Bitcoin Forum

Seems the media has another trick to discourage people from buying into the idea of engaging themselves in the new currency. Read about the Venezuelan incident that resulted to a dead citizen after his family couldn't afford the ransom meant to release him. It also got to my attention of studies showing that there has been an increase in crime rate as the popular cryptocurency (Bitcoin) gained more popularity in the country.

You can argue that this are all just propaganda to discourage the citizens from engaging themselves in bitcoin but still how correlated are crimes to the the adoption of Bitcoin and cryptocurency in general. Do the adoption of Bitcoin truly increase the crime rate in a country with focus to third world countries since we're likely to find more individual with motive to commit crime just to survive especially if they have some advantage over getting caught.

Just to highlight a paragraph from the article;
Some positivity here is the article, made it clear that majority of the crimes are still been committed in fiats but still I want us to discuss how an increase in adoption can correlate to increase in crime rate and possibly prevention methods to deploy to combat this trend if it's true.

Far easier to launder money than Bitcoins, than you think. Most fiat are untraceable anyways.

There is a misconception that an increase in popularity comes with an increase in adoption, that is incorrect. The rise in popularity also doesn't necessarily means a rise in the crime rate. Something like kidnapping would happen even if the payment is in fiat, the riskiest part isn't with the collection of the ransom in the first place. It might be harder to exchange large quantities of Bitcoins to cash, depending on where you're situated.

I think there technically will be increased crime rates because of bitcoin/crypto, albeit a small increase. But then again, even the internet boom created a lot of criminals as well(scammers/identity thieves/propaganda/etc); and the same with any other technology. What matters is that the positives heavily outweighs the negatives.

The propaganda will always exist and it serves one goal which is to distract people from the real problems. For example the amount of money that the banking system launders every week is a thousand times higher than the amount of transactions that bitcoin handles in a year. But that's what the media does, they distract people from the reality by focusing on a small matter.

Even if it were true, what of it? A lot of people are now dying in road accidents in every country. Maybe then we will ban cars? In order to reduce the number of crimes in each country, there are law enforcement agencies. This is their direct responsibility.
In general, studies in the United States and Europe have shown that only a few percent of crimes are committed with the help of bitcoin. So this problem is generally far-fetched.

At what level of granularity?

You need enough data to distinguish across multiple unknown factors of unknown dependencies.

You could measure a sample size of all the Bitcoiners in a crime-riddled city and conflate some correlation (https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations). Correlation is useful for developing possible ideas of causation, though you need a sense of weight.

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Consider a hypothetical situation where A influences B and C independently, but you assume that B causes C. (Or even deeper levels of dependency)

My hypothetical variables: (localized) wealth inequality, bitcoin adoption, crime rate.
                                 alt: population/technological progress, bitcoin adoption, crime rate

Generally the internet scams are increasing day by day so we can't assume that the crime rate increases with the adoption of bitcoin. And ofcourse most of the ransoms requires cryptos to release because they think its easier to spend the money compared to the paper fiat meanwhile lot of thise scammers get caught when they try to convert into fiat on exchanges so it has its pros and cons.

We can regulate cryptocurrency and exchanges as well which can reduce the crime rate is something is happening as government claims so people will still get the benefits of cryptocurrencies or atleast they have a way to make money via trading it.

For the record, I'm not supporting the saying of the adoption of Bitcoin bringing about an increase in crime rate but just starting a conversation which I believe we can all reason together. In my locally, ignoring what the media publicized, the result has been on the positive side as household crimes has tend to decrease.

This isn't just credited to Bitcoin but Internet related jobs as a whole as the youths are getting more exposed. Few years back, house robbery, car hijacking and other household crime were on the increase mostly done by the youths but these days the news report less of that. A decent number of Nigerian youths has themselves engage in something more useful like Bitcoin investment/trading, freelancer etc.

The scams and crimes are there but they have less impact, the media are just painting the wrong impression and I'm pretty sure this must be the same with Venezuela and other part of the world as well.

Let me start by saying that it actually seems that in Venezuela, the homicide rate is decreasing  (https://www.statista.com/statistics/984669/homicide-rate-venezuela/)over the last few years, whereas Bitcoin is getting more and more popular worldwide. Also, if we look at Western Europe (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rates-across-western-europe?time=1937..2016), or the US (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/), the homicide rate has been decreasing since the 90s. So there's no correlation here at all, actually, as the crime is getting less frequent, while Bitcoin popularity is growing. But even if there were a correlation as simple as both parameters increasing over time, it would mean nothing it terms of their causation. For instance, if there were increasingly more killings in Venezuela (or worldwide), and the global tea consumption were on the rise (https://www.statista.com/statistics/940102/global-tea-consumption/), one could make a similar manipulation that drinking tea causes more violence, which is ridiculous. Same goes for Bitcoin and crime.

Well, in the first place, it's a pretty stupid and weak argument once one actually looked towards the deeper reasons as to why scams occur. It's actually easy to make most people shut up when they reason this out tbh, are scams, robberies, kidnapping, and whatnot non-existent in the first place when crypto wasn't here? That single line is enough imo. It's simply a new method that criminals ask to be paid in, but not necessarily the cause for people to actually commit crimes. Crypto is a bloody medium, it's certainly not something that people fight over for like resources such as food and water. It's like saying people kill because they use a knife, my Parents would be a killer then ngl.

Looking at the perspective mate , I think that crime will increase whenever there are increase also in the demand and the prices of cryptocurrency specially the popularity of bitcoin nowadays are doubled and this lures the bad element to find another way of illegal activities entering the crypto or cyber world in which there are newbies and not so familiar individual that jumping also in this market.

with those ideas surely there are only two things will come and this is more victims and more income from the crime provider.

media are born to make profit to their company nothing caring about what is the truth and what will be the future but instead they are here to bring false statement s and wrong news .

There is nothing else to say except that there is no logic to blame the tool, but the one who uses it. Crime has always existed, and drug + kidnappings are very popular in South America - and the fact that a criminal came up with the idea to demand a ransom in cryptocurrency only shows that they are also following new technologies. However, their intelligence is not very high if they only require Bitcoin, and they avoid crypto which has a much higher level of anonymity, so they would get a better chance that they will not be caught.

It is quite evident that cryptocurrencies are much more dangerous in the online world, but this is only a consequence of the fact that a large part of people who use the Internet are quite naive and do not have any basic knowledge about computers/online security.

Countries with a low standard of living will always have a high crime rate - and criminals will always use what is available to them. The fact is that cryptocurrencies will also become part of that system, but I do not believe that they will become dominant when it comes to criminal activities in the near future.

The involvement of crypto in crimes should not be blamed on its existence instead it is the evil deeds of people that should be. It only becomes an effective instrument due to the anonymity and the convenience it gives off to criminals. Crimes are crimes regardless of what tool is being used and at the very first place, bitcoin or crypto's purpose is not to tolerate crimes, it longs for financial freedom for everyone right now and in the future. Not because you are involved in a tool that is being used in crime, it would make you a criminal too, it is the way you use it and how you act up whenever you witness a crime involving crypto.

Mainstream media & the status quo will always push bitcoin as bad. They say it’s used for drugs, terrorism, laundering plus a whole host of other things. What do they think fiat is used for too? They’re not stupid, they’re just trying to manipulate average joe into not buying bitcoin. The fiat system is crumbling & bitcoin is the get out. Buy bitcoin, don’t listen to their FUD.

Bitcoin adoption and crime rate increase, how correlated? what is clear is that there are definitely more positives than negatives, as technology advances it is certain that the crime rate will increase, when there is an opportunity sometimes that is where crime occurs, so we are required to always be vigilant, must do everything carefully..

I guess it is not clear what are those types of crimes? if it was an internet-based crime will I believe that's true, those crimes are committed ever since, scammers, hackers, etc are freely moved on the internet and that's normal because the internet is open, as I remember in 2016, I became a victim of a scam, driven by so-called Bitcoin investment, and it's pretty common on the internet nowadays, but I believe it happens for a reason, that's why we should take extra precaution before dealing this kind of investment next time.

But if people say that Bitcoin/cryptocurrency adoption is the main cause why? the crime is increasing like street crimes, murder, robbery, etc. for me it's a total nonsense and baseless correlation and it should be ignored for the peace of mind.  

How does this is badly related to bitcoin or crypto ?  If the family could not afford to pay the ransom, in bitcoin or in fiat, the result would have been same.
Media is wrongly projecting that if you have bitcoin, you are subjected to ransomware attack which is again misleading.

In order to save yourself from ransomware attack is to properly setup the security of your system so that your system is not compromised. This is the teaching which should have been floating on social media.

I think it is exaggerated to attribute to Bitcoin a certain country's increase in crime rate. I am more than sure that if we are to look closely at individual crimes, the great majority of them don't have anything to do with Bitcoin. In the first place, what percentage of the Venezuelan population is actually involved in Bitcoin?

But I guess there is indeed a new scam modus with the rise of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. But Bitcoin is not to blame for this. As a matter of fact, Bitcoin is also a victim. The technology is useful and has wonderful features and yet it has also earned a negative label due to certain scams. Again, this is not Bitcoin's fault. It is not Bitcoin's fault that it is being used by scammers. You don't blame knives for the rise of stabbing incidents.

The increase in the rate of crime it is based on some traditional indications, perhaps must be updated, well this depends on the countries where it is determined, but some countries do not include the computer crimes, scam schemes based on cryptocurrency, etc.

Specificaly in which if Bitcoin is causing raising these crime rates it is a question of accepting any crime where Bitcoin is involved formally in the statistics.

As for that if in the third world countries there is growth crime for the use of Bitcoin actually this data at countries of the first world are best taken these complaints is at least better documented in the countries called first level.

In any case, the rate for traditional crimes is so tall that it will be very difficult in the short term that based on the cold numbers to determine that in a specific country that rate of criminality increases by the use of Bitcoin.

On purpose there is an index, the GPI (Global Peace Index) where we can see that certain first-class countries are far away from the top.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index

Other source: https://www.economicsandpeace.org

Maybe a good hint of "departure" to start a serious study would be focused on the ends of this list and compare results.
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^{Edit: This page shows in detail the global classification:
https://countryeconomy.com/demography/global-peace-index}

For me, bitcoin itself is neutral. And yes, media need something to attract people so they create news that maybe still hype. We all know fiat is used to crime too, and it is not really booming because it is common thing. But actually i am not agree with media too, why they only give people news when something bad is use bitcoin or maybe bad affect on people who use bitcoin. Like in my country when investment in bitcoin is scam, investment in fiat actually a lot too but not booming, or maybe trader who suicide because lose in trading, there are a lot of people who success in trading but not much appeared in media.

I don't read the same as you Brainboss, the article says that with these new coins there has been an increase in scams using them but it doesn't say there is an increase in crime because of that. Some of the crime that was done in fiat may have moved to cryptocurrencies, without increasing crime in general. I don't see an article attacking cryptocurrencies.

On the other hand, even if it wanted to establish a correlation it would take a lot more, remember the supposed relationship between people drowning in swimming pools and movies featuring Nicolas Cage: (https://www.tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=359)

https://i.postimg.cc/V6Qg8BkQ/Nicolas-cage-pools.jpg (https://postimages.org/)

Just to note, we ought to ask ourselves; why do people involve themselves in crimes at the first place?

This is what really matters than putting the blame on cryptocurrency. I say this because, if these things (answers to the above questions) are tackled, you can be rest assured the world would be a much better place. Crime is bound to abond where there is corruption, injustice, lack of basic amenities, lack of jobs and the necessary conditions for a fair living. These are just a few of the things that should be looked into other than the so called cryptocurrency adoption.

More of the big crimes committed, that has resulted in the taking of one's life in our world today, especially within the third world countries are done using fiat for a payment media. Bitcoin has got little to do with increased crime rate.

How about on talking about fiat itself on tagging it all along with crime rate or something in correlation to that? Why they would always be mindful about new things and blaming out Bitcoin
on higher or increase rate of crime?

Correlation? Well, on some part I could tell that it is really giving out some part due to anonymity and decentralization which is totally a perfect recipe when it comes to money laundering

but it is really just  right to put up some focus on that part? Government and bullshit media  does really love to focus on things on what they do have in mind.

Actually even the past years bitcoin are use in lots of crime in other countries thats why its possible to happen that it will increase the crime rate. Bitcoin or other crypto currency getting involved with some crime because they are using it as mode of payment because its untraceable if where or who is the one who sending it to others. Bitcoin used in some illegal activity such as payment to porn site selling drugs etc.

Just like you already mentioned, I believe that it is just another propaganda to discourage citizens from engaging in Bitcoin because from my little understanding of how crimes and money laundering has been reported in my country from mostly the Government official, ALL and not part of their money stolen from the Countries coffers are not in a single crypto but Fiat. I believe my county now has one of the highest rates of kidnapping and ransom and not a single report has been reported that those ransoms were paid via bitcoin or any form of crypto.
Even though we cannot totally rule out some of these crimes have been perpetrated via Crypto, that does not mean that cryptocurrencies are the reasons for high crimes.

 

considering that cryptocurrencies are becoming very popular nowadays, I think some scammers, as well as criminals, will try to take advantage of this. what's more, is that many people think that cryptocurrencies have transactions that are difficult to track. It's very natural that some people use it for the crime. because it's just so popular, it sometimes gets the public's attention, even though they realize that fraud and the biggest crime also happen to fiat.

Apart from that, I think the way to prevent this is for the government to work with exchanges that require KYC for certain withdrawals. I think most people will trade it there, and maybe we can stop the scams or the crimes out from it. although not optimal, but at least it's worth a try.

Bitcoin implements a nominee system, and its transaction details are publicly recorded in the Bitcoin database (blockchain).
If Bitcoin is used in criminal activities, transaction records will always be made public to the public chain. Once the supervision/criminal investigation section traces the connection between any relevant Bitcoin address in the transaction record and the individual/entity, this transaction record will always become criminal evidence.

Oh how I miss the good old days, way back before 2009 when there was no crime or poverty. People weren't getting kidnapped, killed, and cut into pieces because their family and friends couldn't afford to pay the ransom. There was no drug trafficking because we didn't have Bitcoin back in those ancient times. Cars were never stolen and sold for parts. Break-ins in houses never happened because there was no Bitcoin to steal. Government officials were fair and uncorrupted. They didn't steal and launder money for their criminal friends and partners because there was no blockchain to move that value around.

And one day some scum invented Bitcoin and our world has been in havoc ever since. Oh, wait! But all those things existed and were committed even before Bitcoin. That must mean that this new technology isn't responsible for the doings of men, and some people are just scum no matter the era they live in or the system they use to get paid.

On a more serious note.
When you hate something, like the government hates Bitcoin, you take advantage of the increased adoption to turn it into something ugly. Bitcoin and all crypto leave a digital trail when used, which makes them less effective than cash, but much better than using banks, credit cards, and various other fiat payment processors. That and there constantly rising valuation is what makes them attractive to common people and criminals alike. 

I dont believe that the crime rate will increase a lot. How many crimes are committed with cryptocurrency, compared to a regular crime (if they can be called like that). I think that the ratio s about 1 cryptocurrency related scam to a tens thousands of drugs sold, items stolen, people harmed or killed, financial crimes and etc. Cryptocurrency crime is just a one grain of sand in the ocean. Not much will change with Bitcoin adoption. Cash still will be used more often in connection with crime.

As bitcoin and crypto adoption idea becomes more popular among the public and as more people knows about the capabilities that it can deliver, it's only a matter of time before malicious entities will hear about it and learn about it and then they will have an idea and we will soon expect an increase in crypto related crimes.

Anyway, I think that crime rate wont change much. Even when Bitcoin becomes widely used, the only crimes it can be used are scamming and money laundering. The damage dealt will increase, but it will be few number of cases and that wont really impact on the rate. Criminals wont rob you on the street and ask for crypto.

For example. El Salvador made Bitcoin legal this year. According to stats (https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp) their crime rating did not change significantly, comparing 2020 and 2021.

Crime is not correlated with cryptocurrency, but it is very possible for criminals to attack you and request for your private keys to assess your coins - this is an example of the $5 wrench attack.

That's why it's advisable you do not store your funds on a device you carry around and do not publicize your crypto holdings as that would attract scams and theft attacks.

Read the sentence again, “The popularity of cryptocurrency has caused an increase in scams and crime USING these new assets”, not necessarily “an increase in scams and crime BECAUSE of these assets.”

It’s a fallacy, OP. Correlation doesn’t mean causation.

True. It is better to keep silent about what you have and how much you have.

But what I meant is that someone will try to rob me on the street, they will more likely take my phone, chain, wallet. I doubt that they will demand me to open an app or browser and transfer my crypto to them. Same will be if someone robs my flat. They will take a laptop and a TV, instead of taking a hardware wallet, searching for private keys or wait for me and force me to tell them.

The number of such crimes as "rob/take/steal quick and sell quick" will be greatly bigger than crypto related crimes. That is why adoption wont change crime rate. I think that few criminals of that kind will read readme how to create crypto wallets and use mixers. Not because that will be hard to understand for them, but because they are fine anyway.

This is alarming because the crypto related cases is not just increasing but also getting dangerous each year , in the past ransom is being asked but there is no killing happens but now? this is an obvious attempt to scared all crypto holders in the world that they can be treated like this if they don't cooperate in those crimes.
Now this made me the think of declining to expose any other way of my KYC as this is the only way why we are being exposed from this criminals.

Even with fiat such things do happen, the increase in crypto acceptance has nothing to do with increasing crime rate, all this things already happening before crypto became popular, it is unfortunate that some bad individuals have decided to act this way and use crypto to demand ransom instead of fiat, they feel it will be difficult for the authorities to trace them by using crypto,  you should note that performing kyc is some better because with that it will be easy to trace such kind of people.

I do believe their data comes from many sources, not limited to KYC. A hack on an anonymous forum, your posting history, etc. They don't even check whether your e-mail is a throwaway e-mail or not before sending their phishing e-mail. Other than reducing your access to KYC platforms, strengthening your computer/internet security is a must.

Kidnap for ransom gangs/criminals will always find the most efficient way to receive a transaction, whether or not the person of interest is a Bitcoin/cryptocurrency millionaire or not. Bitcoin will find its way where there are inefficiencies in “markets”, and make them more efficient.

- Illegality in investment fields such as crypto is always on the rise and when contributing to a common report each year, it cannot sum up as a major error for bitcoin or crypto adoption because technology is an area that often leaks information that has a lot of value, even with more rigor, the criminal system also easily forms layers of ideas to destroy the system and steal what is needed. The correlation can only be a small link, but the level of damage to the victim for the summation on the technology field will be higher when crypto is invested a lot of money.

It makes more sense to use fiat which is not traceable than Bitcoin which has a public blockchain that any one can track your transactions for use with crime. Bitcoin does get used for crime like any other currency but I do not think it increases the amount of crime. I think there is less crime using Bitcoin than using fiat currencies. I think there was a saying going around that every note in circulation in the USA has been touched by cocaine I do not know if that was a myth or if it is the truth but if it is the truth then it is clear to me that Bitcoin does not have the same drug problem that the US dollar does.

Very related. Most people believe that since bitcoin's transaction hash is open for every one to read, it is not possible to be used for crime. I choose to differ from that. Bitcoin's user anonymity makes it very possible to be used for crime. Let's take a look at the number of scams happening around. Once a Bitcoin has been transferred, users can only read the transaction but it is nearly impossible to use that transaction to know who the recipient is. This is why most blockchain require their users to register with their full name and pass KYC. It makes it possible to track transaction and know the exact person behind a transaction in case of fraud.

People should at least be thinking off first that crime had been long time existing and becomes worst as the years passed and now Bitcoin would took the blame that it do increase crime rate?

To think off that cybercrime had been increasing year by year before crypto exist and its just normal since there would be those criminal minds that do lurks out into the shadow.

Lets just put aside on really emphasizing on how decentralization and anonymity works.Well, there might be some instances but everything shouldnt really took out the blame.

I don't want to conclude in a negative way but since the digital assets born and so the scammers being born too and so far  the main crime that I think is correlated with bitcoin I might say in a direct way is scamming and fraud but other crime that being connected with the platform is indirectly correlated however some people choose to blame it on the platform. I think fiat is still the most common currency related to crime committed. And yeah it's a big help that every blockchain requires a KYC for the proper verification of the applicant.

Well there might be a correlation to the increase in crime rate with bitcoin, because we can't deny that bitcoin anonymity is such a great thing for the criminals. It'll be really hard to track them, and the value is high too, really worth for them. I heard so many criminal cases about bitcoin, scams, money laundering, illegal buying using bitcoin and such. Of course, with bitcoin coming, they have something easy and useful for their crime. But is it bitcoin fault? No it's not. Although it might be upsetting for us to hear bad news or talks about bitcoin, but well they sure have correlation, although the increase of crime rates won't necessarily because of bitcoin, even if there's no bitcoin, those criminals will still find other way for their crimes.

Correlation doesn’t imply or mean causation. It’s a fallacy. There WILL be an increased rate of use of Bitcoin whether it’s for crime or legitimate transactions simply because Bitcoin will enter markets, especially inefficient markets that banks will not service, and make the efficient.

This has been an old issue being imposed against Bitcoin and the whole cryptocurrency community with regards to the increase of crime rate in relation to the adaption of many people towards engaging into the crypto market. It seems like the media have put a lit of fire into this issue wherein this have already been tackled long time ago that the crime rate (scamming, hacking and etc.) have already been there before crypto and the ones to be blamed are the people behind those acts and not crypto alone for they are using the advantage and making their dirty works out of it.

In general the increase in crime is also not due to the increasing adoption of bitcoin. Evil will always be everywhere. scammers were born because bitcoin transactions are very tempting at high prices. There are many ways that scammers do to trap their victims. It's not just bitcoin, other platforms are also a crime scene.

The correlation of bitcoin adoption with increased crime may be justified. Cybercrime continues to evolve with many methods. but nothing can be hidden in bitcoin, everything can be tracked and will lead to the criminal.

It’s true that when there are no rules people tends to start misbehaving. But, I wouldn’t really say that’s the case with bitcoin. Although we have seen it a lot of times being said that bitcoin gives freedom, but it doesn’t really give freedom. Of course it can be anonymous, but to an extent. Though one thing I have noticed is that crimes that has to do with maybe one individual usually go unpunished through bitcoin.

I have seen individuals report about being scammed and nothing is being done about it. But, I have also seen big cases that has to do with lots of people, and within short time they are caught. Like the one of Twitter and so many others. So I wouldn’t really say there is hundred percent freedom in bitcoin. Criminals can still be caught.