keeping coins on exchanges. Stop using third party wallets and other software. If you want to invest in coins because they might go up, that might make sense, but at least treat i…
Seems like people want to treat currencies the same way people have been used to thinking about what traditional banking has become today.
For those among us that want to ignore the long history of banking and coinage in general, some depositors in greece may have recently seen similar analogues to why banking in a particular locale turned out to be a very bad idea.
Though you'll have people debate the relatively philosophical differences all day compared to the parties who have ended up on the wrong sides of the above.
What I'm more interested in is: how does all of this change the landscape of incentives of actors of all sizes, and what capabilities does it give to such that weren't accessible to such (or any) degree compared to before?
Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
So if the guy had ran a monero exchange he wouldn't have been arrested, I guess?
He's not wrong, Monero is the only crypto (currently) enforcing fully private transactions by default. In a reddit thread about the AB bust someone pointed out that they weren't able to determine the amount of Monero he had, vs. listing exact amounts of his Eth, zcash, etc. edit for clarification: I wasn't saying he wouldn't have been caught, only that Monero offers additional benefits beyond some of the other coins…
Monero doesn't help if the FBI manages to get a copy of your DB with trade histories etc. With BTC-e being hosted on unencrypted servers in Germany, it's hard to believe they wouldn't have been able to get it.
Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme
#46Money "laundering" is used to hide transactions from view so that the parties involved in the transaction can avoid scrutiny or legal consequences for their actions. The DoD accounting scandal is an example of the US Government effectively laundering massive sums of money to evade accountability: http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-account... Also, governments use other tactics that are illegal in th…
>If drug lords and human traffickers simply paid their fair share of taxes chances are money laundering would not be on governments' radar.
This is a bit ridiculous. It's sometimes just more convenient to prosecute the side effects of crime than the crime itself. The financial system and regulations are set up in a way that makes it possible to catch and imprison criminals solely for their use of legitimate banking for their illicit activity. It adds a net to improve capture.
You don't put out mousetraps to protect the bait.
Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme
#47This is the inherent problem with Bitcoin. It's just not anonymous! Imagine a dollar that has a history of every transaction written on it. Monero is the coin you want.
So if the guy had ran a monero exchange he wouldn't have been arrested, I guess?
Also you have to be careful not to store your Monero on something like Shapeshift as they can easily keep records and under some regulation I believe.
Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme
#48So they arrested him for running BTC-E and claim the exchange is a money laundering scheme?
Not necessarilly. It could be that some of BTC-E's activities/his non BTC-E activities may have been money laundering.
For example, if you run a USD-BTC exchange, and I mail you a suitcase full of money, then withdraw it as BTC, you would almost certainly be aiding money laundering.
Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bank didn't adjust the teller windows but people designed boxes to perfectly fit through the teller windows. From a Rolling Stone article -- The banks' laundering transactions were so brazen that the NSA probably could have spotted them from space. Breuer admitted that drug dealers would sometimes come to HSBC's Mexican branches and "deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single…
>The bank didn't adjust the teller windows but people designed boxes to perfectly fit through the teller windows. The one thing does not exclude the other. It is entirely possible that previous windows were too small and, after they were enlarged, in order to optimize the deposit operation some special boxes were put in use.
Possible, but that set of facts do not appear to be alleged anywhere. If this was thought to be true, it would have definitely been alleged in the prosecution agreement.
IE everything is entirely possible
Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bank didn't adjust the teller windows but people designed boxes to perfectly fit through the teller windows. From a Rolling Stone article -- The banks' laundering transactions were so brazen that the NSA probably could have spotted them from space. Breuer admitted that drug dealers would sometimes come to HSBC's Mexican branches and "deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single…
>The bank didn't adjust the teller windows but people designed boxes to perfectly fit through the teller windows. The one thing does not exclude the other. It is entirely possible that previous windows were too small and, after they were enlarged, in order to optimize the deposit operation some special boxes were put in use.
Both facts also do not exclude the possibility that the moon is made of cheese. QED.