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Cash itself has never been sanctioned though? If the government said “we’re now keeping a database of cash serial numbers that are hereby banned” would everyone

Cash itself has never been sanctioned though? If the government said “we’re now keeping a database of cash serial numbers that are hereby banned” would everyone need to install the “cash checker” app and scan each bill they receive?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> Cash itself has never been sanctioned though? Ethereum isn't being sanctioned. Tornado is. If you transact with Tornado, you're in violation of the law. If you don't, you're not, whether you use Ether or not. > if the government said “we’re now keeping a database of cash serial numbers that are hereby banned” would everyone need to install the “cash checker” app and scan each bill they receive? Law enforcement has long used marked bills [1]. The cash isn't "cancelled." If you randomly end up with one, you're fine, in the same way that if you unknowingly end up transacting with a wallet that transacted with a wallet that touched Tornado, you're also probably fine. But if your garage has a box of marked bills, or if your wallet did a big transaction with another wallet that does lots of Tornado activity, you're going to be on law enforcement's radar. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marked_bill#cite_note-4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marked_bill#cite_note-4
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  I just don’t see how the government can go about proving you received the money because you sent to it a mixer vs receiving it from a seemingly legal transaction with someone else who mixed it. Especially with defi exchanges that I doubt will check if coins have been mixed.
  - acdha 4y ago
    Flip that around the other way: you are identified having received a transaction at the end of a chain from some crime with serious consequences. Do you want to have to prove to their satisfaction that you had no knowledge of this and aren’t part of some cartel’s money laundering operation? Can you keep doing that each time you use a mixer or does that start to look like a pattern where they stop believing you? Is there anything in your life that is innocent but could be strung together by an ambitious investigator? (e.g. your roommate’s boyfriend is Colombian, now you’re both getting questions and I hope he’s not self-employed) It’s that grind which is fatal for mixers, not unlike Tor exit nodes. Nobody _needs_ to use them except money launderers but they depend on benign traffic for concealment. Even most privacy-minded people are going to hesitate if it taints their ability to make transactions with regulated businesses and the less innocent traffic there is, the more likely it is that using one will attract scrutiny, accelerating that feedback loop since most people don’t want to deal with the risk even if they are totally innocent. The other level to consider: this mentions DPRK. That means all of the intelligence agencies could be involved and that increases the odds that a mixer is compromised or even run by them as a honeypot. Think about how you can decide whether to trust one, and whether the odds are that you’re signing up for additional privacy invasion like the people who’ve used certain messaging systems or VPNs.
- concordDance 4y ago
  > If you transact with Tornado, you're in violation of US law. Fixed it for you. There's a tendency, particularly in the USA for people to assume that their law is universal
  - shakezula 4y ago
    You're being needlessly pedantic here. They implied US law because the article is by the U.S. Treasury.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    That is quite a conclusion to jump to, rather than simply interpreting the word "the" as an article referring to the sanctions listed in this post.
  - vkou 4y ago
    US law isn't universal, but it does apply to anyone who wants to interact with the US financial system. Which is most people doing business outside their country of residence, including most people using crypto.
SXX 4y ago
At least on government and banking level there are sanctiona against bring cash USD / EUR to Russia and might be Iran / North Korea. Private person can do that, but any bank or country that will sell cash to Putin's regime will likely end up being sanctioned too.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Like Germany?
  - SXX 4y ago
    Germany dont send real paper US dollars or EUR to Russia. Instead Russia just get some more numbers on Gazprombank correspondent bank account in some EU financial institution. There is a huge difference between what can be done with paper money vs numbers on traceable bank account.
Arainach 4y ago
Nothing so brash. Make the largest banks check (the federal reserve already does), and add consequences on handling banned bills that will encourage smaller customers to check before they get to thr FR level.
deleted 4y ago
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specialp 4y ago
Cash has to be physically sent somewhere else. There are already restrictions on large amounts of cash (> $10000) where large transactions must be reported to the government, and it must be declared entering or exiting the country. This is why smuggling cash out of the USA from drug proceeds is a very challenging issue for cartels. But crypto cannot be physically inspected at international borders. So for the government, just like wire transfers, they want to know the source and recipient of such funds. If there were a service where you could bring a large amount of cash, obfuscate the origin, then wire it to a bunch of bank accounts under criminal control, that would be the definition of money laundering and also cracked down on. In this case if Coinbase took some BTC that went through Tornado it would be equivalent to taking a wire transfer from a bank known to be laundering money.
- notch656a 4y ago
  The US has effectively no customs on leaving the country. I doubt those wanting to leave with cash have it that bad.
  - leeter 4y ago
    If you're taking 10k or more in cash out of the country and fail to file a fincen-105 you can have all of the cash sized with no recourse. CBP regularly uses cash sniffing dogs for this purpose. https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/fin105_cmir.pdf https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/fin105_cmi...
    - notch656a 4y ago
      CBP has an alert on my passport and I'm flagged as being a bad-boy with insane amount of grilling (and illegal jailing, strip-search, ~16 hour detainment, the works) every time I enter the country. Even I have never been searched leaving the country. I'm sure it happens but I think it is quite rare. I repeat myself, there is effectively no customs leaving the country even if you are flagged as most-high-risk as I am. >CBP regularly uses cash sniffing dogs for this purpose. The dogs are just probable cause generating machines. Had one of these dogs "sniff my asshole" and the agents got a warrant for me to forcibly be taken to the hospital to be "internally examined." (and I was sent the bill by the hospital, both ERs they took me to ~60 miles apart even though I never consented to any of it) The dog never alerted. It's just cover so they can get a warrant whenever they want. Yeah I'm aware it's illegal to not report on the way out, I'm only saying it seems unlikely criminals doing that are going to get caught.
leeter 4y ago
It's never been sanctioned but it is tracked. Every single time cash (the physical printed bills) flows through a federal reserve branch or even some mainline banks the serial is noted and reported to a database. They do this in case money known to be tainted (stolen, counterfeit etc.) shows up. So if a bill with a flagged serial number comes up that info is forwarded to the FBI/Secret service. That doesn't mean they'll come knocking on your door if you deposit a single tainted note, it just tells them that the note somehow made it to your locality. But if you deposited a ton of them all at once? Yes you'd probably get a visit and some very pointed questions on where you got them and how. This has happened a few times when people found cash from robberies (the D.B cooper case being one). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper#Recovered_ransom_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper#Recovered_ransom_... Most people have probably deposited a counterfeit bill and never known it too. Again singular bills are not a problem. They just tell the secret service to keep an eye on that locality and potentially contact businesses that saw the counterfeits come in assuming those businesses didn't flag it themselves.
jeffbee 4y ago
There's a reason that you can't walk into Goldman Sachs and open a trading account with a box full of cash. They can't tell where it came from. In certain respects, cash is sanctioned.
deleted 4y ago
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giaour 4y ago
> If the government said “we’re now keeping a database of cash serial numbers that are hereby banned” would everyone need to install the “cash checker” app and scan each bill they receive? This database exists, but only banks and police evidence clerks check cash against it. > Cash itself has never been sanctioned though? Most countries have a strict limit on the amount of cash you're allowed to carry over the border.
cesarb 4y ago
> If the government said “we’re now keeping a database of cash serial numbers that are hereby banned” would everyone need to install the “cash checker” app and scan each bill they receive? I recall something like that happening when I was younger. This was long ago, in the pre-Internet days, so unfortunately I haven't been able to find anything about it online; this is only my distant recollection. There was a theft of a large amount of new bank notes, which hadn't yet entered circulation. The government distributed a list of the ranges of bank notes (since the notes were newly printed, they were in large sequential ranges), and every cashier in the whole country (for instance, in supermarkets) had to check every note they received against that list; since the notes in question hadn't entered circulation yet, they could be treated as if they were counterfeit. (Since as far as I recall this happened back in the hyperinflation days, and the whole currency has been replaced one or more times since then, there is no longer any need to check against that list.)
deleted 4y ago
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JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> Cash itself has never been sanctioned though? Ethereum isn't being sanctioned. Tornado is. If you transact with Tornado, you're in violation of the law. If you don't, you're not, whether you use Ether or not. > if the government said “we’re now keeping a database of cash serial numbers that are hereby banned” would everyone need to install the “cash checker” app and scan each bill they receive? Law enforcement has long used marked bills [1]. The cash isn't "cancelled." If you randomly end up with one, you're fine, in the same way that if you unknowingly end up transacting with a wallet that transacted with a wallet that touched Tornado, you're also probably fine. But if your garage has a box of marked bills, or if your wallet did a big transaction with another wallet that does lots of Tornado activity, you're going to be on law enforcement's radar. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marked_bill#cite_note-4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marked_bill#cite_note-4

colinmhayes 4y ago
I just don’t see how the government can go about proving you received the money because you sent to it a mixer vs receiving it from a seemingly legal transaction with someone else who mixed it. Especially with defi exchanges that I doubt will check if coins have been mixed.
- acdha 4y ago
  Flip that around the other way: you are identified having received a transaction at the end of a chain from some crime with serious consequences. Do you want to have to prove to their satisfaction that you had no knowledge of this and aren’t part of some cartel’s money laundering operation? Can you keep doing that each time you use a mixer or does that start to look like a pattern where they stop believing you? Is there anything in your life that is innocent but could be strung together by an ambitious investigator? (e.g. your roommate’s boyfriend is Colombian, now you’re both getting questions and I hope he’s not self-employed) It’s that grind which is fatal for mixers, not unlike Tor exit nodes. Nobody _needs_ to use them except money launderers but they depend on benign traffic for concealment. Even most privacy-minded people are going to hesitate if it taints their ability to make transactions with regulated businesses and the less innocent traffic there is, the more likely it is that using one will attract scrutiny, accelerating that feedback loop since most people don’t want to deal with the risk even if they are totally innocent. The other level to consider: this mentions DPRK. That means all of the intelligence agencies could be involved and that increases the odds that a mixer is compromised or even run by them as a honeypot. Think about how you can decide whether to trust one, and whether the odds are that you’re signing up for additional privacy invasion like the people who’ve used certain messaging systems or VPNs.
concordDance 4y ago
> If you transact with Tornado, you're in violation of US law. Fixed it for you. There's a tendency, particularly in the USA for people to assume that their law is universal
- shakezula 4y ago
  You're being needlessly pedantic here. They implied US law because the article is by the U.S. Treasury.
- kube-system 4y ago
  That is quite a conclusion to jump to, rather than simply interpreting the word "the" as an article referring to the sanctions listed in this post.
- vkou 4y ago
  US law isn't universal, but it does apply to anyone who wants to interact with the US financial system. Which is most people doing business outside their country of residence, including most people using crypto.

SXX 4y ago

At least on government and banking level there are sanctiona against bring cash USD / EUR to Russia and might be Iran / North Korea. Private person can do that, but any bank or country that will sell cash to Putin's regime will likely end up being sanctioned too.

ipaddr 4y ago
Like Germany?
- SXX 4y ago
  Germany dont send real paper US dollars or EUR to Russia. Instead Russia just get some more numbers on Gazprombank correspondent bank account in some EU financial institution. There is a huge difference between what can be done with paper money vs numbers on traceable bank account.

Arainach 4y ago

Nothing so brash. Make the largest banks check (the federal reserve already does), and add consequences on handling banned bills that will encourage smaller customers to check before they get to thr FR level.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

specialp 4y ago

Cash has to be physically sent somewhere else. There are already restrictions on large amounts of cash (> $10000) where large transactions must be reported to the government, and it must be declared entering or exiting the country. This is why smuggling cash out of the USA from drug proceeds is a very challenging issue for cartels. But crypto cannot be physically inspected at international borders. So for the government, just like wire transfers, they want to know the source and recipient of such funds. If there were a service where you could bring a large amount of cash, obfuscate the origin, then wire it to a bunch of bank accounts under criminal control, that would be the definition of money laundering and also cracked down on. In this case if Coinbase took some BTC that went through Tornado it would be equivalent to taking a wire transfer from a bank known to be laundering money.

notch656a 4y ago
The US has effectively no customs on leaving the country. I doubt those wanting to leave with cash have it that bad.
- leeter 4y ago
  If you're taking 10k or more in cash out of the country and fail to file a fincen-105 you can have all of the cash sized with no recourse. CBP regularly uses cash sniffing dogs for this purpose. https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/fin105_cmir.pdf https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/fin105_cmi...
  - notch656a 4y ago
    CBP has an alert on my passport and I'm flagged as being a bad-boy with insane amount of grilling (and illegal jailing, strip-search, ~16 hour detainment, the works) every time I enter the country. Even I have never been searched leaving the country. I'm sure it happens but I think it is quite rare. I repeat myself, there is effectively no customs leaving the country even if you are flagged as most-high-risk as I am. >CBP regularly uses cash sniffing dogs for this purpose. The dogs are just probable cause generating machines. Had one of these dogs "sniff my asshole" and the agents got a warrant for me to forcibly be taken to the hospital to be "internally examined." (and I was sent the bill by the hospital, both ERs they took me to ~60 miles apart even though I never consented to any of it) The dog never alerted. It's just cover so they can get a warrant whenever they want. Yeah I'm aware it's illegal to not report on the way out, I'm only saying it seems unlikely criminals doing that are going to get caught.

leeter 4y ago

It's never been sanctioned but it is tracked. Every single time cash (the physical printed bills) flows through a federal reserve branch or even some mainline banks the serial is noted and reported to a database. They do this in case money known to be tainted (stolen, counterfeit etc.) shows up. So if a bill with a flagged serial number comes up that info is forwarded to the FBI/Secret service. That doesn't mean they'll come knocking on your door if you deposit a single tainted note, it just tells them that the note somehow made it to your locality. But if you deposited a ton of them all at once? Yes you'd probably get a visit and some very pointed questions on where you got them and how. This has happened a few times when people found cash from robberies (the D.B cooper case being one). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper#Recovered_ransom_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper#Recovered_ransom_... Most people have probably deposited a counterfeit bill and never known it too. Again singular bills are not a problem. They just tell the secret service to keep an eye on that locality and potentially contact businesses that saw the counterfeits come in assuming those businesses didn't flag it themselves.

jeffbee 4y ago

There's a reason that you can't walk into Goldman Sachs and open a trading account with a box full of cash. They can't tell where it came from. In certain respects, cash is sanctioned.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

giaour 4y ago

> If the government said “we’re now keeping a database of cash serial numbers that are hereby banned” would everyone need to install the “cash checker” app and scan each bill they receive? This database exists, but only banks and police evidence clerks check cash against it. > Cash itself has never been sanctioned though? Most countries have a strict limit on the amount of cash you're allowed to carry over the border.

cesarb 4y ago

> If the government said “we’re now keeping a database of cash serial numbers that are hereby banned” would everyone need to install the “cash checker” app and scan each bill they receive? I recall something like that happening when I was younger. This was long ago, in the pre-Internet days, so unfortunately I haven't been able to find anything about it online; this is only my distant recollection. There was a theft of a large amount of new bank notes, which hadn't yet entered circulation. The government distributed a list of the ranges of bank notes (since the notes were newly printed, they were in large sequential ranges), and every cashier in the whole country (for instance, in supermarkets) had to check every note they received against that list; since the notes in question hadn't entered circulation yet, they could be treated as if they were counterfeit. (Since as far as I recall this happened back in the hyperinflation days, and the whole currency has been replaced one or more times since then, there is no longer any need to check against that list.)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]