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Blockchain is proving a more than capable solution in the ransomware payments space, enabling a whole new class of malware.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
It also enables people to finance themselves despite tyrannical restrictions imposed by bad governments. Using bitcoin I can send money to someone in Chi no a who's social rating was degraded by the CCP and who is forbidden from using banks. This alone trumps any arguments against bitcoin. Crime will exist forever and criminals will find ways to finance themselves anyway, so the use of cryptocurrencies for their operations is not really a factor.
- red_trumpet 5y ago
  And of the CCP ever finds out, he will end up in jail. And if they can link your wallet to you, you will not be able to travel to China anymore.
- 3825 5y ago
  > Using bitcoin I can send money to someone in Chi no a who's social rating was degraded by the CCP and who is forbidden from using banks How will they convert it into something they can use to pay rent and buy groceries? > Crime will exist forever and criminals will find ways to finance themselves anyway, so the use of cryptocurrencies for their operations is not really a factor. Does this make it easier for the wealthy to evade taxes? I find just signing transactions using something like gpg a much easier to reason about. My biggest concern about cryptocurrency is fees. There is no reason why fees should be based on payload as far as I understand. Whether I’m sending one satoshi (or any other unit of money) or a trillion, the cost should be the same and ideally as close to zero as possible if not zero. This was the original reason I was drawn to bitcoin but it was obvious it would never be the case.
  - yashg 5y ago
    > How will they convert it into something they can use to pay rent and buy groceries? Exactly my question. Exchanges where you can sell the crypto for real money are still regulated and require KYC. > My biggest concern about cryptocurrency is fees. High fees are required to pay for the insane electricity bills and specialized hardware. PoW cryptos are expensive and inefficient by design so there will always be more transactions waiting in the queue to get on the chain than the processing power required to mine the next block.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      Black market p2p exchanges will rise inevitably.
      - yashg 5y ago
        You don't even need black market. On one the largest crypto exchanges in India (WazirX), P2P is the only viable option left to get money into exchange because most banks have stopped dealing with them.
      - cinquemb 5y ago
        p2p exchanges were the first exchanges, only did the regulated KYC ones came later.
  - traceddd 5y ago
    Fees are based on resource usage. In Bitcoin this is usually the total data size of inputs and outputs that are used to make the sum. This is where the issue of dust arises, when an address holds a mass quantity of low value inputs, but combing them yields a very large and therefore costly transaction. In some other chains, like Ethereum, the accounting is ledger based. With these systems theres is no variety in input count, but it similarly scales by transaction computation so more complex contracts are more expensive. Both networks have a fluctuating transaction cost due to congestion competition, but the “base cost” in either is totally unaffected by the value/total amount of currency.
    - faeyanpiraat 5y ago
      You mean that I can have 1btc in 1 piece, or have basically 0 usable btc if I have 1btc gained in like a 1000 small transactions over time? So when I “spend” that fragmented 1 btc, it all gets eaten up by fees?
      - Hjfrf 5y ago
        There was a update on bitcoin last year ("taproot") to improve that issue. Prior to that it was absolutely the case that multiple sender addresses caused multiple fees. Not sure about other cryptocurrency.
  - drKarl 5y ago
    Nano (https://nano.org/ https://nano.org/) for example has zero fees and transactions are instant
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      Nano favors early adopters even more than BTC does. The only way to obtain nano is to buy it from someone who already has it.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  > It also enables people to finance themselves despite tyrannical restrictions imposed by bad governments. Using bitcoin I can send money to someone in Chi no a who's social rating was degraded by the CCP and who is forbidden from using banks. In no way does bitcoin being blockchain based enable you to do this better or more effectively. It's just because it's a less regulated currency.
  - auggierose 5y ago
    Well, it cannot be regulated, because it is blockchain based. That's the whole point, isn't it.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    Bitcoin being blockchain and a consensus algorithm to append it is what enables people to use it without asking for permission. Permissionlessness is the main killer feature, and I dare you to find another way to implement it using some other method.
    - arlcode 5y ago
      Alright, how does a potential recipient use those funds? Pay rent? No, because the government would notice the missing income on the landlords tax return. Pay for food and other goods? No, because the government would not allow companies to take funds from permissionless blockchains. Buy real estate or a car? No because those needs to be registered with the government as well and payments are regularly checked for fraud and money laundering. A black market for all of the above? Sure but any government to weak too prevent a black market of this scale would also be unable to restrict transactions (no matter the method) in the first place.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        Conversion of bitcoin to whatever currency is hard to block. USSR had death penalty (!) for buying or selling things using foreigh currency. Yet, the black was persistent. Also, we are talking about the unbanked: people who otherwise have no other state-sanctioned way to use financial services. Bitcoin first and foremost helps such people.
- enneff 5y ago
  > This alone trumps any arguments against bitcoin. This is a ridiculous claim. Just because a technology can be used for good does not mean it is beyond criticism.
- acdha 5y ago
  > Using bitcoin I can send money to someone in Chi no a who's social rating was degraded by the CCP and who is forbidden from using banks. Okay, let’s think about this even a little bit: receiving that Bitcoin requires them to have software and access websites which the Chinese government has restricted. Assuming they successfully get a wallet app which isn’t compromised, they then need to connect to a well-known, trivially blocked high-volume network service without the Great Firewall triggering. Having done that, they then need to pay a substantial processing fee for any transaction. Since their landlord, grocer, etc. need to be paid in real money this person will also need to find someone to convert it, again requiring a substantial payment because accepting something banned from a pariah is high-risk. All of this is not only expensive but incredibly risky since you’re leaving a lot of electronic records of illegal activity and you’re forced to trust various third-parties who can be compromised without your ability to easily tell. Bitcoin is perfect for state authorities, too, since it leaves a signed record of intent to break the law for each transaction — if they bust a business which does a lot of cash sales, it’s a lot harder to prove where each bill came from and there’s no way to do so if they only start monitoring after the fact like there is with Bitcoin.
democracy 5y ago
That's true! At least there is one great use-case )))
staticassertion 5y ago
The thing is it's not really particularly good at that. No moreso at least because of any attributes of the blockchain. It's really because of external reasons: 1. Lack of tooling and cooperation for investigating fraud 2. Lack of regulation 3. Programmatic interfaces 4. There are markets like the NFT space that are amazing for laundering But no part of why it's good for crime has to do with blockchain.
- vanviegen 5y ago
  Reason 2) does seem to be due to an attribute of the Blockchain, as there is no central organization that the government can force to establish the real-world identity of all participants. (Although this is now happening at the point of conversion to/from fiat currency.)
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    (2) is an attribute of time. The legal system always plays catch up to the real world. Nothing about bitcoin prevents regulation.
- notahacker 5y ago
  "Censorship resistance" was the original use case for blockchain, and demanding money with menaces remotely is the one area where it's unquestionably superior to being discreet about where your money is stored
- CRConrad 5y ago
  >> Blockchain is proving a more than capable solution in the ransomware payments space > The thing is it's not really particularly good at that. Sure, but apparently it sucks less at that than at anything else. Which would be why that's the only use case in which it's actually used as a "currency"; the law of comparative advantage and all that. > But no part of why it's good for crime has to do with blockchain. Well, the anonymity, one would have thought?

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

It also enables people to finance themselves despite tyrannical restrictions imposed by bad governments. Using bitcoin I can send money to someone in Chi no a who's social rating was degraded by the CCP and who is forbidden from using banks. This alone trumps any arguments against bitcoin. Crime will exist forever and criminals will find ways to finance themselves anyway, so the use of cryptocurrencies for their operations is not really a factor.

red_trumpet 5y ago
And of the CCP ever finds out, he will end up in jail. And if they can link your wallet to you, you will not be able to travel to China anymore.
3825 5y ago
> Using bitcoin I can send money to someone in Chi no a who's social rating was degraded by the CCP and who is forbidden from using banks How will they convert it into something they can use to pay rent and buy groceries? > Crime will exist forever and criminals will find ways to finance themselves anyway, so the use of cryptocurrencies for their operations is not really a factor. Does this make it easier for the wealthy to evade taxes? I find just signing transactions using something like gpg a much easier to reason about. My biggest concern about cryptocurrency is fees. There is no reason why fees should be based on payload as far as I understand. Whether I’m sending one satoshi (or any other unit of money) or a trillion, the cost should be the same and ideally as close to zero as possible if not zero. This was the original reason I was drawn to bitcoin but it was obvious it would never be the case.
- yashg 5y ago
  > How will they convert it into something they can use to pay rent and buy groceries? Exactly my question. Exchanges where you can sell the crypto for real money are still regulated and require KYC. > My biggest concern about cryptocurrency is fees. High fees are required to pay for the insane electricity bills and specialized hardware. PoW cryptos are expensive and inefficient by design so there will always be more transactions waiting in the queue to get on the chain than the processing power required to mine the next block.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    Black market p2p exchanges will rise inevitably.
    - yashg 5y ago
      You don't even need black market. On one the largest crypto exchanges in India (WazirX), P2P is the only viable option left to get money into exchange because most banks have stopped dealing with them.
    - cinquemb 5y ago
      p2p exchanges were the first exchanges, only did the regulated KYC ones came later.
- traceddd 5y ago
  Fees are based on resource usage. In Bitcoin this is usually the total data size of inputs and outputs that are used to make the sum. This is where the issue of dust arises, when an address holds a mass quantity of low value inputs, but combing them yields a very large and therefore costly transaction. In some other chains, like Ethereum, the accounting is ledger based. With these systems theres is no variety in input count, but it similarly scales by transaction computation so more complex contracts are more expensive. Both networks have a fluctuating transaction cost due to congestion competition, but the “base cost” in either is totally unaffected by the value/total amount of currency.
  - faeyanpiraat 5y ago
    You mean that I can have 1btc in 1 piece, or have basically 0 usable btc if I have 1btc gained in like a 1000 small transactions over time? So when I “spend” that fragmented 1 btc, it all gets eaten up by fees?
    - Hjfrf 5y ago
      There was a update on bitcoin last year ("taproot") to improve that issue. Prior to that it was absolutely the case that multiple sender addresses caused multiple fees. Not sure about other cryptocurrency.
- drKarl 5y ago
  Nano (https://nano.org/ https://nano.org/) for example has zero fees and transactions are instant
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Nano favors early adopters even more than BTC does. The only way to obtain nano is to buy it from someone who already has it.
staticassertion 5y ago
> It also enables people to finance themselves despite tyrannical restrictions imposed by bad governments. Using bitcoin I can send money to someone in Chi no a who's social rating was degraded by the CCP and who is forbidden from using banks. In no way does bitcoin being blockchain based enable you to do this better or more effectively. It's just because it's a less regulated currency.
- auggierose 5y ago
  Well, it cannot be regulated, because it is blockchain based. That's the whole point, isn't it.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  Bitcoin being blockchain and a consensus algorithm to append it is what enables people to use it without asking for permission. Permissionlessness is the main killer feature, and I dare you to find another way to implement it using some other method.
  - arlcode 5y ago
    Alright, how does a potential recipient use those funds? Pay rent? No, because the government would notice the missing income on the landlords tax return. Pay for food and other goods? No, because the government would not allow companies to take funds from permissionless blockchains. Buy real estate or a car? No because those needs to be registered with the government as well and payments are regularly checked for fraud and money laundering. A black market for all of the above? Sure but any government to weak too prevent a black market of this scale would also be unable to restrict transactions (no matter the method) in the first place.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      Conversion of bitcoin to whatever currency is hard to block. USSR had death penalty (!) for buying or selling things using foreigh currency. Yet, the black was persistent. Also, we are talking about the unbanked: people who otherwise have no other state-sanctioned way to use financial services. Bitcoin first and foremost helps such people.
enneff 5y ago
> This alone trumps any arguments against bitcoin. This is a ridiculous claim. Just because a technology can be used for good does not mean it is beyond criticism.
acdha 5y ago
> Using bitcoin I can send money to someone in Chi no a who's social rating was degraded by the CCP and who is forbidden from using banks. Okay, let’s think about this even a little bit: receiving that Bitcoin requires them to have software and access websites which the Chinese government has restricted. Assuming they successfully get a wallet app which isn’t compromised, they then need to connect to a well-known, trivially blocked high-volume network service without the Great Firewall triggering. Having done that, they then need to pay a substantial processing fee for any transaction. Since their landlord, grocer, etc. need to be paid in real money this person will also need to find someone to convert it, again requiring a substantial payment because accepting something banned from a pariah is high-risk. All of this is not only expensive but incredibly risky since you’re leaving a lot of electronic records of illegal activity and you’re forced to trust various third-parties who can be compromised without your ability to easily tell. Bitcoin is perfect for state authorities, too, since it leaves a signed record of intent to break the law for each transaction — if they bust a business which does a lot of cash sales, it’s a lot harder to prove where each bill came from and there’s no way to do so if they only start monitoring after the fact like there is with Bitcoin.

democracy 5y ago

That's true! At least there is one great use-case )))

staticassertion 5y ago

The thing is it's not really particularly good at that. No moreso at least because of any attributes of the blockchain. It's really because of external reasons: 1. Lack of tooling and cooperation for investigating fraud 2. Lack of regulation 3. Programmatic interfaces 4. There are markets like the NFT space that are amazing for laundering But no part of why it's good for crime has to do with blockchain.

vanviegen 5y ago
Reason 2) does seem to be due to an attribute of the Blockchain, as there is no central organization that the government can force to establish the real-world identity of all participants. (Although this is now happening at the point of conversion to/from fiat currency.)
- staticassertion 5y ago
  (2) is an attribute of time. The legal system always plays catch up to the real world. Nothing about bitcoin prevents regulation.
notahacker 5y ago
"Censorship resistance" was the original use case for blockchain, and demanding money with menaces remotely is the one area where it's unquestionably superior to being discreet about where your money is stored
CRConrad 5y ago
>> Blockchain is proving a more than capable solution in the ransomware payments space > The thing is it's not really particularly good at that. Sure, but apparently it sucks less at that than at anything else. Which would be why that's the only use case in which it's actually used as a "currency"; the law of comparative advantage and all that. > But no part of why it's good for crime has to do with blockchain. Well, the anonymity, one would have thought?