Bitcoin Forum

So... for years we have been hearing that Bitcoin are being used to hide criminals wealth or that it is being used for tax evasion... Well, I have news for you....

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/pandora-papers-biggest-ever-leak-of-offshore-data-exposes-financial-secrets-of-rich-and-powerful

"The secret deals and hidden assets of some of the world’s richest and most powerful people have been revealed in the biggest trove of leaked offshore data in history."

"They expose the secret offshore affairs of 35 world leaders, including current and former presidents, prime ministers and heads of state."

https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/global-investigation-tax-havens-offshore/

"The secret documents expose offshore dealings of the King of Jordan, the presidents of Ukraine, Kenya and Ecuador, the prime minister of the Czech Republic and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The files also detail  financial activities of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “unofficial minister of propaganda” and more than 130 billionaires from Russia, the United States, Turkey and other nations."

"At least $11.3 trillion is held “offshore,” according to a 2020 study by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

These are the people who are making the rules and also breaking the rules...... So this is a big "fuck you" to them....  ;)

Bitcoin is honest money, no one in the right sense will claim that a money transaction that is recorder for everyone to verify is a tax free heaven. But what i did not like with this leak is that, it shows that these offshore transaction can be monitored. I still believe that this report is just assumption and not the real data as there is no way anyone could accurately measure these offshore transactions. But when it comes to Bitcoin every cent you sent are recorded which cannot be altered irrespective of your political power.

What they are always scared of Bitcoin is the fact that they can't control it and print more money to their liking. So what the politicians do with the growing popularity of Bitcoin is to try as much as possible to tint its image and link it to lots of criminal activities such as money laundering, tax evasion, drug trafficking etc

But we all know that crime didn't just start yesterdays when Bitcoin started operating. They just don't tell us the ugly side of their so-called "perfect" fiat currencies

Politicians are just very expensive liar slut actors/actresses. Before anyone saying anything about bitcoin and it's role in avoiding of tax payments, why do offshore exist? Before banning bitcoin, just ban offshore and just remove that term/function from the universe. No offshore = no place to avoid taxes. Then return to the bitcoin but after all, cmon, it's pretty clear that the world asks average people to pay taxes, elite people have a lot of money and can control the whole system, they can manipulate with anything.

Never ever believe any word from politicians, all they do is telling lies and brainwashing the society. Bitcoin users avoid taxes? Directed by Deutsche Bank...

Corruption is never ending in politics. The trail of dirty money is much much bigger than we can even think about. But cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and Monero are actually guven the criminals an extra avenue to perform their illegal tasks. But since cryptocurrency is a new type of currency and comparatively new, this is not used by old crooks.

But if you see the series of events starting from MTgox, coinchek hack, bitfinex issues, ransomware attacks, US pipeline network hack, darknet operations etc. We can blatantly say that bitcoin is not being used by crooks.

The only thing is that, when a currency system is used by the criminals, should we call the currency system bad? That's not right!

Politicians will always have something to hide. Just like a normal person wealth is needed by them to survive when they're not in the position anymore and to hide the money they've corrupted and in order for this money not taken from them by force, they'd have to make some arrangement like offshore accounts. I  have no doubts about it since we have seen many corrupt officials just fly out of the country when things went south already.  Maybe now they may also be using Bitcoin.

icij.org and theguardian.com however are just publishing something like these headlines and  Pandora papers but not the real documents. It will only be like what they call character assassination without the real documents.

Bitcoin can be used for many purposes and it is proven by its history.

Governments can not stop Bitcoin and if they want to prevent citizens to avoid taxes, they have to spend budget for researches to break down Coin Join transactions or Mixing services. If they fail, they have to accept it as part of the social operations nowadays economically.

One bad use case is not enough to damage other good ones. Good or bad, Bitcoin won't be stopped by any government.

I don't know where these revelations would lead to but it's nice to see more evidence to support what many of the non-sheep already thinks/believes. Having said that, we cannot honestly say that BTC isn't being used for those purposes though.

I wouldn't describe those people as "world leaders".Tony Blair isn't an active politician for more than 15 years.
They are powerful in the their own countries,but they definitely aren't world leaders,except Putin,but I guess that he doesn't need hidden offshore bank accounts.
Anyway,I guess that most of their tax evasion crimes happened way before Bitcoin was a thing.
Offshore islands,confidential offshore companies and "tax heavens" exist way before Bitcoin and altcoins were created.
We all know that fiat money dominates the world of financial crimes.Bitcoin can be used for tax evasion(if the criminals find a good BTC mixer),but I assume that fiat money are way more convenient for such crimes.

I only mentioned some of the prominent people that were exposed, but those people are just the tip of the iceberg, because this investigative journalism is still in the early days and there are massive amounts of data that needs to be investigated.

A lot more names of politicians and Billionaires will be revealed in the near future as this data are distributed to more journalists. You will soon see more big names and scandals linked to these papers that will be revealed in the media.  ;)

i dont see bitcoin being tag on the news, but one of negative sentiment about crypto is money laundry and avoiding taxes but i think country that allowing crypto trading or another legal crypto activities sooner or later will make regulation about tax. and i see it with many app that offer tax calculation for it

There always were people who couldn't resist to steal when they had so much money on their hands.
Being from a country this kind of things are pretty much common, I tend to believe that people become politician exactly because they get their chance to fill their pockets.



Banks have a well known history of money laundering and hiding funds. Nothing new here.
And the "Bitcoin is for hiding criminals" narrative works only because too many people just don't think for a second, hence believe all the crap that's delivered to them. They will forget in a month about this and, when the "bitcoin is bad" narrative is delivered again, they'll make no connections, sadly.



Exactly. Bitcoin is only a tool. It's just something of value that can be easily transferred. It can used by honest people, it can be used by criminals, all the same. The same goes with fiat money too, after all.

Thank you for sharing but I think this is not pro or anti Bitcoin, or even fiat,,, this is just people in power being people in power. Greedy,,, corrupt,,, wealthy beyond what they are supposed to be and not paying up tax like us regular people.

They did it in USD maybe or euro or swissfrancs or whatever but if someone told them there was a way to get even less tax by converting to Bitcoin they would. And soon with more banks accepting and understanding BTC soon they can mix dirty money with it too.

That will not make Bitcoin any better or worse :)

Please, corruption would only cease to exist if the concept of politicians were to entirely disappear. Other factors have close to zero relation on them avoiding the rules that they themselves, as OP said, made. It's really nothing new tbh, it's just that there's a lot of know-it-alls on the internet that seem to disagree with that fact, though whether it's actually their own belief or was simply hired by some random dude with money, we'll never know. Really, if people were to just stop for a minute and think, they'd realize some arguments are darn stupid.

It is something that has existed for thousands of years, those at the top have always used their position and power, only the methods have changed - from the dark basements of castles to closed mines, to secret accounts in tax havens. They just continue the tradition of their ancestors, and no matter all the Pandora’s boxes that open with their dirty secrets, rest assured that they are still doing it and no one can do anything to them. Yet what is the greatest tragedy in the whole story is the fact that they were all elected in a fair election, and some will be elected again - if not directly, then their successors.

Bitcoin is a small baby compared to a financial system that is broken to the core, but the most powerful 10% of people in the world will do their best to save it.

This is the type of news that gets people seeking alternatives with Bitcoin this would have not happened or if it did happen we would have been able to identify something fishy happened. In fiat money can be given to politicians and there is no way to track it if this money was in Bitcoin everyone not just other rich people would be able to see how much they were given on the blockchain and track when they spent it and where they put it. You might not know what they have bought or if they own the addresses they sent the Bitcoin to but it would be easier to investigate and we would probably see less politicians trying to cheat tax. There is no better advert for Bitcoin this proves that Bitcoin and the Blockchain would be something that every person wants but they just do not realize because the news will not cover that the Blockchain could have stopped this instead they only report on Bitcoin dropping in price and other negative news.

No if we could identify when politicians are committing crimes and punish them then the corruption would die out. Atm this is impossible because they can hide behind fiat and the lack of transparency of the currency and government. The only times we hear about corruption is leaks like this but the news are already trying to make it sound better then it is. The Blockchain would stop this corruption by politicians because there would be many eyes on their spending and where they deposit their money. We have 100s of people watching the Satoshi addresses just in case there is a withdraw and people would watch the politicians the same.

I agree fiat is now the main currency because of its strengths but because of its weaknesses it is easy for the rich to exploit fiat and profit from it. They could not do it as easily with Bitcoin and the Blockchain.

A typical scenario that has been happening before up until today. The central organizations and some of the personalities that are in the upper-class society keep on pushing bitcoin as a den for illegal activities such as executing crimes, money laundering, and a medium to escape taxes because they are against it due to its nature - decentralized. Some of these people can't accept the fact that bitcoin is beneficial and keep on destroying its reputation for their own personal gain. They don't want bitcoin to thrive and the central organizations can hardly accept it because it is volatile and decentralized. Meaning they won't be able to control it as much as they want because the market demand is the only thing that controls it of course aside from some external factors such as news about its legality and the movement of the whales. Unlike fiat, they can't just make cryptocurrency out of thin air which makes it not ideal for their liking.

Technically speaking, most people who are into cryptocurrency are paying their tax obligations. In converting and exchanging their coins in fiat, they are paying some fees to the centralized exchangers that are regulated by the government. Hence, they are still paying tax aside from the annual tax of course which is subjected based on the generated income you have annually in doing cryptocurrency.

It will be interesting to know how many of these names are associated with the cryptocurrency sector. The Biden administration recently came up with an additional funding of around $80 billion for the IRS. The justification was that it will result in an additional tax receipt of $1 trillion. Forget about $1 trillion. I will be surprised if the IRS could get $100 billion in return for all these investment. The root cause for tax evasion is sky high taxes. When you increase the marginal income tax to 60% and make capital gains tax at the same level, at least a significant portion of the taxpayers will try their best to avoid taxes. It is no rocket science. 

If they are not they are stupid the only reason businesses like to accept cash is because there is no trace of it and they can hide it and not pay tax on it but with Bitcoin if you are hiding from paying tax then you are stupid because it is publicly recorded. The tax authority would only need to identify what addresses you have used and since most people have to reveal their addresses to make trades and then they use them on exchanges all that data is collected. Exchanges probably release this information to the authorities and if they have not paid tax they will quickly identify it. Exchange fees are not tax though you are confused you need to pay the fees for the exchanges because that is how the exchanges make money and you need to then declare your earnings to the tax authority after that even if you have paid fees. You can deduct the fees from the earnings I think but do not confuse it exchange fees are not tax. I would describe the exchanges tax as a service fee instead of a tax because they are charging you for a service like moving around the coins when you purchase them and escrowing them for you.

If there are any people who are involved with cryptocurrency they did not avoid tax with cryptocurrency that would be a stupid move. The taxes are large and the taxes are larger for the rich but it is based on your income and is only a percentage if you are getting taxed over 50% then you are earning a lot of money. Remember that the politicians get paid by tax paying money too the people of the countries are paying tax which funds the salaries of these politicians and then the politicians which are funded by tax paying money are avoiding tax which goes to maintenance work of the country and their salaries and I think it is awful that people that are leading our countries because there are a couple of kings from different countries on this leak are taking the money when it benefits them and then are hiding it when they are asked to do what everyone else does. People who are earning very little are expected to pay taxes and sometimes these people are struggling to pay for food but these rich people are hiding the money and can live comfortably for centuries if they could. There will be no jail sentences for these rich people and politicians but if it was me or you we would be put in jail for tax evasion.

Nah! They won't use bitcoin to evade taxes, bitcoin's far too volatile for them to use it to transport their money and clean it up to hide the origin and such. And there's an FBI interview regarding cryptocurrency that I've watched wherein the agent said that it's much easier to track the launderers if they're using bitcoin.

If people didn't take action the first and second time around (I don't know how many papers and wikileaks already went out) then I don't see why this should be any different.

They made big movies, big books, big media reports about Panama Papers and guess what, many names on that HUGE list are still busy making their fortunes and hiding their money. The papers simply alerted them and made them move away.

Trust me, now they'll publish news about Bitcoin money laundering to make people forget this.

The Pandora papers which were said to contain the list of the most powerful people in the world that had some hidden wealth, avoiding tax, and money laundering will prove to the world that cryptocurrency is merely used for money laundering while most laundering is done through fiat currency. In meantime, I believe Ras Al Khaimah will be among the offshore companies used by these powerful people cause offshore was said to be in existence for over 7000 years.

This is going to be fun.

These people haven't learned their lessons. There was the Panama Papers, and then there was also the Paradise Papers, and now the Pandora Papers. They were trying to be hiding something; they were trying to circumvent the law, albeit in an obsolete and foolish way. It's just a matter of time before a leak takes place. There will certainly be footprints in what they are doing. They cannot hide their wealth forever in this way.

Some of these people might have attacked Bitcoin for being a currency of criminals and launderers. Well, the only difference is that money laundering in Bitcoin is perhaps more effective.

We always hear the criticism that Bitcoin is used for money laundering. Well, probably. And as far as money laundering is concerned, I'd say kudos to the updated and technology-savvy launderers. I'm not just justifying money laundering, but if one has to launder, one better do it the modern way.  

tbf, "they" don't really need to anything to bury this story. The general public will forget about this in a month or two and move on to the next big story (just like it happened with the panama papers scandal a few years ago) because that's just how the current world actually works, information travels so fast and there's so much of it on a daily/weekly/monthly basis that, yeah you can discuss about the hot topic for a few days but, we all need to make room for the next big thing that's coming.

About how they are gonna depict btc in a bad light, it's gonna be just another day in the office for these people, isn't it? Since the media is controlled by "them", it's fairly easy to manipulate and bombard the average joe 24/7 on the tv and news on the internet with whatever fits their agenda. But the pandora papers? this story will get scrapped from the teleprompters very, very soon

Pandora Papers have revealed data about popular faces of my country. It includes the cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. These people have never given any statement relative to bitcoin or any of the cryptocurrency. I believe most of the popular faces have invested indirectly on cryptocurrency without revealing any information to thr outer world. In the news on the regional channels it hasn't mentioned that these people have got more properties and investments made beyond their earnings. Nowhere it is said about the medium as bitcoin. So, different way the news is getting circulated.

The papers are a big yawn. Most if not all of the people 'called out' have made NO attempts to hide what they are doing. They are just using the common and fully legal practice of shielding income by using off-shore investments. Their respective governments know about it and for the most part do not care.

This doesn't prove that Bitcoin is not being used by criminals. It only shows that high profile criminals and money launderers use established fiat money schemes that existed long before Bitcoin was created. Big surprise.

How can you know that all those people don't own Bitcoin? If they bought it through their shadow connections and masked their traces well, the only way to catch them is if they slip up when they try to spend their BTC.

You can't simultaneously claim that Bitcoin is great because it can't be seized and it has some privacy, but then say that criminals don't use it.

I think there's no publicly known cases of large Bitcoin stashes owned by criminals because one type of criminals, like drug dealers, has piles of cash and they don't see a point in converting it all to Bitcoin, while the other type of criminals, like those country leaders, have access to laundering tools like offshore companies, and they basically control the country so there's no one to investigate them properly. This leaves Bitcoin, or more like privacycoins, only good for hackers, street-level drug dealers and other criminals that deal with millions, not billions.

If you are still trusting anything your government and politicians are telling you, then I have to say that I am sorry but you have been totally brainwashed and borderline stupid human being.
You don't have to study just this Pandora papers, you can also study history and see that politicians are making rules and regulations only for slave classes and they are always exempted from this.
Pandora papers are only a small drop in ocean of greed and corruption, and I am not sure if Bitcoin or anything else can fix this but at least we don't have to witness non-stop lying and manipulations.
Step one: throw away your stupid TV propaganda machine.
Step two: start using Bitcoin

Well, one being true does not make the other untrue. You can launder money with Bitcoin and you can launder money with offshore companies. What everyone around the world should really be concerned with is all these "offshore" banking jurisdictions and they need to be looked at in the same league as terrorists. Places like South Dakota, The British Virgin Islands, etc. that help these multi-millionaires hide their money are a leach on society and are only out to help a tiny fraction of people in the world. Like 0.0001% of people are using these places to steal money from the billions of people on these planets and frankly - these are the worst countries in the world and are funding the worst crimes out there. Offshore needs to become synonymous with absolute scum and any country that supports such financing should be cut off from the world. That includes countries like the UK and the USA who have certain privacy laws that are manipulated, which benefit when the smaller countries are shutdown.

Another thing they do not like of bitcoin is that it gives ever single person the ability to do what they are doing, it is true that bitcoin is being used mostly for legal stuff and there are a few bad apples out there using it for their crimes, but they do not like the fact bitcoin levels the playing field, with fiat the only ones that can get away with something like this are the rich and powerful but with a coin that makes no distinctions like bitcoin this means that even a middle class person could do it and they do not like this one bit.

Ok I do agree that some of this money might have been deposited via bitcoin, what about the rest of money that goes via fiat channels? The real point is leaders from mostly poor nation loot the money and deposit in banks of rich countries. This practise has been there for decades yet no one touch that aspect. Read the document you will find mostly leaders of underdeveloped countries.
Between none in the links posted by OP there is clue that money goes via bitcoin.

What the brand is doing is distorting the truth of Bitcoin, so the conglomerates deliberately trigger Bitcoin as if it were a threat but instead Bitcoin is a form of openness of transactions with Blockchain as public data.
From this news, of course, we can see that illegal transactions that have been carried out for years have been hidden from the public and only opened this year. This is the bad side of centralized finance that is actually played by certain parties.

Its quite disgusting really, to think that those wealthy people can afford to pay their
dues and taxes also have the knowledge, avenues and help to evade them. The general
public dont get to be part of that corrupt, privaledged system of hoarding wealth.

Bitcoin is a small baby but it offers an alternative to that broken system, unfortunately
those corrupt people have access to it too.

These Pandora papers are all over the news, whats going to happen? what are the
consequences going to be? and yea I would imagine this is only one of many pandoras
boxes.

We got to hand it to the investigative journalists involved in uncovering this, very intriguing.

I read some articles about it, they are revealing a lot of people but noticed there are no American politicians on the list. Isn't that very selective?

How this may affect Bitcoin is probably non. But this could be something of an argument in the future which the government will ask strict regulation to crypto for things like these offshore or tax evasion schemes to not happen in crypto.

No surprise there. Politicians are like a protected class. In 99% of the cases, they don't get charged even if they do some crime and even on rare occasions they get charged, they manage to get rid of those charges in no time. Here in India, the legal system has become a joke. One of the billionaires, Anil Ambani has pending loans worth more than $20 billion due to various public and private banks. He claims that he can't repay them, as he has become bankrupt. But as per the Panama papers, he has stashed billions of USD worth of assets abroad. A few other names from India (Sachin Tendulkar,Kiran Mazumdar Shawe.etc) are included, but this guy's name stands out.

Money laundering exists with all currencies, not just Bitcoin, not just fiat but anything that is valuable. Problem with Bitcoin is that it is disproportionately easier and cheaper to launder them than fiat which requires several shell companies and different jurisdiction. This makes it suitable for people who are looking for tax evasion or cover up their tracks without having to spend too much, but again privacy coins might be better.

Problem with the scheme is that Bitcoin's market cap is nowhere near enough for it to be conducive. It is far better for money to be laundered through fiat than Bitcoin, at least for the time being. Especially since it is harder to convert it back into fiat as well.

Yeah, that's what I said, like Panama everyone is shocked but nothing happened :)

They don't need to but they will. In Jordan in fact the entire country's internet blocked the ICJ website in fact even hours before the news came out, meaning to say someone was already tipped off there that this would come out. So we even know that ICJ itself has people corrupt enough to do that. And then after the news, the state media already put out stuff. That's just the king of Jordan everyone knows is corrupt.

Pandora Papers, only 32 times the  market cap  of Bitcoinin in tax evasion.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/

The Pandora papers only indicate that there are merely more people in the mainstream hoarding soon to be worthless fiat and surprisingly their tax evasion and hoarding of it gives fiat value. If they were to spend it then it would only show how worthless it can be. It looks like more will be printed soon and crypto will moon once again. Crypto and BTC is fast money and for that the bankers are jealous and want their cut of the fiat money or possibly in the future CBDC.

THIS!

Nothing really happens anymore it seems. There is a sense of acceptance that no matter what we do, things cannot change. Personally for me, maybe it is the effect of age because I'd say that I definitely didnt feel this way 10-15 years earlier and every case of injustice used to be a chance to organize and protest.

Its not like that the protests don't happen now. The biggest problem is nexus between mass media and everyone else. Mass media has completely lost credibility and Social media does not have enough effect. Such news come and go and nobody bothers. People are more interested in trolling those on the other side of political spectrum. The politicians and Social Media has come together to make people fight against people (no better example than the USA). As we are all busy fighting each other, there is not time at hand to make the politicians accountable. Thus, everything goes.