Bitcoin Forum

Blockchain.info, aside from being a great tool and web wallet, offers and advertises a coin mixer service - or to put it in plain English, a money laundering service. Under what jurisdiction is money laundering legal??

bitcoins are no money so they cannot be laundered.

BTC is money:

"Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts"

And under which laws are bitcoins covered? None

lets see if glbse gets registered as a company easily... for me this would the first proof (i live in eu too)

Money laundering is a recently invented crime designed to control us to which I say fuck you.

 I think anything can be laundered, not just fiat money and Bitcoin money. All laundering is is an attempt to conceal the identities/amounts of a transfer...of anything.

Doubt there has been any case yet to clearly decide if laundering services are illegal.

The mixer is for privacy, not money laundering. Bitcoin being traceable is an artefact of the technology. There is no law which states BTC sent back to a users must originate from the same set out outputs as the BTC paid in.

Besides that blockchain.info is well under the volume threshold required to register as an MSB within the UK.

If I would like to wash my money, I would simply go to the laundromat machine which I call "casino", buy a plenty of token and then change them back to money as the grand winner!
Are casinos illegal in Vegas??

In casinos, transactions over $10,000 are automatically are automatically reported to the feds.

i'm not American
but
how many casinos are in vegas?
x $9,000

walk in buy chips, play a couple of games -doesnt matter if you win or lose- cashout $8,900 worth of chips go to next casino?

tho the casions dont call themselves "mixer services" :)

This whole AML stuff is a sham, doesn't catch the big players, they already successfully use banks, just another imposition on the little guy who probably wouldn't have a reason to launder money...

CASH. Cash is reportable. I can make $10,000 credit card purchase, wire transfers, check transactions. These aren't reportable because a paper tail exists. Form 8300 for reference - http://apps2.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=148821,00.html (http://apps2.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=148821,00.html)

Hmm... Interesting discussion. I guess we will not have an answer until it has been tried in a court :o

I'm not quite sure how chips work in a casino, but, can one really walk up to the....uhh...check out counter and plop down $9k worth of plastic chips and get handed $9k cash, no questions asked?

It's about privacy. Addresses can be tied to users (like how you put a vanity address (http://blockchain.info/address/1ELECeJompinDox61L73eAUyaWpe3Q5HZB) in your sig).

Now if you go and purchase some boner pills, the whole world will know about it.

Interesting how the OP asked the question and then didn't say anything else on this thread...

@OP   VERY illegal, you should report them immediatly!!!

It's not just addresses - groups of addresses can be be identified to the same user.  Go here and click on the owner icon: http://blockviewer.com/#/owns/1ELECeJompinDox61L73eAUyaWpe3Q5HZB (http://blockviewer.com/#/owns/1ELECeJompinDox61L73eAUyaWpe3Q5HZB) - you can see 190+ addresses has been linked to him as well!  In fact, the tool even identified his screen name (look at the line label pointing from his address to the owner icon) so he's explicitly identified.

EDIT:
What's even more damming is that another address was explicity identified to be from the user "flatfly".  So the OP also owns flatfly username too -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=52782 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=52782)

Which is totally public information... But congrats on your couch detective skills :)

And nice tool by the way.

Laundering money is not illegal but laundering the proceeds of criminal activity's raised funds is.   

ohhh, now you can make replies. ;p

Under any jurisdiction that doesn't have a law that makes what blockchain.info illegal. If there's a US Federal law that you think makes it illegal, I'd love a citation. Honestly, I don't know if it's legal or not. My bet is that you could probably find some law you could cram it into, but that's true of almost anything.