Bitcoin Forum

online currency bitcoin can basically be used for various transactions. For example, for legal transactions such as wordpress.com, Galatic virgin airways, republikhost.com, and various social donations like to wikileaks.

On the other hand, the digital currency can be used for the benefit of a greater portion of illegal internationally. Illegal acts that include money laundering, gambling, drugs, and even protitusi.
But it is possible if in the U.S. ensued with bitcoin money laundering. If there are politicians who commit this crime, the police will be very difficult to handle. Unless, if they cooperate with or exchanher bitcoin users who understand the concept of bitcoin

What?

Op... what the what?

hmmmmmmm

I'm speechless, Nerazzura

I also now have a headache.

Thanks, Nerazzura

You can mine Orphan block, they are corrupted, so there you have BitCoin Corruption.

The only thing I understood in that was the smileys at the end  :o

could do if someone  money corruption. of the company could do until the government, however, my question whether to BTC  had a chance to do so. this could happen also!!
who could be categorized as a corruptor BTC and how anyone ?
 are included into it.  give you a reason, friend wheter malicious hackers

DUH!  ??? :P

OP please stick to posting in your native dialect.

This gotta be posting bot, or someone really really not into English. Bitcoin and corruption....ppl were corrupted even before money as we know it existed, so i dont see why ppl can not be corrupted with BTC (if that was OP's question)

Nowadays the biggest corruption is not about giving money/fiat/Btc from point A to point B.
It´s about to do / owe a favour. (Not trackable)

And that´s why Transparency International is in my eyes a hypocritical tool to prevent lower (trackable) degrees of corruption, (Money-transfer)
but not the real relevant kind of corruption as i wrote before.

I think it is possible to discredit Bitcoin as a tool for corruption.
It was possible to discredit Bitcoin as a tool for buying drugs and so on.

The underlaying sense of that argumentation is to implement Bitcoin into the existing system with new rules (Registration Duty) by creating public pressure.

I'm sorry for my english. but it looks like the answer you've replied to my question.
maybe next time, I'll fix it

Money laundering will always exist.
It will probably get harder with time (in what refers to bitcoin), but there will always be a way.
Maybe a time will come where cash becomes the main vehicle for laundering :)

Bitcoin is a poor form of medium for money laundering. IP address can be traced.

Even if you use anonymous browser to conduct illicit activity, if you are not careful into divulging your shipping address (or near by address), authority will use the information to deduce your identity. And cashing out large amount of bitcoin anonymously will be difficult.


Cash is still the best medium for money laundering. Trade off being it is hard to store bulk amount and you need to hire trusted personal to guard it.

Cash has always been a primary vehicle for money laundering. It is my understanding that a greater number of bitcoin TX (in terms of percentages) are used for money laundering then cash is

...

"Money Laundering" = Any money you have that the government does not know about

 >:(


Nerazzura: Parla italiano?

Whatever you are smoking, please send some my way  ;D

What?
Money laundering - completely annonymous coins... Basically DRK and a few others. All BTC transactions are recorded so everything can be traced back eventually.

May be we want clean coins. What's the problem?

I don't think that it is nearly as easy for politicians in the US to hide money as you seem to think it is. Their finances are fairly public and moving large amounts in and out of bitcoin exchanges isn't going to help them evade the public eye as much you think.

If you mean that they could take corruption payments directly in bitcoin, then yes, I see what you mean there. That does make it easier for them. But even so they still have to cash it out somehow, or buy things with the bitcoin. Or they could hold bitcoin if they felt that it was a sound investment.

All and all, it's not much different than cash. A corrupt politician could accept a briefcase full of cash and have the same problems washing it as he would with washing the bitcoins he would receive instead. Also, using bitcoins requires a little bit of technical familiarity and a lot of the US politicians are well known for being technically inept.

Government officials use diplomatic bags, to launder money, smuggle diamonds and drugs, and it's seldom reported. But when crypto currency is used as a vehicle to do these things, it's all over the Press. Make you wonder why that is?  >:(

Legal private companies launder money, on a daily basis, and seldom get caught. And if they do, they just close shop and open somewhere else, under a new name.

It's just another "method" for people to launder currency, but most of this is tracked. The protocol was not created to launder money, it was created, as a alternative to a failing fiat currency, which is used for money laundering too.

Sorry, not sure I understand your statement / questions  :D

Bitcoin is only pseudoanonymous (though if you hide your IP and use new addresses every time it is pretty much anonymous).

That being said, I can't wait to see what extra anonymity features that Zerocash will be bringing to the table when it is released!

The biggest challenge of laundering money with bitcoin is moving it into and out of fiat. It is very easy to have bitcoin that you control not be associated with previous transactions but is much more difficult to exchange it for fiat without raising any kind of red flag

...

ShakyhandsBTCer

Not too hard to exchange your BTC for my cash...  PM me if interested.  NOT huge quantities.  Not a cop nor a crook.

It's really hard for me to find BTC for cash, hardly anyone I know has any at all.  And I want to be off the grid buying BTC.

I am not saying that I am having trouble laundering my BTC personally.

My point was that for a money launder it is difficult to exchange BTC for fiat.

This is my point exactly as money launders usually need to move "large" amounts of money.

You can use blockchain's shared coin to get the same effect as zerocash but with shorter TX confirmation times as zerocash has all TXs in a shared coin format and when one party "backs out" of a TX then the TX will fail and all the parties will need to try again by all signing a new TX

If bitcoin is "property" and not currency, then it certainly cannot be accused of involvement with money laundering, but that would make it a currency.

Different government agencies treat it differently.

It can be a currency to one department and property to another department.

That is not true. People often use real estate to (attempt to) launder money all the time and real estate is not in any way currency. The same holds true with gold, diamonds and other "untraceable" assets

If your trying to launder coins i would suggest for you not to use sharedcoin as it has been proven not to be so anonymous

Link:
http://www.coindesk.com/blockchains-sharedcoin-users-can-identified-says-security-expert/

I agree...what type of post was this?!
Gave me a headache couldn't get my head around it.

You can be tracked by an attacker with shared coin but not with 100% certainty. IIRC one of the articles about this said that it could identify the recipient of a transaction with 25% certainty.

The researchers matched the senders with the recipients by looking at matching input/output amounts on a TX. This problem could easily be solved by either of two ways:

1 - Have the coins take two (or more) paths to their destination. This would mean that you would have to participate (via the blockchiain.info web wallet) in more transactions and would take longer to set up. Alternatively it could be set up so that you can have multiple ultimate output transactions, possibly with a different number of intermediary transactions.

2 - Charge some kind of randomized fee for the service that is paid at random times throughout the process.

"encryption tools could effectively turn off law enforcement’s ability to surveil criminal and terrorist suspects online."

When a government begins to spy on everyone all the time, dark wallet is an example of what is going to then transpire. Hey, NSA?

Have you tired localbitcoins.com?

It's pretty good. Last stat people were throwing around was that it's in over 8000 locations now. Shouldn't be too hard for you to find some BTC.

Dark wallet, tor, I2P are not effective tool to stop agency such as NSA.

The statement "encryption tools could effectively turn off law enforcement’s ability to surveil criminal and terrorist suspects online." is true. The NSA is very unlikely to be able to break strong encryption. I can't speak for any of the specific tools you mentioned, beacuse who knows what the NSA has their hands on at this point. But a new tool that uses strong encryption open sourced and created from scratch should be safe from prying eyes.

Shared coin when used in conjunction with other mixers can mask your identity.   

Well if you use sharedcoin+other services doesn't it just mean you are incurring an extra cost because your paying for a service(sharedcoin) that doesn't deliver what you want.

So IMO using sharedcoin in the first place is just a waste of your coins

XMR coin is currently partnering with I2P developers to see if they can bring anon coin into the market.

Darkcoin already have two failed implementation. The current framework the coin operates on may not even be possible to implement a truly anonymous coin.

there is no real need for a "truly anonymous coin" as it could likely do nothing that bitcoin could achieve with the use of a mixing service

I can dig it!

The OP made my eye cross and now it's stuck!

I don't think that these types of extreme privacy features have that much of a demand from crypto users.

All I keep hearing though is people talking about how these mixing services are not truly anonymous at all and are actually easily trackable.

The biggest recent one was the reveal of how badly designed blockchain.info's implementation was. It was revealed that you could just eye ball the transactions are figure it out very quickly.

Black market transaction still make up a large portion of bitcoin daily transaction.

Yes. It is surprising easy to track all the big whale and your counter party transaction.

It is dangerous if this info leaked into the wrong hand.

What are "black market" transactions?

How do you define the term?

Stuff you don't like?

People trying to avoid brutal and punitive taxation?

Enquiring minds want to know!

Black market: Trades deemed illegal by people who trample on other's rights.

One of the best definitions I have read lately!

+100

That may or may not be true, however it is already very difficult to tell when someone is actually spending money or when they are transferring bitcoin to themselves. It is also relativity difficult to determine which address is the change address and which address belongs to the person you are sending to. 

I'd like to numbers and citations to support the claim that illegal transactions compose a large percentage of Bitcoin transactions.

:)

Criminality is going there.

Criminality uses dollars, francs, drachmas, pesos, rubles, Euro and pounds fucking sterling.

So what?

What are they supposed to use?

Polynesian shell money?

I don't have specific statistics, but bitcoin is known to be a way to conduct nefarious activity. There is also a large number of crypto ransom hacks where an attacker encrypts a user's files files and demands a certain level of bitcoin or the key to decrypt the files will be permanently destroyed.

Every good has its hidden bad face, and evil people will always find the way to get profit from this, Bitcoin needs to still stronger and we

need to protect it and so we will...

So just how do intend to do that?

I wouldn't necessarily agree with that definition. The black market would be more trades deemed wrong by people as a society. Take for example human trafficking, I think it could be agreed that society as a whole would agree that human trafficking is wrong, but sadly it is still a reality. Regardless of the legality of selling humans, this trade would be done on what would be considered to be the black market.

 ???

People should be able to do whatever they damn well please with THEIR money!

You would probably not agree with that statement if someone was paying a hitman to make you the mark...

"People should be able to do whatever they damn well please with THEIR money as long as it is not malicious or has an intent of evil to harm someone else"

I agree, that is violation of rights, and everyone should be against it. That doesn't mean that some group of people can decide arbitrarily that some voluntary trades are illegal. If they don't violate rights, they are legal.

Any "internal controls" placed on bitcoin will drive tha value to near zero and former Bitcoin users to altcoins.

Some things that are illegal may not directly violate other's rights but may do so indirectly. One example of this would be the black market for stolen merchandise. Although the merchandise may have been stolen a long time ago, the functioning market in effect took away the rights (property) of the original owner.

I still agree, and this is still violation of rights. The merchandise should be returned and the thieves excluded from trade.

I am talking about smuggled goods, goods which the government has restricted or placed under price controls, traded on a free market. Envision high tariffs on food import, high taxes, price controls. That is empty shelves and hunger. The allegedly illegal free market is necessary to feed the people. There are countless examples from history. Basically, regulation is destructive, sometimes leading to hunger.

The black market is the derogative name of the free market that fixes the destructive violent government regulation.

I've found it useful to divide not into just white/black markets, but into five areas: white, black, gray, red and pink.

From http://www.nostate.com/3441/black-markets-vs-free-markets/ :

“Black market” as commonly understood is a problematic term, since it encompasses both harmless things that governments ban (the cannabis trade, for instance) in most places, as well as harmful things that governments also ban (murder for hire, for example).

I personally favor the market analysis given by agorist theory, which breaks down things along two axes:

• White market: State-approved, moral (i.e. non-rights-violating) (e.g. on-the-books employment)
• Gray market: Banned unless done in state-approved manner, moral (e.g. off-the-books trade)
• Black market: State ban, moral (e.g. drugs)
• Red market: State ban, immoral (e.g. murder for hire)
• Pink market: State-approved (and largely state-conducted), immoral (e.g. taxation, conscription, compulsory education)

Visual illustration on slide 7 of a powerpoint I made for a presentation to a libertarian meeting this summer at http://www.nostate.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/What-Sort-of-Libertarian-Are-You1.ppt (reproduced for readers of this blog below).

http://www.nostate.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/The-five-markets.png

Shit-ton of namby-pamby Big Government types in this thread.

Such types are the greatest single danger to bitcoin and crypto as a whole.

Why is the "Red Market" included in the chart that the state allows it as long as regulations are followed?

but one can partially hide their money through bitcoin. An article lately that i've encounter was about bitcoin and divorce. :D

I think OP had at least a few glasses too much to drink :P

Done carefully and properly, one could theoreticially hide ALL of one's bitcoin income from the prying eyes of government.

I only use my coins for completely state approved stuff like buying services I don't need at boringsite.com, donating to the admin of boringblog.com etc.

I'm a good person  :)

and then I pay taxes on it, on all of it :)

and sometimes I even lose money doing that, but I don't care...

because I feel good then :)

I love my Government and I'm sure the feeling is mutual  :-*

No, because...


you give the bullies money

You have been deluded into thinking self sacrifice is a virtue

Think again.

of course it was a joke  ;D

this is how the folk thinks, and it's ridiculous

Agreed and the more "regulation" the further undergoround crypto will be driven.

This is of course, as it should be.

The same is true with fiat. However is this something that is really necessary to have to do?

I dinno.

With half the governments on the planet after your money, what do you think?

Re: bitcoin and money laundering

Money are never dirty, and can therefore not be laundered. Money are always divine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8P80A8vy9I

Exacly, plus more than that. I came over this, Mike Maloney reads from Atlas Shrugged, the passage where d'Anconia opposes the meme that money is the root of all evil. Maloney gets tears in his eyes when he reads...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkivn_3zn5I

And this is true, as long as you understand that society is different than government. Government does not represent society. And is a separate entity.

Government seen as an association of free actors whose purpose is to solve prisoner's dilemma type of problem (which can only be solved by external observer) is good.
But, when those free actors are forbidden to dissociate this is coercion.

This is not always true, as if you acquired money in an illegitimate manor, or if the specific money can link you to a specific crime, then it is considered to be "dirty" 

Money acquired in an illegitimate manner is only "dirty", if it can be directly connected to the crime.

Getting harder to cash out large sum of bitcoin as all exchanges are now regulated.

Local Bitcoins then?

...

@ leezay

There are several companies that advertise on the Internet that they will take your Bitcoin for gold.

Gold is the ONLY thing I have spent BTC on...

emm... nothing is perfect, we just have to know how use them ;D

Not that many localbitcoin buyer will carry large amount of cash to do on site trade. Risk of getting robbed is high also.

LBC sellers are technically suppose to comply with AML regulations, although many of them do not do so. You would probably need to sell over several trades if you wanted to cash out a large amount.

LBC users are in no way at all required to comply with AML regs any more than the seller of a used car is required to do so.

I have read news reports that LE has charged LBC sellers with AML violations when they sold to people who we're claiming to be using the bitcoin for illegal purposes

Fine.

Where's the beef?

Show us the links!

And please tell us just how a transaction which might appear to be illegal on it scae compares with a perfectly legal transaction between two ordinary citizens.

oh

It's "were" not "we're".

;)

I have seen the report to. It was in Miami, this guy was charging 30%+ markup on trades to people. An undercover cop told the seller that he was going to use the bitcoin for illegal purposes and he was arrested for violating AML laws. I have also seen on the FinCen website that anyone who transmits any amount of financial instruments must follow AML laws.

Dumbass, meet cop.

Should be wary of buyer paying 30% premium.

I'm going to go ahead and get my book written so you guys and dolls can learn how to get around all thiese silly-assed "regulations".

I believe the origin of 'money laundering' is related to black money.
You 'launder' black money into white.

All this will now have to be abandoned. Money is money, and crimes will have to be dealth with separately.

I can foresee special crime investigation teams, which have expertise in bitcoin, being set up.  ;D
Already you have crimes involving bitcoin shooting up.

It was the seller asking for these kinds of premiums. IMO the seller was targeting people who were trying to use bitcoin for illegal purposes and wanted to stay "under the radar"

That was probably humoristic, but

If violence have been done, investigate that.
If fraud have been done, investigate that.
If illegal substances has been transacted, investigate that.
If someone has been enslaved (nonsensically/newspeakly called trafficking) then take action on that.

Money moved over the border? Has to be ignored. Can not be outlawed, just as giving someone a piece of cake against a cup of coffee in return, can not be taxed. (It they could, they would).

Please do so.

I will.

I'm working on it.

I really would like to know how to get around the government with my bitcoins.

@OROBTC,

You said "there are several companies that advertise on the Internet that they will take your Bitcoin for gold.

Gold is the ONLY thing I have spent BTC on..."

Would you provide me with links to the companies online that take btc for gold, especially the ones you have dealt with? Many thanks to you.

Correct.
Although bitcoin may be unrelated to the crime, some one with expertise in bitcoin could help unravel the 'money trail', leading to the criminal.
That is where the special teams could come in.

IMO whenever you are making this kind of markup in an efficient market, you are almost certainly doing something that you shouldn't be doing.

...

@ bigwig456

Here are the below gold for BTC sellers that I know about, I have bought from the first one:

https://www.goldsilverbitcoin.com/  (ask for Justin, see my experience here: http://goo.gl/pJM7U)

https://www.amagimetals.com/  (I have read a few good reviews)

https://agoracommodities.com/

http://www.coinabul.com/  (they MAY have gotten their act together, but one BAD review from a year or two ago)

YMMV!  Do your own diligence!  CALL them too!


* * *

@ LostDutchman

I too would be interested in your book!  Please keep us advised!

The argument here is can bitcoin ever out weigh bank currencies or fiat not to talk of using it for laundering.

Please speak proper english. Reading this gave me a head ache. Rephrase your words then we'll see from there lol

Money laundering is a problem with cash too.

This is more or less true. If you are willing to pay this much of a premium then it is very likely that you are going to ask the other person not to verify your identity. You have a good argument for them not to check your ID because they are making so much money from your trade. 

I doubt if the seller is doing anything illegal here.

Seamlessly bitcoin has more to offer to those launderers than to us the legit users,mainly having no centralized control system help launder money boundlessly around anywhere which many of us has experienced/witnessed.

Yes many Countries with very stick laws unable to stop this and bitcoin is also very good and easy way for this

The seller would not be doing anything illegal (except not checking the buyer's ID). The buyer would likely be willing to pay for the privacy because they intend to do something illegal with the BTC.

As long as there is no legal requirement to check the buyer's ID, I guess the seller should be safe.

In the US if someone sells something like BTC for fiat in any amount they are suppose to verify the other person's identity and report any transactions above a certain threshold and report any kind of suspicious activity they encounter.

That is strange. It is usually the buyer who has to verify ids (to ensure that there is no tax evasion). But each jurisdiction will have its own rules.

All of the money laundering cases that have involved LBC (AFAIK) have always involved the seller of BTC not verifying the identity of a buyer after being told that the buyer is going to use the BTC for something illegal.

I am pretty sure this is not true. It is generally the responsibility of the person who is "handing out" the fiat to make sure that the person receiving the fiat is doing so legitimately. Tax evasion is generally the responsibility of the tax authority to try to prevent.

Btc could be used as a good method the launder money in and around the world without anyone's notice,being a no centralized online currency no body is there to question how much of money you move through and over this system ;D

yes, that's the reason why the Government wants to ban BTC

Laundering and tax evasion are reasons, but the primary reason is control over the economy.

I think not only bitcoin can be used for money laundering, almost all of currency of this world can be used for money laundering, it's depend on the person who used the currency, hopefully bitcoin and all of the currency in the can be used not for illegally like money laundering ...

Money laundering is going to keep happening no matter what currency is being used  ::)

Can you give some proofs to prove it?

proof? didn't you heard about silk road and silk road 2 that blackmarket used bitcoins in their transactions, most of those transactions are drugs and illegal things.

because bitcoin is included in the financial transactions it is possible bitcoin can be made illegal transactions such as money laundering practices, plus more on bitcoin wallet there is no clear identity, in addition to the admin who hold it, so that when used as a wash bitcoin wallet money, it will be very difficult to track the process and who did it ...  ::)

The blockchain is a permanent, unquestionable record. If you are not really careful, you may end up disclosing your identity.  :)

The public blockchain require laundering. Businesses also have to hide their transactions/sales/customers/supply and so on to competitors.
The thing is the P2P solution is pure laundering. Too perfect to be legal. I think banks will launder your money, you put in a big jar and they give you back what you need. The authorities will connect the dots with the internal database of the bank.

BTC has a long way to go to become a most laundered money. USD is the most laundered money, however, it is still legal tender.

For some Politician in other country who have weak law , bitcoin is another option to hide their money.
They can keep it in cold wallet and they can ask bribe with bitcoin not cash money.

wow, this is deep bro. I never thought about this but, good to know  ;)