Bitcoin Forum

Since Bitcoin is a completely decentralized currency, there is no way to know when and how much money is being sent to whom, both the sender and receiver remain anonymous. So Bitcoin is used to buy and sell various criminal and illegal products. So various arms smuggling activities are paid through Bitcoin. Also, all transactions on the dark web are done through Bitcoin. Which is very sad for us


It is essentially a perfect medium of transaction for all the terrorists and criminals of the dark web. This is why the governments of different countries have declared Bitcoin illegal in their countries. If these actions could be stopped somehow, Bitcoin would be legal in all countries of the world. But in any case, I hope that slowly Bitcoin will be able to gain legality in all countries.

Many bitcoin transactions used for illegal deals were known. How were these known? Bitcoin transaction is not anonymous but synonymous unless you use Tor with it. Fiat are mostly used for illegal deals.

Fiat are used for money laundering. The money laundered are in banks or somewhere in fiat. There are many people reputable in the public but are involved in money laundering. There legit businesses are used for it to block the trace.

Most terrorists are still using fiat mostly.

Bitcoin can not be illegal in most countries because bitcoin is legal in more than 90% countries out of 100% countries. This is because they see the benefits. Some countries made it illegal because they see it as gambling not because of what you are saying. That is why you will see some countries that ban gambling that also ban bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

One of Bitcoin's uses is money, and money ultimately is a tool — and literally, any tool can be used both in a good way and in a bad way.

Being sad because bitcoin is being used for illegal activities is like being sad that cash is being used to buy drugs and being sad that knives are sometimes being used to stab people. It's totally an utter waste of your time and emotions.

That's just how it is I guess, it's not a hopeless endeavor though as there are other things that you can still do with bitcoin and as much as you're worried about it being a way to fund terrorism, the people that are investigating on this matter are putting in all of the effort that they've got on this one because they know how crucial a funding is to a terrorist organization, also, it's worth remembering that most arms dealer won't probably be caught dead doing transactions with bitcoin because they know that it's pseudonymous and there are crypto investigators that can easily track them down to take them out, basically, bitcoin is a hot currency for them so it's unlikely that they might have any use for it, I think that Monero and many other privacy tokens are much more attractive to them compared to bitcoin.

The fact that the dark web and all these illicit activities have existed way before even Bitcoin was created shows that this isn't the making of Bitcoin...if anything the fact that Bitcoin transactions can't be erased from the ledger makes them work against users that think it's anonymous to use ,unless one uses other methods to lose their money trail...

But for the kind of money that's involved in these illicit transactions....AML or KYC can easily get in the way of criminals and if you ask me this doesn't make it the perfect medium of exchange for people trying to operate under the radar of the law!

Fiat will always remain the king here unless when moving from one place to another then Bitcoin could be the answer here  :P

Why not go back to read again from what the definition of blockchain is, an open distributed ledger, so can you tell me from here what is hidden from a public and open distributed ledger, this is not the aspect where its decentralization comes in, bitcoin is being decentralized because its not under any government regulation, we should look into it more closely and make our own findings before saying anything concerning the bitcoin network or blockchain technology.

it's very risky to make transactions involving illegal stuff in BTC unless they can find a way to make it safer for them. afaik more XMR are used in the darkweb than BTC.

maybe if they are in a country where Bitcoin is not regulated but most of the crooks are not fond of losing money as BTC price is not stable. they'd be killing each other when they find out the next hour that the price dips below the agreed price.

Do you blame guns for killing human beings or you blame the shooter and send him behind bars. This is why it is useless for anyone to say bitcoin is used for illicit activities. It is the people that are using bitcoin for illicit activities that should be blamed and not bitcoin,this is where the government is being biased.

Fiat, gold, natural resources are also used for illegal activities but who will say that let them be banned. In my country some people steal our crude oil in exchange of ammunition. Don't be decieve illicit activities have bein in existence before bitcoin came into existence. Any commodity that can be exchanged for goods and service will be used for illicit activities.

You know what terrorists prefer? Fiat. It is even more anonymous and far less traceable than Bitcoin.

OP, I think there are some misunderstandings about Bitcoin in your post.  You are correct that it gives some anonymity, but all the transactions end up recorded on a public ledger that anyone can see.  So people can see the quantity and movement of coins from one address to another.  Law enforcement agencies even use blockchain analysis to trace questionable transfers and pinpoint illegal stuff going on.

That sort of tracking is really tough, if not impossible, when people use physical cash

What are you hoping for?  After you have concluded that all manner of illegal business transactions including terrorism financial support are been undertaken through bitcoin network. This is not the first time am reading about people accusing bitcoin to be a currency that aid and abate illegalities due to its decentralized system and anonymity while they refuse to emphasize about the blockchain that is an open ledger for the public view whereas is not found with fiat transactions that corrupt banks managers starch, conceal, clean any trace. It should suffice you to know that fiat has the highest tone of money laundry cases and illegal business transactions to which bitcoin don't even come close.

A lot of countries that are against bitcoin, the reason isn't because of anything order than their inability to have a central control over the currency as they do with fiat.

OP, where have you been all of the time? that's like several years ago and with the adoption in the mainstream now, Bitcoin with its use cases has changed dramatically. And you have a way to know whom sent you as long as you're expecting it from somebody and it's impossible to just receive a BTC out of nowhere. You'll also be able to know how much is sent to you through checking it on explorers.

There's no way to stop it, those that have declared a ban for Bitcoin should look at cash/fiat money of theirs and see how those terrorists are being funded as it's not trackable if they use that instead of Bitcoin. But we're already on 2024 and that thought for Bitcoin is starting to go away.

Exactly

Banning Bitcoin through concerns of illegal activity is nonsense because financing
illegal activity will just move back to Cash, thats if there was ever a migration from cash
to Bitcoin?

So what is the OP about? why create this topic which has been replicated numerous
times before but Bitcoin acceptance and adoption is growing...


Great, thanks for the massively enlightening post.

I don't know but this is just another myth for Bitcoin, and that they are being used by criminals, perhaps you can read all about it,

https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/crypto-laundering/

It's old though in 2020, but for sure the numbers are going down because all those that you mentioned, the US government might be tracking them as we all know that they are watching bitcoin mixers and tumblers and as soon as they followed the trail and that they are being used, US are going to shut it down for good.

However, it doesn't mean that Bitcoin could be legal or gain legality, it has powers that government are afraid of.

Have you ever wondered, what did criminals use for illegal transactions before bitcoin was invented? It's fiat and why hasn't anyone tried to eliminate or accuse fiat of being used for criminal activities?

At the end of the day, bitcoin is just currency, a tool like many others, and how people use it depends on their behavior, you can't blame bitcoin or anything. Like someone attacks you with a knife, would you report the murderer to the police or would you tell the police that the knife was the culprit? With your ignorance, I will not be surprised if you invest in bitcoin and lose money, you will blame bitcoin as a scam and do not dare to admit the mistake is yours.

It's sad that to this day there are still people blaming bitcoin just because smugglers and criminals are using bitcoin.

Everything has a bad use because there are always dishonest people that will want to make use of something that was invention with a good intention for their bad intentions. There are drug lords, smugglers and weapons traffickers that are using Bitcoin as their currency of exchange but this people are also using others digital currency that are centralized but they have not been caught. Since they have not being  able to catch those using centralized fiats then they do not have an excuse that Bitcoin is the reason why this illegal activities are striving. Bitcoin makes transactions anonymous but not completely not traceable therefore the government do not have to use this as an excuse to ban Bitcoin. There are more benefits of Bitcoin since the governments can monitor the address used in this crimes and catch the offenders.

I have the feeling that OP is yet another newbie, who yesterday found out that Bitcoin and decentralized cryptocurrencies exist.
This topic has been discussed a million times before, but I guess that OP is too lazy to do a forum search and find older threads about it.
Bitcoin can be used in the dark web only via Bitcoin mixers. Transacting BTC thru the dark web without a trusted mixer can expose you.
I also think that Monero is more popular than BTC in the darknet. Bitcoin is nowhere close fiat money, when to comes to illegal transactions and money laundering.
OP, can you mention all the countries that have banned Bitcoin? Bitcoin is being banned mostly by underdeveloped countries that are governed by dictators. I wonder why... ;D

How I wish i can dig those threads that have already tackled about this  abuse in using bitcoin
from criminals to terrorist and that DarkWeb thing that we have seen also in Movies and documentaries.
but if they can use bitcoin then how about altcoins and Fiat itself?

They exaggerate things then think about that bitcoin is just used for illegal things which they relate to those illegal sites or activities.

But we can also see that fiat and whatever currencies there's still crimes happening, so maybe those people should not think about that illegal activities is not only happening on bitcoin and if they just think about that way then maybe they can't really see the bright side about the usage of bitcoin. Maybe people should locate the good side of bitcoin so that they can enjoy this coin and possibly they can earn more profit with it rather than became skeptical to acquire this coin.

Well speaking of illegal activities i think fiat is the most common ways to pay some illegal activities and there are only less in bitcoin, not all criminal's knows about bitcoin and they know more on fiat, sometimes bitcoin is having a hard time to gain more popularity because some people used it to scammed others specially to those who still didn't know how to use or what bitcoin is, and it will cause big impact to bitcoin but this is not a hendrance for bitcoin to gain reputation in the future i believe that many users will come in the near future because people will slowly adapt to the new technology using new payments system to make life more easier than today.

Nope, Monero has taken the crown and Bitcoin is number two!


No, it's not, that's why it's getting replaced with Monero!


The governments of the countries that have banned Bitcoin would have banned it darknet or no darknet, there were far more things involved in those, and it was about control, you can't comply with full control and keep Bitcoin as it is, you have to choose one, and if I were to choose between the governments of Egypt, Libya or Bangladesh supporting bitcoin and a 16 pack of beer I would probably have to think for a bit!

That thinking is the wrong approach, and it is that of the majority of those who only see one edge of bitcoin and fit it in there as if it were the whole, and it is not. That's not really the problem of why governments have obstacles, it's because of the technology itself and how people could empower a part of your finances/control.

So here we go again... talking about those criminal transactions and other correlated things to it. So let me ask you this. If Bitcoin had been used into these means then why you wont really be trying out to
reflect those words on FIAT itself? Okay lets say that before Bitcoin had been created then fiat has always been the medium with these illegal transactions. This is why whenever i do read up with
these kind of words or sentiments in towards Bitcoins anonymity aspect or into its features which people do usually focusing up into its negative aspects and not on the positive ones.

Government hating? Its not something new and its really just that an alibi that they would really be focusing too much about anonymous transactions but the real thing on why
they are hating it, just because there's no way that they could really be able to control and this is why they wouldnt really be recommending for this thing to be deal up by their citizens into their
vicinity and keeps on doing that even upto this moment.

Yes, both bitcoin and fiat can be totally used as an advantage or a disadvantage, it’s up to the user itself how he will utilize his bitcoin or fiat. But nevertheless, bitcoin will always remain a bad tool as long as it’s not widely accepted by the whole universe, and fiat will remain a good one since it’s backed up by majority of the government in the world. No wonder why if bitcoin can’t be used as a currency by the majority, then let the people use it as an investment instead.

So what's the difference with fiat which up to now has also played a role in making itself a step to commit fraud, sell illegal products and so on. Bitcoin was not created for this purpose, but was used by irresponsible people for activities that violate existing rules. If you feel this is sad why are you interested in being on the forum because most of us are here because of the problem of liking bitcoin. Fraud in any form cannot be blamed on fiat or bitcoin itself because it is actually an activity carried out by some irresponsible people.

When we can't differentiate between right and wrong, that's where we start to make certain clamps. Unfortunately, people never learn from the past where fiat was also a tool for people to commit crimes. Stop associating bitcoin with it because what happens is not bitcoin but the individuals and groups who exploit it.

How many countries have made the decision to make bitcoin illegal and more which ones restrict or ban it. If you want to say it as a whole then you have to look at this issue as a whole. Now many countries are starting to accept bitcoin as an investment asset and that is far from enough because legally it is impossible to carry out transactions because each country has its own currency.

I will not get to th technicality of Bitcoin, While I do agree that Bitcoin can be used for illegal activities but this has been happening before the invention of Bitcoin and still it happens largely through Fiat not through Bitcoin as Fiat don't leave any traces as it's not captured anywhere hence I don't think it's fair to stigmatize Bitcoin with illegal activities.

Yeah, I think this so called bad news from Bitcoin comes very early from it's bad media publicity and then it just struck with us specially when we hit the peak at 2017 wherein some social media outlet reported that Bitcoin is very used by criminals or others to launder money.

It's more difficult for criminals to do this, they still need to be technically inclined, and if given the fact that they are, then there could still be traces in blockchain, specially that blockchain analysis has evolved throughout the years are well looking for addresses that might be used by this criminals. So doesn't make sense for them to used it, and would rather go back to the traditional way of using fiat because that's where they are good at.

Bitcoin is just a tool the usage of that tool depends on the welder, traditionally whatever criminal acts we can think of have been there way before Bitcoin even the dark web was there prior to Bitcoin.
The world is a global village filled with good and bad people even most governments indirectly make use of Bitcoin and other methods of transactions to pay their spies.

Not only bitcoin but fiat as well can be used as a tool to create negative effects to the people. However, it's only bitcoin that is being condemned by the government simply because it's only bitcoin that cannot be fully controlled by them knowing it will always be decentralized. Unlike fiat, even if it's obvious that a lot use it for illegal purposes, the government can't do nothing about it because they will always protect and support fiat no matter what.

I think they are only jealous of the BTC break out and they do their best to prevent it from sky rocketing but good thing they didn't succeed and just joined the alliance later on. The saying is really true that "if you can't beat them, join them" :D. They also say that we must learn to forgive and forget. Past is past and people or things can still change.

Most criminals are smart and wise, and BTC is only easy to use. BTC is not totally private, so traces are possible but crypto mixers have been invented eventually to fix this problem. Fiat is more traceable because it is centralized but until now, many criminals are still using it and some are well-skilled to still get away with their crimes.

Everything has good and bad side, we use mobile phone use internet or all other technology using this technology but we not only do good things but there are many people who do many bad things with the help of this technology. There are two types of hackers, one is black hacker and the other is white hacker, black hacker steals the information of others, on the other hand, white hacker fixes the errors of various sites. In the case of Bitcoin use, many times it is seen that some kidnappers kidnap people and demand ransom through Bitcoin, it is definitely bad behavior by Bitcoin but its responsibility should not be given to Bitcoin. We invest in Bitcoin and expect good things in the future on the other hand there are some criminals who try to commit crimes through Bitcoin. We should see how well we are doing with Bitcoin, not what others have done.

Is Dark web hacking group the only one all over the world, are there no armed robbers everywhere, looters, fraudsters, scammers and all manner of fraudulences in the society that includes the use of fiat currency, why then is the little one happening in crypto being seen as the big offense here, government have their own personal reasons for ding this, they know better because they cant regulate the networks.

Some bad uses of bitcoin.  :'( yes it is really sad when bitcoin used to buy some illegal stuff and etc. But bitcoin is not 100% anonymous.  Today there is a company designed to track Bitcoin activity through various methods by connecting send and receive addresses by connecting the dot and etc company like Arkham Intelligence also known for the company who do the job. Even company like Binance usually can detect whether this clean btc or not.

To be more precise, good or bad is human behavior, we should not blame bitcoin, fiat or any other tool just because it is being used by criminals to commit crimes. Everything in this world is created with only one purpose: to make our lives more convenient and better. Bitcoin was created by Satoshi because he was tired of inflation, the devaluation of fiat currencies, and the suffocating control of the government over the people. He was just trying to create a currency that would help us fight inflation, limit government control, he never intended to create bitcoin for criminals to use.

Yes everything has good and bad side. But I want to say that not only bitcoins are used in illegal stuff but fiat currencies are also used. So those who think only that Bitcoin is used for various criminal activities and buying and selling of illegal goods maybe they are wrong.

You said that a lot of people these days are Kidnapping people and demanding bitcoins as ransom. I have seen such news in our country's newspapers several times. They have even been caught by the police and jailed after demanding bitcoins as ransom. Those who are claiming Bitcoin for such criminal activities should not blame Bitcoin for the behavior of those people because they are only using Bitcoin as a medium. Just as the kidnappers demand Bitcoin as ransom, they also demand fiat.

It all started as a whisper until those who are involved in this criminal abuse of Bitcoin increased more and more which made me a great concern. Of a truth you're right and it saddens me that such technology that was meant to help is now part of what they are using to harm others.

But it is important to remember the importance of it too. Bitcoin transactions, while not completely anonymous, can be traceable on a public ledger. Bitcoin is like a flip coin just like any other technology, the good people use it for its purposes while on the other side the bad use it for theft, fraud, and other wrong purposes. However, there have been regulations and enforcement developed to address misuse, but ultimately how we use it matters the most. If everyone can just use it for the right things there won't be any problem at all.

understand the procedures of Bitcoin you will think of anything you have in mind, in actual circumstances bitcoin is not meant for illegality it is meant for something of being decentralized of being independent of it on but many people misunderstood the usage of Bitcoin that is why you see some people lamenting that bitcoin is used for a criminal activity or illegal activity it is meant for investment from my own understanding not for any other transactions and the people get afraid of Bitcoin because many scammers as then to pay them with the Bitcoin but that does not mean that bitcoin is being used as illegal Duty or illegal function.

Who cares and how do you interpret fiat which previously also experienced the same thing. The percentage of bitcoin used for illegal activities such as arms smuggling, dark transactions and money laundering is also not proven how much. There will always be illegal activities carried out by people and even whether or not bitcoin is on this earth. The reason countries completely ban bitcoin is not on the plain of that reason because there are other considerations that might cause them to ban bitcoin.

What kind of legality do you mean because now there are many countries that allow bitcoin as an investment asset and expecting the government to provide access to legalize bitcoin as a legal means of payment is completely impossible. If your expectations are regarding this, then I doubt that the government will give permission and will change the fiat currency regulations of every country that wants to allow it.

Drug trafficking, weapons or the black market, existed long before Bitcoin was created and illegal trading activities have been going on for years, the government just has an excuse to link Bitcoin with illegal goods.

Actually, that's not a factor, the government is not legalizing Bitcoin, there are other things that the government needs to consider regarding Bitcoin.
For example:
And this one.

For further understanding you can review this one: What is the reason why our government banned Bitcoin? (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-reason-why-our-government-banned-Bitcoin?top_ans=70432165)

Several social media and also other sources, explain and it is not linked to the black market or anything else, Many countries state as in the source above.

How to identify those bad actor's and users of bitcoin and also to enlighten the government about bitcoin and hoe it transactions can be tracked because as long as the transactions pass through the blockchain it can be analysed so instead of the government to totally ban it involment with bitcoin it is better to regulate the market and it actor's in other to protect the system from abusers who may take advantage of bitcoin decentralised nature to carry out illegal transactions.

But in all, bitcoin do more good than harm so the government shouldn't ban bitcoin because of some bad actors who make up for a small numbers of bitcoin real users.

You shouldn't be naive it's an excuse actually. Unlike fiat money and valuable goods, cryptocurrencies can be easily tracked through the blockchain. And many criminals have been arrested thanks to them. In addition when terrorists and criminals use cash money to fund their crimes. The reality is states are afraid to not being able to recover taxes as they want and are frightened for their central bank money, in addition banks are also frightened and put a big pressure on governements for not being discarded by cryptocurrencies.

become a medium of payment for criminal activities? you misunderstood, there have been criminals for a long time and they didn't use bitcoin, they used fiat at first then because they saw bitcoin as very safe and easy to use then they tried to use bitcoin, but they didn't realize that everything was tracked with blockchain technology, so Bitcoin is actually not suitable to be used as a payment medium for criminal activities

Even without legality from the state, Bitcoin will still have a large user base and will continue to be of interest to large investors, including institutions