Bitcoin Forum

The banned Bangladeshi militant organisation Ansar Al Islam (AI) and Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) has sent a huge amount of money to Kashmir. The India TV refers to the case of this trafficking through Bitcoin by converting to cryptocurrency. The media reported that an Indian police officer who was reluctant to reveal the name on Tuesday (March 9).

According to the commentary of the officer, a special action group of Sohail Newaz and Fazle Rabbi Chowdhury named two militants were arrested by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP),  special branch of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime(CTTC) in September 2019. During interrogation, they said that militant organizations have been getting a lot of funds through Bitcoin system since 2014.

These two further said that they collected a huge amount of money from Pakistan and Gulf countries in the form of cryptocurrency. They used to raise money through 'Hundi', but it is now in the monitoring of the law-discipline forces.

Additional Deputy Commissioner Ahmedul Islam, the Additional Deputy Commissioner of Bangladeshi Special Action Team, said it was very difficult to identify illegal transactions through Bitcoin. We do not have technical ability to do this.

The US government announced in August 2020 that hundreds of cryptocurrency accounts, four websites and four Facebook accounts were seized. This step has failed the attempt to collect funds with the digital currency of militant groups.

However, digital currency is still banned in Bangladesh. Bangladesh Bank issued a notice on December 2016 asking everyone to refrain from such transactions.

News published by Daily Ittefaq, an influential national newspaper of Bangladesh. I just translated it from Bangla to English. Here is the news link,
https://shorturl.at/rDIPT [Daily Ittefaq]
https://shorturl.at/gjuAL [India TV]

Because we all want privacy with our financial transactions, the good people and the bad, whether we are hiding something or not.

This does not amount to a big deal actually. Sometimes we are overemphasizing such incidents simply because Bitcoin is involved in it. More often than not, criminals use fiat. Good people use it, too. The same goes with Bitcoin. It is being used both by bad and good people. But in terms of cross-border transactions, Bitcoin is a whole lot better than fiat. We all know that. Terrorists must have also heard of it.

Exactly, Bangladesh is a developing country and recently promoted from least developing country to Developing country in terms of Economy and GDP rate. By the way, people are getting smart nowadays and criminals too. Passing money from border, Bitcoin is the most safest way to transfer the whole money without knowing anyone. That's why, criminal can take that opportunity. On the other hand, good people also use Bitcoin as you already explained.

If terrorist organizations can use bitcoin to access it, I think that it is definitely a big deal. Yes, it might look like scratching the surface but there is something more to this and I think that we should be scared of it. As long as there is no real way to prevent terrorist organization and other bad elements from using bitcoin/cryptocurrency, I think that we should treat it as a big deal.

Kudos to the police they've seized those transactions early. Good and bad people has only one purpose in this kind of transaction which is "privacy" and "convenience". For the legitimate investment like good people did with their Bitcoins governments still on track of them because it is an untaxable wealth or asset, but to those criminals out there those transactions will surely be distributed to some of their branches depending on what they intend to use those Bitcoins but no doubt for funding illegal activities.

Uh uh, definitely not. Bitcoin doesn't have a gatekeeper. Bitcoin does not have an administrator like the one we have here on this forum. Bitcoin does not discriminate users. Bitcoin is what genuine freedom is all about. You are a criminal, a pedophile, a politician, a saint, a terrorist, and so on does not matter. You are welcome.


There is no preventing them from using Bitcoin. That is the truth. But, you know, law enforcers will enforce the law. Law enforcement is precisely the reason behind AML, CFT, KYC, and so on. It's their cat and mouse game.

As to Bitcoin, it is there for everyone. In the same manner that countries are not shutting down Toyota car dealers even if ISIS troops are riding on Toyota Hilux. They don't shut down Samsung or Apple or Nokia stores even if these terrorists are communicating through their mobile phones.

It's pretty sad that this is the final frontier when it comes to morals of bitcoin. If this is freedom is then being locked in a cage safe from all this evils is a far better choice then, we can't just look the other way when there are people that are using it for malicious purpose.
I want to believe you that law enforcers will enforce the law but I wasn't born yesterday, law enforcers are breaking the laws too, this world is slowly descending to chaos and we just smile and do nothing about it. Your right about the Toyota cars being used but if the manufacturers were to know that they are dealing with a terrorist, I think that they will not deal with them. Those cars came from CIA so we can't do anything about it.

Yeah it is easy to say to step up their game but if the government is filled with corrupt people to the brim, I think that it will be close to impossible. There are existing methods but those countries do not have the funds to upgrade their current methods and when it comes to government spending, you have to be on budget and you should have the approval of the majority and you have to start almost from scratch.

That's so sad, and obviously this should affect the bitcoin and crypto industry negatively, this will hype and make negative perception of crypto among common people that it's a bad thing used only by criminals. Doesn't matter how good a technology is and what its moto is for, there will always be some people who will misuse it giving it a bad name for everyone. Saddening news.

This thing should be expected, many cases of money laundering out there and traditional paper money is the most used currency for laundering money, bitcoin might be hard to trace but it's not entirely untraceable and the launderer track gonna be forever kept in the blockchain but paper money trace will just vanish into thin air, it's just whether they are capable or not, not because the currency's fault.

If someone says that they have evidence that illegal activities are carried out with BTCitcoin then they need to provide the evidence in the form of transaction ID and wallet address so that everyone can verify. I have seen similar incidents thrown around implicating BTCitcoin being used for illegal activities but i have not seen one transaction ID or a wallet to substantiate these findings rather simply throwing the name BTCitcoin.

With no evidence it is hard to believe that any transaction have taken place if they are taking the name BTCitcoin. The authorities wants to take the name of BTCitcoin in vain they should have the transaction ID and wallet details to substantiate the claim, if not we have to assume it is a bogus claim to simply put all the blame on BTCitcoin and hide their inefficiencies.

Everything can be used for evil purposes. There is a massive amount of military trade which is made by fiat money. No one denies that but if there is something illegal transaction happens in bitcoin then "Bitcoin is used for illegal purposes." Evils can use everything in an evil way, but others will use it in a good way. Cash money is also hard to track. These could have happened in cash then fiat currency is illegal?!

So this is a case of criminals admitting to committing crime with bitcoin. .. more like they would most like be doing with fiat currency. But rather than punish the criminals alone for abusing/misusing Bitcoin, innocent people who use Bitcoin too get punished together. That's is not justice.

Anyway, the good thing about Bitcoin is that the transactions are transparent to the public... that is a really good feature that can allow security agencies and anyone else track crime money. Fiat doesn't offer this feature to the public as far as I can tell.
By the way, I wish they could provide the addresses used by them in the past to fund the violence. Bitcoin makes it possible for things like that to be investigated public rather than in secret.

This is bad for all of us in the crypto world. Sure the number of people involved in money laundering  is fairly small compared to the whole bitcoin market. But bad news usually get more attraction than good news. A few large bad news can shift the public sentiment against bitcoins. We all need to do our part and work towards more transparency in the crypto world. We do want to protect our anonymity but we also want to protect the good position bitcoin has these days. Preventing money laundering should be the goal of every government these days. Somehow we need to arrange our self's with countries that have a lot of problem with criminals using bitcoins.

Any medium of exchange and has monetary value, they will use it and there is no exception, like us, we can also use it for anything we will use it.

It has always been a big deal because it is the belief what bitcoin is used for, negatively. But just as the same as fiat money, it can used for every purpose that we use.

To fully understand the scale of corruption in BD you guys should watch this report from Aljazeera.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6v_levbUN4

Their semi-autocratic military raj with a puppet democracy is a threat to not just India but other countries as well. They need to be taken out and the Bangladeshi people should be reunited with India and given absolute political, economical and cultural freedom.

Ironically the only government capable of doing this is BJP, the very govt. that hates muslims or anything non-hindu.

Ethics are related to how people use Bitcoin. Bitcoin in a vacuum should not be judged with a moral compass since it is just a tech, a tool. I'm pretty sure government and some services will try to control it by doing surveillance and blacklist any site/bank account related to these activities, and make it harder for people to withdraw cash from their Bitcoin stack.

Crypto is quite transparent, everything is present in the blockchain, unlike fiat where only some people can track the flow of money and use it for their own purpose (if it's a good thing then good if it's not then we're doomed). Focusing on banning the technology is not going to be effective imo.

There is definitely something fishy with this news. The Indian government want to ban the ownership of Bitcoin, but they were forced to shelve their plans due to opposition from cryptocurrency users in that country. And now suddenly some "unknown" police official comes up with the claim that Bitcoin is being used to fund terrorism. Till now, there has been zero evidence to link Bitcoin with terrorism in India. And now some anonymous source claims that a link has been found. The timing couldn't be any better for the government. If they are certain about the terrorist link, then let them come up with concrete proof to support the same. Until then, I am not going to believe this BS.

People and the Government will say what ever they want about Bitcoin and how they now believe that Bitcoin is now responsible for the negative vises they are having in their country. Also the Nigeria Government have said that Bitcoin is used to launder money in the country but also have not been able to point to one proof of such transaction. This is not saying it is not possible but we know money laundering has been in existence even before bitcoin so, if this unscrupulous people now realize this is easier than money, of cause they will exploit it but we didn't say let us cancel fiat when it was used for the same purpose. 

I believe that Bitcoin trading is already banned in Bangladesh. And now with this incident, they will start cracking down on the P2P platforms as well. And since the Kashmir militants are also involved, I don't think that the Indian authorities will remain silent. They will also try to target those traders who use the P2P platforms. Still, I don't believe that this news is very accurate. It is not easy to convert Bitcoin to fiat cash in either India or Bangladesh. Most of the militant groups receive their funding in the form of "Hawala" which involves physical cash.

Another incident wherein the use of bitcoin is overly emphasized on a problem stemming from some other issues that the parties didn't bother tackling before. Bitcoin is placed on a bad light even though it only does what it's expected to do. Most terrorist funds do not directly come from bitcoin transfers, and I believe that the bulk or majority of such funds come from laundered fiat that came from multiple sources. It's easier to actually transfer fiat from point A to point B and is much more private, considering that there is this bank secrecy law safeguarding deposit information and whatnot.

They'd have to do better than just spotlighting the use of bitcoin if they want to kill terrorism. Their counter-terrorism agencies seem to be incapable of culling the problem from its roots.

Now that explains why the India government recently announced that they would "ban" Bitcoin in India. It is things like this that are turning governments against Crypto currencies.  >:(

The thing is.... they could have used diamonds or gold coins and the India government would not ban that, if they used that? Probably not, because they know diamonds and Gold are used for legal things too. We need to show them that Bitcoin is used for "legal" things too and not just for crime.  ;)

We have a lot of hard work to "educate" governments to the positive side of Bitcoin.  ;)

They were arrested in 2019 but the news has been published now?
Well, I will not be surprised to see some good politicians are also laundering money through bitcoin.
Your links are not working, please share the direct url, short links are not allowed in forum also.

This documentary has a sole purpose of defaming the current govt. while I have to agree that documentary is partially true.

Let's stop making it look like there won't be money laundering if there is no digital currency, Fiat have been used millions of time for money laundering, terrorists fundings and illegal things as well, if any country can put ban on crypto because of this they should put ban on Fiat as well

People are so smart at this time and they are finding smart way to transfer money. For a developing country like Bangladesh, money laundering is a great curse and for this, the government of Bangladesh is not accepting bitcoin as legal currency.

This has been an issue for years already. Bitcoin surely had a bad image long time ago since many people used it for illegal things, buying drugs, money laundering and other criminal things. That's why there are many countries banning cryptocurrency as well. But still, it can't be stopped. The anonymity of btc surely help it, and it'll be even harder to track if the criminals do illegal things using bitcoin.
I hope there will be a way to solve this, since it might give bad impact, and make it harder for bitcoin to be accepted as a worldwide currency by many.

- But the problem is that even if we demonstrate the value of crypto and bitcoin in the community and government, they will still use negative examples against bitcoin, we cannot try to promote them in this legalization issue as bitcoin is used by so many bad guys to harm society and government, bans will at least prevent similar situations from happening, minimize damage, we as a good user, the impact is not too great. We can still use bitcoin every day through different ways and methods of access, the value of bitcoin cannot be changed just because of such information

Defamation? Bro if I do stupid shit, of course there'll be defamation. Run the country like a country not your as a grocery store family business.

Everyone in the region already knew this and we've been reading, writing, hearing about all this for decades now. People that have extended family that are living in BD today and have been for centuries are all suffering. There is no "defamation" going on here. Just the truth. Admit it. Fix those issues. Move on.

BTW that day isn't far away when India and BD unites again. For good. Let's hope you guys are able to clean this filth in your military and political areas before that day arrives so that a peaceful reunification can happen.

You are talking about a war to take over a country because it is corrupted and you want another corrupt country to take over and merge them together  ::). It is disappointing to see racial profiling regimes in power and what government you are talking about who hates Muslims, now i got it, it is a right wing party with fascists ideologies and you think they will sort the issues. It will create a much bigger mess if they try to intervene.



Bangladesh already banned bitcoin as per my searches and how can it change things if they really think that bitcoin is used to fund terrorism. What are the evidence they are providing to substantiate their case file.

So, any problem with that?

I guess it is just a common news especially when bitcoin price is increasing. But, I don't think it will prevent the investor who will buy bitcoin for their investment place.

Remember, bitcoin is money and we will free to using it, as for we have limitated by the government we still using it with another ways. Bitcoin always reported as a place for money laundering even though they don't know bitcoin is very transparent.

It's not new Bitcoin is used for illegal activities, perhaps because it makes it easier for Bitcoin to send money abroad. So criminals are interested
in committing crimes using Bitcoin, therefore a special team for internet crimes is needed to track down  the perpetrators of these crimes.
Because now criminals are getting smarter at tricking the police with increasingly sophisticated technology. If the police do not improve their skills
in technology, criminals will always be one step ahead.

There's no such thing as morals of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is no religion. It's simply a decentralized currency free for all.

If you are to completely avoid all the evils, I'm afraid even if you leave humanity you cannot get away from it. Your mind itself is a bearer of evil.

You and I are moral beings so perhaps we could something when and if Bitcoin is used for malicious purposes but you cannot assign any kind of culpability to Bitcoin itself just as you cannot do the same to a fork which was used to stab someone.


We share the same doubt, although mine does not stop at law enforcers. How could you be sure that Toyota won't provide cars to bad people while law enforcers do?

Yes, you are right that Bitcoin is banned in Bangladesh by Supreme Court. (https://www.dhakatribune.com/business/banks/2017/12/27/bangladesh-bank-ban-bitcoin)

On the other hand, if militant groups can receive their fund in cash, they can use Bitcoin network too for being anonymous. It's very natural that they will receive or send through BITCOIN.

Well, there is no news for that thing, we can also see this news with fiat currency, the thing about laundering cryptocurrency is that most people think that it cannot be traced by the government. A lot of things like this are now existing because of the value of bitcoin nowadays.

I don't think that terrorists would prefer Bitcoin. It is not easy to convert cash to Bitcoin, and Bitcoin to cash in India anonymously. As Coleman stated, the preferred funding route for the terrorists remain in physical cash. When they can easily fund their operations through Hawala, I don't think that they will go for the Bitcoin route, which can be more tedious and more prone to tracing by the authorities. There may be isolated incidents though. And for the government, that is enough to impose a blanket ban on Bitcoin.

One of the major feature of bitcoin is that it is anonymous and that it helps secure one's privacy. You should also know that bitcoin was created for everybody, the good and the bad, and can be used by both. Bitcoin is intrinsically not a bad thing and only those who use it for the wrong reasons are bad.
I'm sure this particular news would go viral because of the involvement of bitcoin in a crime due the fact that the government are trying their best to paint bitcoin in a bad light. No one would care to mention the number of people bitcoin have helped improve their status of living

India TV is the same channel that shows hour long "documentaries" about finding a "Mummy of Raavan" in Sri Lanka. (Raavan is the villain in Ramayan, a Hindu legend). You can judge how genuine they are.

Also, even if governments ban bitcoin based on such sketchy news, the terrorists won't magically stop. When the US govt sanctioned Iran, they didn't stop flying the F-14 Tomcat. In fact, today Iran has the only F-14 Tomcats in service in the world. And they did well enough on their nuclear program too. Political problems don't end by bans/ sanctions but by actually facing the real underlying issues.

This is one crazy report! 5 brothers, one chief general, and 4 criminals!
I like to watch documentaries (different kinds) and I can say there's some pattern... many governments around the world are connected with criminals, simply they started a journey together! A political party needs a muscle, they take some new gang from the street to protect them, while they will share intel and jobs with them! It's all on a small level, more money goes to their political plans, but once the political party takes the government, all of them grow so big in a very short period of time! Here we talk about billions of dollars that are taken from the government and washed by those criminals... in their country and all over the world!

Sadly I live in a similar country... this is one big joke... you can't believe what kind of prime minister we have here, the one that doesn't know how to talk properly, like most other ministers! But that political party rule for 8 years now, and they are the bosses of everything!

So is there a country in the world that is free from this? Maybe not, maybe some advanced countries are doing that in a sophisticated way, but all world is infected!

Yeah.. just noticed that the OP had posted link from India TV. No one takes this TV channel seriously in India. It is the TV version of Coin Telegraph. Always showing fake news, or bait videos. That said, given the close proximity of this particular TV channel to the ruling party, I won't rule out a well planned propaganda campaign against Bitcoin in India. If the government proxies paint Bitcoin as something used by terrorists, then it will be much easier for them to go ahead with a ban.

Actually something happened there, that's why it came out publicly and published in newspaper. Obviously, there has reputation issue too for Bangladesh where Bitcoin is not legalized. They can only know why they choose to use such route. It is easy to convert Bitcoin to cash as I am also from Bangladesh and I usually convert Btc or other Cryptocurrency to cash according to my need. For big amount, it may cause some problem if they want all in a hurry.

I don't think that the news is fake. India TV can publish negative sides or fake news or something like that. But it was also published by a renowned newspaper of Bangladesh which is nationally certified (News Link will be given below).

https://bit.ly/3rFBcPo (Use translator)
https://bit.ly/3ckHTju

So is it like a soap opera, it is a mythical story from what i understand from the searches and it is great if they can create a documentary about mythical books. If it is good and it is in English or has subtitles do share me the content so that i can watch.

I do agree with the government understanding the technology and trying to find a way to legalize it rather than an outright ban which will not help the legit users and the people who use it for illegal activities will always find a way to keep doing that.

If they ban the trading of Bitcoin, then the activity will move underground and become more risky for everyone. People will start using decentralized P2P platforms such as Bisq which are extremely difficult to track. Obviously the government can nab a few by posing as traders, but out of the millions of cryptocurrency users in India, how many are they going to arrest? If they allow the exchanges to operate, at least they will make KYC mandatory and the authorities will be able to track the transactions.

Until 2009, these kind of criminal settlements are happening in what payment mode? Completely centralized fiat money right so blaming the system is not actually right, it like banning something because few people using the technology in the wrong way. Governments can never seize the cryptos that is why they are worrying much than actual criminal activities. :)

It must be admitted that many criminals use Bitcoin for money laundering, and this is not only happening in Bangladesh. But in almost all countries
there are always criminals who abuse Bitcoin to launder money. Therefore, almost all centralized exchanges have implemented KYC / AML to prevent
money laundering. In fact, not a few countries have banned Bitcoin for money laundering reasons. I hope that criminals who use Bitcoin for
money laundering can be immediately arrested and given penalties that are appropriate for their crimes.

Absolutely right, there are many criminals who use BITCOIN to launder money. In South Asian Zone, many developing countries still not legalized Bitcoin but people are using it. Many of them announced it is a crime and will be punished for using it. Bangladesh is one of them and already many cases there where people got arrested for making transaction on BITCOIN.

So whats a big deal if they use bitcoin. Any person do anything but we only blame bitcoin. This is not right. Bitcoin is just a way so why we will blame thats because of it is impossible to track sender and reciever. Well thats not the right fact.  I want to tell another thing lots of Bangladeshi prople works in others countries and a huge percent of people use hundi method to transfer money in Bangladesh.  Government knows and government also can track them and also government ban it. So what people still use hundi. I think if government start a user-friendly way for bitcoin in our country that people definitely also use bitcoin.

The Hundi/Hawala method remains the preferred mode of funding for 99.999% of the terrorist organizations in the South Asia region. And regarding this news, I am not even sure about its reliability. For me, it looks as if some of the government officials have come up with a wild theory with hardly any proof. They are looking for excuses to ban Bitcoin and to persecute cryptocurrency users. And scripted stories such as this one helps them to go ahead with their plans.

Many countries says Bitcoin is being used for terrorism just to ruin its reputation and of course to regulate Bitcoin. If this thing is true, then for sure everything is recorded which the government can review very well. Terrorism are using fiat money as well, maybe they can also ban people from using it but then again, Bitcoin is still great despite of this one and there’s no proof for this claim.

From what i understand there are still people in Bangladesh actively trading in bitcoin and the government has pushed the market underground as bitcoin is banned for a long time as i remember checking the banned country list a few years ago and i do not think they changed that and obviously there are people from Bangladesh in this forum and they might be active in P2P based platforms. I am also curious to know how they are dealing with the situation.

First of all, Bitcoin is not something that can be banned. If the Bangladesh government wants to ban Bitcoin, then the only way to do that is to shut down the entire internet in that country. Otherwise, it is not practical to spy on 200 million people and their bank accounts, to know whether they are trading cryptocurrency using P2P platforms or not. And it is not just P2P platforms. Users can even register with international cryptocurrency exchanges and do trading (those which allow users from Bangladesh, and not the Binance type exchanges).

yes, banned Bitcoin is an impossible job right now...
The ones that can be banned are the exchange sites and other sites that deal with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies but not Bitcoin. but now we already have a VPN and there are many ways you can do to avoid getting banned.

As long as you are dealing solely with cryptocurrency, there is no problem. But the issue is that you need to convert your holdings to fiat cash at some point of time. If you do that through online banking, then the government can easily track you. One option is to deal with physical cash. There are a few traders in P2P platforms who do that. But then, it can be quite risky to deal using physical cash with unknown people.

Even if the government do track your transactions with your bank, I think that there should be some kind of amount that you are going to reach before you can get flagged so if most transactions that you have are around the 3 digit in USD, I don't think that it won't raise some flags. I do agree P2P is the best but I think that the safety issue of dealing with stranger can be alleviated if you have some companion in the transaction and you do the transaction in a public place.

But for the huge amount of BTC, most of the market have a daily limit and need KYC to bypass withdrawing it.
So, if the case tracked earlier, the fund can be blocked at the market.

P2P platforms can be quite risky. I have dealt with some buyers (with 100% positive feedback) in P2P platforms and had very bad experience sometimes. The strategy adopted is very simple. They keep us waiting for 1 hour or more, claiming that there is some issue with the bank. Then they will mark the transaction as "paid" without making the payment. I am having years of experience in dealing with these people, so I immediately opened the dispute option and got my coins back. If some inexperienced user was in my place, then he might have lost his coins. And dealing with these people face to face is not recommended at least in developing nations. You don't know their criminal background. Once the transaction is done, there is always a chance that they will blackmail or threaten you, as your identity is known.

This is another proof that bitcoin could be moved around however we want, if you look at it from a different point of view, you could see this as "if these groups can move money around and launder money, then I can do whatever I want since my thing is not this illegal", because none of us do anything this dangerous and illegal, what could be the worst thing you could do? Trade bitcoin when it is not allowed? Gamble with bitcoin when it is not allowed?

None of them are as serious subjects as this and that is why it is really not a big deal if you ask me, that is why I think it is quite obvious that we should not be worried about what we do when there are people who do worse things.

I dont know how this is a big thing, yes crypto currencies are used for bad things as well as for good things. It is the same with FIAT, FIAT is used way more for laundering and bad things. Yu dont see news articles stating '' FIAT was used for such and such crime'' but for crypto it is suddenly big news, besides crypto is easier to trace so it is even better that criminals use crypto over fiat, they can be found more easily.

Of course, news like this has a negative impact on the global adoption of Bitcoin, but what should be done? How can criminals and terrorists be prevented from using Bitcoin or new technologies? They are always looking for appropriate means to achieve their goals.
For example, terrorists use computers, the Internet and a mobile phone to communicate with each other and coordinate terrorist operations, as well as use bank accounts, cards and cash to buy weapons and explosives, so can these things be prevented?
The same thing with Bitcoin, they will certainly use Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to achieve their purposes, and no one can prevent them from doing so, but we cannot cancel Bitcoin for this reason.

Even now, there is only one form of payment which is 100% anonymous, and that is physical cash. In the cryptocurrency sector, we have so called "anonymous" coins such as Monero, Zcash and Deep Onion. But recently there have been instances of users of Monero getting arrested after authorities tracked their transactions. So although the coins claim that they are anonymous, there is a chance that someone will be able to trace the transaction back to the user. But no such issue with physical cash. It is impossible to trace any of the transactions, if done using physical cash.

With the growing technology and technical upgradation people find new ways to make exploite it and use it for illicit activities and for that we can't blame technology?But still this is associated with bitcoin and critics will say it's anonymous transaction feature have increased these types of crimes but for their knowledge it can be said that if nobody could trace it how come the feds came to know about such crimes in Bitcoin?Its because you can trace the transactions in Bitcoin it's not much anonymous as it is considered to be.The crimes are done with the use of cash also but the only possible explanation is that you cannot bank transfer such funds as it is directly under supervision and you need to personally handle it which drug dealers have huge circle around the world.So were there no such crimes before 2009 when Sathoshi first introduced Bitcoin? Yes there were but government just got an excuse now to shift their blames on Bitcoin for such money laundering schemes.

It is because new to the ears of most people when they tag bitcoin or crypto being used for criminal acts or funding. And this probably won't change even though bitcoin is started to become accepted and adopted by large institutions.

Easier or you mean harder?

I know very well that news like this will cause a lot of countries to be planning to ban Bitcoin, but it wouldn’t make any sense at all. For me I would say that the best thing for them to do is to make sure that they don’t ban it and then they would look for ways they are going to regulating it, if issues like this are going to keep popping up. If they ban cryptocurrencies, then people will resort to mostly making use of P2P. So, banning crypto doesn’t make any sense.

Although sometimes I feel issues like this are usually being exaggerated because they have to do with Bitcoin, we know very well that these people have been making use of fiat and no one is talking about it, but when it is Bitcoin they start making noise about it.

Unregulated decentralized currency will have some problems, that has always been the case, when we first said that we do not want government interference with our money, we took the reality of bad people using this currency as well. Just a few years ago we had dark net that sold drugs and even provided illegal services for bitcoin payments, that was always the case even when we first started, and that is why we should not be shocked about news like this.

Of course it is not good that this happens, money laundering should not be a bitcoin problem, but people laundered money even before bitcoin, you think there was no money laundering before 2008? Of course there was, so we should not see this as a problem of bitcoin but a problem of currency, whatever currency there will be, people will always do illegal stuff and launder that money into regular life.

That is the best case for bitcoin, being regulated but you have to consider the countries that are banning it, most of them have a really tense environment which means that they will have to do anything they can to stop the opposing forces to fund their activities and to establish peace in the region which is difficult because there are militants that are opposing the government. That is the sad truth, media likes to go for the sensational things rather than the truth.

As much as this is intended to put bitcoin in a bad light, I really see no big deal in the fact that bitcoin was used in laundering money by militants. I know this news is only getting this much attention just because bitcoin is involved.
You should know everything in the world can be used for either good or bad. Nothing is good or bad intrinsically, only the purposes used for determine this.
This is just like saying the internet is bad or harmful because hackers use it to rob people of their hard earned money. Bitcoin in itself isn't good or bad. This is determined by what people use it for.

That is why I said to bring a companion with you and do the transaction in the public, with a lot of people surrounding you, any chance of a funny business happening will be alleviated and having a companion insures that they won't overpower you. There isn't really any blackmail when someone you did transaction with knows about your identity unless you gave them something compromising then that is the time to worry, and it is also easy to deal with because you know who is behind the blackmail.

One issue that I have noticed while dealing with the P2P platforms is that every now and then the criminals manage to hack inactive accounts with good feedback and use them to con unsuspecting sellers. I faced this issue a couple of times in Localbitcoins, but fortunately the moderators/arbitrators helped me to get my coins back. So you can't solely trust the trust/feedback score of these users. You need to check their feedback for the most recent 5 or 10 trades. And in case they don't have recent trades, then don't deal with them although they may be having good feedback.