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I wonder how Bitcoin-based scammers launder their money. Bitcoin addresses are anonymous, but all transactions are public, right? So while it's hard to find ou
by blauditore 10y ago
I wonder how Bitcoin-based scammers launder their money.
Bitcoin addresses are anonymous, but all transactions are public, right? So while it's hard to find out who's behind an address, it's publicly visible if they spend money, and where it goes. Thus, they're only able to spend it on "trusted" peers to not jeopardize their own anonymosity.
For example, if they buy something from an online shop, this transaction will be visible for all Bitcoin users. And if that shop publicly shows its Bitcoin address, authorities might track down that shop and force it to give away their shipment address.
Or am I missing something?
- chipperyman573 10y agoYou can use Bitcoin mixers to get around this. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mixing_service https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mixing_service
- cryptarch 10y agoBitcoin tumblers take care of this. Roughly, you set up a service that puts a lot of people's coins in a single wallet, then you route bitcoins from that wallet to a bunch of different wallets operating in similar fashion. Kind of like how TOR works. It's easy to generate many temporary wallets that can not be linked back to your main wallet, shops can do this too and I think it's considered a good practice to use one address per sale. You can also convert the Bitcoins to a more anonymous coin (Monero?) and back.