Bitcoin Forum

http://app.bitlaundry.com/ (http://app.bitlaundry.com/) (commission 5%)
http://bitcoinlaundry.com/ (http://bitcoinlaundry.com/) (5%)

What are the point of these?

This is in no way shady in any way, shape or form, and exactly the kind of thing we should be promoting with bitcoin.

Money laundering.

They should all be on this list: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Financial_Services

I completely agree.

Bitcoin already has enough bad press. There is no reason illegal operations should be allowed free reign on the main forum for Bitcoins.

So you believe that if I were to simply use this mixing service by sending some of my coins to it and receiving those back that I would be committing a crime?

If all they are doing is sending bitcoins from different addresses, why not just do this yourself?  It isn't too hard to setup a few different wallets and send coins back and forth between them at random. 

I mean, maybe I'm missing something here, but 5% plus transaction fee adds up to a lot for something you can do yourself.

Wonder how many coins from mybitcoin will go through something like this.

If you live in any country where a GPU capable of realistically mining Bitcoins isn't the same price as your house...

The answer is: Yes. It is VERY illegal. You're looking at some serious prison time.

If you've ever heard of the "Mob" or the "Mafia", that's one of their biggest businesses. It's why they own so many businesses such as Strip Clubs, Restaurants, etc. etc. If the FBI ever intervenes into Bitcoins, the reason will be because of Money Laundering.


The fact the community seems to condone such activities, even making stickies with services, does not help. It is in fact very serious and very illegal in any industrialized country. By continuing to condone such, you're helping Bitcoins with bad press and helping bring the attention of the authorities to something that is in no way illegal. If things like this continue, trust me..... government intervention will be imminent.

Personally, I don't want to see that happen. I am not one to invest any serious amount of money into Bitcoins, I am however a Software Developer and have been investing a very large amount of my free time. I don't want to see it be all for naught. 

Either these services will be made illegal, or Bitcoin as a whole will be made illegal.

Isn't it the whole point of bitcoin to make it easier to transfer money without requiring permission from any government?

Wouldn't you be able to do it with just two wallets and a bunch of different addresses? One wallet and a bunch of addresses (never tried this)?

Yes, and that's why I support Laundering.

Actually, I used the http://app.bitlaundry.com/ to spread 1 BTC out using http://btc-fortune.com/ over 1 day.
This gave me more chances to win without hitting 1 bet after another.

There is nothing wrong with gambling.
Maybe you're confused?

Also, I'm not using the laundering service for making my transactions anonymous...I'm using it to spread 1 BTC over 1 day.

Have I mentioned, lately, how much I love you, SIR?

In case you guys haven't noticed it, high-ranking government officials like Charles Schumer already consider Bitcoin to be a tool for money laundering. These services simply automate what any user can do himself.

We can pretty please people to not do this all we want, but they're gonna - it's cash. If you support Bitcoin, I suggest you cooperate with law enforcement as much as possible. Perhaps better block chain statistics tools?

These services mix your coins with the coins of other users. that's not something you can do by yourself :-)
For example, if I am from the FBI and I buy some drugs at SR, and then follow these coins on the blockchain, you will or will not be included in the recipients of these coins, depending on whether you used the laundry or not.

thanks for dumbing it down for me lol

Those services are illegal.

Not Being Caught != Legal

I would like to gently remind you that USA != whole world


You are the author of http://bitcoinlaundry.com/ , right ?

Have you ever considered opensourcing your work (I mean the code behind http://bitcoinlaundry.com/ specifically) ?

True enough.

But if you live in one of these countries, then it really makes no difference if you're in the US or not.

Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Canada
China
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hong Kong, China
Iceland
India
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Netherlands
Luxembourg
Mexico
New Zealand
Norway
Portugal
Republic of Korea
Russian Federation
Singapore
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States

If you engage in money laundering, the same people are looking for you.

I am that guy, yes, but no, I have never considered open-sourcing the extremely complex and massively valuable intellectual property that bitcoinlaundry.com represents, what with how all these suitcases of cocaine keep arriving at my front door every week.

Do you actually get enough volume for a laundry service to be even remotely secure?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering
Money laundering is disguising illegal sources of money so that it looks like it came from legal sources.

Why would you assume I have an illegal source of money?  The use of a mixing service does not automatically mean money laundering is occurring.  [edited]

No, never, and that's one of the reasons you shouldn't use it, besides that it's fattening and immoral.

Wait, I meant to say.... yes.... YES! Yes, I do. No... well, only sometimes.

I think it was a couple months ago in discussion with Hiro White on Agorist Radio that I stated that I'm looking forward to my indictment.

<yousuck>
I agree completely. In fact, go one better and report all of your Bitcoin holdings and cash flows today.
</whatever>

Right. And if you're mining and then selling off the coins you better report the earning on your W2 so you pay the tax on the money you made.

My name is mikegogulski, and I endorse this statement.

Of course, if you owe state and/or municipal tax, your Bitcoin earnings must be reported on the relevant returns there as well. Current IRS rules put electrictiy for running mining rigs into the same expensa category as Arabian thoroughbred horses; thus, deducting your power bill is right out.

"Money laundering is a euphemism for transactions out of view of State surveillance. Any transaction that takes place outside of State control is essentially ‘Money Laundering’ according to the State. This means that, for example, people living in Greece, who are forbidden from making any transaction over €1500 in cash, even though the money is legitimately theirs and they are not engaging in any act that is defined as criminal activity by the State, is guilty of ‘Money Laundering’ by the mere fact that they are making a transaction above an arbitrary size."

https://blogdial.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/precursors-to-bitcoin-legislation-emerge/

Excuse me, but I am unconvinced that
a) all those jurisdictions would recognize the artifact that is a bitcoin as "money"
b) mixing "transactions" carried out in these mathematical constructs constitutes  "laundering" anything at all (service name notwithstanding)

Try harder next time :)


Oh, that's sad.

:(

It would be nice to have an opensource version...

I live in the mother fuckn USA (check my post stalker to see what state I live in <3).

so do I but we will probably newer know as the list of funded addresses is not known.
btw mybitcoin was a laundry as well.

EVERYTHING is a laundry

So far I only buy and spend Bitcoins. I don't convert to USD for precisely this reason.

YOU might be looking forward to an indictment, but I would rather not needlessly martyr myself. You can help the movement far more from home than from a cell.

That's fine. Clearly, you're not part of my target market.

What are your crimes?

檢討。

Presumably the bitcoins moving though laundry services are (disproportate to the rest of BTC economy) ill-gotten gains.  There is a reason they are willing to pay 5% right? 

So, while these laundry services can disconnect you from bitcoins that were your own ill gotten gains, doesn't it probably link you to other crimes instead?  Wouldn't just depositing your coins into fresh MtGox account (that you only connected to over TOR) and withdrawing them a few days later be much more effective, because you would be mixing them with legitimate coins (and for a smaller %)?

The laundry service doesn't need to use its own wallet. It could use several of the free online wallet services. The mybitcoin incident illustrated why one would need to use multiple. So long as some of the services along the "chain" preserve your privacy, you should remain anonymous. Kinda like Tor for money. All you are paying for is technical expertise and better strategies like random timed transfers and multiple branches.

Right? Maybe I've missed something.

Can someone with knowledge please post an answer for this question from echris1. Especially if you add Tor in the mix, is it not very easy just to anonymize your own coin trail with a bunch of self initiated / self receive transfers?

If those addresses aren't used anywhere else, it may not be thay simple... Check here:
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/72/how-is-it-possible-to-launder-bitcoins/

If Magic The Gathering Online Exchange wins their case, will this even be considered an issue? They're trying (and some what succeeding) to convince the courts that BC is commodity and therefore not subject to currency laws.
Also, besides spreading your BC around, why would any one need to launder an anonymous currency?

It's not anonymous. If you don't intentionally cover your tracks, your transactions can be tracked. So if you want to buy something using Bitcoins from MtGox, the mafia (or whoever) could pressure MtGox into revealing your receiving address. From there they just follow the block chain.

Thank you for the link good sir. Indeed it answered some questions.

Forgive me, the two statements were meant to made separate from each other. How could you be found out if you didnt use an exchange like Magic The Gathering Online Exchange?

Depends on how you obtain them and use them. Potential vulnerabilities include your mining pool operator giving up your IP address, vendors giving up your snail mail address, etc.

Regarding the MtGox case, I still think these services are important even if it's legal. There are many reasons to want privacy besides breaking the law.

Getting an empty wallet wont help, unless the online wallet service automatically shuffles the sent and received coins with each other.

To simplify my question:
1. It costs 5% so why would somebody with 'clean' coins launder them?
2. If all the coins in the laundry are dirty, aren't you just receiving someone else's dirty coins?  Do the laundries have some way to get 'fresh' coins?
3. Say you received coins that cops KNOW were used in a drug sale.  Is "No officer, those are just the coins I received when I was laundering my coins... for fun...?" a valid defense?  What could you say?

These services don't seem very wise to me...

let's assume none of the coins are dirty just all owners are sensitive to their privacy.
they have their bitcoin addresses linked to their personal information either by the means of an exchanger or similar counterparty. what they expect from the laundry is a degree of decorrelation where there would be no direct connection of the originating bitcoin address to the addresses that hold the coins after the exercise.

imo it's more about mixing and randomizing then washing dirty coins clean.

how would you recognize dirty coins? from a list of registered scams? do you run an illegal drug selling operation that generates income dirty by definition? is your wallet harvesting trojan successful and need to move some coins?

Some services do shuffle coins. You can check which ones by sending them some money and watching to see if it gets moved into a larger wallet. The ones with cold storage should be more likely to mix coins.

1. Any desire for privacy. Buying porn, booze, dildos...
2. The exchanges would be a good source of fresh coins, since they do get shuffled there and have a large pool. Automated services are happy to accept "dirty" coins.
3. Lawyer up. You have a case, but by then you're already in trouble. IANAL but I think they would have to prove each crime (drugs and laundering), not just that you committed at least one of them. You should encrypt every wallet you want kept private.

Money Laundering - the crime - is ONLY the act of concealing the origin of illicit funds.

If origin is not illicit, no crime has been committed. No matter if you use remittance services, buy diamonds for no reason, western union, offshore entities etc.

The burden of proof is on the accuser to determine the origin of the funds.

This is also usually ONLY a crime when tax evasion is involved, this is the only time a multijurisidictional cooperation will be saught for a money laundering case. (in USA, it is also illegal to pay taxes on actual illicit money laundered funds)

So again, concealing the origin of funds is not inherently illegal.

bye

I have been using bitlaundary to just maintain my anonymity and privacy. I already use TOR/proxies to access pornsites, conspiracy theory and other such sites.
And I used such “laundary” services so I could easily buy stuff on the sites I mentioned earlier.
As you can see its not a crime. Such services are needed and just act like TOR.

BUT
I just noticed that http://app.bitlaundry.com/ now upped their fees to 10%!!
Yes, I understand its a risky business and I was fine with their 5% fee. But the fee just keeps going up.
So I am looking for an alternative. Any suggestions?