Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin is a double-edged sword. There are advantages and disadvantages. Of course, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. In the early stage, it is inevitable that Bitcoin will be used for some illegal and criminal activities because of the following convenient conditions.

• Non-sovereignty, free space.
• Decentralized distributed accounting method
• Perfect anonymity, easy account cancellation, new account creation, concealed identity.
• Convenient, fast and without third parties.no border.

It can be said that it provides fertile soil for criminal activities, money laundering, drugs, guns, dark web transactions and so on.

Similarly, Bitcoin is not suitable for these unseen businesses.

• The price of Bitcoin is extremely volatile, and it may be held for a long time in order to have higher returns.
• Bitcoin is banned in many countries, and the network is still very closed, such as China.
• The crypto market, or Bitcoin trading platform, is often attacked by hackers. Of course, some white hats are also staring at your wallet and exchange.

What is your opinion on this issue? How to avoid criminal activities? It is impossible for everyone to abide by the rules like the Bitcoin forum, and a large number of volunteers selflessly pay their own labor to maintain the rules of the game in the forum.

Contrary to popular belief, bitcoin is the favorite cryptocurrency of the FBI AML team because it's a pseudonymous meaning that you're only anonymous in the ledger but not when you are spending it.

This topic was discussed so many times you could have searched really before asking.
But you chose to post a long topic and be wrong.
As already said, Bitcoin doesn't have perfect anonymity.

Now, really, use search. And ask around. And research. And learn.

It doesn't provide anonymity. Every address and amount can be tracked down. It looks rather pseudonymous to me. It'd be anonymous, if it somehow hid the amounts and the parties (sender & recipient).

So, it provides what cash do too? Except that it does this dirty job worse due to its transparency? Explain me how you can launder money with Bitcoin since you have to somehow convert them again in fiat. Let's assume that you have $1m and you want to launder them urgently! Show me your steps to prevent from getting caught using Bitcoin.

You can't avoid criminal activities, just as how the USD hasn't really prevented criminal activity. The authorities simply has to find/pursue the crooks through other means than through the currency.

One of the main points of Bitcoin is that you can make transactions without anyone's permission.

Fiat is arguably far more conducive for money laundering and anonymous as well. You can't trace cash as effectively as you can with Bitcoin.

You really can't expect anyone to take care of your Bitcoins. You're responsible for them and any loss as a result of your negligence is your fault. There is no problem with non-reversibility.

Also to avoid volatility, just trade it for your fiat immediately after the transaction, if you really want.

Frankly speaking, there is no way to avoid criminal activities! The nature of bitcoin is designed in such a way where everyone can get their hands on to it. This is true for other cryptos as well so let's not victimize bitcoin alone. Bitcoin was forever used by the criminals of various statuses and the trend will continue, unfortunately.

The only way to curb this illegal activities is stringent KYC norms. But that again goes against the idea of bitcoin and the whole theory of decentralization. So I really can't see an effective way to  curb on illegal activities while maintaining the idea of bitcoin. We will have to compromise either of one side. But it's interesting to see what other members are thinking.

There is no solid evidence that KYC actually prevents illegal activities or money laundering, just as there is no solid evidence that mass surveillance prevents terrorism or crime. It is a fabrication told by governments to justify spying on their citizens and sticking their noses in to your business. With how easy it is to acquire someone else's KYC details, all that stringent KYC achieves is innocent people having their identities stolen and being framed for crimes they didn't commit. All a criminal has to do is create some fake altcoin giveaway or fake airdrop, and they can collect hundreds of KYC documents in a couple of days.

Every currency in the world is used for some illegal activities. Not only is bitcoin no different, but it shouldn't be different. Either bitcoin is censorship resistant, or it isn't. If you start discriminating against some users, some addresses, some transactions, some bitcoins, then you open the door for discrimination against any bitcoin user, and so bitcoin is no longer bitcoin.

Bitcoin transaction is not anonymous, it is pseudonymity. The blockchain is completely transparent, but you can maintain privacy if you want.

Why are fiat a fertile soil for criminals? Read this OP (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5349207.msg57457732#msg57457732) as an example. Why are terrorists and bandits demanding for paper fiat (cash)? Criminals still make use of fiat than crypto.

How about fiat? They are most suitable.

'May' is an understatement, it will. Just hold and be patient, do not panic during bearish market, all-time-high will be attained.

As some countries will ban Bitcoin, many others will not. China banned Bitcoin, but Bitcoin remain existing and promising.

What did you mean by close network?

Bitcoin is built with open source codes, miners are not centralized in a way miners are chosen, any person can mine Bitcoin, just get your ASICs to start and make profit. Bitcoin is decentralized and the ledger is opened to the public. So, how is Bitcoin having close network? Running nodes is even voluntarily. Expatiate more on this, but I know you are totally wrong.

You need a lot to know more about. Bitcoin gives freedom, using centralized exchanges and services will not give you freedom and total control. Not you key not you coin. Has any centralized platform generated you private key before or seed phrase? If you are not using reputed noncustododial wallet, then you do not have any excuse. Centralized services hacks is what you are referring to, you can protect yourself while using reputed noncustododial wallet, most especially the hardware wallets which are convenient and store private key offline.

Most of your statements are not right.

Avoid criminals should be your aim, use reputed noncustododial wallet
Avoid malware
Do not store your coins on centralized platforms, store it on noncustododial wallet, Trezor and ledger nano are recommended, or any other offline wallets. Online wallet is not bad, but for low amount of coins while security and safety is maintained.

To know more about security, safety and privacy, check this topic: Good topics on security and privacy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5239098.0)

I don't think it's Bitcoin's job to avoid crime. Crime chooses, and I would have hoped Silk Road taught the lesson that it really is a poor choice to be used for criminal purposes. Can we stop feeding something that has repeatedly been proven wrong already?

P.S. Hackers aren't interested only in Bitcoin trading platforms, they're interested in easy backdoors, lazy admins, careless managers and generally, just poor security practices. And I think you used white hat wrong?

That's true! There is no solid evidence that kyc norms are effective against money laundering or even terrorism financing. Completely in agreement with your statement. However, it is one prime weapon which can be used to curb illegal activities. But it is very difficult for a decentralized network like bitcoin because there is no way to know who is mining it and from which part of the world. It's simply impossible to have 100% correct information. But stringent kyc can at least discourage few percentage of scammers from using it for their illegal businesses. But kyc goes directly against the idea of bitcoin and that's why scammers will try to obtain other people's kyc to hide their dirty money trail.

I don't see how you can agree that KYC is not effective at preventing illegal activities, and then in the next sentence state that KYC is a "prime weapon" against illegal activities. Those two statements are mutually exclusive. If anyone can show me some evidence that KYC reduces money laundering then I'm all ears, but given that fiat banks which have much stricter KYC rules than bitcoin are complicit in laundering trillions of dollars each year, I won't hold my breath. KYC is about surveillance and control, not about preventing crime.

Any scammer can easily sell bitcoin for fiat, if that's what they want to do, with or without KYC. We've had KYC on all centralized exchanges for years, and yet scammers and hackers continue to use bitcoin, just as they use cash and fiat. KYC is not a deterrent.

That's what they told you to justify their needed control over you. Yes, stating that you, as the government, must be aware of the people's transactions to prevent the society from illegal activity is indeed correct, even though illegal activities such as invading taxes might be good for the economy if its system is corrupted. Do you really believe that money laundering is tackled by KYC that way?

Think critically; don't be a useful idiot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot).

Well said.

maybe that's the advantage of bitcoin over real money, those who commit criminal acts through bitcoin will not be able to track their whereabouts. Sometimes I also think negatively that bitcoin is made by criminals so that they can carry out criminal transactions through bitcoin, and on the other hand I also think positively that good people make bitcoins so that everyone can have additional income from trading, mining and investing.

That is not called a "disadvantage". Literary anything you can think of can be used for both legal and illegal activities. Your kitchen knife can be both used to peel fruits and a murder weapon but you never say that is the "disadvantage of kitchen knife"!

This FUD is actually 8 years old now and comes from the days when the Silk Road crap was all over the news overshadowing everything else bitcoin was providing. It's funny to see how it is being dusted off and presented again!

I have no idea what you mean by the network being closed but bitcoin is only banned in 4 or 5 countries out of 195 (2%) that is not called "many".

This has nothing to do with bitcoin.

I accept your opinion. This is also a great achievement for me in the forum. I am very grateful to you. In the future, I will search first, learn by myself, and then summarize my views.

In fact, after watching everyone’s recovery, another gain is that the fiat currency is more anonymous. Thank you for everyone’s replies.

Yes, fiat transaction can be anonymous unlike Bitcoin transaction that is not because of the blockchain which is available to the public. Although, while making use of fiat during electronic transfer, it is traceable but fiat transactions are not transparent because no open ledger (like the blockchain) is available to the public but yet in a way the governmental bodies can trace transactions. How will the paper money then be? It is completely anonymous transaction because it can be done in a way no one will know during cash transaction than the two parties involved. That is why terrorists, bandits and kidnappers prefer cash transactions because no footprint left to be traced.

The opinion on this is settled that you cannot just differentiate Bitcoin and Fiat on the basis of who uses it for criminal activities. These are just talking points for those who don't want to accept Bitcoin and want to either pump their own bags or hope that something they propose will become the next bitcoin.

Another issue similar to this is about energy used by PoW.

Both of these issues are raised time and again to attack Bitcoin because it suits those with the power to print fiat, earn commissions on transactions and just manage money. Bitcoin threatens to make money managers obsolete. People can actually be in control of a sovereign currency that does not need to be backed by a state. The positive potential of this is enormous but nobody wants to talk about that as an option.

While its good that you are contemplating, why not contemplate on how Bitcoin and LN transactions will help a country of six million if all of them have a way to save/ spend money without the need to go to a bank branch and pay commissions/ fees to the bankers. How does financial education and financial literacy make better entrepreneurs and better savers out of people that most consider poor and incapable.

Those are the questions that the volunteer, self-policing group of people here at Bitcoin Forum intend to talk about and spread. It'd be great if you can divert your attentions too. Look forward to hearing your views on this.

You have this backwards. Bitcoin is generally a poor choice for most criminals. If I make a bitcoin transaction, then it is public knowledge that absolutely anyone in the world can look up and examine on a block explorer. If I make a cash transaction, then only me and the person I'm transacting with know about it. Cash is incredibly more private than bitcoin, which is why it remains the preferred option for most illegal activities.

I would wager that no one who is working on the development of bitcoin is doing so that criminals can use it or so that people can make profits from trading. They are working on it so it can continue to progress as a peer to peer, trustless currency. Anything else it is used for is simply a byproduct of that.

Even fiat if abused will also have its disadvantages. It's also being used in illegal activities by criminals which only means that any currency by any form could possibly be used to commit crimes. Instead of looking at the negative side, I guess it would be better to enjoy the advantages that Bitcoin could offer. It could honestly provide us financial freedom if it will be adopted by most communities in the future.

Preach! This is what we should be doing rather than obsessively focusing on the never ending negative side of bitcoin, I mean even if people were to prevent it from happening, people will find a way to trick each other again at a much better way.

This is the crux of the matter. There is a great point made by Andreas Antonopoulos about exactly this. He essentially points out that drugs are the second largest commodity market in the world, behind food and drink, and have been for thousands of years. The defining feature of a currency is that it can be used to buy goods or services, and if you can't use your currency in the second largest market in the world, then it's not really a currency at all.

Any currency in the world, be it fiat or crypto, not only can and will be spent on illegal goods, but must be able to be spent on illegal goods, otherwise it is not a currency.

I deeply agree with your point that we can't stop planting because there are bugs in the land.

Bitcoin is used to do some illegal and criminal activities. It is not Bitcoin's fault, let alone that there is a problem with Bitcoin. No matter what is used as currency, there will always be such a problem, and it is good for us to treat it positively and correctly.

Of course, I also feel that the development of Bitcoin is more perfect. Some problems will also be solved, although I don't know what improvements will be made to Bitcoin in the future.

I have confidence. A good project must have a balanced ecology. This is the law of nature and does not depend on our will.

Exactly. They don't even need to find new ways! Like, you know.. they can juse use the US dollar or other local fiat currencies for illegal purposes, like people have always done since forever? It absolutely boggles my head how for some reason a lot of the Bitcoin critics think that illegal transactions hasn't existed before Bitcoin. 🤯

You cant really avoid those evil minded to use bitcoin to their criminal activities. As this decentralization and this type of anonymous transactions were the advantage for them to continue and upgrade their activities, authorities are also wiser to catch them as the technologies can now traced their informations, etc.

While innovations are being updated, some unusual activities related crypto transmissions were being found, too.

They know fine well that fiat is used in far more illicit transactions than bitcoin is. They don't care about the truth - they are only interested in disparaging bitcoin with clickbait headlines about how the only people who use bitcoin are drug dealers and terrorists. ::)

It's the same for other aspects of bitcoin too. Bitcoin exchanges are laundering money! But don't pay attention to the fiat banks which have been laundering orders of magnitudes for more for decades. Bitcoin mining uses too much electricity! But don't pay attention to the environmental impact of the fiat system, banks, ATMs, armored cars, etc. Bitcoin is a risky investment! But don't pay attention to the fact that we've been rigging traditional markets against the average person for decades.

These kind of attacks will continue endlessly from the people who have the most to lose by bitcoin's growth and adoption. Thankfully most people seem to be able to see through them.

That's a quite wider topic to analyze. Yes, I agree with the money laundering & the investment risk, but Bitcoin mining is a different story that has never been seeing again historically. It's not a simple “energy-costly procedure” and in my opinion, it shouldn't be compared with the banks neither with any energy-wasting possession like Gold.


The mining of Bitcoin is a greedy game and even if it uses human's greed for the common good, I'd say that it can be really dangerous (& unethical). There is no standard energy required for extracting those 6.25 BTC every 10 minutes. It changes every 2016 blocks and by the technology that is being used for calculating those SHA256d results. At the moment, it uses 70.36 TWh per year, but that thing can change incredibly quickly.

The energy required could be considered as an analogous variable with the market value (of 1 BTC). If the market value increased, it'd be more profitable to spend more energy on mining, because you'd be earning more in exchange rate with fiat. So, by comparing Bitcoin with banks, you're comparing a non-globally adopted product with a globally adopted one.

If we assume that Bitcoin will be globally adopted in the future ($1M — $10M), you'll realize that Banks use much less energy than Bitcoin. It'll have environmental impact in the future, whether the majority of those hashes is being calculated by renewable energy sources or not. If Bitcoin wasn't a thing, these sources could be used to cover another impact, so Bitcoin, essentially affects indirectly the environment.

The way to reduce criminal actions in the Bitcoin community, will be to "self police" the activities done with Crypto currencies. If you see a possible crime.. report it to the authorities. Some "White hat" hackers are doing things like this already by just applying their knowledge and tipping off the authorities, when they spot a crime.

A lot of scams are doing the rounds.... just report them to the regulatory financial authorities and leave it to them to resolve it. DO NOT take the law into your own hands.. just observe and report it.  ;)

Every scam or crime reported with Crypto currencies, will reduce the amount of people participating in these crimes and it will send out a strong message to the "wannabe" criminals out there that the community will not tolerate it.  ;)

I don't want to get too off topic here since I have discussed this in many other threads - most recently here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5347865.0 - but bitcoin has far less of an environmental impact than portrayed in the media, and I would definitely argue that it is significantly less than banks once you consider all the bank branches, the servers, the computing power, the armored vehicles, the ATMs, the commuting employees, the fiat printers, the armored vehicles, and so on. If you consider the amount of wealth lost in a recession, and the amount of energy it required to produce that wealth, then the 2008 recession alone caused more damage to the environment than 500 years of bitcoin mining will - https://www.coindesk.com/whats-the-carbon-footprint-of-fiat-money. And we have a recession, what, every 5-10 years?

They are unlikely to care. If I call my local police department or even the FBI or IC3 and tell them someone is selling a scam altcoin on this forum, will they even look in to it? And even if they do and they discover that the scammer in question is based on the other side of the world, what are they realistically going to do about it? Unless the scam starts bringing in more than 7 figure sums of fiat, then they probably won't even look twice at it.

here comes the excess of bitcoin with the original currency, when someone is about to commit a crime they have to think twice about doing it, because bitcoin doesn't look at all its basic form and criminals will not be suspicious at all what we have today, and it is not at all easily traceable and its security is also very tight to be cracked by irresponsible people

Nothing do really surprises of when anytime people do really make out these kind of criticisms towards bitcoin about this manner without even trying to look back on how fiat is being used already for criminality
which they should realized and its true that everything does have its con's too and people are really way too focused about bitcoins flaws but we know that anonymity does really give out bigger role
or does really have positive functionality which most of the community do love it. When it comes to payment system then theres no doubt that bitcoin is really a great invention that had been
created towards this and also having its negative or con's is always attached to it.

with the change in the currency, at least it can minimize the crime that will occur such as cases of fraud, for example, besides that bitcoin can also be taken to travel anywhere like we want to go to a country, with digital currency this can be easier to reduce the crime that will happen to someone who wants to act maliciously against us, sometimes that's where digital currency is needed

Yes, this can be true that criminals may have chosen Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency for the same purpose of hiding their tracks...in the past. Not anymore today because the criminals realized that there are now ways that can track them more if they use Bitcoin. Better be using the real cash, as no one is recording the transaction. This same argument against Bitcoin has been used so many times to discredit its use but already found to be unhinged. Let's clear this assumption once and for all.