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Matt Levine, today: ‘One of the weirdest things in recent financial/criminal history is that for a while people really believed that Bitcoin, an electronic pay
by kgwgk 7y ago
Matt Levine, today:
‘One of the weirdest things in recent financial/criminal history is that for a while people really believed that Bitcoin, an electronic payments method that creates a permanent, traceable, public record of all transactions and links them to identifiable accounts, was somehow a good way to pay for crime. “It’s completely anonymous,” people thought, “like digital cash, but you can send it anywhere and no one will be able to trace you.” Not really! I suppose it was even true for a little while, but eventually law enforcement agencies figured out how to trace Bitcoin transactions, and then the fact that years’ worth of criminal financial transactions were just forever openly available to them on the Bitcoin blockchain was … bad for criminals.‘
- onion2k 7y agoI wonder if the media around BTC being anonymous and untraceable was actually encouraged by the intelligence community and law enforcement. It's certainly been a boon for tracking down a lot of criminals.
- kgwgk 7y agoIn that spirit, Levine ends his comment as follows: ‘Do you think maybe Satoshi Nakamoto works for the FBI, and invented Bitcoin as a way to get criminals to make a convenient permanent record of their transactions?’
- magduf 7y agoI seriously doubt it. Remember, "never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence or stupidity." Our law enforcement community isn't that bright or long-term thinking. Plus, once criminals get it through their thick skulls that BTC really is traceable after all, they won't use it any more.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- clamprecht 7y agoBut if the opponent knows you subscribe to this rule (assume ignorance over malice), couldn't they take advantage of this?
- microcolonel 7y agoThe aphorism does not call upon you to assume good intentions, but to avoid attempting to establish intention when it has no benefit to solving the problem noted.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoYes, there is no stable state of the system in which ignorance and malice are assessed accurately. If you don't want the rate of malicious action to increase, you need to overdiagnose it.
- UweSchmidt 7y agoI doubt it too, but dislike the meme you cited. Intelligence agencies are very much capable of producing elaborate, long term plans and are quite good with crypto. They could introduce it to the world without cooperation or coordination with regular law enforcement. Not saying that they did. I have never heard a convincing argument for your quote and would like everyone to at least consider malice when the situation warrants it. Maybe "follow the money" would be an equally valid, but contradictory heuristic to deal with unclear situations.
- avs733 7y agoGiven how inaccurate the average news media is at everything else what makes you think they would need to encourage that?
- quickthrower2 7y agoYou can use Bitcoin anonymously, but it's like using the web anonymously i.e. it takes a lot of effort and a single mistake screws it up.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago> You can use Bitcoin anonymously, but it's like using the web anonymously i.e. it takes a lot of effort and a single mistake screws it up. I don't really get it, but you have a "money out" problem like any fraud. Even if you buy bitcoin in untraceable in cash, you transfer it to wallets, you have two eventual issues. You'll either buy something and ship it to yourself, or you'll need to get real cash out. The former leaves a vendor ready to give you up, and the latter only works with exchanges that have your ID. Am I missing something?
- CydeWeys 7y agoYou can sell Bitcoin in person for cash.
- kjeetgill 7y agoIs there a big enough cash market for it to be worth "criminal enterprise" level money?
- Karunamon 7y agoI'm not sure what you're defining as "big enough" here, but localbitcoins.com shows verified, well-reviewed people in my smallish city that would be willing to do up to $30KUSD in one transaction.
- w1nst0nsm1th 7y agoIf they don’t require an ID card from their cash receiver.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
- reidjs 7y agoWhat if you bought btc with cash from a stranger on localbitcoins and put it into an empty wallet. How would anyone link those btc back to you? Unless the localbitcoin guy is an FBI agent or something...
- coolspot 7y agoTrace btc to the localbitcoin guy, find intersection of his location data from cellphone service company with location data of others around the time of transaction.
- itake 7y agoI think the real problem is high volume transactions. In theory, buying money off of localbitcoins assuming you connected to their service anonymously, met with the seller anonymously, etc. should be safe. But if you're accepting payment and then cashing out, you will need a safe way to cash out and localbitcoins will get you caught fast. Agents would see the money going to a localbitcoins user. They could either setup a sting or just contact whomever has been buying these coins off of you.
- chimi 7y agoImagine if you see all transactions made with this $100 bill.
- sam0x17 7y agoSo are tumblers not a thing any more? I thought in general tumblers made it pretty impossible to trace things unless you are moving a volume of money that is much bigger than what the tumbler typically processes in a day.
- belltaco 7y agohttps://www.coindesk.com/eu-authorities-crack-down-on-bitcoin-transaction-mixer https://www.coindesk.com/eu-authorities-crack-down-on-bitcoi...