Bitcoin Forum

The popular idea is Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are the tools for processing illicit and criminal activities around the globe. But we have learned it is global banks that moved some $2,000,000,000,000 ($2 trillion) worth of suspicious transactions for criminals around the world.

According to Buzzfeed News it turns out, "Deadly Terror Networks And Drug Cartels Use Huge Banks To Finance Their Crimes." Buzzfeed obtained thousands of documents that detail how the banks profit. The documents contained private banking information about public figures and senior government officials around the world — along with suspected criminals and organizations tied to terrorism.

More than 2,100 “suspicious activity reports” were filed from 1999 to 2017. These reports are required when there are signs of money laundering or other potential crimes. These transactions could be linked to drug dealers, terrorists, human traffickers and other illicit operations. But after filing the reports the big banks continued to process most of the transactions and collect the associated fees.
 
These documents (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/fincen-files-financial-scandal-criminal-networks?origin=shp/) compiled by banks, shared with the government, but kept from public view, expose the hollowness of banking safeguards, and the ease with which criminals have exploited them. Profits from deadly drug wars, fortunes embezzled from developing countries, and hard-earned savings stolen in a Ponzi scheme were all allowed to flow into and out of these financial institutions, despite warnings from the banks’ own employees, according to the documents.

Since the story broke shares in finance giants Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC have tumbled.

https://i.ibb.co/C0kWKTy/deutsche.png

The volume of transactions and amount of money involved make the "Dark Web", cyber-criminals, crypto exchange hackers and other bad actors look like amateurs.

In light of these reports governments, securities regulators and executives at global financial institutions have some explaining to do. They have been raking tremendous profits for executives and shareholders by moving dirty money.

Interestingly the leaked documents stem from a congressional investigation into the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We are less than 45-days away from the 2020 elections.  

Why do these gatekeepers cast doubt about supporting crypto while laundering trillions of dollars for global crime cartels?  

Probably because if bitcoin is legalized, then banks will no longer be needed. Everyone is watching the digital yuan testing in China.
If the US government is investing huge amounts of money to track transactions on the blockchain, then in the future, cryptocurrency will play an important role in the field of payments.
Banks will fight to the last, while there is a possibility.

This doesn't surprise me atall. Afterall most of the traditional financial systems are too opaque... so worst things could be happening there. The traditional system should be as transparent  as truely decentralized cryptocurrency or more transparent.
Eliminate or reduce their centralization, secrecy, apaquness etc and you will solve lots problems and also can see their activities clearly to solve crimes and evil
The traditional financial system without proper transparency is more like a kingdom of darkness. But many are OK with it because lots of the evil are hidden.

All I know is that there are a lot of shady business while using fiats. For example, I checked about western union and I noticed the fiat collected using western union is not even traceable. There are amber shady things of such that I have read about fiat currencies. It is not surprising to me when I read about the malicious activities. I believe people know that most people still use fiat, which is an evidence of more scam activities. It is not about the fiat or cryptocurrencies, anywhere people are, there are good and bad people. People know how to manipulate.

While claiming crypto is used in money laundering and terrorism financing, I still remember a news I read on cointelegraph where united state SEC implied it is a misconception which is actually and totally true if compared to fiat.

actually this is not popular at all. maybe only in certain circles like the banking cartel or the FUD army that tries so hard to keep the bitcoin price down.
otherwise in real world and among regular people, bitcoin is either unknown or is usually seen as virtual money for the nerds.

my take:

1) to keep the fiat ponzi scheme going (bankers and the top 1% need that money printing/money laundering machines active 24/7)

2) BTC can help the average joe to keep their wealth out of reach from the claws of the system, as such, it may be a bit of a problem in the long-term for the crooked banking system so they send the media to keep the "bitcoin bad, banks good" narrative alive so that the herd can have that feeling of safety, security and trust when keeping their money in the banks

Cash has always been the shadiest currency, with the banks backing it to death and acting as ‘legal cartels’ to facilitate money laundering and other illegal stuff across the world. While they still have an essential part on the economy and society, one cannot deny the fact that they commit crimes most of the time in plain sight, and they are only getting caught if someone ballsy enough stands up against them and expose them to the public. Imagine the countless scandals banks have found themselves into and only getting fined with no severe legal repercussions. Yep, sounds so fair.

This is a means to herd users into breaking the privacy cloak Bitcoin offers. If it is tagged as a suspicious commodity, then bogus regulatory laws placed on it through centralized platforms can be justified and users are forced to de-anonymize themselves.
Monero for example, which is one of the most privacy centered cryptocurrencies has come under lots of attacks and criticisms from government agencies who are constantly trying to track it - Private Coin Monero Can Now Be Tracked By US Homeland Security (https://www.ibtimes.com/private-coin-monero-can-now-be-tracked-us-homeland-security-3037794) or to reduce its adoption by exchanges making it more difficult for it to be used.

With the increasing suspicion being linked to cryptocurrency transactions, Banks and governments increase the cost of users trying to maintain their privacy when transacting, which is a big threat to government control.

This is the regular opinion I get from people. The narrative of Bitcoin as a means of facilitating illegal activities has always been a means of controlling it or dissuading people from using it.

Because with bitcoin, banks will have no chance to launder money amymore. There are a lot of criminal activities going with fiat currencies which most of the times are not visible to us. With bitcoin, even if there's miney laundering happening, the rate is too lower compared to fiat.
Our country's reserve money with Federal Reserve Bank has been stolen but yet no such progress in recover, a lot of banks were involved with it.

This story is quite funny, sad, but ultimately good for us. The argument that crypto is for criminals, which I have heard many times, rings very hollow now. I'm invested in the stock market, but definitely not in banks, and I'm glad I'm not !

Banks pointing fingers to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin as a tool for money laundering is a part of a great cover up and deception which unfortunately has been deliberately amplified in social media and Government's preferred a silent treatment about this matter since they always want to preserve the status quo without regard to preserve its integrity and ethics.

What's more about banks is they can steal your money by printing money. Bitcoin can only be compared to little in criminal rate happening in Banks, yet mainstream only highlight Bitcoin's negative activity. But they do not banks data breaches, frozen accounts, and huge money laundering scheme's.
If people could only do their own research, they wouldn't be afraid in joining the Cryptocurrency market.

This may be the popular idea before when Bitcoin was still mostly used underground, but ever since Bitcoin has went mainstream the idea has faded away. Perhaps only a few stubborn people are left sticking to this anti-Bitcoin view.

As to money laundering, fiat is the money used by everyone so it is understood that it will also be the same money used for money laundering. The entire fiat value of Bitcoin is a tiny amount compared to the overall fiat amount in circulation.

If something threatens the system then they will do everything in making sure that it will not dominate. That is the law for competition and this banking institutions will do anything in their power to not get their old system become entirely obsolete. The problem with legalizing bitcoin is there is no clear way to address the grey area, let's admit it that there will be people with ill-intent that will exploit bitcoin's grey area. The future of cryptocurrency will advance no matter what though and governments either accept it entirely or not.

Many scams are based on the idea of making you believe that the one who is scamming the other is you. So you don't realize that it's the other way around.

In the same way, banks blame money laundering on bitcoin, to divert attention so that people don't realize that they are laundering the most money and appear to be honest institutions.

This isn't because Bitcoin is pure and inherently repels criminals from it, it's because it's generally not well adopted, even among criminals. Plus, privacy is far from perfect now, so moving large amounts of money and not getting detected later would be quite hard. But Bitcoin has privacy improvements in its roadmap, so if we imagine that Bitcoin would one day be as popular as banks, than all the criminals will switch to it too. And if Bitcoin will not get more popular, than there's really no point to be happy about banks helping criminals.

Well with the tag of privacy, pseudo-anonymity in the name of Bitcoin, it's rather easy to create an image of a medium mostly being used for criminal activities. Though honestly, with enough influence (or money), anything can be hidden from the public eye, and as long as they don't know, no one would really admonish them no? Ignorance is bliss perfectly suits the masses here tbh. Plus, it's honestly more likely for illegal activities to happen on centralized businesses, which just makes it more likely that something is happening under the table most of the time.

Even if we do consider Bitcoin being used instead of fiat, the money originally would come from centralized companies, either through moles or insiders, which honestly still makes the ones at fault the companies by being quite careless. There would still be a window or frame that criminals would use fiat to transfer funds to Bitcoin, so if securities could capitalize on that, and as long as they know that these criminals would go 100% for exchanges or p2p to trade BTC for their stolen fiat, then they can anticipate and intercept, with enough resources used on the investigation that is.

People are basing on the nature of Bitcoin and it's potential to become a tool for money laundering which is why a lot of people are saying that Bitcoin is being used to launder money. With enough development, Bitcoin will surely attract the attention of fraudsters and launderers, it's inevitable.

Do not be mistaken, banks are being used in laundering money and only ignorant denies it so it's not a surprised that that kind of money is being laundered through the system of banks. Also, bank is more developed than Bitcoin.

This is not the first instance about money laundering through banks, we will see these reports and then everything goes silent after a while, i have not seen anyone getting implicated for these activities till now and the government always protects these bankers, even if they implements disastrous policies that could bankrupt the government would step in, so i am not expecting any difference even with this report.

It is because anyone can blame a decentralized financial market and it is an easy target for all the centralized institutions.

You can't launder money without banks! And even if you use bitcoin or any other crypto for money laundering you need to end the process with banks and banks will take the fee, like they always do! Majority of people is ignorant, they use money every day, but they don't know where the money is coming from, who creates money, how the money is distributed, they don't know basics about the system they are using and support!
Bitcoin is under the spotlight for years, you can move money from one part of the world to another, with very low fees, and without government/bank interfering. That is suitable for people from white and dark side, it's a tool that is used by all!

The op is right. I've seen various scandals with huge banks laundering money (I'm not just talking about neglect, I'm talking about banks taking part in those crimes), but somehow these banks are still in business and people still generally believe that banks can be trusted. Sometimes even a single big scandal exceeds Bitcoin's total market capitalization, so talking about Bitcoin being dangerous since some use it for money laundering is extremely unfair. And since all that accountability in the banks leads to huge sums laundered by those who are supposed to ensure that it's not possible, I'm skeptical about AML regulations being forced onto crypto exchanges and stuff, because clearly they're not helpful with fiat.

Pointing fingers doesn't make them cleaner. They are trying to paint Bitcoin dirty and yet they can never hide the fact that they are the ones who are making money laundering a thing. They cannot say no to criminals in coat and ties.

Money laundering wouldn't be easy without their facilitation. Even money laundering through Bitcoin won't probably end without the dirty Bitcoins ending up in fiat.

The only reason they're pointing fingers is to attempt to stop Bitcoin. Let's face the truth here - a Bitcoin economy means there's no need for banks. No bank is stupid enough to say "yeah, let's self-destruct!". Money laundering isn't something new and I'd bet you anything that more than half of the wealthy ones have earned their money at one point the less legal way. So have politicians and so many other well-known people.

It's just more than easy to understand why they're against us: Bitcoin is against banks. Simple as that.

Just a series of experiment, but they never worked. I believe the government will not allow bitcoin to damage the economy, but we (the bitcoin community) already have a power that can cause fear in the government as well as the economy with bitcoin.
So far, the government seem to only see bitcoin as a criminal tool that can harm a country, but in fact they have also failed to stop similar cases with fiat. It doesnt make sense for the government to want to stop bitcoin just because it can be used by criminal, and I think there is an interest factor in that. Not a good idea.

I can assure you that you will win that bet. ;)
Its an open secret and the whole country can do it.

You are absolutely right because bitcoin was designed as an alternative means to make people financial freedom but the decentralized aspect of it is what the government and institutions don't like about it which the reeason why they make some false statements  about crgpto to be an instrument of money laundering and darkweb. But the information provided by the OP make us to understand that all the scam and launder done through crypto is still amateur.

money laundering has been here for ages already. so when they talk about btc for money laundering? they are just fooling themselves, looking for loopholes to ruin the image of btc?
 if they will educate themselves, they will know the true benefits that they can derive from using btc or blockchain tech. they are just scared for the things that will change once this technology is out even in government transactions.

I wasn't surprised to knowing that Banks launder was $ 2 Trillion, because illegal activities that occur on fiat have existed
since Bitcoin did not exist. So it's a little surprising when the government considers Bitcoin to be used for money laundering
and financial terrorism. In fact, fiat is proven to be widely used for money laundering and financial terrorism. Maybe the
government is doing this to make Bitcoin look bad, because the government is afraid Bitcoin will replace fiat.

Banks' jobs have been killing the economy.
People's confidence in the current financial system is declining, inflation and economic recession are also attributed to the current banking system.
Bitcoin and crypto can solve the above problems