3 ms·
Yes, absolutely. This is a cornerstone to a lot of p2p markets. You take a % of the cut and let money launderers buy and sell between themselves via your mar
by Blazespinnaker 9y ago
Yes, absolutely. This is a cornerstone to a lot of p2p markets. You take a % of the cut and let money launderers buy and sell between themselves via your market.
For example, let’s say I want to sell x$ illegal goods. I just tell the buyer to bid up my 1 million virtual cat and I’ll transfer the goods to you. The transaction goes unnoticed. What’s even better, the buyer can sell the cat at a lost and recover some
Cash.
What’s more the money launderers buy and sell the virtual pets so as so mix up their money in the market.
There was a huge art deal recently. You have to wonder how much of the money laundering factored into the purchase of Salvator mundi.
It goes even further. Participants in the market know that money laundering is taking place and rely on it for profit. They bid up the virtual goods.
Of course, there is also a pyramid scheme / hot potato at play as well. Last one holding the bag loses.
And yeah, there are the naive folks whose out there with their money in not a understanding what’s really going on.
Valve profits from this quite nicely, and second life. Lots of these games with virtual goods.
- anonymous5133 9y agobut this doesn't make sense at all because you can just send eth to someone else relatively anonymously.
- jacoblambda 9y agothe point is that the game can be used to give the trading a "legitimate" purpose
- eric-hu 9y agoThis sounds plausible, but it seems like speculation. Given two hypotheses: "the Valve hat economy is used for money laundering" and "many Valve gamers are willing to spend money on hats", I'm more inclined to believe the latter without more solid evidence.
- sincerely 9y agoIt's been years since I was involved in the hat economy (TF2, way back when keys were 2.33 ref, to be specific), but the two hypotheses aren't exclusive. Valve gamers are willing to spend money on hats, but someone using the economy to launder money is willing to take a percentage loss, so it was cheaper to buy keys (the default currency) with Paypal from people who had bought them Valve using stolen CCs than from Valve directly. If I remember correctly, the official price was $2.50 per key, but they could be bought on forums or subreddits for around $2/each. Again, it's been a while and not a topic I actively tried to remember, so please don't take this as necessarily authoritative.
- imtringued 9y agoAlso the only way to cash out money out of steam is by selling games on third party websites.
- pas 9y agoOr selling accounts. (See how WoW account sales are/were common.)