3 ms·

I am not intimate with US law, but what about altcoin exchanges? I don't think that converting your bitcoins to say Litecoins is illegal.

thephyber 11y ago
TL;DR: IANAL but money laundering laws are usually designed to prosecute a wide range of methods and usually involve attempting to prove intent as opposed to whitelisting specific methods of laundering. The long explanation: It's complicated. US law tends to be specifically designed for one application in mind and then ends up being expanded as new applications rear their heads. The IRS (tax collection entity for the US federal government) classified BitCoin as an investment a few years ago (as opposed to a currency). This suggests that other non-state created digital crypto-currencies are considered investments as well (IIRC Canada's mint was trying a digital currency, hence the "non-state created" phrase). Money laundering statutes aren't new enough to know about [1] crypto-currencies, but they are effective with dealing with the conversion of money to products/services and back for the purpose of obscuring the original method of obtaining the currency. I don't know much about money laundering except what I see in movies+TV (specifically Breaking Bad). I've heard that buying large value gift cards (plastic charge card versions of "gift certificates") are required to be reported to authorities by the retailers. Recently a school sports coach was prosecuted for violating money laundering statute when he divided up one payment of $10,000+ into multiple smaller < $10,000 payments after his bank started to get suspicious about the nature of the transaction (which is required by US federal law of the bank). He violated the because he altered his payments "to avoid mandated financial institution reporting" of his transfers. Personally I think the mandatory threshold is stupid since people know what it is[2], but I feel no sympathy for the man in this case since the payments were suspected to be him paying off a student that he raped/molested. And yes, I realize that being accused of something is not the same thing as being guilty. [1] http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/aml_history.html http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/aml_history.html [2] although the US Patriot Act allows federal investigators to use _any_ change in financial habits to trigger an investigation, not just transactions above the $10k level

thephyber 11y ago

TL;DR: IANAL but money laundering laws are usually designed to prosecute a wide range of methods and usually involve attempting to prove intent as opposed to whitelisting specific methods of laundering. The long explanation: It's complicated. US law tends to be specifically designed for one application in mind and then ends up being expanded as new applications rear their heads. The IRS (tax collection entity for the US federal government) classified BitCoin as an investment a few years ago (as opposed to a currency). This suggests that other non-state created digital crypto-currencies are considered investments as well (IIRC Canada's mint was trying a digital currency, hence the "non-state created" phrase). Money laundering statutes aren't new enough to know about [1] crypto-currencies, but they are effective with dealing with the conversion of money to products/services and back for the purpose of obscuring the original method of obtaining the currency. I don't know much about money laundering except what I see in movies+TV (specifically Breaking Bad). I've heard that buying large value gift cards (plastic charge card versions of "gift certificates") are required to be reported to authorities by the retailers. Recently a school sports coach was prosecuted for violating money laundering statute when he divided up one payment of $10,000+ into multiple smaller < $10,000 payments after his bank started to get suspicious about the nature of the transaction (which is required by US federal law of the bank). He violated the because he altered his payments "to avoid mandated financial institution reporting" of his transfers. Personally I think the mandatory threshold is stupid since people know what it is[2], but I feel no sympathy for the man in this case since the payments were suspected to be him paying off a student that he raped/molested. And yes, I realize that being accused of something is not the same thing as being guilty. [1] http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/aml_history.html http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/aml_history.html [2] although the US Patriot Act allows federal investigators to use _any_ change in financial habits to trigger an investigation, not just transactions above the $10k level