Bitcoin Forum

Something to say?! Regulations for fiats, where are you? Hidden in the basement?
'Money laundering' is the dinosaur argument to fight Bitcoin when nothing else works, often used by people with no idea what they're talking about. That was funny to listen to 5 years ago but mo more, perhaps they should spend all their energy and resources on something else... Banks for example... 8)

https://messari.s3.amazonaws.com/images/agora-images/lJXM2s2.jpg
image (https://messari.io/c/research/bitcoin-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things)

I knew that to be the case for a long time. You see drug lords being arrested with bags of money. You see people steal money at gunpoint every day but to the mainstream media it's important that some kid was buying weed with bitcoin :D

It's not important that every day in every city there are hundreds of illegal transactions done with cash. They are still worried about decentralized currencies that aren't even untraceable.

It's very obvious! Bitcoin came into existance just 10 years back and money laundering is happening since ages. So if some leader is resisting bitcoin citing this laundering reason, there has to be some hidden agenda kept out of our eyes!

I would not be surprised if Banking lobby is feeding the politician's pockets and international media houses to spread such misinformation about money laundering with bitcoin!

However, we can't deny the fact that it is easier to launder money using cryptos compared to fiat. So pros and cons, both are associated with cryptos!

Of course very poor argument that bitcoin is the key of money laundering. They want to make bitcoin like a reason of terrorism, money laundering and all kind of illegal things, they act like bitcoins is the reason of everything bad and banks are gifts given from heaven while in reality there are some very known facts how Deutche bank and others laundered billions but they close their eyes on it. And there are even more money laundering facts via banks that we don't know.

Before Bitcoin ALL crime was using fiat coins, such as USD. There was (is?) a disturbing statistic about the percentage of American banknotes with cocaine traces... After Bitcoin, only a minuscule amount of crime uses Bitcoin, actually matching world adoption. So no.

AND, Bitcoin leaves more traces, which help authorities even more once they match an identity to a wallet...

This is a repeated blatant lie from sensationalist media seeking attention, for profit of course...

It is not very surprising to me. Bitcoin is not very suitable for money laundering. It can be used as a store of value, but for laundering the dirty money Bitcoin is not a prefered medium. When someone does money laundering, he purchases movable or immovable assets, such as bullion, real estate, automobiles, arms, equities.etc. Bitcoin is not suitable here because it is not very easy to purchase these assets by making direct payments in Bitcoin. You need to convert BTC to fiat first and then use it to purchase the assets.

Another issue with Bitcoin is its volatility. If you hold a lot of money in the form of Bitcoin, you may need time to convert that wealth to some asset such as real estate. It may be require to wait for a few months. And during this time period, Bitcoin can go up or down by as much as 50%.

This is the truth, as anonymity serves as a feature enabling ease on money laundering there is an overview of bitcoin being much used on money laundering. This has been described through several articles, and USD is the one that's used much on laundering.

Though there is not much of regulations for bitcoin the userbase is low and to the same constitutes the money laundering. With this we can get a clarity of increased use of fiduciary Currencies on money laundering stands higher than bitcoin.

They simply don't have any other sound argument against Bitcoin. Money laundering is the most believable argument they could raise. And even that is still not sound enough. It boomerangs to the fiat currency they are protecting so much. I really doubt that multi-billionaire illegal dealers of arms and drugs, and funders of terrorism use Bitcoin.

If we made an audit with fiat money laundering for sure, everyone will be shock because of so many frauds happening in the banks. I know bitcoin is being used like this but bitcoin are still better compare to any currency. Maybe banking company are behind this article or research, they can’t stop bitcoin on this way.

is there not regulation for fiat money? that's what banking and money transmitter law was built around. :)

the continued attention to cryptocurrency as a money laundering tool is a tacit acknowledgment that crypto is gonna get much bigger and much more valuable. for years, governments have been writing off crypto as too small to matter. now that opinion is clearly changing. they see the writing on the wall.

banking regulations don't apply to cryptocurrency and that's what they want to change now. they want exchanges (and perhaps other services like payment processors and mixers) to be treated like financial institutions. yikes!

the point is that they keep pretending that bitcoin is this evil currency that is "out of thin air" and used for all kinds of illegal activity  while in reality fiat which they control, print, process,... is THE tool that every criminal is using for all their illegal activities. in comparison bitcoin usage is non existent and it is not just because of size of it, it is because of the transparency of it, that is cash doesn't leave any trace but bitcoin does and leaves it open for the whole world to see!

On the contrary, the design of cash is for its every step to be tracked-- where it goes, whose hands has it passed through, where is it deposited, where does it come from, etc. A transaction with cash must have traces. That is the legal way, at least. And because the crooks are using cash more than any other, there is what we call money laundering, for everything to appear clean. The problem with the designers and controllers of this cash is that they are now pointing at Bitcoin as the alternative or even preferred way of doing crimes because of anonymity. It is transparent as to the fact that all transaction records are public, but as to who and what particular transactions are involved, Bitcoin does not provide them.

Impressive, even I was of the notion that BTC is used more for money laundering than fiat currencies. This serves to prove that those clamouring for the regulation of the cryptospace due to its use for funding illegal transactions have made a  baseless arguement and those individuals have an ulterior motive.

the term "cash" refers to the physical form of money as in the piece of paper with a number on it that you can use as the medium of exchange. there is no trace when you use paper/physical cash to do a transaction.
what you are referring to is the digital form of money when you use banks, credit cards, online banking,... that leaves a trace.

I think that at the begininig when Bitcoin was able to ensure bigger anonimity and transactions were harder to trace, it was also more often used for money laundering.
But not all criminals are skilled in cryptocurrencies and sometimes larger amount of Bitcoin is not so easy to cash out or to put into legal money flow.
Nevertheless, some people still have the impression of Bitcoin like something illegal and involved in money laundering.

Haha, this is amazing. It's great to see such ridiculous stats shown of bitcoin and the use of in it illegal activities, there really is no way for people to dispute this and say that BTC is still used for illegal purposes now. BTC being used for the majority of the darknet is really stupid and is one of the biggest myths in crypto, I mean, who would want to do illegal transactions when there is literally a public ledger where every single transaction is shown and recorded on.

This depends a lot, there are unmarked bills that do go for sale on the black market, and cash does not have every transaction recorded. The dark net is also really into privacy coins and coins like XMR are quite popular in performing illegal activities.

I want to say something who blame bitcoin for money laundry.lets reveal which fiat money and bitcoin using most for illegallity.then forbidden which is using most 🤗

"Dinosaur argument" indeed.
The kind of argument you make when you are desperate? Argument filled with lies and exaggerations.

I wonder who can easily "launder" Bitcoin without getting spotted unlike "laundering" fiat currencies.

Yeah but it is easy to move it and  keep it without a name attached to it.

1000 oz of gold is  difficult to get from country a to country b

1.4 million in btc can get moved  way easier.

@bitbunnny

Yes, but the trend has long since changed, especially with the development of privacy-centric cryptocurrencies (Horizen, Monero, etc). In the earlier years, we didn't have any also, that's why.

Another point is when they need to sell (with the KYC that comes with) yep, and I don't think these guys are living with bitcoins, nor a card, and nor they're interested in. They want banknotes...

See yourself, in Europe, why are they removing the 500€ bill? Because it was used only by criminals. Here, in the capital, you could even resell it 520€ to a Chinese shop. Dude, I would never have owned a 500€ bill in my life :'(

Banks are mixers for fiats! :D

But 1.4 million is also very easy to track with the public ledger that is free for everyone to see. What is really the best option here is, 1.4 million via a privacy coin (XMR, etc). Gold and stocks are possible, but very difficult to pull off correctly and you'd just be shooting yourself in the foot.

It is fair to say that the darknet is ruled by cash and the abundance of privacy coins available.

Wow, this is a great post. I heard some stories about the 500 EURO banknote, but I never knew it was that in demand. I do think that in all countries, the biggest banknote is always rare to obtain.

Anything can be used for laundering, even third-party investments. But do not take btc as the first in this field

i don't think even the privacy coins such as Monero are being used in the dark market that much. if they were used in the darknet with some small popularity then their prices should have been a lot higher than it currently is.
i think only the first part of your last sentence is correct, the darknet is still ruled by cash.

Something is quite interesting to others thus they give false and negative feedback but the reality behind, they support it and look for a way to use this technology. In the future bitcoin will be generally accepted as a common medium of exchange.

I have come to realized that many of those that are most like to launder money such as government of official and politician will most probably not consider using crypto because they believe it is very risk. I ones engage one rich man in a talk about investing in crypto. He didn't know bitcoin but immediately I start explaining to him that its online base asset, he lost interest and think its a scam. Most of them still believe the best way to launder money is to carry fiat and bribe their way to where they want to go and hide the money

Realistically Bitcoin is also much smaller than most, if not all government-backed currencies, therefore it's not really a fair comparison.

I think a better comparison is looking at the fraction of total money supply turnover that can be attributed to illicit activities, not sure if Bitcoin would fare any better in this case.

With that said, Monero (XMR) and other privacy coins must be far worse.

yes its a shame ho many people using bitcoin.
In my nearly friend zone only 1 has a bitcoin walled but he is not using it much.


regards

Aside from that, there are more users of fiat currency, that alone explains why Bitcoin is used less than fiduciary currencies.  If ever Bitcoin surpassed fiat in terms of users then I bet Bitcoin will be used in this illegal stuff more than fiat.  So basically looking at the statistics of  users, the result of money laundering cases will not be surprising.

How do we know/track fiduciary currencies to the scale we can Bitcoin? Granted we haven't been able to do so until recently with the proper technology as blockchain forensics companies like Ciphertrace or Elliptic provide