5 ms·

Monero is not anonymous anymore as soon as you want to convert to fiat.

by devops000 5y ago

rosndo 5y ago
So? Monero also makes it trivial to create a fake paper trail for the origins of your money.
- devops000 5y ago
  When you will receive the bank wire from the exchange you need to provide to IRS the source of income. What will you say to them?
  - dpacmittal 5y ago
    Just sell an NFT to yourself.
    - wnevets 5y ago
      relevant https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/melania-trump-nft-auction/ https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/melania-trump-nft-auction/
  - rosndo 5y ago
    You provide them accounting from your fake business which accepts only monero payments for digital goods and doesn’t keep access logs? This is really basic stuff. You will never be caught unless other evidence leads them from the original crime to you. Unless you fuck up it’s not possible to link incoming Moneroj to any specific source, this means that you can fairly easily hide your money laundering activities even from somebody with full visibility into your business.
    - 323 5y ago
      You live in some fantasy land if you think you can just say "oh, I just received 100 dollars worth of Monero from 1 million unknown entities, my $100 million is totally legit, fuck off". Unlike criminal law where you are "innocent until proven guilty", in most AML/KYC situations you are "guilty until proven innocent".
      - fer 5y ago
        > "oh, I just received 100 dollars worth of Monero from 1 million unknown entities, my $100 million is totally legit, fuck off" That's pretty much the whole NFT craze, but without Monero which makes it even dumber.
      - rosndo 5y ago
        You’re being ridiculous. Nobody is going to look at you twice for selling 1000x$5000 cryptocurrency trading courses a year, or even double that. I’ve dealt with AML/KYC for cryptocurrency businesses with much higher volumes, nobody ever asked for anything crazy. Just basic accounting, website urls, linkedin profiles. > You live in some fantasy land if you think you can just say "oh, I just received 100 dollars worth of Monero from 1 million unknown entities, my $100 million is totally legit, fuck off" I think the only takeaway here is that “323” is too stupid and greedy to survive as a money launderer. Don’t try to cash out $100M in monero at once, live a wonderful life with $5-10M a year.
        bduerst 5y ago
        >I’ve dealt with AML/KYC for cryptocurrency businesses with much higher volumes, nobody ever asked for anything crazy. Were they legit businesses or illegal? It makes a difference because there's more than just you and the KYC exchanges reporting, and it's survivor bias to assume they appear the same.
        rosndo 5y ago
        Legal businesses, receiving much larger individual payments from a limited number of clients. > It makes a difference because there's more than just you and the KYC exchanges reporting, and it's survivor bias to assume they appear the same. Exchanges are usually the least of your problems, it’s the banks. Even very high risk businesses don’t face scrutiny which isn’t easily overcome when all of your incoming payments are anonymous and untraceable. It’s really not hard to create a fake ecommerce business that would be entirely indistinguishable from a real one.
        5y ago
  - Jerrrry 5y ago
    Nothing, because of the 5th amendment. You pay taxes on stolen gains. The IRS is explicitly forbidden from reporting the gains themselves.
    - CheezeIt 5y ago
      They have broken this rule.
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      Because of the "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" part? How does that stop the IRS from telling law enforcement that you've suddenly come into millions of unexplained dollars?
      - undersuit 5y ago
        You already have to be in trouble. The cops can have the IRS release your tax returns, the IRS doesn't call the cops(they have their own). >IRC 6103(i)(1) provides that, pursuant to court order, return information may be shared with law enforcement agencies for investigation and prosecution of non-tax criminal laws.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    You've stumbled upon the main use case for NFTs.
  - boring_twenties 5y ago
    I have received many wires from crypto exchanges to my account at a major US bank and have never been questioned about it.
vmception 5y ago
It's been over half a decade since that stopped mattering, for me. I've bought goods and services directly with Monero plenty of times. I've paid invoices that the merchant put in Bitcoin, while using a third party to pay in Monero, which the third party then paid in Bitcoin. Now in the 2020s I can swap Monero directly to SECRET network, a Tindermint/Cosmos blockchain where all smart contract executions are private (such as the amount and quantity of your erc20-style wrapped Monero), allowing further bridging over to the EVM ecosystem for all the liquid DeFi trading activities, and Tornado cash if desired. and the times when I use KYC to convert it to fiat, I haven't cared either. I like that the OTC desk or exchange doesn't even receive the address I sent from, much more similar to wiring from another bank account, where the receiving bank can't look at all your prior records and balances at the source of money and just has to assume the other place is compliant. it should be obvious that someone with an illicit source of their Monero will need to reintegrate their value into the broader economy first, so that they can account for it properly. with access to the entire DeFi ecosystem now, that is extremely easy. all crypto users should restore that level of privacy.
- ElonMuskrat 5y ago
  > It's been over half a decade since that stopped mattering, for me. It's certainly going to matter come tax season to businesses which are/will be forced to convert Monero to local fiat. > I've bought goods and services directly with Monero plenty of times. I've paid invoices that the merchant put in Bitcoin, while using a third party to pay in Monero, which the third party then paid in Bitcoin. What exactly do you buy with Monero?
  - vmception 5y ago
    US businesses and persons pay tax in income no matter what asset it was received in, and report capital gains or losses as well upon liquidation into another asset such as fiat There is nothing unique about crypto or monero in that regard, what did you have in mind?
- devops000 5y ago
  What are advantages of doing all those steps using Monero instead Fiat? I understand that you can hide your trances but if you buy legits things, who cares?
algorade 5y ago
It is easy to sell your Monero for fiat anonymously using a service like localmonero.co There is also a growing parallel economy where you can buy goods and services directly with your Monero and avoid selling anything for fiat. For example, I have bought domain names using XMR on nja.la.

Monero is not anonymous anymore as soon as you want to convert to fiat.

rosndo 5y ago

So? Monero also makes it trivial to create a fake paper trail for the origins of your money.

devops000 5y ago
When you will receive the bank wire from the exchange you need to provide to IRS the source of income. What will you say to them?
- dpacmittal 5y ago
  Just sell an NFT to yourself.
  - wnevets 5y ago
    relevant https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/melania-trump-nft-auction/ https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/melania-trump-nft-auction/
- rosndo 5y ago
  You provide them accounting from your fake business which accepts only monero payments for digital goods and doesn’t keep access logs? This is really basic stuff. You will never be caught unless other evidence leads them from the original crime to you. Unless you fuck up it’s not possible to link incoming Moneroj to any specific source, this means that you can fairly easily hide your money laundering activities even from somebody with full visibility into your business.
  - 323 5y ago
    You live in some fantasy land if you think you can just say "oh, I just received 100 dollars worth of Monero from 1 million unknown entities, my $100 million is totally legit, fuck off". Unlike criminal law where you are "innocent until proven guilty", in most AML/KYC situations you are "guilty until proven innocent".
    - fer 5y ago
      > "oh, I just received 100 dollars worth of Monero from 1 million unknown entities, my $100 million is totally legit, fuck off" That's pretty much the whole NFT craze, but without Monero which makes it even dumber.
    - rosndo 5y ago
      You’re being ridiculous. Nobody is going to look at you twice for selling 1000x$5000 cryptocurrency trading courses a year, or even double that. I’ve dealt with AML/KYC for cryptocurrency businesses with much higher volumes, nobody ever asked for anything crazy. Just basic accounting, website urls, linkedin profiles. > You live in some fantasy land if you think you can just say "oh, I just received 100 dollars worth of Monero from 1 million unknown entities, my $100 million is totally legit, fuck off" I think the only takeaway here is that “323” is too stupid and greedy to survive as a money launderer. Don’t try to cash out $100M in monero at once, live a wonderful life with $5-10M a year.
      - bduerst 5y ago
        >I’ve dealt with AML/KYC for cryptocurrency businesses with much higher volumes, nobody ever asked for anything crazy. Were they legit businesses or illegal? It makes a difference because there's more than just you and the KYC exchanges reporting, and it's survivor bias to assume they appear the same.
        rosndo 5y ago
        Legal businesses, receiving much larger individual payments from a limited number of clients. > It makes a difference because there's more than just you and the KYC exchanges reporting, and it's survivor bias to assume they appear the same. Exchanges are usually the least of your problems, it’s the banks. Even very high risk businesses don’t face scrutiny which isn’t easily overcome when all of your incoming payments are anonymous and untraceable. It’s really not hard to create a fake ecommerce business that would be entirely indistinguishable from a real one.
        5y ago
- Jerrrry 5y ago
  Nothing, because of the 5th amendment. You pay taxes on stolen gains. The IRS is explicitly forbidden from reporting the gains themselves.
  - CheezeIt 5y ago
    They have broken this rule.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    Because of the "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" part? How does that stop the IRS from telling law enforcement that you've suddenly come into millions of unexplained dollars?
    - undersuit 5y ago
      You already have to be in trouble. The cops can have the IRS release your tax returns, the IRS doesn't call the cops(they have their own). >IRC 6103(i)(1) provides that, pursuant to court order, return information may be shared with law enforcement agencies for investigation and prosecution of non-tax criminal laws.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  You've stumbled upon the main use case for NFTs.
- boring_twenties 5y ago
  I have received many wires from crypto exchanges to my account at a major US bank and have never been questioned about it.

vmception 5y ago

It's been over half a decade since that stopped mattering, for me. I've bought goods and services directly with Monero plenty of times. I've paid invoices that the merchant put in Bitcoin, while using a third party to pay in Monero, which the third party then paid in Bitcoin. Now in the 2020s I can swap Monero directly to SECRET network, a Tindermint/Cosmos blockchain where all smart contract executions are private (such as the amount and quantity of your erc20-style wrapped Monero), allowing further bridging over to the EVM ecosystem for all the liquid DeFi trading activities, and Tornado cash if desired. and the times when I use KYC to convert it to fiat, I haven't cared either. I like that the OTC desk or exchange doesn't even receive the address I sent from, much more similar to wiring from another bank account, where the receiving bank can't look at all your prior records and balances at the source of money and just has to assume the other place is compliant. it should be obvious that someone with an illicit source of their Monero will need to reintegrate their value into the broader economy first, so that they can account for it properly. with access to the entire DeFi ecosystem now, that is extremely easy. all crypto users should restore that level of privacy.

ElonMuskrat 5y ago
> It's been over half a decade since that stopped mattering, for me. It's certainly going to matter come tax season to businesses which are/will be forced to convert Monero to local fiat. > I've bought goods and services directly with Monero plenty of times. I've paid invoices that the merchant put in Bitcoin, while using a third party to pay in Monero, which the third party then paid in Bitcoin. What exactly do you buy with Monero?
- vmception 5y ago
  US businesses and persons pay tax in income no matter what asset it was received in, and report capital gains or losses as well upon liquidation into another asset such as fiat There is nothing unique about crypto or monero in that regard, what did you have in mind?
devops000 5y ago
What are advantages of doing all those steps using Monero instead Fiat? I understand that you can hide your trances but if you buy legits things, who cares?

algorade 5y ago

It is easy to sell your Monero for fiat anonymously using a service like localmonero.co There is also a growing parallel economy where you can buy goods and services directly with your Monero and avoid selling anything for fiat. For example, I have bought domain names using XMR on nja.la.