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There's pretty much no way to know if a bitcoin address belongs to someone from a sanctioned country or otherwise sanctioned, right? So this effectively makes
by jrochkind1 5y ago
There's pretty much no way to know if a bitcoin address belongs to someone from a sanctioned country or otherwise sanctioned, right?
So this effectively makes paying ransomware an activity with very high legal risk.
It will be interesting to see how that all plays out. It's hard to imagine the regulators didn't think of this... I wonder what they are thinking exactly.
- gnopgnip 5y agoThe government doesn't need to prove a bitcoin address belongs to someone on the sanctioned list, the specific intermediaries used aren't important. Proving that you know you are paying someone on the sanction list is enough.
- jrochkind1 5y agoYou misread my point. In fact, the article suggests they don't even need to prove that you know you are paying someone on the sanction list. > In a pair of advisories, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network warned that facilitators could be prosecuted even if they or the victims did not know that the hackers demanding the ransom were subject to U.S. sanctions. Indeed, that means it is legally dangerous to pay anyone whose identity you don't know. That is what I'm saying, yes.