Serious question, I thought BTC's only usefulness came from its usefulness in laundering money. Is this not true?
Bitcoin's usefulness comes from being able to transact value without a centralized authority. There are no gatekeepers to determine who can transact with whom, to assign value to a medium, or to take that value away. It is democratization of financial power.
I mean pragmatically not abstractly. Bitcoin transaction fees were >$50 recently, so it's useless as a form of payment, and nothing is keeping it from being worthless tomorrow so it's a poor parking spot for money.
The article says the FBI intervened before the hit was executed. They were apparently tipped off by the BBC. It's far more likely, in my opinion, that a BBC source would disclose his scam taking bitcoins from would-be hirerers of contract killers, than it is that an actual hitman would have bad enough opsec that the BBC would be the ones to discover his clients.
>the cost to unmask any given btc txn to asymptotically approach $0. Mind you, there are several ways to obfuscate transactions even in the bitcoin network. and there are also privacy focused blockchains to whitewash money
All of the 'trustless' tumbling solutions I've seen tend to leave some evidence on the blockchain, it often only dilutes the certainty that a particular input maps to a particular output. IMO, the only "surefire" way to launder bitcoin is traditional money laundering: send a trusted person dirty bitcoins and they send you back bitcoins from a clean legitimate source. Strong incentive for launderer to take the funds a…
Only because the criminal hasn't yet tried to use that bitcoin to buy something in the real world. If they try to convert to fiat via an exchange, they can be identified the same way the husband was. If they try to buy products directly without using fiat then it is harder for law enforcement to get the records they need, but still quite possible. They will probably be safe if they never touch the bitcoin, but that e…
> Only because the criminal hasn't yet tried to use that bitcoin to buy something in the real world. An asumption you're making and likely untrue. There are many ways to convert to fiat or skip that step and luander through the dark web
Don't need darkweb for that if you're very careful with how you execute trades on https://localbitcoins.com/ (a service that I believe predates coinbase, circle et al)
Usually, one'd use a coin like Monero instead, the project's wretched history notwithstanding.
Sounds like it worked just great for one of the criminals... From TFA "The FBI has not, however, been able to identify the hitman as yet. The reason is almost certainly because the hitman did not use a commercial service like Coinbase, which must comply with know-your-customer laws, for the Bitcoin transactions but instead relied on his own personal wallet—one that did not reveal any information about his identity."
Only because the criminal hasn't yet tried to use that bitcoin to buy something in the real world. If they try to convert to fiat via an exchange, they can be identified the same way the husband was. If they try to buy products directly without using fiat then it is harder for law enforcement to get the records they need, but still quite possible. They will probably be safe if they never touch the bitcoin, but that e…
> There's this misconception that bitcoin is private / "safe" for criminals. Is this why we've successfully caught every single ransomware operation transacting in crypto?
To be fair, you have to look at the enormous number of ransomware operators that are conducting their business in fiat... Humm. I suppose that there aren't very many of them. Perhaps cryptocurrencies do make some forms of criminal enterprises much easier to operate. I'm willing to accept that 'Hitman for hire' might not be one of them, though - mostly because you need a local presence, at which point, taking payment…
People make it out like the fiat conversion step is a big gotcha but criminals make fraudulent bank accounts with stolen/synthetic identities all the time.
Kinda crazy. Most DarkWeb 'hitman' sites were just FBI honeypots or good samaritans reporting sketchy individuals to the FBI. I doubt this guy found the services through the 'dark web' or even the Internet. Probably met them through personal connections.
There's this misconception that bitcoin is private / "safe" for criminals. In reality, the block chain is public (and all of its transactions inside... that is how distributed ledger consensus is achieved among miners) and the on-ramps and off-ramps between fiat are all logged / tracked, especially Coinbase (since they are taking the "safe route" and playing by all of the rules with governments / regulators). Your la…
Sounds like it worked just great for one of the criminals... From TFA "The FBI has not, however, been able to identify the hitman as yet. The reason is almost certainly because the hitman did not use a commercial service like Coinbase, which must comply with know-your-customer laws, for the Bitcoin transactions but instead relied on his own personal wallet—one that did not reveal any information about his identity."
Unless the hitman has decided to retire, it's probably only a matter of time before they catch him using good old fashioned detective work. For instance, investigators might be able to catch the hitman in a sting operation, if they know what marketplace the hitman sells his services on.
I suspect there are few real-world examples where "you could just say X" actually works... but in this case the story is that a random "weed dealer" killed not a random person, but a specific person known to the "weed purchaser"? Who would believe that story?
How does prosecution prove the payment was connected to the hitman and not the weed? Seems like they'd need to seize the hitman's digital communications, at which point the jig is probably already up.
Evidence.
A grand jury must look through the evidence and conclude that there is enough there to possibly result in a conviction.