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Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

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Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#71

Post by Jabanga »

placeybordeaux wrote: post #59
nubela wrote: post #26

This 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.

Monero, dash and zcash are the big three that have anonymity right? Any other big coins in the space?

Possibly Ethereum after it gets pre-compiled contracts for elliptic curve point addition and scalar multiplication in the Metropolis upgrade, which will enable zk-SNARKs. Among the many applications enabled by succinct zero-knowledge proofs of arbitrary computations are private transactions.

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#72

Post by vertex-four »

joosters wrote: post #23
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. Since you have to use an exchange to obtain or sell crypto currency, this 'advice' is just pointing out the terrible flaws in bitcoin/ethereum/whatever. There will be plenty of users who were in the middle of cashing in/cashing out and have no…

I've bought and sold cryptocurrency without using an exchange personally. It works fine.

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#73

Post by jameskegel »

placeybordeaux wrote: post #59
nubela wrote: post #26

This 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.

Monero, dash and zcash are the big three that have anonymity right? Any other big coins in the space?

No, it's only Monero doing it correctly.

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#74

Post by jameskegel »

vocatus_gate wrote: post #70
placeybordeaux wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monero, dash and zcash are the big three that have anonymity right? Any other big coins in the space?

Unfortunately Monero is the only one doing it right: all transactions are enforced private by default. Dash and zcash offer confidential transactions as an opt-in feature, but so few people use them that it draws additional scrutiny when they do. At this point in time it's "Solo Monero" for privacy.

Brethren

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#75

Post by ajross »

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #13

"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...

Pretty much, because what HSBC did was illegal and they got caught. The statement you quoted wasn't intended to be a statement that "conventional institutions never cheat", but that there is a regulatory process in place to prevent that (i.e. the one that HSBC cheated around, thus the enforcement action in your link), where with bitcoin there is none.

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#76

Post by mikeyouse »

celticninja wrote: post #2

They should at least say he is the owner of btc-e.com to give it context. The site was used by cyber criminals but it was also a legit operation, much like HSBC.

The difference is always the proportion, obfuscating that is pretty dishonest.

HSBC laundered something like $9 billion for the cartels from 2006 - 2009.[1] As of Dec 2009, they had $2.36 trillion in assets.[2] Money laundering is clearly illegal and $9 billion isn't a small amount of money, but their business wouldn't have changed at all without that 0.3% of dirty cash. You can absolutely make the case that the penalties should be larger (although $2 billion in fines is a pretty good start considering they didn't keep the deposited cash) and that executives should have criminal liability, but there's nuance to both of those things.

There's just no comparison to BTC-E (or any of the darknet markets that people insist are 'just like' eBay) who solely exist to launder money and facilitate illegal goods.

[1] - https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/legacy/2012/...

[2] - http://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReportArchive/...

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#77

Post by MichaelGG »

grandalf wrote: post #29

Money "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…

What? Laundering often ends up with them paying taxes - for instance by putting tons of cash through a laundromat. Taxes then paid, the criminals are free to spend it as they wish. In fact, that's like, sort of the entire point of it.

Money laundering (as an offence) is just a crude tool to make prosecutor's lives far, far, easier.

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#78

Post by jameskegel »

mads wrote: post #53

Weird that https://www.xbtce.com is still running. Seems there are very few trades (3 in the last hour) being made but the "order book" is flashing away like nothing is wrong. Chat is also dead...

Lots of exchanges get caught eventually doing what your posts suggest BTCe is doing

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#79

Post by mistermann »

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #13

"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...

In Canada we have banking regulations related to money laundering and an oversight agency called FINTRAC. However, anyone with any knowledge in the matter will tell you that a bank will happily tell customers exactly how to structure transactions to achieve what they need without having to report to FINTRAC, and FINTRAC itself has no investigative capabilities.

That this system is entirely to keep up appearances is blatantly obvious, but such a large percentage of the population is making a killing on real estate they have less than zero interest.

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#80

Post by mistermann »

MichaelGG wrote: post #77
grandalf wrote: post #29

Money "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…

What? Laundering often ends up with them paying taxes - for instance by putting tons of cash through a laundromat. Taxes then paid, the criminals are free to spend it as they wish. In fact, that's like, sort of the entire point of it. Money laundering (as an offence) is just a crude tool to make prosecutor's lives far, far, easier.

I suspect this is what's happening in Canada - billions of dollars of "under the radar" money is coming into Canada to buy real estate, but the construction & trades jobs it creates and resulting boost it provides to GDP makes the government happy to turn a blind eye to the source of this money or that they make no direct taxation revenue (and refuse to audit certain people who are obviously breaking the law).
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