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Isn't this like the #1 use case for crypto? Everyone wants an untrackable unblockable currency that is out of government control until the day it is used for t

• garrettgarcia 8mo ago
  It's clearly not untrackable. It's never been untrackable. That's how they know it went to Iran.
  • paxys 8mo ago
    Only because in this case they used a centralized exchange. The amount of actual circulation to countries like Iran and North Korea is likely many orders of magnitude higher that what is knowable.
    • idontwantthis 8mo ago
      Every single transaction is public information. If you carry a wallet into Iran, and it's coins are used through 20 different transactions to purchase weapons, all of those can be traced back to their origin.
      • arcanemachiner 8mo ago
        Well, that depends on which cryptocurrency is used, doesn't it?
      • cammikebrown 8mo ago
        Not if they used Monero
      • paxys 8mo ago
        That's like saying every currency note is traceable because it has a serial number. If someone hands you a dollar today can you trace it starting from where it was printed to everything it was used for until it eventually got into your hands? Yeah you can look up bitcoin wallet IDs on the ledger, but you can also generate an unlimited number of wallets, and pass coins in any combination through any number of mixers and tumblers, and exchange it between multiple currencies (some of them truly untrackable). If people or organizations want to stay anonymous in the crypto ecosystem they can very easily do so.
        • kelseyfrog 8mo ago
          Except none of that happened. It didn't stay anonymous, it just went to Iran.
          • paxys 8mo ago
            Did not happen != cannot happen
            • deleted 8mo ago
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            • kelseyfrog 8mo ago
              A lot of things can happen, but what did happen is the coins went to Iran.
        • MarsIronPI 8mo ago
          The difference is that with cash we don't write the serial number of every bill for every transaction in an easily-accessible central ledger. There's no such thing as an off-the-books Bitcoin transaction, by nature.
          • thinkmassive 8mo ago
            Most bitcoin transactions actually happen off-chain (aka "off the books"), mostly through exchanges but also through decentralized layers like Lightning Network. It's also possible to physically transfer value by exchanging a signing device or seed phrase.
    • ozgrakkurt 8mo ago
      I don’t understand the point of this. It is no different than traditional finance. People do and did transfer drug money before and they will keep transferring drug money. I don’t see what blockchain has to do with that. On the other hand, I use blockchain personally for completely legal purposes and find it very useful. Easy to do international transfers, easy to buy different currencies even if local government is trying to make it hard. Also I have more trust in it compared to countries that I live in or travel to. Another big aspect of it is no hidden costs and borderline scamming behavior I get from credit card companies or banks when doing international spending or transfers. This is not even about the insane prices, the feeling of getting scammed is even worse. Also it is literally governments reason of existence to preserve order and catch criminals. Banning everything used by criminals is insanely stupid. Same idea with cryptography, same with internet, same with cash.
    • torginus 8mo ago
      I know some pretty sharp folks who fork for various police departments chasing illicit crypto related activity. The amount of stuff they can track including timing of transactions, entry and exit points, etc, and so over a long period of time means that most of the traditional anyonmization methods like tumblers simply do not work. Eventually someone, somewhere makes a mistake and the transactions and wallets can be traced. If you have dirty money to hide, it's much better to hide it in a bank in Panama, or fill a sports bag with gold bars and fly it out on your private jet than use crypto. Anything you can do from your bedroom, police can track from theirs.
      • 0x3f 8mo ago
        By definition the police only ever detect and catch those they are capable of detecting and catching. It's entirely in their interest to let people believe their capabilities are much greater than they really are. That goes double for the companies that sell this technology to the police.
      • MarsIronPI 8mo ago
        Including sending and receiving Monero? (This is a serious question; I don't have a perspective on this yet.)
      • MASNeo 8mo ago
        I am working to track and trace and time transactions and while this is possible when and if you know the identity of at least one participant it’s quite another thing when no identity is known at all. Criminals know that so it’s notoriously hard to pull off. Thanks to Daleware secrecy and lax Super PAC rules to disclose sources of funds it’s not going to get easier. So either your friends are genius saucers or they have effective government intelligence that would be highly appreciated. I’d be interested. You are spot on regarding the bedroom though. Exporting physical USD is far more lucrative, by the shipload, often by Chinese Money Laundering Organisations, for free.
        • lucketone 8mo ago
          There is a third option, that those being tracked make mistakes
    • basilikum 8mo ago
      Bitcoin is traceable by design. That's how a public ledger works. It is merely pseudonymous. But it leaves complete public money trail. If your Bitcoin ever associate with your real identity, which they tend to do when you actually use them, your anonymity is gone. There is a reason why Monero exists.
      • paxys 8mo ago
        The ledger is traceable, the coin is not. Not all transactions have to happen on the blockchain. In fact very few do. If I put $80m worth of BTC in my hardware wallet and physically hand it to you in exchange for a truck full of black market rockets, who is going to trace it?
        • npoc 8mo ago
          Why would anyone accept a private key as payment? It's not very private if you gave it to me.
        • basilikum 8mo ago
          Transferring private keys defeats the point of Bitcoin. The whole reason for the whole ledger and PoW thing is to prevent double spend. Lightning is an attempt to do that in a more efficient and potentially private way. But why would I ever accept your private keys as payment without transferring the coins out to my wallet on chain?
          • deleted 8mo ago
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• ericbuildsio 8mo ago
  Could someone explain to me where the myth of "crypto = untrackable" comes from, and why it's still being perpetuated? Storing a record of every single transaction on a publicly accessible blockchain sounds trackable by design
  • subscribed 8mo ago
    In the case of bitcoin, surely. Some other coins not so much trackable, and that's the reason some countries don't like them: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/binance-delist-monero-zcash-4-153904972.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/binance-delist-monero-zcash-4...
    • ericbuildsio 8mo ago
      Fascinating, I didn't know that Zcash / Monero worked that way. Thanks!
    • paxys 8mo ago
      Also not true in the case of bitcoin. If I want to transfer money to you I don't have to do it on the chain. I can send you the private key of my wallet in whatever way I want and now you have the bitcoin, zero tracking.
      • Jyaif 8mo ago
        That's not transferring the bitcoin, that's giving potentially temporary shared access to the bitcoin. The other party then needs to transfer the bitcoin to make sure the original party doesn't use it.
  • nytesky 8mo ago
    I think it’s part of the Origin Story. Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto almost 20 years ago. There are a number of wallets that people believe belong to Satoshi (have they proven they belong to SN?) Yet the identification of Satoshi has eluded a global hunt to identify him. Maybe law enforcement has not been involved, but the mystery definitely suggests that BitCoin can help mask identity.
• torginus 8mo ago
  Can't anyone basically sanction entire wallets, and mark them, and make some legislation that any transaction involving coins originating from those wallets be rejected by all payment processors and exchanges in regulated markets? I mean, they obviously can, but probably they have elected not to do so. But if crypto becomes a tool in the hands of enemy nation states, such regulation can't be soo far off. Though that would create a secondary market for these 'tainted' coins, and would probably have far-reaching consequences into the crypto ecosystem.
  • wat10000 8mo ago
    You can't track individual coins, so you'd have to "taint" entire wallets. Using a mixer would taint the mixer and every wallet it sent to. I'd think this would end up tainting almost everything before too long. Bitcoin also doesn't require the receiver to authorize a transaction, so if you had control of a tainted wallet, you could taint other wallets at will, wielding it like a weapon. Doesn't seem feasible. Not that this always stops legislators.
    • StopDisinfo910 8mo ago
      > Using a mixer would taint the mixer and every wallet it sent to. I'd think this would end up tainting almost everything before too long. Is that actually an issue? I am looking for it but I can't see a downside.
      • 0x3f 8mo ago
        It was at least in theory an issue when they tried to sanction mixers. In fact people would purposely send tainted crypto to well known wallet addresses of celebrities etc. making them technically run afoul of OFAC
      • wat10000 8mo ago
        Depends on your goal. If you want to keep the system going while blocking "dirty" money, it's not going to work. If you want to use that as a stealth method of banning the whole system, then full steam ahead.
• wat10000 8mo ago
  It seems to me that the people who want the unblockable currency out of government control are not the same people who want to block money transfers to countries like Iran.
• EA-3167 8mo ago
  I'd argue the #1 use case is ransomware and scamming, but this has to be a close second. Honestly the journey from "The blockchain is the future, everyone must see that" to where we are now really feels like the one we're taking with 'AI'. In the end it will still exist, but the use case is going to be so much less inspiring than people want to believe, outside of medical and fundamental research at least.
• chihuahua 8mo ago
  I thought the #1 use case for crypto was ransomware, followed by shitcoin rug-pulls, and the ability to commit theft without recourse. Sending money to Iran is just a minor edge case.
  • hilliardfarmer 8mo ago
    What a deeply troubling and cynical comment. As far as I know, nowhere in the Bitcoin white paper or the original code base. Does it say anything about what you seem to think it's use cases are. Bitcoin has one main use, digital cash, that can be sent instantly and for free or a very low fee. Edit: I would agree though, that anything other than that is probably a scam.
    • natpalmer1776 8mo ago
      Men of principles often mistake the experience and observations of others for cynicism when it does not align with said principles. This applies to a great deal, not just bitcoin.
      • toomuchtodo 8mo ago
        Relevant citations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality "We must take the world as it is and not as we would like it to be." - Maurice Allais
      • slopinthebag 8mo ago
        So the USD as well?
      • hilliardfarmer 8mo ago
        Thank you, had to ready this 3 times but wow, well said!!!
    • 8mo ago
• fredgrott 8mo ago
  you mean its not used for the Paul brothers latest meme coin rug pulls?
• deleted 8mo ago
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• wnevets 8mo ago
  > Isn't this like the #1 use case for crypto? What is even the point of crypto if you can't commit crimes with it?
• moralestapia 8mo ago
  What's funny is that Bitcoin/Ethereum are now the most tracked ledgers on the planet. If I wanted to do some shady value exchange it would be my last choice.
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• dpedu 8mo ago
  Not just the #1 use case, the only use case. Real money is better in every scenario other than crime.
• bigstrat2003 8mo ago
  The #1 use case for crypto is that it's anonymous like cash. And yes, this enables people to use it for crime... just like they use cash. The unavoidable cost of freedom has always been that some people will misuse it. Personally, I would rather have freedom even if it gets misused than not have freedom even if it means crime is over.
  • throw0101a 8mo ago
    > The #1 use case for crypto is that it's anonymous like cash. And yes, this enables people to use it for crime... just like they use cash. Not quite like cash: collecting and transferring US$1.7B in cash—actual physical paper—is probably more logistically challenging than BTC. I understand the argument for freedom, but depending on the scale/dosage many things that could be fine in small quantities aren't as good in large ones.
  • hn_acc1 8mo ago
    I'll bet $100 that the percentage of crypto used for crime is higher than the percentage of cash used for crime.
    • fluoridation 8mo ago
      Mmh... What do you mean by percentage? Over the amount transacted per day, or over the total supply?
• jacobjjacob 8mo ago
  It’s 100% trackable. It’s anonymous but there are many datapoints that could be used to deanonymize if the transaction parties are not extremely careful
  • carshodev 8mo ago
    Exchanges are not anonymous at all though. They are directly linked to your identity as required by US law, but physical btc can be traded anonymously as its technically just a string of letters and numbers. You could transact with it through just telling someone this string if you trust them enough.
• expedition32 8mo ago
  Money laundering is only good when our people are doing it.
• cs702 8mo ago
  It's also the #1 use case for $100 US dollar bills. Most US $100 bills, in fact, are not even in the US.[a][b] US $100 bills are the currency of choice for small-time crooks and evildoers around the world. They are also the currency of choice for big-time crooks and evildoers. Briefcases of US $100 bills have long been used for illicit payments, as depicted in numerous books and movies. Just because crooks and evildoers use US $100 bills doesn't mean they are not useful and valuable to honest people too. What Binance did was wrong, no doubt, but Binance ≠ crypto. -- [a] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2022/oct/innocent-greenbacks-abroad-us-currency-held-internationally https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2022/oct/innocent-... [b] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/12/177051690/most-100-bills-live-outside-the-u-s https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/12/177051690/most...
  • dylan604 8mo ago
    > Just because criminals and evildoers use US $100 bills doesn't mean they are not useful and valuable to honest people too. Like all of the ATMs near a dispensary that was always out of cash because 20 individual $20 bills runs out a lot faster than 4 $100 bills. Until dispensaries became legal, it was rare for me to see an ATM with anything other than $20s. Now, I see $20, $50, $100 dispensing machines regularly.
    • michaelt 8mo ago
      > Now, I see $20, $50, $100 dispensing machines regularly. There's also been a lot of inflation. If you held a $50 bill in 1997, or a $20 bill in 1978, then you held a note worth more than a $100 bill today.
  • crazygringo 8mo ago
    There's a major distinction, however, in that it's a heck of a lot harder to safely and reliably lug briefcases or suitcases full of $100 bills from Chicago to Tehran, than it is to click and transfer some Bitcoin. Which is the whole point.
    • cs702 8mo ago
• carshodev 8mo ago
  Unblockable yes, untrackable no. Also portable is the main ability of crypto. The reason that this could be found out is because every transaction is recorded so it can be linked back through the chain once it hits another exchange that is KYC'd. If I have a gold watch and I wear it through the airport go to turkey melt it down and give it to an iranian, then buy a fake watch and return home noone will every know that this transaction took place. This would be 100% impossible to track in any reasonable manner. If I went to an exchange transfered bitcoin to a person then they spent this bitcoin in a way that linked it to their identity this would provide a full audit trail that would link me to that person. Also this audit trail could NEVER be removed or altered. There are ways to use bitcoin in an untracable manner just like gold, you can have a cold wallet and transfer the keys to someone else. The cold wallet password could be only memorized and thus have no physical trace and no transaction record could take place whatsoever, but this is the OPPOSITE of what an exchange does. Also cash and bank systems are not as resistant, they can fail, be hacked, be altered, people can use shell companies and fake identities. Some cryptos like monero try and hide the transaction path but even this crypto has some vulnerabilities making linking it to people possible in some cases.
• bko 8mo ago
  > Everyone wants an untrackable unblockable currency What are you talking about? Crypto is defined by its trackability (immutable, permission-less, verifiable ledger of every transaction in history). Please refrain from commenting on things you're unfamiliar with.
  • dmantis 8mo ago
    That's not universally true, there is a class of privacy coins whose txs are not (at least in theory) traceable. I'd argue that's actually a more anarchist original view and transparent ledger is a bug of the first implementation, not a feature, and creates problem of the original money people are trying to solve (i.e. have electronic money without a government overreach, US using modern banking system as a political pressure tool, etc)
• slopinthebag 8mo ago
  Yes it's the #1 use case, in the same sense that the #1 use case of a free and open internet is criminal activity.
• mvdtnz 8mo ago
  Certainly in the top 5 along with child pornography, illegal gambling, drug pedalling and ransomware.