[HN Gopher] The rise of crypto laundries: how criminals cash out...
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The rise of crypto laundries: how criminals cash out of Bitcoin
Author : tokyoseb
Score : 201 points
Date : 2021-05-28 11:00 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I may be biased since I am holding and mining crypto, but I find
| recent slew of articles talking up the evils of crypto amusing.
| From eco evils to national security. Crypto is the culprit and
| banning it will bring salvation.
|
| Just today my superior shared WSJ opinion piece saying it should
| be banned altogether. I genuinely chuckled. It was ignored for so
| long, but only now when it may be genuinely hard to just put
| down, because real players joined the fray, did the offensive PR
| started.
| jayd16 wrote:
| >It was ignored for so long, but
|
| Its easy to ignore a bad but unpopular thing. As the bad thing
| gets popular, more will be written about it. Pretty straight
| forward process.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| I am pretty sure all the crypto in the world would not be
| enough to maintain well documented laundering schemes that
| cartels use.
| entropic88 wrote:
| It's not just a recent slew of articles - calls to ban and
| framing it as tools for criminals and terrorists has been
| repeated like a broken record for a decade now.
| brabel wrote:
| That might be your bubble , because in mine, I've seen
| cryptocoins being attacked for as long as I've known about
| them.
|
| It's not that banning it will bring salvation, it's just that
| it's one less evil to worry about, with no clear downsides as
| crypto really isn't used for anything good.
| _wldu wrote:
| The same argument could be made for banning Tor. I disagree,
| though, as these technologies can be and are used for
| good/normal things. Not everyone is running guns, evading
| taxes or selling drugs. In fact, most people aren't.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| They were attacked, but about two years ago it was an attack
| along the lines of 'Pfft, how can random mathematical
| equation busy work determine value?', which was a lot more
| reasonable. Current articles go for the emotional stuff.
| nickpp wrote:
| "First they ignore you"...
|
| We are fast approaching the "fight you" stage.
| [deleted]
| vyrotek wrote:
| After learning about how expensive stolen art is exchanged as a
| proxy for cash from "This is a robbery" on Netflix I started to
| wonder if laundering is really needed with crypto. There are
| probably clever ways to just exchange wallet ownership instead.
| vmception wrote:
| Yep. Anybody that is watching funds move across addresses has
| no idea what they are doing. They rely on assuming that the
| funds still have the same ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) who
| is trying to hide, when that couldn't be further from the
| truth.
|
| Anybody that claims they know is just trying to scam a
| government for a lucrative blockchain analysis contract. Just
| another crypto entrepreneur aiming to leak fiat out of the
| system, even while pretending to act like an adversary to
| crypto users.
|
| The reality is that:
|
| A) the UBO either isn't trying to hide because they can acquire
| the goods and services they want without laundering (other
| tokens, governance control of a crypto network, passive income,
| digital art, using the dirty funds to pump other tokens that
| they already own with clean money allowing them to derive
| entrepreneurial or trading genius benefits)
|
| B) the UBO know they can launder whenever they feel like it or
| get around to it
|
| C) the funds have already changed UBOs to people that were not
| involved and shouldn't be tracked, because A) and B) already
| happened onchain or offchain
| takeda wrote:
| The thing is that wallet is digital. If I hand you an USB
| stick with the wallet, that doesn't mean I no longer have it.
| The USB could be a copy of it and I could still withdraw the
| money. To be sure that doesn't happen the new owner would
| need to transfer money to another wallet. Unless there's a
| high trust that this won't be done.
| vmception wrote:
| Yes, crypto can operate in a temporarily trusted
| environment.
|
| What I was describing here wasn't that, I am referring to
| onchain transfers in trade for goods and services. (Part C
| could also be hand to hand trusted transfer of a
| wallet/private key)
|
| Chain analysis still assumes that its the same owner or
| related guilty beneficiary all the way to a centralized
| exchange.
| DennisP wrote:
| The trouble is, there's no way to know that the seller threw
| away their copy of the private key.
| vmception wrote:
| The point is that crypto can operate in a temporarily trusted
| environment. The subsequent owner does need to rotate
| addresses as soon as possible. It is the blockchain analysis
| that can't tell the difference between the prior owner moving
| to another address that prior owner controls, or a different
| owner moving addresses.
| DennisP wrote:
| There's little practical difference between:
|
| a) I give you my wallet, and you immediately send the coins
| to a new address to protect against my (potential) copy of
| the wallet, or
|
| b) I just send the coins to your new address myself.
|
| Either way, the blockchain records a transfer from my
| address to your new address.
| vmception wrote:
| The difference is in the liability incurred.
|
| So you're the blockchain analysis firm for the Department
| of Justice, and you're like "omg omg look the coins are
| moving! omg omg look its going to a centralized exchange
| account lets go subpoena the records and find out who has
| the KYC and identifying information behind that account."
|
| DOJ busts down the door "aha! got you!"
|
| If it was the person that actually hacked or did drug
| trafficking, then they found that person and charge them
| with that, wire fraud, money laundering etc.
|
| If it was just the recipient then the investigation is
| still ongoing and much lesser charges are possible. The
| DOJ would at best case try to find out who the "kingpin"
| is by overcharging the second person, but the primary
| observation is that the DOJ has not stopped any
| particular activity. Either way, its still not quite what
| happens:
|
| The reality is that it is many hops between unrelated
| people before it hits a centralized exchange that is
| subpoena-able at all. People.don't.need.or.want.fiat.
| Especially not a lot of it at any given time. Even hedge
| funds take in-kind investments of crypto to create a new
| limited partner. People don't need to cash out first and
| then invest that cash.
| DennisP wrote:
| I'm saying there is literally zero difference on chain
| between the two scenarios.
| vmception wrote:
| onchain, correct, it is indistinguishable.
|
| the reality offchain can be very different, I was trying
| to make clear just in case you or others that didn't
| catch that. but I think we're agreeing on everything.
| jack_pp wrote:
| I always wondered about this but can't criminals just get
| some kyc info from the black market or even some homeless
| person and withdraw money in that person's name? Why
| bother with obfuscating wallets chain hopping if all that
| matters is to not be asociated with the name that
| ultimately withdraws from an exchange
| vmception wrote:
| Going back to your question, then why bother with the
| other stuff?
|
| Not everyone wants fiat. Not now, not eventually. They
| are able to obtain goods and services in crypto. They are
| able to pay developers, buy games, invest in other
| crypto/projects ensuring the success or perception of
| success of people they like, control crypto networks with
| voting power, create exchanges and other infrastructure.
| There is no "eventually buy a multimillion dollar house
| how do I do that inconspicuously or maybe I can buy it
| with crypto in the future". It's just recognizing that it
| is possible whenever you want, but also not a priority or
| a necessary addition to what people value in this world.
|
| It's fungible _enough_ for all the purposes that many
| individuals with dirty crypto or organizations with dirty
| crypto care about.
| vmception wrote:
| They can and do. You can buy "Fullz" which are a random
| ID leaked from a prior massive hack or just plain old
| phishing, and create exchange accounts. Any new darknet
| marketplace merchant starts off by selling Fullz and
| tutorials for like $1 and to get their reputation up.
|
| I would say the lack of major prosecutions on this is
| because criminals still launder the money first and don't
| want to frame people (or have the exchange account frozen
| so soon), and DA/prosecutors use their discretion to tell
| when its unlikely the person in question was the actual
| person they are looking for, for now. Some people likely
| are getting framed, judging from televised arbitration
| shows like Judge Judy where the entertainer keeps cutting
| off the defendant who calmly says their bank account was
| compromised, and awards everything to the plaintiff.
|
| This isn't crypto specific and is for bank and brokerage
| accounts too. Most darknet money-isolating tutorials talk
| about trading stocks in a brokerage account with
| stolen/recreated credentials as well.
|
| Unless an account in your name wire transferred money
| directly for a shipping container full of cocaine, you
| would never find out that someone has opened a
| bank/brokerage/crypto account in your name and was
| operating it like a normal person accumulating money and
| occasionally trading.
|
| Think of it like being a victim of identity fraud but the
| fraudster improves your credit score by acting normally
| and responsibly for you. That's literally whats happening
| pretty often.
| derefr wrote:
| Laundering is needed if you want to (enable the people you
| trade with to) ever spend the black-market money on white-
| market goods.
|
| Without that, your trading partner ends up holding a "dirty"
| wallet -- just as if you gave them a suitcase full of marked
| bills.
|
| That wallet still holds value -- all dirty money does -- but
| it's a lot _less_ value than cleaned money.
|
| Databases of stolen credit card numbers sell for not-much
| money. It's not just because you need stuff set up to drain the
| cards; it's because the money you drain from the cards is
| dirty. The dirty money is worth only about as much as the
| database itself. It's when you clean it that it attains "face
| value."
| rokobobo wrote:
| And the idea with stolen art is that "dirty art" should
| theoretically always trade at roughly the same discount to
| "clean art," and in fact, over time, as gaps in the
| provenance become easier to patch up through fabrication, the
| discount should reduce. In that sense, "dirty art" is an
| investment, so the immoral of the super-rich are fine holding
| it forever. Also, no need to pay estate taxes if it's already
| an undisclosed asset on a yacht somewhere.
| vmception wrote:
| The XMR to sXMR bridge is live and applauded by both the Monero
| community and Secret Network community
|
| Secret Network also has an AMM called SecretSwap for exchange to
| any other asset
|
| All smart contract execution on the secret network is private, as
| in the variables and current state is not stored on chain for
| perusal, all assets are smart contracts
| digianarchist wrote:
| Is the Monero community still working on atomic-swaps? If the
| can pull that off it would make it very difficult to trace
| money laundering activities.
| vmception wrote:
| This would be one rendition of one
|
| It is more so that the Secret Network is able to basically
| shard a Monero multi-signature address across the SGX chips
| that the validators are required to have, and from consensus
| mint or burn sXMR when XMR is deposited or withdrawn
| ChrisClark wrote:
| They actually just launched XMR/BTC atomic swaps today. So
| I'm sure a bunch of atomic swap tech on Monero is now
| possible.
| kasperni wrote:
| https://archive.is/4U02A
| speedcoder wrote:
| Thank you for version not behind pay wall. I was worried I'd
| have to pay in BTC.
| jason0597 wrote:
| I'm curious for the day when Monero overtakes Bitcoin as the
| primary cryptocurrency for illegal dealings. Then law enforcement
| will truly be hopeless.
|
| Some drug markets are already dealing in Monero only. It's just a
| matter of time before more people catch on.
| Taek wrote:
| Analytic techniques are getting better and the cutting edge
| research strongly suggests that to a sufficiently sophisticated
| attacker, Monero is fundamentally about as private as bitcoin.
|
| Zcash from a theoretical perspective is a lot stronger, but I
| believe from a practical perspective (due to things like
| weaknesses in the mempool privacy) is also not very private.
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| >Monero is fundamentally about as private as bitcoin.
|
| That's contrary to what I've read, care to expand? As far as
| I know the IRS is still offering a bounty to crack Monero
| Taek wrote:
| https://gist.github.com/DavidVorick/0dbd4906bfa50b7d8dba23f
| 7...
| hanniabu wrote:
| > due to things like weaknesses in the mempool privacy
|
| What weaknesses? Anything besides IP?
| stiltzkin wrote:
| I believe Ether will overtake BTC first as primary
| cryptocurrency, but XMR will play a big role as an altcoin too.
| m00dy wrote:
| I can tell one of the ways that is missing in the article.
|
| Let's say, you have a lot of Bitcoins and your buddy is a bitcoin
| miner. You craft your transaction such a way that you put all
| your coins as transaction fee. You send your transaction only to
| your buddy. Your buddy picks it up and solves the puzzle
| afterwards. Fees will be converted to brand new coins.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| What's the point? It's not hidden after block is mined. You
| would hide your trace if blockchain analysis tools did not
| account for that use-case, but that's probably a known method.
| flotzam wrote:
| Brand new coins, but wouldn't they still look suspicious if the
| block's coinbase is outlandishly large?
| aqme28 wrote:
| That used to be common before wallets got better. People
| would accidentally set the fee way too high every once in a
| while.
| Taek wrote:
| Also you'd be able to see which transaction paid the large
| fee and what the history is.
|
| Might go unnoticed if the original coins weren't suspicious,
| but if an investigator is already looking at the original
| transaction because they suspect it was involved in crime,
| this type of jump is unlikely to throw them off the trail.
| vmception wrote:
| It will literally be international news (in crypto circles)
| when a transaction like that gets mined.
|
| People frantically contact all the mining pools to see who
| mined it and if they will return the funds to the sending
| address.
|
| This has happened many times and they usually do return it,
| because people have nearly universal consensus that it was a
| mistake.
|
| Kind of not a great way because it is too conspicuous.
|
| There was one time this happened that was interesting and
| intended to be conspicuous:
|
| Some hackers got access to an exchange, but the exchange had
| some pretty good security and would not let them withdraw large
| amounts, but the hackers could set the transaction fee. So they
| started burning all the exchange's money by distributing them
| to miners with this high transaction fee, to let the exchange
| know they were serious and needed their demands met.
|
| Could they have coordinated with a miner and nobody would be
| the wiser? Sure.
| latchkey wrote:
| This is effectively MEV on ETH. Happens all the time.
| mgerullis wrote:
| Is it possible to send out transactions without sending them to
| the mempool?
| alcio wrote:
| yes, you can email it to your miner buddy.
|
| it's possible to spot such transactions if they violate
| transaction forwarding rules (aka standardness rules) but not
| consensus rules. for example, a transaction greater than
| 100kB is not standard but still valid.
| Taek wrote:
| Law enforcement watches the mempool, they can spot such
| transactions anyway because they know it didn't ever show
| up in their mempool logs.
| mgerullis wrote:
| Ok but is it really illegal? I doubt there's a law on who
| can send who private BTC transactions? Or is it actually
| possible to mark this as laundering?
| Taek wrote:
| There's nothing illegal here. The goal of privacy is to
| avoid giving anyone a reason to suspect something. In the
| case of money laundering specifically, you want to turn
| money that looks extremely suspicious into money that
| doesn't look suspicious at all.
|
| Little tiny 'gotchas' aren't going to save you from a
| determined investigator. They are trying to follow a
| trail of evidence so they can produce more evidence. What
| you need is a clean break, so that the investigator hits
| a dead end and has no productive leads they can follow.
| mgerullis wrote:
| Yeah but wouldn't it require some kind of fork of the BTC
| software (not chain) to actually include this transaction
| without sending it to everyone else?
| walls wrote:
| The transaction is valid to all miners, it just isn't
| shared with the network until your buddy finds a block
| that includes it.
| b10c wrote:
| I've build a tool to detect differences between _my local_
| mempool and what miners include in their block (there will
| always be slight differences). This is primarily intended
| to detect censorship, but can also detect transactions that
| never entered _my_ mempool.
|
| See https://miningpool.observer
| neb_b wrote:
| This is really neat. Have you thought about trying to
| bundle it as an app that can be downloaded on umbrel?
| b10c wrote:
| Yes! Will be on umbrel eventually. Currently needs a
| Bitcoin Core build from the master branch. The features
| use should be in the upcoming release. Then Umbrel!
| JefffJohn555 wrote:
| Brilliant! I remember thinking about this problem a few
| years back: what stops miners of a blockchain just
| ignoring transactions/anything from certain entities. So
| it's good that there exists a way to track such
| behaviour, if it is occurring.
| martinko wrote:
| Economics. If miners consistently ignore certain
| transactions, there is space for new miners to enter the
| market and earn super-normal profit. After the next
| difficulty adjustment cycle, the old, censoring miners
| may be priced out.
| crispyporkbites wrote:
| I don't think that works at all? Your buddy would have to mine
| that specific block to get the reward, which is based entirely
| on chance. You'd also have to spend as much on the POW
| electricity and hardware to have a chance of getting reward
| anyway.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Yeah unless your buddy is a mining pool, I don't follow how
| that would work as well.
| Aissen wrote:
| Yup, for Bitcoin it would mean having the mining power of a
| big pool, indeed.
| Retric wrote:
| No, just a secret block that isn't broadcast to everyone.
| 1 block a week is plenty to pull this off and that's just
| 1/1,000th of the worlds mining power. Unless you get
| really unlucky and the block fails to enter the block
| chain letting someone else gets credit for the
| transaction.
| Taek wrote:
| If you're really patient (and many big time criminals
| are), you only need to mine once every few months, maybe
| once a year or less. That's still hundreds of thousands
| of dollars of mining equipment, but well in reach for
| many.
| Aissen wrote:
| I'm curious what it's like, so here is a small
| calculation. Some metrics:
|
| - 144 blocks per day are mined on average
|
| - the current network hashrate is 145M TH/s
|
| - a 100 TH/s rig is about $10k.
|
| The investment to be able to have full control of mining
| one block on average, without electricity, internet and
| storage :
|
| - per week: you'd need 143k TH/s (145M / (144 * 7)), so
| about $14M of investment in just the mining rig (provided
| you can buy it all)
|
| - per month: you'd need 33k TH/s, so $3M of mining rig
| investment.
|
| - per year: you'd need 2.7k TH/s, so about $270k in
| mining rig equipment.
|
| Of course, there are a lot of variables here (e.g
| hashrate is highly variable), but this gives a general
| idea.
|
| All this for a "washing" method that heavily implicates
| the miner: the address of the new coins is still known,
| it's not really "clean", just an unusual transaction.
| latchkey wrote:
| Now run the same numbers for ETH.
| Aissen wrote:
| If you know you mine blocks regularly (e.g once per day or
| week), it's entirely doable. It's the miners who chose what
| transactions go into a block. In this scheme, the transaction
| is "secret", only one miner received it.
| goldenkey wrote:
| The transaction isn't secret after it gets mined in the
| block and added to everyone's main chain. The only use of
| this would be to conceal one's IP for the transaction
| broadcast but it's really not necessary anyway because the
| bitcoin mesh network does a repeating broadcast from all
| peers to all peers, of all transactions in the mempool.
| Just use a secure connection and only broadcast to a single
| peer that you can verify to be a standard "dumb client."
| Odds are they won't have any logging of IPs and will
| rebroadcast the transaction, which will propagate it to the
| entire network.
| exo762 wrote:
| You can still trace the money by looking at the block explorer.
| All you did is thrown them in coinbase address. This is no
| different from coinjoin.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Your "buddy" would have to be a large mining pool for this to
| work, and even then it would be noticeable on the blockchain
| that this happened.
|
| Worst idea to launder ever.
| legulere wrote:
| Could you wash bitcoin by colluding with miners? You create a big
| transaction with a high fee, but don't propagate it. You give the
| transaction only to the miner you colluded with. The miner gets
| the transaction fee which is seen as legit. They can now give you
| the good bitcoins and keep some of it for themselves.
| ccity88 wrote:
| I get that money laundering is always linked to criminal
| activity, but how have we always just accepted the lack of
| personal privacy when it comes to finance? Privacy is a feature,
| not a bug; and whilst crypto may not be the way forward, I hope
| one day we can reach a solution that has both privacy and also
| safety. The language used by law enforcement is quite alarming,
| it suggests that they should be privy to ALL transactions made,
| regardless of reasonable suspicion.
| kd913 wrote:
| Data can be stored, transparent but open for legitimate
| purposes. I don't think it's a good idea to go to the other
| extreme for complete anonymity in a case like this whether the
| consequences result in massive criminal activities.
|
| E.G. I trust my medical data to my doctor with some reasonable
| confidence they are using it responsibly.
|
| Same thing here, I can trust my financial institutions with my
| data, but I want it to be open to authorities to look for
| criminal activity. I would ideally like that data to be placed
| under some legislation a la the GDPR to ensure it's used
| responsibly.
|
| To be clear, I would much rather my data be sold to some
| advertisers than for corruption/criminal activity to exist.
| psychlops wrote:
| I prefer the innocent until proven guilty model.
| NateEag wrote:
| In the US legal system, that refers to whether you can be
| punished for a crime, not investigated for one.
| psychlops wrote:
| An investigation that would require a warrant. My point
| being that all activities should not be considered
| criminal by default thereby available for perusal without
| a legally provided reason. And only then if very narrow
| in scope.
| wpietri wrote:
| There's a difference between privacy and secrecy. If I'm
| involving my bank, what I'm doing is already not secret. My
| bank knows. But normally they keep those things private,
| because it's generally not anybody's business.
|
| There are occasions where society's interest in preventing
| crime outweighs personal privacy, and one way to look at that
| is that when something (like, say, ransomware) has an effect on
| other people, it can no longer be reasonably called private.
| When that happens, as long as there are reasonable checks and
| balances, I'm fine with banks giving out information,
| especially when it's organizations that generally respect the
| privacy of the people involved.
| meowface wrote:
| I think this is a valid argument. I also think a corollary
| argument is that it's also valid to decide not to use a bank,
| though, and do a lot of things purely through cryptocurrency
| even if you're not doing anything shady or illegal, since, as
| another comment says, "as long as there are reasonable checks
| and balances" isn't necessarily a guarantee you can always
| rely on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27315773
|
| >> but how have we always just accepted the lack of personal
| privacy when it comes to finance?
|
| >We didn't. This is something that has changed in the UK in
| my lifetime. Unless you were the subject of an investigation
| you didn't have to provide much detail to the tax
| authorities, and what you did provide was kept strictly
| separate from other areas of government.
|
| >There was an attempt to strike a balance with the emphasis
| on privacy. Nowadays the government thinks it is entitled to
| all the data all the time.
| wpietri wrote:
| People definitely have differing views on what "reasonable
| checks and balances" mean; here in the US we have whole
| movements of people with... strong opinions on the topic:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement
|
| I agree it's valid not to use a bank; one could try to
| conduct all one's business in cash. But in practice, people
| doing that are often doing something criminal, so people
| using cryptocurrency should not be surprised that they end
| up being treated with the same level of scrutiny as people
| running around with briefcases of cash. That is to say,
| their attempts at secrecy may result in a practical loss of
| privacy.
| meowface wrote:
| That's true. I personally don't mind using banks and
| don't mind them knowing what I do with my money and
| perhaps the government knowing as well. But I wouldn't
| necessarily judge someone who doesn't want to use one.
| rmah wrote:
| Money laundering is not always linked to criminal activity
| except in so far as money laundering it itself illegal. Many
| nations (and not just "third world" nations) have some pretty
| onerous restrictions of flow of capital. A lot of money
| laundering activity is simply people moving money between
| jurisdictions. Admittedly, sometimes (usually?) with illegal
| goals such as tax evasion, but not always.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Money laundering is linked to criminal activity by
| definition. It literally means introducing the proceeds of
| criminal activity into the legitimate financial system.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/moneylaundering.asp
| wpietri wrote:
| I think that's a good general definition. But sometimes
| people want to move capital unlinked to crime across
| borders. They then use exactly the same mechanisms money
| launderers use. If you have a term for that you like
| better, I'd be interested to hear it.
| irtigor wrote:
| That's only true if they are trying to avoid taxation,
| which is also ilegal (even if you think it is justified).
| Moving capital from a place to another doesn't use the
| same mechanisms of money laundering if done legally.
| wpietri wrote:
| That's not the case. As mentioned elsewhere in thread,
| some places have limits on capital movement.
| irtigor wrote:
| That's a good example that proves my point and the reason
| why I said "even if think it is justified", it doesn't
| matter if it is a cap/tax/whatever, it only uses the same
| mechanisms of money laundering because it is money
| laundering (they are trying to hide that that money is
| not clean/legal, that the reason it is illegal is because
| it was not supossed to legally leave the origin country
| instead of being drug money, makes no difference to the
| law, but morally could be ok to some).
| malka wrote:
| Then moving the capital is not legal.
| wpietri wrote:
| Sure, but they are not trying to avoid taxation, which is
| the claim I was addressing.
| seanhunter wrote:
| If it's not the proceeds of crime, but just money leaving
| because of unfavourable domestic policies, it's normally
| called "capital flight" rather than money laundering.
| vmception wrote:
| Obfuscation.
|
| One of my other comments might be useful for you in
| articulating this in the future:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27317593
| wpietri wrote:
| Just so people downvoting this have an example, India has
| strong restrictions on capital movement. So much so that once
| when I was leaving India the outgoing customs inspector had
| me open my wallet, noticed excess rupees, and helpfully
| relieved me of some of them before I got on the plane. And
| less colorfully, I know somebody whose parents would like to
| move to the US to spend more time with their kids, but they
| can't legally transfer enough money to buy a house near those
| kids.
|
| I honestly get why some countries have capital controls;
| rapid shifts in capital can be truly devastating to a small
| economy. And criminals are some of the people most eager to
| move large sums of money to other legal jurisdictions. But
| there are definitely cases where money laundering isn't
| linked to what most people would consider crime.
| ectopod wrote:
| > but how have we always just accepted the lack of personal
| privacy when it comes to finance?
|
| We didn't. This is something that has changed in the UK in my
| lifetime. Unless you were the subject of an investigation you
| didn't have to provide much detail to the tax authorities, and
| what you did provide was kept strictly separate from other
| areas of government.
|
| There was an attempt to strike a balance with the emphasis on
| privacy. Nowadays the government thinks it is entitled to all
| the data all the time.
| celticninja wrote:
| That's not the case at all. HMRC is very proscriptive about
| what you can do with their data, that's if they let you near
| it all, even then client consent is absolutely required for
| each access.
| vmception wrote:
| > I get that money laundering is always linked to criminal
| activity
|
| Its not. Well, by definition it is but it is paradoxical. Money
| obfuscation is not illegal, but when the source of the money is
| illicit then money obfuscation is money laundering, but
| successful money laundering means nobody can ever distinguish
| between a licit or illicit source, and it is up the accuser to
| prove the source was illicit, which should be impossible.
| (Whether there are records or not, there should be no probable
| cause to receive or act on those records at the standard needed
| for a criminal investigation)
|
| So, only unsuccessful money laundering is linked to criminal
| activity, and deterrence relies on stigmatizing all money
| obfuscation.
| [deleted]
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >The language used by law enforcement is quite alarming, it
| suggests that they should be privy to ALL transactions made,
| regardless of reasonable suspicion.
|
| Unfortunately this is exactly their position, which they have
| made quite clear - and it isn't limited to financial
| transactions. Its the same line of "reasoning" they use to
| decry the use of encryption. They want to eliminate the concept
| of privacy all together and be privy to all of your
| transactions, communications and behavior to ensure nobody is
| "breaking the law". This was the whole idea behind the
| Orwellian "Total Information Awareness" program that was so
| obviously antithetical to freedom that the government was
| forced to change the name (while continuing to develop the
| program). In my opinion its far better to live in a free
| society where we are legally entitled to privacy and a few bad
| actors get away with crimes than the alternative.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness
| MikeDelta wrote:
| I understand your point. However, privacy cannot shield one
| from tax and legal obligations.
|
| It is not just the proceeds from criminal activities, but also
| tax evasion (from the rich or companies) and terrorism
| financing.
| exo762 wrote:
| You can use cryptocurrency which hides all of your
| transactions (like zcash) and pay your taxes as a law abiding
| citizen. There is no conflict here. Tax systems rely on
| citizens reporting anyway.
| ushakov wrote:
| > Tax systems rely on citizens reporting anyway
|
| ever heard of CRS (Common Reporting Standard)?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Reporting_Standard
| ska wrote:
| > Tax systems rely on citizens reporting anyway.
|
| It relies on reporting and the right to audit, so they may
| end up with all of the information anyway; it's more that
| you are making them ask for it rather than providing it
| proactively.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| I really admire your faith in human kind.
|
| I am fairly certain that many citizens would be tempted to
| become creative in their transparency (or activities) if
| they knew they would never get caught. Such is human
| nature.
| n_ary wrote:
| > You can use cryptocurrency which hides all of your
| transactions (like zcash)
|
| Nit: only if you use zcash shielded wallets(very rare &
| resource hungry) are your assets private. Most wallets use
| transparent addresses, which is kind of similar to normal
| ones.
|
| Given current landscape, only monero is defacto private.
| [deleted]
| dougk16 wrote:
| PirateChain and Aeon as well.
| 3np wrote:
| And AZTEC on Ethereum.
| ip26 wrote:
| Tax systems follow a "trust but verify" model.
| RcrdBrt wrote:
| Some are even "assume bad faith and verify"
| exo762 wrote:
| Again, not a problem. ZCash allows one to
| cryptographically prove transactions.
| crypto-cousin wrote:
| At least in Western countries our definition of "terrorism"
| usually serves to demonize BIPOC.
| swiley wrote:
| Not just BIPOC, any group of people you don't like.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| If a tax requires the entire citizenry surrendering all of
| their financial privacy, it should be abolished.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| What system would be fair and acceptable to you?
| [deleted]
| iSloth wrote:
| And shortly after all countries would collapse...
| [deleted]
| decafninja wrote:
| To some, that is probably a desired feature, not a bug.
| imtringued wrote:
| The new rulers?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| By definition, financial transactions are not private,
| because they necessarily involve a counterparty.
| Empf wrote:
| Tax fraud.
|
| You would not benefit from it you would loose money
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| It's important to realize that attribution - knowing which
| human got which money when - is actually very important in many
| contexts, particularly when a lot of money is involved. This
| allows for an un-do button in the case of mistakes, fraud, etc.
| If I'm wiring my down payment for a house for $200k, it's nice
| to know that if I fat-finger the receiving account I can get
| the money back. How would you feel paying your down-payment in
| cash or BTC? How about when Citi accidentally paid an extra
| $900M (or something like that). Normally they'd be able to get
| all the money back (actually in that case they couldn't, but
| that was a weird anomaly).
|
| I'm all for privacy, anonymity, etc - which is one of the
| reasons I'm very excited about crypto - but you always have to
| look at things from multiple angles.
| ucha wrote:
| Attribution is important but you don't need the government to
| be able to do it without your authorization. You can very
| well have private unattributable transactions that you decide
| to disclose to the authorities only if you need and want to.
|
| If you send your coins from wallet A to wallet B with
| CoinJoin, it's not possible for a third party to identify
| this transaction, but you can disclose the seed of wallet A
| and sign a transaction from wallet B thus proving ownership
| of both.
| loceng wrote:
| I believe the $900M was merely paid earlier than it needed to
| be, but was still owed, so why the transaction wasn't
| reversed.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| Yes, but still normally this mistake would be unwound. The
| recipients would just send the money back, or a court would
| tell them to send it back, even though the money was owed.
| But there were a number of confounding factors - for
| example that the money wasn't owed by _Citi_ - it was owed
| by someone else and Citi was just paying on their behalf.
| celticninja wrote:
| In the Citi case though it could have been paid in BTC and
| the result would be the same. The law decided then and the
| law would decide in bitcoin. Yes the ability for the court to
| force the return(or not) would depend in some part on the
| party being willing to do it, but ultimately if they are
| going to abide by the law it would happen regardless of the
| medium used.
| pliny wrote:
| Voluntary attribution is a solved problem in cryptography, so
| you can stay private if everything goes well and prove you
| are the sender or receiver for a given transaction if you
| need it reversed.
| auntienomen wrote:
| If you don't interfere with money laundering, the criminals
| eventually acquire enormous wealth, and with it power. They
| eventually acquire enough power to take over the government. At
| that point, you're at their mercy, and theorizing about privacy
| laws becomes a bit pointless.
| rusabd wrote:
| So you are saying that before money laundering laws those
| criminals took over the government. It is almost like said
| criminals just don't want any competition now
| crispyambulance wrote:
| > eventually acquire enough power to take over the government
|
| I wonder, recalling the Panama Papers incident, if this has
| effectively happened already!
| jb775 wrote:
| This has already happened.
|
| They typically launder money via "foundations" or
| "charities". They acquire power by purchasing media
| companies. They use the media companies to control public
| narratives to shift the Overton window of public policies.
| They also use it to manipulate the truth as it suits them[1].
| Their target population for controlling thought narratives
| are yuppies and the lower classes.
|
| [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/DrewHolden360/status/139733532
| 441...
| camgunz wrote:
| I think in the US, it's a war on drugs thing--though it could
| also be a Cold War thing. Just musing though, but yeah it's
| wild that we don't think this is a right.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| It goes back further than that, at least to the prosecution
| of organized crime syndicates in the early part of the 20th
| century. Al Capone went to jail for tax evasion, after all.
| camgunz wrote:
| Yeah for sure, famously. I think the evolution of like, KYC
| and the global financial surveillance system probably came
| about for Cold War or War on Drugs reasons though.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I don't think the public cares. And, of course, there are many
| news articles, like this but also about fiat, that show why
| 'privacy is bad, ok'; criminals will run rampant if we cannot
| track everything you do.
| atatatat wrote:
| Right, because the art trade is so hard to notice.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| It seems as though large movements of cash is actually a
| pretty good way to _find_ criminals.
|
| Someone saying "the privacy of someone moving $100M is bad"
| sounds reasonable to my public ears.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Nobody accepted this. Governments just imposed it on us.
| [deleted]
| jackfoxy wrote:
| > how have we always just accepted the lack of personal privacy
| when it comes to finance?
|
| It was very easy. The American public was hoodwinked into
| accepting the 16th Amendment (levying an income tax) as a tax
| the rich scheme. And like all tax the rich schemes it was a
| cover to tax everyone, especially the middle class. You can't
| have an income tax without the government prying into
| everyone's finances.
|
| Before this financial privacy was the norm.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| The income tax was first introduced in the UK, in 1799, to
| fund a war against France, and the rate was only 10%, and
| only levied on the rich.
|
| The first American income tax was also introduced in a war -
| the Civil War.
| jackfoxy wrote:
| IIRC the US Supreme Court declared the Civil War era income
| tax unconstitutional, which is why it required a
| constitutional amendment.
| bluGill wrote:
| No, they said the tax on capital gains was
| unconstitutional. An income tax itself was allowed, they
| only tossed out the whole law because it was obvious that
| the tax code they ruled unconstitutional wouldn't make
| sense without the capital gains tax parts.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Very strange to see that Fog managed to run for 10 years when the
| guy being almost a public figure in Russia, and flew Russia-US
| regularly.
| djoldman wrote:
| https://outline.com/X6nWWs
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I am fascinated by the rise of 'chain analysis' companies - that
| started as 'aint it fun' and became 'hey we can help the cops
| track ransomware' quite quickly.
|
| The thing that fascinates me is ... we _could_ do (very similar)
| analysis on "normal" bank accounts - on a much larger scale but
| still.
|
| I wonder how much criminal activity would be revealed?
| xwdv wrote:
| Once chain analysis becomes trivial, a major selling point of
| cryptocurrencies will be defeated. What then is the point?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The major selling point of bitcoin now is that it is a way to
| store value that is not controlled by a single entity.
|
| Anonymity never was a design goal (even though it helped) and
| transactions are now too slow and expensive to make it a
| viable payment network. You can still buy drugs in Bitcoin,
| but it is not why people invest so much into it.
| roofwellhams wrote:
| Monero fixed this problem, right?
| iand wrote:
| It doesn't defeat the point of cryptocurrencies which is to
| create a currency free from a single point of control.
| xwdv wrote:
| That is only theoretical.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Banks are required by law to do this type of tracking on their
| normal bank accounts and file reports of any suspicious
| activity they see. The fact that the transactions aren't public
| means there isn't a third party that can do it and one bank
| can't follow the chain once a transaction goes to another bank.
| That work has to be done in the context of a legal
| investigation.
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| I'd bet something similar is being done with traditional
| banking transactions by government agencies, if only to aid in
| parallel construction
| MikeDelta wrote:
| And I believe banks seem to cooperate as well to the limits
| of what is allowed. Detecting Financial Crime (DFC) is
| (becoming) a big part of operations.
| giaour wrote:
| > we could do (very similar) analysis on "normal" bank accounts
| - on a much larger scale but still.
|
| Would this be (more or less) forensic accounting applied
| proactively to all accounts? I know techniques similar to
| 'chain analysis' are applied in criminal investigations, but
| it's usually reactive (due to the labor involved and the need
| for warrants in many jurisdictions).
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _we could do (very similar) analysis on "normal" bank
| accounts_
|
| I don't think so really, the fact that the ledger is public is
| really the thing that makes this is a credible model.
|
| In the absolutely general sense of "if all banks around the
| world opened all their books and banking secrecy laws didn't
| exist, and if we somehow had the ability to trace through cash
| transactions" then sure, _theoretically_ (and again not
| accounting for the absolutely vast difference in scale between
| the volume of transactions in the real world vs the
| blockchain), but none of that is even remotely probable.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I'd argue that the problem isn't secrecy laws but just
| general incompetence and unwillingness.
|
| Sure, banking secrecy laws could be a problem for large-scale
| frauds totaling millions, but smaller-scale operations
| typically stay within the same country where the law most
| likely already allows this kind of tracing, but it's so
| unefficient that by the time it's tracked down the money is
| already gone for good.
| chii wrote:
| > but none of that is even remotely probable.
|
| it's not likely, but it's possible. Laws can be used, if the
| political will is there. It's not like encryption where you
| can't actually force it!
|
| The thing is, this data can contain sensitive information,
| which existing gov't may want to keep hiding (like CIA slush
| funds etc).
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _it 's not likely, but it's possible._
|
| OK, sure, in about the same sense that world government is
| possible: hardly anyone is asking for it and there is a
| tremendous level of investment in the status quo by all the
| people with political power.
| tudorizer wrote:
| Well, on "normal" bank accounts you would be hit by
| international policies and cover-ups, while on public ledgers,
| the only barrier is the tech.
| tw04 wrote:
| You think someone who is sophisticated enough to hide money
| in the international banking system isn't sophisticated
| enough to hide it in bitcoin?
|
| Congratulations, you tracked the transaction to a shell
| company and have no jurisdiction to unwind who the cash
| withdrawal went to? Ignoring the coin washing services
| referenced in the story.
| ozim wrote:
| Someone who is sophisticated enough to hide money in
| international banking system won't care about bitcoin.
|
| There is enough bad guys that are not sophisticated enough
| and are thinking that bitcoin will do all hard work of
| hiding it for them.
|
| Obviously they are wrong.
| tudorizer wrote:
| Precisely! This is the reason why "crypto is good for
| money laundering" falls apart, IMHO.
| wesleywt wrote:
| Why go through all that trouble when regular banks already
| launder cash for you.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Do explain, because I don't believe you actually know how banks
| work. Banks will flag up dubious transactions - uncommon large
| ones, frequent smaller ones, a sudden stop or start in
| transactions, etc. They've got big fraud (and money laundering)
| prevention teams on there, currently using machine learning to
| detect suspicious activity.
|
| I mean there's bound to be laundering going on via banks, but
| it's risky.
|
| Heard about one guy that tried to get his Bitcoin winnings onto
| his regular account, his bank wouldn't accept it because they
| couldn't verify its source. Of course, he managed to open up an
| account at another bank who accepted it without question, and
| transferring it to his main account from that bank was also
| done without question, so it's not exactly consistent.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| The biggest tax haven on earth is the United States, but they
| only serve you if you 1) are not american 2) are not citizen
| of the few countries they have tax treaties with.
| mattmanser wrote:
| I assume he's alluding to the recent banking scandals of
| money laundering by big players like HSBC.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| If he couldn't show the trace then no bank should've let him
| really: were I live, you have to show where fiat->crypto
| accused and how you got that fiat. Then you have to show how
| the crypto became worth more (that can just be a wallet
| address IN and wallet address OUT between the times it went
| from the fiat amount you started with until the time it
| became what you are trying to transfer to the bank). But
| that's all; few screenshots, even for large amounts. I guess
| if you are trying to send over more than a million, you might
| want to get some people to help you anyway. Also; always call
| your bank upfront to explain what will happen; that can
| prevent a freeze or reject if you got in ahead.
| libertine wrote:
| >Heard about one guy that tried to get his Bitcoin winnings
| onto his regular account, his bank wouldn't accept it because
| they couldn't verify its source. Of course, he managed to
| open up an account at another bank who accepted it without
| question, and transferring it to his main account from that
| bank was also done without question, so it's not exactly
| consistent.
|
| You nailed it here without noticing it: you just use the
| right bank(s) in the right countries, and then just shuffle
| and move money around.
|
| I'm pretty sure there are organizations dedicated to set up
| these operations.
| gaspard234 wrote:
| Many others have noted HSBC which actually created special
| cash delivery booths in Mexico but earlier this year
| Australian banks were caught laundering nearly $500million in
| illegal proceeds for Latin American cartels.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5bkyq/drug-cartels-used-
| aus...
| [deleted]
| tomcooks wrote:
| Problem is they do Know Their Customer
| knuthsat wrote:
| I think Bitstamp exchange offered a payout in gold bars for some
| time (there's no taxation on acquired gold in some countries).
|
| The exchanges are definitely in on it. From trading bots, to
| price volatility. Pretty sure there's inside trading being done
| on most successful exchanges.
|
| Nothing better than knowing the behavior of a bunch of traders
| and figuring out the best massive bot trading strategies.
| vmception wrote:
| > Some criminals undertake what is known as "chain-hopping" --
| jumping between different cryptocurrencies, often in rapid
| succession -- to lose trackers, or use particular "privacy coin"
| cryptocurrencies that have extra anonymity built into them, such
| as Monero.
|
| Its kind of hilarious that an article in mid-2021 treats this as
| novel, or that it is novel to many people reading it now.
|
| To me this is like reading about bearer bonds from a 1950s heist.
|
| Chain-hopping is as old as crypto exchanges. It has some folly,
| because even if a chain analysis firm or armchair blockchain
| sleuths aren't inspired enough to consider or look on another
| chain, the records are still permanent.
|
| Hopping over to XMR or privacy chains has been available since
| 2014. Even with older versions leaking some rings, the best
| practices from back then still mitigate that, and rotating
| anytime since 2017 ensures mitigation through now.
|
| The article lacks anything coherent, providing maybe a tiny spark
| of inspiration for investigators and people enamored by the
| crypto phenomenon, but wasting everybody's time because there are
| other techniques fairly unique to the crypto space that are more
| accessible and efficient and not secret at all.
| Ceezy wrote:
| Well everybody is just not as in the loop as you are. Not sure
| what is hilarious about that...
| vmception wrote:
| The point is that this article conflates several things and
| is describing some fairly outdated or inefficient obfuscation
| techniques of which launderers would be some of the users of.
|
| It goes from Hydra market duffle-bags of cash hiders
| (lolwut), to chain-hopping and scant mention of privacy
| coins. It randomly talks about Wasabi wallet same-chain
| bitcoin mixers, and then talks about Bitcoin Fog's operator
| being arrested which is much much older technology. It
| doesn't acknowledge or provide awareness about people
| actually wanting the privacy coins to begin with or staying
| within the mixing system (or trading claims to assets in the
| mixing system), and just assumes people are trying to
| obfuscate briefly with the end goal of holding non-private
| coins or fiat.
|
| I don't get the impression that they were avoiding describing
| useful techniques for criminals, I get the impression that
| they have no idea.
| pibechorro wrote:
| Probably easier for any serious criminal to just deal in cash and
| make deposits at the big banks, they have a long history of
| taking cartel money.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| But cash isn't that useful if you're holding a company to
| ransom on the other side of the world. And normal bank
| transfers are very traceable.
|
| Banks need to report any transactions greater than $10K (or a
| series of smaller transactions that make up $10K). The
| consequences of a bank not reporting far exceed any profit they
| would make from it.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I think the GP was specifically referring to HSBC which has
| been known to evade its responsibilities in this regard.
| Taek wrote:
| I believe Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, and plenty others have
| reputations for this as well. HSBC just happens to be in
| the news the most.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| If you show up at the correct bank with a $1million briefcase
| you will be taken to a closed office and they will serve you.
| tootie wrote:
| Traditional laundering operations are typically very expensive
| and subject to heavy scrutiny. Banks or other washers take a
| big cut. And if you're here talking banks which have been
| caught doing this then it isn't very secret anymore. Crypto can
| be laundered quickly, cheaply and safely. And in unlimited
| quantities.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| Drug dealers and such probably yes. Sending 10 mio USD ransom
| across the world in cash would be much harder, but is so much
| easier in cryptocurrencies.
| raesene9 wrote:
| Depends on the country. Definitely in the UK if you make a lot
| of large cash transactions without a good business reason,
| you'll get scrutiny.
|
| This is one of the reasons that common fronts for crime are
| companies that would be expected to handle a lot of cash :)
|
| Also the major advantage of cryptocurencies in crime is their
| international nature. It means I can sit in a country that has
| no extradition treaty with the places I'm doing crime, safe in
| the knowledge that I won't be touched, as long as I'm careful
| who I target.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > This is one of the reasons that common fronts for crime are
| companies that would be expected to handle a lot of cash :)
|
| Or a large amount of smaller companies for which 5K in
| revenue a month won't look suspicious (I'm thinking of stuff
| like these small phone (repair) shops, and there was a
| massage parlor down the road that was open frequently but
| never saw any customers. Still managed to stay open for
| years. Maybe that grey Mercedes that parked out in front of
| it once a month had something to do with it?)
| vmception wrote:
| Custom pillows, by appointment only, was probably the most
| obvious and rational front I've ever seen.
|
| Create customer records of as many high dollar value
| appointments as you want!
| 5ersi wrote:
| The easiest way to totally anonymize crypto is to use hash
| marketplaces (i.e. Nicehash). Hash marketplaces let you
| anonymously buy hash power via BTC, which you can then direct to
| any crtpyo coin pool to get mint crypto coins.
| jtsiskin wrote:
| Assuming you trust they aren't saving any logs..
| gvv wrote:
| yeah, this would NEVER happen with cash! /s
| user-the-name wrote:
| You can't demand people send you cash from around the world as
| ransom for the computers you took over.
| orbitingpluto wrote:
| The media is the message. Criminals don't launder bitcoin at
| non-profitable nail salons either.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| I think I've read more stories on bitcoin laundries than actual
| laundries... suprising given how long it has been around.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| Here's a little story to help balance the ratio
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/article...
| meowster wrote:
| Here is the exact same URL without Google's AMP:
|
| https://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/article/wansho-laundry
| ulzeraj wrote:
| > "They're basically a trustless version of a mixer and it's all
| done within software," said Robinson, noting that an open-source
| project called Wasabi Wallet was the dominant player in the
| space.
|
| Funny because Wasabi requires a lot of manual coin control to
| preserve anonymity. Samourai Wallet automates most of these and
| offers obfuscating tools.
| martinko wrote:
| > Samourai Wallet automates most of these and offers
| obfuscating tools.
|
| And does not have a desktop client. Next to useless.
| bsedlm wrote:
| I'm always left wondering about the invention (the encoding into
| laws) of "money laundering".
|
| I believe that this happened at some point during the 70s right
| around the time congress declared "war on drugs"?
|
| edit: aha, I refer to 91st USA congress:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Secrecy_Act
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Drug_Abuse_Preve...
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| It happened earlier: in the USA many laws and agencies related
| to it were brought out during prohibition.
| vmception wrote:
| Yes this is accurate in the sense that these are the basis for
| the modern enforcement tools in use
|
| The state has never had a right to understanding the financial
| flows or private property, it found a convenience with the
| electronic financial system and deputized all financial
| intermediaries to data mine and snitch for it.
|
| This has subsequently become conflated with a right of the
| state to have all of this information, as the people running it
| now are unfamiliar with not having these conveniences.
|
| The market, on the other hand, is simply reverting to a mean.
| It has developed and chosen an electronic financial system that
| doesnt require financial intermediaries.
|
| So the state is going to lose its power to criminalize
| transactions. If there are any actual criminal behaviors with
| distinctive victims, then it has to do an actual investigation
| and find the individual and prosecute them. It really isnt that
| absurd of a concept.
| Closi wrote:
| They date back until at least 1930's with the prohibition :)
| joshfraser wrote:
| Every dollar bill in your wallet has trace amounts of cocaine on
| it. They probably spent some time tucked in some dancers g-string
| too. All money is "dirty". It's just a question of how many times
| it needs to trade hands before we collectively agree to treat it
| as "clean" again.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Neither of the things you've described make money dirty. Just
| because a dollar bill comes into contact with cocaine (often in
| cash sorting machines in banks), it doesn't mean that it is the
| proceeds of crime.
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| I think his point is that a sizable portion of physical cash
| is involved with crime, that's one of the benefits of using
| cash so it only stands to reason- Yet everybody still uses
| cash regardless. Though I'm sure this same argument will be
| used in the future to justify a transition to a cashless
| society where all transactions are traced
| arbitrage wrote:
| uhhhhh ... that's not what they're talking about. nobody really
| cares about cocaine and pubes on dollar bills.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| I care
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| mouzogu wrote:
| Why would you go through this elaborate process when you could
| just get HSBC to launder your money.
| rchaud wrote:
| The people that even HSBC won't do business with.
| tudorw wrote:
| No dufflebags?
| smitty1110 wrote:
| If you have enough volume, HSBC will customize your
| experience by modifying teller windows to accept the hard
| briefcase of your choice. You won't have to worry about some
| random guy cutting your bag and stealing your illicit cash!
| koreanguy wrote:
| ft.com paywall
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