4 ms·

Honestly, Iranian banks have a better chance of wiring money abroad if they use Monero, but obviously it's not a solution the government will accept, because we

Honestly, Iranian banks have a better chance of wiring money abroad if they use Monero, but obviously it's not a solution the government will accept, because well, no control. If they decide to fork any existing cryptocurrency or create some kind of token, it's likely to be banned on exchanges. I don't see how they could pull this off.

acdha 8y ago
The big problem for any existing system is volume: Iran has enough money that they’d dominate the real currency exchanges and once that happens the risks go up for everyone involved. Even the most ideologically committed cryptocurrency proponents are going to think twice about going to jail on behalf of a foreign power without compensation.
- gammateam 8y ago
  A measured approach would allow for this growth in a way that doesn't spook the non-sanctioned markets. Monero used to traded for around 45 cents ($0.45) for about 2 years, it trades for $45 right now, your argument would have worked A LOT better then. Why is Monero $45 right now? For the obligatory devil's advocate response who will you blame: dark net markets, sanctioned countries, better user experience? All we have are correlations and these networks are working as intended, and have gotten a lot more hardened and resilient. So let it trade for $4,500 just because Iran has some money to move.
  - acdha 8y ago
    The question is how much real money is entering or leaving the system, since that's what would matter here — if someone is trying to launder $1B it's probably going to be a big problem if the system is only exchanging $1M/day into stable currencies and the rest of the volume is speculation. Similarly, since there isn’t much base demand there simply might not be a sufficient volume of buyers on the other side of those transactions. Then you get to the bigger problem: being involved in these activities has significant risks in any country which follows the sanctions. The authorities are going to want you to prove that you aren't involved in the illegal activity if you don't want to be charged with money laundering.
    - gammateam 8y ago
      > The authorities are going to want you to prove that you aren't involved in the illegal activity if you don't want to be charged with money laundering. The onus is on the government to determine an illicit origin for their charge of money laundering to stick. This is related to the US federal crime of Money Laundering, and not any other variation. In the Monero system, receivers do not know the address of the sender. So, that's convenient.
      - acdha 8y ago
        US requires currency exchanges to make a strong identification for the customer in every transaction. Using Monero does not remove that requirement any more than using a suitcase of cash which just happened to show up in your office would. That alone would be a federal crime and it almost certainly would be enough to get search warrants, etc. which would likely turn up evidence for other charges for anyone who is running an exchange while badly misinformed about the law. Anyone trying to be legit is going to steer clear of those hypothetical Iranian transactions, especially since the odds of being compromised in some other way are high even in the unlikely case that Monero can withstand a nation-state level adversary. For any significant volume – such as what we’re talking about – traffic analysis is going to get a lot of info and since it involves Iran you’d be betting that none of numerous highly-capable intelligence agencies have compromised another party who has a trace pointing at you.
        gammateam 8y ago
        Yes but this would be a DIFFERENT crime which I made it extremely clear we aren't talking about Nation states aside, the point you seem to be missing is that many people people are able to acquire goods and services directly with Monero without using an exchange. Merchants are not subject to the regulations that national currency exchanges are subject to and there is no framework to create this kind of prohibition right now.
        acdha 8y ago
        > Nation states aside, the point you seem to be missing is that many people people are able to acquire goods and services directly with Monero Which is true for sufficiently small definitions of “many” but not what this thread was about. If you’re going to handwave about how being charged under financial reporting rules designed to prevent money laundering is a completely different crime then you have to acknowledge that there are reasons why a system which is adequate for a few people making occasional purchases will have big problems scaling up to the level of a nation laundering money to get around sanctions.
auiya 8y ago
Wasn't Ripple/XRP designed for this exact purpose? Being a SWIFT replacement?
- mihaifm 8y ago
  XRP doesn’t have any anonimity features, you can see who’s on the other end of the transaction and impose sanctions once they try to convert it back to fiat.

acdha 8y ago

The big problem for any existing system is volume: Iran has enough money that they’d dominate the real currency exchanges and once that happens the risks go up for everyone involved. Even the most ideologically committed cryptocurrency proponents are going to think twice about going to jail on behalf of a foreign power without compensation.

gammateam 8y ago
A measured approach would allow for this growth in a way that doesn't spook the non-sanctioned markets. Monero used to traded for around 45 cents ($0.45) for about 2 years, it trades for $45 right now, your argument would have worked A LOT better then. Why is Monero $45 right now? For the obligatory devil's advocate response who will you blame: dark net markets, sanctioned countries, better user experience? All we have are correlations and these networks are working as intended, and have gotten a lot more hardened and resilient. So let it trade for $4,500 just because Iran has some money to move.
- acdha 8y ago
  The question is how much real money is entering or leaving the system, since that's what would matter here — if someone is trying to launder $1B it's probably going to be a big problem if the system is only exchanging $1M/day into stable currencies and the rest of the volume is speculation. Similarly, since there isn’t much base demand there simply might not be a sufficient volume of buyers on the other side of those transactions. Then you get to the bigger problem: being involved in these activities has significant risks in any country which follows the sanctions. The authorities are going to want you to prove that you aren't involved in the illegal activity if you don't want to be charged with money laundering.
  - gammateam 8y ago
    > The authorities are going to want you to prove that you aren't involved in the illegal activity if you don't want to be charged with money laundering. The onus is on the government to determine an illicit origin for their charge of money laundering to stick. This is related to the US federal crime of Money Laundering, and not any other variation. In the Monero system, receivers do not know the address of the sender. So, that's convenient.
    - acdha 8y ago
      US requires currency exchanges to make a strong identification for the customer in every transaction. Using Monero does not remove that requirement any more than using a suitcase of cash which just happened to show up in your office would. That alone would be a federal crime and it almost certainly would be enough to get search warrants, etc. which would likely turn up evidence for other charges for anyone who is running an exchange while badly misinformed about the law. Anyone trying to be legit is going to steer clear of those hypothetical Iranian transactions, especially since the odds of being compromised in some other way are high even in the unlikely case that Monero can withstand a nation-state level adversary. For any significant volume – such as what we’re talking about – traffic analysis is going to get a lot of info and since it involves Iran you’d be betting that none of numerous highly-capable intelligence agencies have compromised another party who has a trace pointing at you.
      - gammateam 8y ago
        Yes but this would be a DIFFERENT crime which I made it extremely clear we aren't talking about Nation states aside, the point you seem to be missing is that many people people are able to acquire goods and services directly with Monero without using an exchange. Merchants are not subject to the regulations that national currency exchanges are subject to and there is no framework to create this kind of prohibition right now.
        acdha 8y ago
        > Nation states aside, the point you seem to be missing is that many people people are able to acquire goods and services directly with Monero Which is true for sufficiently small definitions of “many” but not what this thread was about. If you’re going to handwave about how being charged under financial reporting rules designed to prevent money laundering is a completely different crime then you have to acknowledge that there are reasons why a system which is adequate for a few people making occasional purchases will have big problems scaling up to the level of a nation laundering money to get around sanctions.

auiya 8y ago

Wasn't Ripple/XRP designed for this exact purpose? Being a SWIFT replacement?

mihaifm 8y ago
XRP doesn’t have any anonimity features, you can see who’s on the other end of the transaction and impose sanctions once they try to convert it back to fiat.