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Please... the metals markets, where holdings can be reconstituted, aggregated, faked and leveraged is the undisputed champion for big time laundering. Two favor

by rrggrr 8y ago

Please... the metals markets, where holdings can be reconstituted, aggregated, faked and leveraged is the undisputed champion for big time laundering. Two favorite examples: https://qz.com/216059/chinas-investigation-into-missing-metal-could-spark-a-much-bigger-crisis/ https://qz.com/216059/chinas-investigation-into-missing-meta... https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article195552089.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article195552089.html

joe_the_user 8y ago
Not to discount the metal markets or just corrupt banking, but crypto currency clearly has the advantage of being transmissible weightlessly anywhere in the world.
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  Imaginary metal is weightless as well :-) And what it doesn't have is a chain of transaction receipts showing where it has been.
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    Imaginary metal is akin to a bank token, indeed easy to transport but connected to people & institutions (kind of like, money). And it eventually has to be traded for real metal. Just about everything of value has it's pluses and minuses for avoiding state scrutiny (land, cash, enterprises dealing in a lot of cash, start-ups needings lots of cash, halal banking, underground economy equivalents, etc, etc). With the interlocked problems of capital controls, drug cartels, failing states and resource economies (China, Brazil, Mexico, Afghanistan, Congo, etc), the river of dirty money is huge and goes everywhere. And efforts at control are naturally quite large too ("how much control over how dirty a flow" is what the lobbyists now place bids for, right, with the money itself coming partly from these flows. But those who've escape enough of their capital want to plug up the capital of their competitors, naturally). Still, the advantage of turning a raw resource (energy) into money is a tremendous boon to those who control resources but don't technically own them (from bureaucrats to warlords). And, of course, the blockchain shows the flow of tokens from account to account but it neither shows who owns the account nor the reason for the flow. Someone might guess but guesses aren't evidence in a conveniently large number of places.
    - joe_the_user 8y ago
      Actually, I still didn't distinguish bitcoin-for-money-laundering from credit-accounts-for-money-laundering. The thing is that a credit-account may indeed have the advantage that the trail of money might be lost. However a bitcoin has the advantage that a bitcoin trader doesn't have to depend on any one single institution or entity to secure the claim for their wealth. A state can look at a bank or a gold-account company or whatever and say "you must invalidate this account in particular, I'm watching" and the account-holder loses their money, no matter where they are in the world, even in their island hideout, etc. The state may look at a given bitcoin, see it's been by the Lord's Resistance Army to sell human heads or whatever but the state can't do anything if that state can't find where in the world the holder of the account is. To catch the actual illegal money, States would have to require all exchanges and buyers have filters to stop bitcoins they declared illegal (not that states necessarily shy away stuff like that as we've seen but it's clearly harder). Which isn't saying bitcoin's absolutely better but it presents some uniquely better aspects "for the discerning money launderer" (don't let this bit of sarcasm lead you think I'd approve of such scum btw).
- geezerjay 8y ago
  > crypto currency clearly has the advantage of being transmissible weightlessly anywhere in the world. It also provides a convenient way to pay off transactions in an obscured way, which was the main reason cryptocurrencies gained so much traction in illicit trade.

by rrggrr 8y ago

joe_the_user 8y ago

Not to discount the metal markets or just corrupt banking, but crypto currency clearly has the advantage of being transmissible weightlessly anywhere in the world.

ChuckMcM 8y ago
Imaginary metal is weightless as well :-) And what it doesn't have is a chain of transaction receipts showing where it has been.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  Imaginary metal is akin to a bank token, indeed easy to transport but connected to people & institutions (kind of like, money). And it eventually has to be traded for real metal. Just about everything of value has it's pluses and minuses for avoiding state scrutiny (land, cash, enterprises dealing in a lot of cash, start-ups needings lots of cash, halal banking, underground economy equivalents, etc, etc). With the interlocked problems of capital controls, drug cartels, failing states and resource economies (China, Brazil, Mexico, Afghanistan, Congo, etc), the river of dirty money is huge and goes everywhere. And efforts at control are naturally quite large too ("how much control over how dirty a flow" is what the lobbyists now place bids for, right, with the money itself coming partly from these flows. But those who've escape enough of their capital want to plug up the capital of their competitors, naturally). Still, the advantage of turning a raw resource (energy) into money is a tremendous boon to those who control resources but don't technically own them (from bureaucrats to warlords). And, of course, the blockchain shows the flow of tokens from account to account but it neither shows who owns the account nor the reason for the flow. Someone might guess but guesses aren't evidence in a conveniently large number of places.
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    Actually, I still didn't distinguish bitcoin-for-money-laundering from credit-accounts-for-money-laundering. The thing is that a credit-account may indeed have the advantage that the trail of money might be lost. However a bitcoin has the advantage that a bitcoin trader doesn't have to depend on any one single institution or entity to secure the claim for their wealth. A state can look at a bank or a gold-account company or whatever and say "you must invalidate this account in particular, I'm watching" and the account-holder loses their money, no matter where they are in the world, even in their island hideout, etc. The state may look at a given bitcoin, see it's been by the Lord's Resistance Army to sell human heads or whatever but the state can't do anything if that state can't find where in the world the holder of the account is. To catch the actual illegal money, States would have to require all exchanges and buyers have filters to stop bitcoins they declared illegal (not that states necessarily shy away stuff like that as we've seen but it's clearly harder). Which isn't saying bitcoin's absolutely better but it presents some uniquely better aspects "for the discerning money launderer" (don't let this bit of sarcasm lead you think I'd approve of such scum btw).
geezerjay 8y ago
> crypto currency clearly has the advantage of being transmissible weightlessly anywhere in the world. It also provides a convenient way to pay off transactions in an obscured way, which was the main reason cryptocurrencies gained so much traction in illicit trade.