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As someone who grew up in a country where hundreds of millions of $$$ were stolen from the people by the government officials, and than transported illegally ou

As someone who grew up in a country where hundreds of millions of $$$ were stolen from the people by the government officials, and than transported illegally out of the country - I can tell you you're very naive about how openly these high-level international crime deals are done. What they did was simply load the money in an airplane and fly them to a small, corrupted country (Cyprus in this case) where the banks and the local government were in the deal for a cut. No need for bitcoins or any other technology that leaves easy to follow traces. Just paid everyone a cut, probably someone in the West too, since country was under UN sanctions at the time. And money was never recovered, nor anyone got prosecuted for it, of course.

throwaway290 4y ago
As a Russian I can tell you and everyone else drawing parallels with the past forget there were no sanctions at the scale as currently applied to putin and there were no crypto at the time. If there were strict sanctions in place, they would not be able to fly to cyprus as you say. And if there was crypto, they would be far more efficient at doing what you describe because they don't even need to pay for the planes and a bunch of people to move cash (people who steal it and can leak the information). And people called me naive in this thread. The real or faked naivety of crypto pushers is what knows no limits...
- subsistence234 4y ago
  >And if there was crypto, they would be far more efficient at doing what you describe because they don't even need to pay for the planes They would however need to find people that can sell bitcoins to them. Let's say a corrupt dictatorship wants to turn their $1T of criminal/stolen assets into BTC. How are they gonna do that?
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    > They would however need to find people that can sell bitcoins to them. I hope you don't think they'd go around writing "zdrastvuite zis is putin can you sell some bitcoins" with strong slavic accent :) > Let's say a corrupt dictatorship wants to turn their $1T of criminal/stolen assets into BTC. How are they gonna do that? Give somebody ruble in exchange for bitcoins. Maybe even have a handy russian in charge of a crypto exchange (that's probably what got localbitcoins shut down in the first place). Remember how they made it impossible to store or withdraw lots of foreign currency? I bet it helps demand for ruble. Pegging ruble exchange rate probably helps too, remember how after rising to more than 100 rub somehow dollar is now worth 60 rub (only in Russia of course, good luck selling ruble anywhere else).

throwaway290 4y ago

As a Russian I can tell you and everyone else drawing parallels with the past forget there were no sanctions at the scale as currently applied to putin and there were no crypto at the time. If there were strict sanctions in place, they would not be able to fly to cyprus as you say. And if there was crypto, they would be far more efficient at doing what you describe because they don't even need to pay for the planes and a bunch of people to move cash (people who steal it and can leak the information). And people called me naive in this thread. The real or faked naivety of crypto pushers is what knows no limits...

subsistence234 4y ago
>And if there was crypto, they would be far more efficient at doing what you describe because they don't even need to pay for the planes They would however need to find people that can sell bitcoins to them. Let's say a corrupt dictatorship wants to turn their $1T of criminal/stolen assets into BTC. How are they gonna do that?
- throwaway290 4y ago
  > They would however need to find people that can sell bitcoins to them. I hope you don't think they'd go around writing "zdrastvuite zis is putin can you sell some bitcoins" with strong slavic accent :) > Let's say a corrupt dictatorship wants to turn their $1T of criminal/stolen assets into BTC. How are they gonna do that? Give somebody ruble in exchange for bitcoins. Maybe even have a handy russian in charge of a crypto exchange (that's probably what got localbitcoins shut down in the first place). Remember how they made it impossible to store or withdraw lots of foreign currency? I bet it helps demand for ruble. Pegging ruble exchange rate probably helps too, remember how after rising to more than 100 rub somehow dollar is now worth 60 rub (only in Russia of course, good luck selling ruble anywhere else).