3 ms·

uhhh... check your math bro -- as of this moment there are 6,453,450 BTC in existence -- and you can buy them for $18.24 a piece leading to -- 117,710,928M USD

by feydr 15y ago

uhhh... check your math bro -- as of this moment there are 6,453,450 BTC in existence -- and you can buy them for $18.24 a piece leading to -- 117,710,928M USD -- sure it isn't a billion but it's more than enough to hustle a few hundred k through whenever you want

vrotaru 15y ago
I am wrong, or the dollars should be already laundered before they reach MtGox? You have to transfer them from a bank account, right?
- weavejester 15y ago
  No, you could buy bitcoins with unlaundered dollars, even with a credit card, and then launder the bitcoins themselves so that when you spend them they can't be traced back to the account you bought them with.
  - hnsmurf 15y ago
    You can do that but it would serve no purpose. If you bought $100k bitcoins on a credit card, now the IRS has a paper trail. They'll want to know where that $100k you paid the credit card bill came from. Even if you got the money in without being traced and spent them that's not laundering, it's tax evasion.
    - weavejester 15y ago
      Ah, I misunderstood what was being proposed.
- hnsmurf 15y ago
  You are not wrong, unless there's some way to buy bitcoin by cash or some other untraceable means (Western Union?). I think many people are confusing laundering with other things like tax evasion. They're distinctly different.
hnsmurf 15y ago
"Hustling money through" is not exactly laundering. To launder you have to: #1 get the money into bitcoin. How did you get it there in substantial quantity to begin with? There may be $100m of it in supply but how many people have a hundred k bitcoins they will readily exchange for cash? It has to be cash, if you put the money in a bank it's easily traced and therefore pointless. #2 get the money out of bitcoin in such a way that you can pay taxes on it. Since you presumably can't buy houses, cars, or jet skis with bitcoin it's not very useful there. Even if you could buy a house or car, you'd still need to file taxes since the government can easily see that you bought a $500k house while claiming 0 income. The whole point of laundering money is to pay taxes on illegally gained cash so you can spend it. (Tax evasion is its own separate crime and industry, and I suspect bitcoin isn't very useful there either.) So now you have to start a shell business that you can claim made all of those proceeds in bitcoin. It has to be one that doesn't legally require you to KYC (banking industry slang, meaning gather relevant info about the people you do business with) and report to the IRS. Then you have to find people to buy the hundreds of thousands of bitcoins from you. Far easier to start a bar, buy alcohol, pour it down the drain, and claim you sold it. If I were laundering a few hundred grand a year I wouldn't waste time on bitcoin.

by feydr 15y ago

vrotaru 15y ago

I am wrong, or the dollars should be already laundered before they reach MtGox? You have to transfer them from a bank account, right?

weavejester 15y ago
No, you could buy bitcoins with unlaundered dollars, even with a credit card, and then launder the bitcoins themselves so that when you spend them they can't be traced back to the account you bought them with.
- hnsmurf 15y ago
  You can do that but it would serve no purpose. If you bought $100k bitcoins on a credit card, now the IRS has a paper trail. They'll want to know where that $100k you paid the credit card bill came from. Even if you got the money in without being traced and spent them that's not laundering, it's tax evasion.
  - weavejester 15y ago
    Ah, I misunderstood what was being proposed.
hnsmurf 15y ago
You are not wrong, unless there's some way to buy bitcoin by cash or some other untraceable means (Western Union?). I think many people are confusing laundering with other things like tax evasion. They're distinctly different.

hnsmurf 15y ago

"Hustling money through" is not exactly laundering. To launder you have to: #1 get the money into bitcoin. How did you get it there in substantial quantity to begin with? There may be $100m of it in supply but how many people have a hundred k bitcoins they will readily exchange for cash? It has to be cash, if you put the money in a bank it's easily traced and therefore pointless. #2 get the money out of bitcoin in such a way that you can pay taxes on it. Since you presumably can't buy houses, cars, or jet skis with bitcoin it's not very useful there. Even if you could buy a house or car, you'd still need to file taxes since the government can easily see that you bought a $500k house while claiming 0 income. The whole point of laundering money is to pay taxes on illegally gained cash so you can spend it. (Tax evasion is its own separate crime and industry, and I suspect bitcoin isn't very useful there either.) So now you have to start a shell business that you can claim made all of those proceeds in bitcoin. It has to be one that doesn't legally require you to KYC (banking industry slang, meaning gather relevant info about the people you do business with) and report to the IRS. Then you have to find people to buy the hundreds of thousands of bitcoins from you. Far easier to start a bar, buy alcohol, pour it down the drain, and claim you sold it. If I were laundering a few hundred grand a year I wouldn't waste time on bitcoin.