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It can be pretty anonymous too. You can use fiat to buy mining hardware and then it's pretty hard to connect an identity to a wallet if you're careful. Don't y

It can be pretty anonymous too. You can use fiat to buy mining hardware and then it's pretty hard to connect an identity to a wallet if you're careful. Don't you eventually need fiat? Yes, so you have someone sell NFTs to those untraceable wallets and now you have a legit income stream as an artist. Pay the tax in the place you want your money to end up and you really only need like one person in your destination country to clean as much as you'd like.

dragonelite 6y ago
You pretty much need to go through a Know your customer(KYC) process to really trade in crypto. At least here in western Europe i had to upload a Id doc, I don't mind it because saving money costs me money, buying satoshis earns me money. Given cryptos nature of being a public ledger and there more then enough compute power available everything can probably be traced and backtracked in real-time.
- atat7024 6y ago
  > You pretty much need to go through a Know your customer(KYC) process to really trade in crypto KuCoin? Binance?
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Binance is a great example because you can just keep creating new accounts to circumvent their KYC limits heh. I'm sure they have no idea. You just have to take it up with the government in whatever country they're domiciled in. Like any legitimate company, they simply won't tell anyone which country that is, of course.
  - dragonelite 6y ago
    A more local crypto exchange, when I started buying bitcoin it was harder to get euros in and out of Binance. Seeing how I'm not really a dissident or a rebel and I'm lazy so I'm not going to jump through multiple hoops. So I don't mind the KYC process so I don't have to jump through hoops, but I do see how nations can use lawfare to attack/monitor crypto currencies, its not that hard to see. You have a open ledger, you have wallet addresses connected to personal identities. They can probably use social media connection graphs to fill in the gaps of unknown wallet addresses. Its a real time financial monitoring tool like the current system, just packaged up as some libertarian/tech bro nirvana escape hatch. Brilliant marketing if you ask me, but I'm just using it as an inflation hedge.
    - randomopining 6y ago
      Yeah literally, is it not just a connected graph of transactions? Sounds like smart people can split and roll and all this stuff to their main transaction to try to obfuscate it. But with the proper tool, couldn't the FBI use powerful computers to fill the graph in with human links and deduce a lot from it? XMR I don't know though.
      - dragonelite 6y ago
        I don't know enough, but the moment I saw I needed to go through a Know your customer process I knew block chain privacy is compromised. Wouldn't be surprised if there are ways to obfuscate your bitcoins. Something like wrapped bitcoins or something. For the time being you already have block chain analytics companies that can trace and back trace transactions. Hell maybe they can even do it cross chain. I wouldn't be surprised if a NSA or other nat sec organization can hack something together in a weekend.
- dumbfoundded 6y ago
  Only in the destination country. Let's say someone in China wanted to move $$$$ out of China for whatever reason. They could use yuan to purchase mining hardware and use that to generate clean wallets with no identity attached. A good friend of this person is an artist in the UK. The artist cashes in the ETH, properly reports taxes from income, and now has a completely clean and clear source of cash. Now if the Chinese person wants to get out of China in a hurry, they can visit their close friend in the UK.
  - powerapple 6y ago
    I believe this is how it works at the beginning, and I consider it as the main use of crypto in China. It was actually easier when exchange was legal in China, you can just buy bitcoin. Even now, you can use AliPay, WeChat and bank transfer to do P2P crypto transaction.
  - ninjinxo 6y ago
    Being generous you can mine ~$10 of crypto per day with a 3080 based on its hashrate, zero electricity cost. So to transfer $1 million out over 3 years, you'd need to run mine ~$900 of crypto per day, ie. run 90 RTX3080s 24/7/365. Also note that this would draw around 20kW. [1] https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/nvidia-rtx-3080 https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/nvidia-rtx...
    - ALittleLight 6y ago
      Googling I see the price of a 3080 is 700 dollars, so this would cost 700 * 90 = 63,000. Plus electricity, which, maybe you can get cheap somehow in China if you have the right friends. Seems like an amount this size is pretty small compared to what you're moving. If you think bitcoin will go up long term then the cost might work out to be negative.
      - africanboy 6y ago
        > Googling I see the price of a 3080 is 700 dollars assuming you're able to buy them and have the money upfront and are able to hide the purchase. "What this person could be doing with 90 3080, I wonder" asks the Chinese government employee that checks your bank transactions. https://www.techradar.com/news/nvidia-rtx-3080-shortage-could-continue-until-q3 https://www.techradar.com/news/nvidia-rtx-3080-shortage-coul...

dragonelite 6y ago

You pretty much need to go through a Know your customer(KYC) process to really trade in crypto. At least here in western Europe i had to upload a Id doc, I don't mind it because saving money costs me money, buying satoshis earns me money. Given cryptos nature of being a public ledger and there more then enough compute power available everything can probably be traced and backtracked in real-time.

atat7024 6y ago
> You pretty much need to go through a Know your customer(KYC) process to really trade in crypto KuCoin? Binance?
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Binance is a great example because you can just keep creating new accounts to circumvent their KYC limits heh. I'm sure they have no idea. You just have to take it up with the government in whatever country they're domiciled in. Like any legitimate company, they simply won't tell anyone which country that is, of course.
- dragonelite 6y ago
  A more local crypto exchange, when I started buying bitcoin it was harder to get euros in and out of Binance. Seeing how I'm not really a dissident or a rebel and I'm lazy so I'm not going to jump through multiple hoops. So I don't mind the KYC process so I don't have to jump through hoops, but I do see how nations can use lawfare to attack/monitor crypto currencies, its not that hard to see. You have a open ledger, you have wallet addresses connected to personal identities. They can probably use social media connection graphs to fill in the gaps of unknown wallet addresses. Its a real time financial monitoring tool like the current system, just packaged up as some libertarian/tech bro nirvana escape hatch. Brilliant marketing if you ask me, but I'm just using it as an inflation hedge.
  - randomopining 6y ago
    Yeah literally, is it not just a connected graph of transactions? Sounds like smart people can split and roll and all this stuff to their main transaction to try to obfuscate it. But with the proper tool, couldn't the FBI use powerful computers to fill the graph in with human links and deduce a lot from it? XMR I don't know though.
    - dragonelite 6y ago
      I don't know enough, but the moment I saw I needed to go through a Know your customer process I knew block chain privacy is compromised. Wouldn't be surprised if there are ways to obfuscate your bitcoins. Something like wrapped bitcoins or something. For the time being you already have block chain analytics companies that can trace and back trace transactions. Hell maybe they can even do it cross chain. I wouldn't be surprised if a NSA or other nat sec organization can hack something together in a weekend.
dumbfoundded 6y ago
Only in the destination country. Let's say someone in China wanted to move $$$$ out of China for whatever reason. They could use yuan to purchase mining hardware and use that to generate clean wallets with no identity attached. A good friend of this person is an artist in the UK. The artist cashes in the ETH, properly reports taxes from income, and now has a completely clean and clear source of cash. Now if the Chinese person wants to get out of China in a hurry, they can visit their close friend in the UK.
- powerapple 6y ago
  I believe this is how it works at the beginning, and I consider it as the main use of crypto in China. It was actually easier when exchange was legal in China, you can just buy bitcoin. Even now, you can use AliPay, WeChat and bank transfer to do P2P crypto transaction.
- ninjinxo 6y ago
  Being generous you can mine ~$10 of crypto per day with a 3080 based on its hashrate, zero electricity cost. So to transfer $1 million out over 3 years, you'd need to run mine ~$900 of crypto per day, ie. run 90 RTX3080s 24/7/365. Also note that this would draw around 20kW. [1] https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/nvidia-rtx-3080 https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/nvidia-rtx...
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    Googling I see the price of a 3080 is 700 dollars, so this would cost 700 * 90 = 63,000. Plus electricity, which, maybe you can get cheap somehow in China if you have the right friends. Seems like an amount this size is pretty small compared to what you're moving. If you think bitcoin will go up long term then the cost might work out to be negative.
    - africanboy 6y ago
      > Googling I see the price of a 3080 is 700 dollars assuming you're able to buy them and have the money upfront and are able to hide the purchase. "What this person could be doing with 90 3080, I wonder" asks the Chinese government employee that checks your bank transactions. https://www.techradar.com/news/nvidia-rtx-3080-shortage-could-continue-until-q3 https://www.techradar.com/news/nvidia-rtx-3080-shortage-coul...