Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin is not very hard to track. Why do you ask? If someone is after you and have enough power and incentive (say, some governmental agency), you will get caught sooner or later...

This has been discussed already

HEY GUSY, I'M JUST SOME 1 POSTER SCRUB MAKING SOME RANDOM TOPIC ABOUT SOMETHING THAT IS EITHER ALREADY KNOWN, OR DOESN'T MATTER, OR IS FICTITIOUS.

I DO THIS, BECAUSE I'VE GOT A SIGNATURE AND I'M TRYING TO GET THINGS FOR DOING NOTHING BUT SPAMMING. THIS IS MY CONTRIBUTION TO THE WORLD!!

THNX GUYS, INSERT BTC ADDRESS HERE__________________________________________________

I LIKE HOW THE GUY ABOVE ME IS PLAYING ALONG WITH IT  ;D :'(

Bitcoin is rather easy to track. Silk Road business was a cold shower for the ones thinking otherwise.


Sorry, but most people don't read all-caps texts because such texts are just retarded.
So if you want to actually say something and want it to be read, try to grow up, think before you write and, obviously, use normal text.

I asked because my study is about that,and i know its hard to track dirty money in reality how gouvernmental agency will deal with digital.

not that easy as you think, if someone go serious about not being tracked, i doubt that the government could really do something, otherwise why they have not caught yet, the guy who stole all those btc on bitstamp? and i can go on with many more examples

If someone goes serious about not being tracked and caught in the end, they wouldn't use Bitcoin in the first place. If it comes to using a cryptocoin, there are a lot of better choices other than Bitcoin. There was a thread here the OP of which was that serious to cover his steps (he was selling classified info, If I'm not mistaken). I guess anyone curious on the topic should read it...

Bitcoin has the advantage/disadvantage (depends on your point of view) being easily tracked, but not often tracked. People think of cash as being untraceable, but that's not true. If you deal with large sums of cash, all that cash has a paper trail and various government agencies get copies of that paperwork. Just try going through customs with a large amount of cash. Withdrawing large sums from a bank and even cashing in a large number of chips in Las Vegas all involves paperwork that can raise a red flag with government agencies.

At this time, Bitcoin usually doesn't involve this paperwork. Criminals can launder money through Bitcoin for quite a while before being discovered. Once they are discovered, however, every transaction that they've ever made is on the blockchain and is easy to follow, so their money isn't clean at all.

That's where many Bitcoin criminals trip themselves up. They get away with it for a long time and forget just how easy it is to follow the money on the blockchain.

So to answer the OP's question. No, you can not launder money with  Bitcoin, but you can be fooled into thinking it's been laundered.

Small amounts of bitcoin is easy to launder and tough to track. Large sums of bitcoin is probably impossible to launder in one go, it will have to be split up into hundreds of smaller packets (just like fiat) and it will take time.

Is the dirty money in BTC? If one's have to buy BTC then to sell it, that makes 2 traceable transactions, so it's doomed.

The traceable part is the spot of purchasing. If you want to acquire large amount of bitcoin, you have to either deal with a regulated exchange or an exchanger with money transmitter license, they will verify your identity and record the transaction

Another way is to get a large mining farm and dig out clean coins, so I guess in the future the mining equipment maker would also be regulated as a money transmitter service and require buyer's id card  ;D

But anyway, money laundering have many different forms, clever criminals will always find innovative way to launder money. I think the primary goal of money laundering law is not for prevent money laundering, but give banks a right to examine all the money flow so that excessive money will not flow to undesired area, mostly for sanction reasons

there will always be an attempt on money laundering regardless if its bitcoin or fiat.

its just a matter of whats easier, and actually reliable without the usual hassle. When I say usual hassle I mean like stuffing shoe soles $100 bill stacks to get money across to its destination.

so yeah, bitcoin does make it easier. But, people who do this needs to obviously mix their coins.

most people who do launder money actually mix their coins, or actually re-gamble it to a gambling site to get fresh new coins.

but they do cover their steps if they were smart enough to launder the money in general.

Once you have gotten traced to one Bitcoin address, it's very clear to tell where that money has gone. Bitcoin merely slows down the processing of getting traced. If your identity, or "alias" rather, gets linked to one single address, it then becomes a matter of taking that alias and linking it to a real person. The address you used to launder money then is your identity. Law enforcement is VERY good at catching money laundering, even with Bitcoin.

bitcoin is harder to trace but not impossible. Any one who launders money can do it in bitcoin fiat or any other form of currency. Bitcoin just makes international transfers easier.

bitcoin laundering takes as much work as any other currency

A seasoned money launderer talks. Care to tell us some gory details of the business?

You have to take one poison or the other.

Bitcoin's decentralized and anonymous design makes it hard for powerful elites to take from everyone else and destabilize the economy by monetary manipulation, but that very same nature makes it fundamentally easier for criminals to hide.  There probably are ways to make bitcoin addresses untraceable to a person, if the person is careful.  I believe it required a mistake for the authorities to catch the owner of Silk Road.

While there are ways to catch criminals without following the money trail, there isn't a way to "catch" the elites, without using a money that is impossible to manipulate.

DPR published his real personal info in his LinkedIn profile as well as made some posts here with his Gmail address, which allowed FBI agents to establish his identity and carry out a successful identification...

So think twice about what to post at bitcointalk.org, what to show and what to conceal

I wouldnt think too hard about posting on here, if people are buying multiple accounts in general lol.

Like I seen a dude run 20 accounts alone to hype up his ponzi, in the investors games thread and its retarded. Got away with lik minmum 13 btc. All based on his own promoted deposits.

Plus this forum also offers to promote VPNs.

As already said, it's not that hard to track.

There're other coins that declare being untraceable, but as far as I know, any bitcoin-based coin is easy to track. It's considered that cryptonote coins' transactions, though, are really imppossible to track 8) 8) 8) 

Well, Bitcoin itself isn't really usable for money laundering, as any transaction is traceable, especially if an exchange hands over informations about a wallet which is linked to a verified customer.
But using bitcoin mixing services there is a good chance to get the coins back "cleaned".

And then you would need to use so-called offshore debit cards to get the Bitcoins into money, as I don't guess you want it to withdraw to your real bank account.

its not hard to track transactions and probably much easier than most think to associate an address with most users

But to access cryptonote coins (namely Monero) you still need Bitcoin, and the Bitcoin transaction where you bought Monero with would still show up, so whats the point. Unless the Monero coins you have were mined, their origin will most likely be trade for BTC in some exchange.

If that is true, laundering should be very easy.
Just send it to one of the mixers around and then tracing the origin of the funds will become very difficult.

how you can do it? it's not easy at all, tracking back to the original address it's possible, maybe even when those addresses are mixed, but associating it to a specific person/users is another different story


you can mine cryptonote at launch, they are affordable, with a gpu like 970/980, then convert that in bitcoin, simple

The point is probably that after that, you cannot follow the monero coins any more.  That's the point.  Of course you can see that a guy deposited half a million $ in an exchange to get bitcoins.  Then you can trace those bitcoins to an exchange that has monero on its list.  And from there on, you don't know anything any more of where that money went, contrary to the bitcoin block chain.

That's the advantage of cryptonote in my eyes. 

Suppose that someone wants to buy, say, a famous painting, and keep that hidden.  He can now take some money from his bank account, and put it on an exchange, and buy some bitcoin with it.  That's traceable.  Then he can put those bitcoin on another exchange, that's still traceable.  There he can exchange them for monero.  And then the track is lost.

The seller of the painting can now receive monero from the buyer.  Nobody will be able to link that to the other guy's address.  That's the whole point of cryptonote.  Of course, this guy now has a problem: how to get dollars out of his monero ?
He can convert them to bitcoin on an exchange, and exchange them to dollars.  Of course, questions can be asked of where did he get that money.  But nobody will be able to trace the monero transaction and link it to the painting.  Unless of course, the guy selling it, tells authorities.
But what can also happen, is that that guy buys something else with bitcoin or monero.  For instance, drugs.  As such, he doesn't need to get back to the dollar.  He could get his monero or bitcoin from trading a painting, and could get drugs in place, without this being traceable. 

Yeah so simple, except thats stupid since it will be nonviable after a while, just like its nonviable to mine Bitcoin as a single entitiy now.
"Hey, if you want to use Monero, the only way to do it anonymously is by mining them". Don't you see that is pointless. 

And thats why the authorities would follow by asking, "where did that million dollars that went into X exchange then to XMR ended up at?"
You better have a convincing answer, but chances are you'll not.

politics are hard to control or track.

http://media.giphy.com/media/tMn3MwAkCREty/giphy.gif

Bitcoin is pseudoAnonym and Monero is not very "anonymous" (in respect of  BTC). The problem will be always the FIAT money deposited in the exchange, unless you mine bitcoin or all the other cryptocurrency directly ;).

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OP, if you want to "launder" some dollars , then bitcoin is a good way... because you can still sell your dollars (cash) to someone that is available to buy $$ for bitcoin.

Yes, bitcoin is an easy medium on money laundering, but that doesn't mean that you won't get tracked with your activities. Taint analysis helps track where the coins go after a certain transaction until it stops. The hard thing is, even if you kept track of coins and managed to locate the last address it landed, you'll still get a rough time on linking the address towards a certain person or user.

There is nothing more confident than being legit, Really bad bussines at minimum gives you 30% in utilities. Of course every succesful business has its dark side, so we can easily say that the person that has lots of any kind of money is synonymous of sinner and peccant. But I prefer being a sinner inside the limits of law.

You cant escape the laundering since the main purpose is to move large sums of cash to supplement another business or for something else.

The coins really do their job, as long it retains their value at a constant rate but thats the only impractile thing about for some druglord to use it.

But, if the coin value tanks, then they`ll just have to force their old ways. Like stuffing money into various places.

I played around with it, and then my computer crashed, and I lost my keys  ;D
Them I tried to call Monero Bank for them to issue me new keys, but I couldn't reach them  :D

As long their are forms of gambling the casinos are a perfect for people to launder their drug money.

Its pretty shady as hell too, cause I actually noticed some of these gambling sites outside from the bitcoin scene they require youre last 4 ssn.

Like what the hell? talk about identity theft included lol.

If you have paid your taxes, they really won't bother.
If you owe the tax department money, they will sell the shirt off your back to recover their dues.  :P

If you take all the necessary precautions, and stay away from unnecessary things, then Bitcoin can be a quite efficient tool for money laundering. Keep a low profile, stay out of trouble, get quality legal support and keep your fiat in the form of hard cash. Whenever you convert your BTC to fiat, do that anonymously, without involving cash transfers to your bank savings account.

The shady people in fiat money laundering, force people at gunpoint to open bank accounts for them. They kidnap their kids or wife for leverage.

There are even poor people getting paid to take the heat for the use of their identity.

What is stopping the same people to do this with ANY other currency? You cannot change the human behaviour behind ANY technology.  :(

So let's just leave this whole money laundering thing connected to Bitcoins... It's possible on ANY currency.

Money laundering in fiat is being done everyday before bitcoin was invented. The easy part is moving money around. The difficult part is accumulating the pile of cleaned money into legit books again. If successful launders can clean millions in fiat, they can certainly do it for bitcoin too. Bitcoin doesn't make it easier, it is just one of many laundering methods.

I think that small amounts of fiat is much easier to launder and thought to track then small amount of bitcoin. And block chain is here to stay so they can catch you even 100 years from now with technology we cant even imagine today.

Cash is much less traceable than Bitcoin, not to mention that anonymity is an important trait of a good currency. A good currency should allow individuals to trade without the government tracking every transaction. It's not their business and AML is just a bad excuse for regulations that don't work and significantly encroach on individual rights.

they are coming with a new cash that is traceable, there was a discussion about it

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1070180.0

actually it is good that they are aiming at this, will only make bitcoin stronger, because more people will move to it

I don't really see how this isn't thwarted by the same thing as unmarked bills? Unless the bank knows exactly which bills were stolen and all of them have this new technology - you're not going to see a difference. Not to mention if they just spent it, unless the merchant their spending it had the ability to discern the difference it would pass through unnoticed. This technology would require literally everyone to be on board - something that is incredibly unlikely to occur.

Not to mention that this does't deal with the bigger issue of organised crime money. Nowadays, money isn't illegally gained by robbing banks but rather illegal drug operations etc.

I don't think it will make bitcoin stronger: untraceability is not one of its strong points to say the least !  But it might make anon coins stronger.

Then no government emitted currency (i.e. fiat) is any good with this approach. Even paper money has serial numbers printed on it which makes it quite traceable. Besides that, I've heard rumors that some serial number ranges of the US dollars are illegal in the US, among them the dollars the US government paid to terrorists freedom fighters in various parts of the world...

bitcoin is more anon than many think, but you need to work with something like coin-join, project like  this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=919116.0, could potentially turn the table on the anonimity issue about bitcoin

Instead of wasting valuable resources on something that 99% of people don't care for, bitcoin developers (or whoever is concerned) had better spend their time on dealing with real problems that are now dogging Bitcoin (pun intended). I mean frustratingly slow confirmations, just to name a few...

The problem with something like that is that it is not systematic.  So if you do it, you are suspect from the start.  If not many people use it (because you have to take the initiative to do so), the anonymity offered by it is very limited.

No, the biggest problem in bitcoin it the linkability of transactions.  Coinjoin only makes the links somewhat more involved but doesn't unlink them.  It tries to blur them by adding cross links between unrelated transactions.  But the real links are still there (muddled with other, unrelated ones).  If not may people use coinjoin, the links will be blurred somewhat, but you don't have true anonymity.

In fact, if tainting becomes a way of refusing coins, one would become reluctant to use coinjoin, because your coins might get tainted that way.

I like dash (formerly darkcoin) more, because at least, the coinjoin mixing is systematic.  So one can hope that you don't find the trees amongst the wood any more.  Nevertheless, the links are still present between transactions - they are simply confused with a lot of other links.


A true anonymous system is something like zerocoin.  I think that cryptonote is also close to achieving anonymity (although I'm not entirely sure I fully understand all details of it).

yeah zero-knowledge proofs, is what we need, but in the case of zerocoin there is this some small problem related to space, transactions are quite big, so you need to use it only when it is needed, also the problem of indistinguishable, it's not that good, if there are people with large transactions and other that do small transactions

Use some bitcoin whash services and it is somewhat untracable. Depending on how much effort and resources the tracking opposite party has available, its never 100% clean.

Big banks   know much better way to launder money,stock market,offshore banks accounts,forex
gold market,bitcoin market is to small ,to much complicated and to much transparent