Bitcoin Forum

Scammers scamming other fellow scammers. Let us wait until those criminals selling cash for bitcoin discover that bitcoin is not anonymous hehehe. They might pay for $0.01 on the dollar for Monero or Grin transactions hehe.

https://static.cryptoglobe.com/filer_public_thumbnails/filer_public/1c/82/1c828078-c849-436f-ab1a-b2a46c2fba61/anonymous.jpg__740x380_q85_crop_subsampling-2.jpg

The second annual research report by cloud security provider Armor shows that criminals are selling cash for bitcoin on darkweb marketplaces at a substantially reduced rate.

According to the report, Armor researchers examined 12 different hacker marketplaces over the course of five months and determined that cash was being sold for bitcoin at pennies on the dollar. The report states that darkweb markets are thriving despite the continued crackdown on their existence.

More concerning for crypto users was the discovery that criminals were using bitcoin to aid in laundering stolen funds.

The report says,

One of the cleverest services spotted was where a criminal can pay a seller $800 in Bitcoin and have $10,000 transferred to a bank account of their choice or wired to them via Western Union, a seamless turn-key money laundering service.

While 12 cents on the dollar may appear a poor exchange for illicitly obtained funds, the Armor report claims it poses an attractive avenue for less experienced criminals.

Chris Hinkley, head of Armor’s TRU team, explained,

For those scammers who don’t possess the technical skills and a robust money mule network to monetize online bank account or credit card credentials, this is an offer that can be very attractive...this clever service gives them an additional channel for monetizing the large amounts of financial data available on the underground.

Read in full https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2019/09/dark-web-criminals-are-laundering-cash-for-bitcoin-at-pennies-on-the-dollar/

It would be interesting to see how many of these transactions are done with Monero and Dash compared to Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. I have to be honest, I saw all the FUD about the Darkweb and Bitcoin and I went in there to experience it for myself. The majority of the sites I saw was not for Bitcoin and more for Dash and some for Monero.  ::)

A lot of the sites even accept credit card payments which was strange, but I reckon a lot of these credit card purchases are done with stolen credit cards. <The people receiving the money via credit card payments must have used fake ID's or they are part of organized syndicates with fake businesses.>  ::)

It was a weird experience and the things on offer was mind blowing. <I would not touch it with a 10 feet pole>  >:(

This is reason why  the crypto markets needs to be 'shut' down and only most transparent regulated P2P BitCoin must survive this.

Or - we will see another global shut down for all crypto - see Liberty Reserve

good luck with that. for every dark web market they shut down, a half dozen pop up to replace it. :P


liberty reserve was a centralized money transmitter business. troll harder.

Every time a story like this pops up, I take a look at the most recent data and news articles, and every time they say something different. It is difficult enough to get numbers of bitcoin transactions taking place on the dark web; it's impossible to get numbers of monero transactions. Some reports say that monero is the most offered payment option, but actually monero payments rank below bitcoin and litecoin in terms of volume.

This is reason why the internet needs to be shut down and only the most transparent regulated P2P connections must be allowed to survive.
This is reason why encrypted communication needs to be shut down and only the most transparent regulated plain text emails must be allowed to survive.
::)

Why does this happen at all after ur logics?

https://cryptonews.com/news/okex-korea-axes-privacy-coins-as-south-korean-purge-intensif-4654.htm

All ICOs needs to be removed as well, or do you want the SEC to clean things up?


https://www.investopedia.com/news/sec-chair-says-bitcoin-not-security/


Self regulation has to be done. Or govs will do it , like for Liberty Reserve - doesn't matter what techy args u have or how u define 'decentralized' -   (global) lol  !

>> https://coingeek.com/us-treasury-cryptos-must-adhere-to-tough-market-regulations/

It is not about some text msg in the internet - it's getting a GLOBAL finacial product with all implications.
So better learn what that means - or shut up ur anno anarcho scams

In this other source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/800-bitcoin-buys-10-000-cash-on-dark-web-turn-key-money-laundering also highlights such an event, although
it is difficult to follow each transaction in the world for amounts from $ 800, it should be noted that on the dark web there are pages where they make bitcoin almost impossible to track and another way is to pass it to Monero, it is usually a money laundering, but by changing it in a little Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency, to the market all this is helpful, because to make such a transaction for Paypal and get rid of that money, it is because the hackers themselves know that bitcoin and crypto in general will soon have a bullish rally.

I must be having a slow day.

I pay someone $800 in Bitcoin and they send me $10,000 in cash via methods that aren't very traceable. That sounds like a jolly good deal. Um, what's in it for the person who accepts the BTC other than a vast deficit?

Laundering.

The people selling $10,000 are selling stolen money. This is largely from hacked bank accounts or credit cards. They can't just transfer this money to themselves. Even using something like Western Union to wire the money to themselves is going to look pretty obvious once they've done it a couple of times. So instead they wire it to other people in return for bitcoin. They never actually have to touch the money themselves, and it is never in any account owned by them - they simply transfer it from the real owner's account to the buyer's account. Far less risky. And it's not really a deficit because it's not their money to begin with. For them, it's $800 of profit.

You can read the full report here: https://cdn.armor.com/app/uploads/2018/10/2019-Q3-Report-BlackMarket-SinglePages-1.pdf

It's a fantastic thing that dark markets can't be stopped, because that's exactly the whole purpose of it. The freedom that it offers also attracts the scummiest entities to utilize it to their advantage, but there just isn't a way to stop this. People are afraid of dark markets because the emphasis has always been on murderers, terrorism, etc.

I'm personally not against people buying/selling weed and whatnot through dark markets, and let this be what most people use them for. I know someone who regularly buys shrooms for personal use. Nothing wrong with that.

@1Referee. The darkweb attracts the scummiest entities, however, who said that the banking system is not run by the scummiest entities also hehehe.

The people are not afraid of the men who fund wars that create debt to make the banks richer. The harmless bankers.

Governments let this happen in all aspects. Not just Bitcoin.

Just a small point they've missed in the news... how many million dollars are laundered via crypto and how many are laundered with old fashion methods?
Of course, nobody has reliable numbers, but I think that the part done with crypto is only a drop of water in an ocean.

Did Armor actually test any of these services?

They realise there are scores of these so-called Paypal/WU/Skrill etc for BTC services popping up every day, right? And they're generally just scammers with nothing to sell.

You can see their ads pop up right here on the forum every now and then:

Here's one post that missed being deleted: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926006.0

They've all used almost the exact same copy from the 1990s, used to be WU for Paypal, then for e-gold, not for Bitcoin. Outright scams, not actual hackers with money to launder or hacked bank accounts to sell.

I agree on what Kakmakr said. Bitcoin's activity in the dark web have decreased through the years since the silk road days. Criminals in the dark web have became smarter now and has shifted to a more anonymity focused coins like the monero and dash and even the authorities are the ones who have said it. Bitcoin is not anonymous as we think really even countries can issue a blacklist on addresses related to illicit activities that is also the reason why some of them have shifted in a lesser known crypto as well as a more anonymous one.

Rightly said  ;D.  Bank system is the most scummiest entities worst they were backed by government and laws.


It does since many of those who traded Bitcoin in the dark web learned it the hard way that Bitcoin is not fully anonymous.  So now they are using anon coins and tokens, so we just need sometimes for these anonymous coins to be shutdown too.  It is just a matter of time before these kind of cryptocurrency (anonymous) declared illegal.


It is indeed that the old fashioned method of money laundering is far more greater than the cryptocurrency related.  Just think about the adoption ratio of this two method and yet they are more alarmed when cryptocurrency is involved because for them it is a new thing.   

There's nothing mentioned in the report I linked to above to suggest that they bought or attempted to buy any of the services they are reporting on, including all those which use bitcoin or other cryptocurrency. As you say, there is no shortage of scammers on the clear web, so why would there be a shortage on the dark web, where it is essentially impossible to take any real action against spammers. This essentially sounds like the twitter scam of "Send 0.5 ETH to get 5 ETH back", but with extra steps. I would, however, be surprised if every one of the services or trades that are mentioned in the report are scams.

I'm not exactly familiar with trading illegal services on the dark web. Are escrows a thing?

If I had a sMerit left I would have given it to you. I couldn't have said it any better.

Don't forget that this directly applies to governments collecting taxes as well. People often treat Bitcoiners with a strong anti taxation opinion as tax evaders and thus criminals, but they have no clue about how much of their money is used to finance proxy wars and whatnot. Bitcoiners can now decide not to pay tax, or less tax than before because no one can freeze their balance if they avoid using centralized services.

The mainstream media is doing an extremely good job dedicating a lot of its time to the wrong criminals.  :-X

no, they really can't. it takes years for governments to build cases sufficient to convict anyone. the risk is obviously worth it for DNM vendors. after each round of DNM takedowns, the market only ever grows larger. from the dozens of smaller markets, one or two of them always steps up to become the next silk road or alphabay.

it's a never ending cycle that governments are clearly losing:
Feds Dismantled the Dark-Web Drug Trade—but It's Already Rebuilding (https://www.wired.com/story/dark-web-drug-takedowns-deepdotweb-rebound/)
Despite Setbacks, Darknet Markets Show Continuous Growth in 2019 (https://news.bitcoin.com/despite-setbacks-darknet-markets-show-continuous-growth-in-2019/)

The government and the banks are always working together. They give money to the politicians and help them be elected to different levels of positions in government. The government borrows money from the bank for their wars, the most popular in America is the war on drugs.

The people are taxed to pay for all of it.

I'm sure some of them are legitimate hackers, for sure, but the large majority are outright scammers, copy pasting the same tactics that worked 20 years ago.

Escrows are a thing on darkmarkets themselves, but that's a good point. Those services Armor's talking about? They don't do escrows. You send them Bitcoin, and they promise to Western Union you money. It's classic, just as beautiful as the Nigerian Prince scams, because it works.

I think guys like Armor give too much credit to kiddie scammers. And they have no clue about what happens. They just enter these markets, get their heads done in by the amazing things they see on sale, and then scramble to write a report that's not substantiated.

Like you said, I don't think any of the services were tested. Armor took the ads at pure face value.

This is stupid... Not sure why criminals would trade millions of dollars worth of dirty money on a P2P currency that the government would have a decent shot at cracking the code. The ironic part about these sort of articles is that BTC was made for money freedom, and is probably one of the worst coins to do illegal things with, while privacy-based coins, that were literally built to avoid government intervention and keep other people's eyes off your money, are getting barely any publicity and pushed to the public as the crypto for the darknet.

Now, why is that..? Because the government and banks are trying to paint a horrible view of the coin, even though it's not even the most used coin to fund illegal activities that occur on the darknet.

Not sure what you mean by this. No government is "cracking bitcoin". Do you mean tracing the user via the blockchain? Sure, that's possible, but the hacker in question is likely going to be using a mixer, CoinJoin, selling for Monero, or something similar.

Do you have a source? Everything I've seen suggests bitcoin is still the most used coin, even though Monero would be a better choice on the dark net IMO.

where is this report? Does anyone have the link of this report so I can see?

about this company that made the report, see the team:

https://www.armor.com/about-us/

MARK WOODWARD ( CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER )

JOSH BOSQUEZ ( CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER )

They are the only people with technical skills to watch and do research on darkweb. I assuming they must have taken some time to do such research, so I would like to see this report and if possible I hope the report has proof. Because in my opinion they are promoting themselves

I linked to it above:

There is nothing in the way of "proof" in the report, as you ask. They simply talk about the offers advertised, and how much each costs. They did not purchase or attempt to purchase any of the offers they discuss. As we discussed above, it's very likely the majority of advertised offers or trades are scams.

Pay 800 USD worth of bitcoin and get 10,000 USD in fiat money from a bank account via Western Union?
I don't get it.What makes this transaction clever?I guess that the hackers have access to way too much stolen bank accounts so they sell them at an extremely low price.
The battle against the Darkweb is going to be harder than ever.

That's what was explained to my sluggish self.

Since whoever's paying winds up with cash I really don't get why they're not recruiting mules to cash out themselves and then they get the full amount but I'm not a criminal.

That's probably because they want to create a channel (specifically their victims for a broader investigation) where they may get skipped ahead if the ones who are paying them BTC are actually doing it for an illicit activity and so, they are also considered criminals here. It'd be very interesting to see how these criminals react when they come under the radar of those big criminals (the slave police of their sultry delinquent Government which is itself dipped in the mud of corruption till their last drop of blood).

Soon Bitcoin will not anymore be used in the dark web transactions all because they can be traced and there is nothing "too be careful" once you are into this marketplace. And this is good news for the Bitcoin community as it is not anymore going to be the target of many of those in the government who can be using this as the scapegoat to launch anything that can be affecting the world of cryptocurrency.

The fiat for bitcoin service might not also be the real money launderer at all. I reckon that it might only be the middleman. The real money launderer might get half of the $10k hehehe.

Sadly that will not be the case, even if anonymity coins are mostly use for illicit activities in the dark web daily and Bitcoin will only be used rarely it will still be the face of the headline since the news and media will always link it to the most popular crypto. They all have their ways of padding the news and hiding other statistics just to make Bitcoin look bad for the common people. The bad thing about this is the impression it makes to all of the people who don't know the industry and that includes lawmakers who just take actions because of it. This won't really stop not until majority of the people gets the general sense that Bitcoin is now barely being used in the darkweb.

Most stats seem to point to the opposite. Bitcoin is used just as much as ever. It makes little to no sense to me but liquidity and acceptance clearly mean more to the average reprobate than covering their tracks.

There'll come a time where all privacy coins are rejected from above ground exchanges and bitcoins with any sniff of being near a dex or a mixer may be treated with suspicion by them - https://bisq.community/t/dirty-btc-coins-on-the-xmr-market/7798

Bitcoin will always be used by criminals of all layers. People here often think that cash is mostly used by criminals, but it should be pointed out that a lot of that happens digitally through financial institutions.

One would think that criminals must be sick in the head to launder money digitally, but it happens more frequently than people think. On a larger scale financial institutions even help you do it if the reward outweighs their risks.

Bitcoin is open for anybody to use, even if we don't particularly like those using it. Get over it. The same aspect that empowers criminals to freely use this decentralized money, helps us (non criminals) just as effectively.

It's nonsense, really. There will come a time in the not too distant future where every bitcoin or fraction thereof in active circulation has at some point passed through a mixer, Wasabi wallet, CoinJoin, DEX, etc. How far are they going to look back? They obviously can't block every deposit that has every touched one of these services, so there must be a cut off of how far they will go back, and it will be trivial to bounce bitcoin around some "clean" addresses you have just generated to increase the number of steps since coming from one of these services. With every day that goes by I wish for large volume DEXs more and more.

Exactly. The entire reason that criminal use bitcoin is because it works. If it didn't work, criminals wouldn't use it. Every currency in the world which successfully functions as a currency is used for illegal activities. If it can't be used for illegal activities, it's not really a currency.

That won't happen. Crypto markets are the fuel fo the cryptocurrency industry right now.
Without them, the industry cannot survive and actually bitcoin is going to die. Illegal activities are going to continue to happen the same way as they happened before bitcoin invention.

Don't worry yourself about his opinion when it comes to this particular area.

He wants you to buy BSV, ideally from his fine self I presume. They have an ever so slightly contradictory fantasy about Bitcoin being truly P2P whilst also having nodes that no one can afford to run and slavish legal penis suckage. Funnily enough they're all mutually exclusive but you may as well be arguing about the colour of the sky.

I speculate that some of those politicians attack bitcoin only because they do not want everyone else to have similar privileges as their rich, white crime, criminal friends hehehe.

That's like saying; soon fiat will not be used for illicit activities anymore because governments are steering towards a cashless society where all transactions conducted digitally can be traced.

Ignore how we refer to each specific form of money, because it's simply just money at the end of the day, whether it's called fiat, Bitcoin, Gold, etc. There is an underlying value that we exchange, and as long as there are enough people and businesses willing to accept these forms of money, they will be used, regardless of it being used for good or "bad" purposes.