I know I have said it before, but if they (and other crooks in general) been willing to pay the money in taxes and put in some time to make some fake businesses then they could have laundered it quite well.

Coinbase Commerce and all the other payment processors will convert BTC to fiat.

So you setup a 'crypto consulting business' and take BTC payments.

There are a lot of exchanges that exist even today that have $10K+ withdraw limits a day with no KYC

BTC goes in to exchange -> other coin (preferably XMR or other privacy coin) comes out -> other exchange -> BTC to fiat gate way.
You burn some exchange fees and the % that the processor takes AND you get a W2 or 1099 for the amount so you have to pay income tax on it.
You will also need to pay an accountant / bookkeeper to keep the records unless you want to do it yourself.

Generate a bunch of fake emails from clients and poof you have a way to move the money.
With some work, and giving 30% to the government and so on.

But it's work and time and you have to give some away and as I started. Most criminals don't want to do that.
So they get to go to jail.

-Dave

Sorry, a bit bad wording and an incomplete thought being written down on my part 
Using my shovel example nobody cares when I dig a well to help out some poor family, but use that same shovel to hit them over the head and bury them and it makes news.

That was just what I was trying to say.

-Dave

And that is the problem BTC is a tool.

I can use a shovel to dig a well to get fresh water for people in need and then to help in the fields to plant crops to feed them.

Or I can use it to beat someone over the head and then dig a grave to hide the body.

It's all how you use it.

I can use BTC to make my life better by getting out of the stranglehold of banks or I can use it to help move funds for human trafficking.

-Dave

People are going to have to figure out what works for them.
Having lawyers / the government get involved is probably just going to cause more problems.
Have a will with instructions of how to dispose of your crypto and a way to get to it and it should be no different then any other asset.

-Dave

It's cool. But it does make you wonder if it's programmers who like BTC. Or, lazy programmers who had to come up with a recovery method and did a copy - paste - edit of something else and poof a known working way of generating something that has been audited every which way and is known to a lot of people.

Think about it BIP39 does not exist in the crypto world, Proton starts using something like it, how much crap are they going to get about it's security....

-Dave

Keep in mind by default with the letsencrypt certificates they are only for 1 domain at a time.
You can get as many as you want.
So you can have site1.darkv0rt3x.com and site2.darkv0rt3x.com and site3.darkv0rt3x.com but they all need to have separate requests and separate key files and so on.
That's just the way it is.

You can get wildcard certs for *.darkv0rt3x.com but you have to request them in a slightly different way:

https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/acme-v2-production-environment-wildcards/55578

-Dave

Upper right had corner of the web page click on your profile and then settings and then payment methods.
This link *may* take you to the page: https://www.coinbase.com/settings/linked-accounts

In the android app go to the hamburger in the upper left then profile and settings and you should have any active payment methods listed.

Keep in mind they have gotten really strict.

DaveF is not the same as Davef which is not the same as davef when it comes to the name that your bank has on your account.

-Dave

QR codes are not 100% safe either.
Although it has not happed to them yet (that we know of) there was an interesting hack shown a while ago on camera firmware where if it saw "X" it actually passed data for "Y"
Was showing how facial recognition could be faked at the hardware level.
Also, as mentioned with QR codes and some places make them 'cute and annoying' that do not scan well.
And too many places and people do not include the BTC address in the QR image. So now you have to dig to make sure.

So.... they both have their issues....which is less bad.

-Dave

Sooo...

We now know that using crypto with an online computer is not that secure.
We now know that web browsers and plugins are not that secure
We now know that running something like MetaMask that can connect to everything anyplace is not that secure

Oh, wait we knew all those things already...

The only new(ish) info is that MetaMask might be a bit poorly written and has not had a real security audit.

-Dave

Bitcoin is more against the banks and central banks then against the governments or corporations.
It's more about having more financial control and freedom to do things with your money and do it in different ways.
It's about making sure that you don't have to worry about what other people are doing with their currency since nobody or group can control BTC

-Dave   

There is that risk I can be mitigated a few ways.
If you deal with someone with a high enough feedback the risk is less. If they have been on a site like localcryptos.com / paxful / whatever for years, and built up a high feedback and trust they are less likely to want to do something to damage it.
Also, most (all?) of the sites do escrow. The seller puts the BTC into escrow, once they have the cash they give you a code to release it. Once you verify the code is good and for the proper amount, you shake hands and they leave. The site, doing the escrow takes it from there. The other person cannot take it back.

Or, this is why when I do public meets to trade it's in a coffee shop or restaurant you can have a drink and wait for the conformation if you are not using an escrow.

Also, and this is just me, when GETTING money from people for crypto, I tend to want to meet in a casino. You can take a few random bills and put them into a machine.
Best counterfeit detection out there are casino slots.....


-Dave

All require at least an SMS for smaller amounts, all then require ID verification for larger amounts.
The ID verification amount really depends on the ATM operator and the state that the machine is operating in.
There are a lot of other ways to get BTC for cash. Even localcryptos.com is probably a better way if you have a place to meet that you feel safe.

-Dave

Nope, money is flowing just fine at least here.
Restaurants have people in them.
Stores are filled with shoppers.
Airports have people in them.
As stated above, online retailers are having great sales too.
Since I-Bonds are now @ ~ 7% we are actually seeing people save / invest some money too.
Housing market is still hot.
And so on.

-Dave

And......Not your keys not your coins.....

It's the database has crashed excuse.
Wait...expressecrypto used that last month:
https://twitter.com/ExpressCryptoIo/status/1475033061398093827   /   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5378843.0

Can we have a new excuse for next month? I'm not asking for much, not even a better one, just a different one.

-Dave

It does go back to the fact that BTC is not anonymous, it's pseudo anonymous at best.
Coinbase knows a lot of things about yourBTC, same way banks can, with a little bit of digging, find out a lot about that check you deposited.

We tend to be willfully ignorant of these things and just keep doing what we have been doing, till it bites us on the ass.


-Dave

So you had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of BTC sitting on your PC and did not check it for close to a year?
And with that amount of money you didn't use any form of security?

10 years, even 5 years ago that might have been acceptable.

You say they were stolen March of last year, when was the PC in the shop you never answered that?
You should also post the txid, if the BTC went to a known exchange address it's a place to start.

-Dave

There is that. Not real worried about the place burning, it's all on fireproof sheets / mats.


Just did some testing, the input is dead shorted on the PCB, I guess the plug / connector was the weakest link going back to the wall so that is what went poof.
Since the miner is 100% dead too, I am guessing that there is something past the wall power section of the power supply that is also toast.

Since a few people asked. I was wrong in the OP, the PDUs did trip and then reset within a second or two. All the miners dropped and came back but since the internet was down briefly I didn't see them down separately.

-Dave
 

It's not needed.  It's pointless.

And if 1BTC becomes worth some truly large value of fiat and it's decided to add more decimal places to the protocol since 0.00000001 is now worth $1 then you just took a lot of money out of a lot of peoples pockets.

The entire point of BTC is that it's an immutable blockchain and what is there today will be there FORVER. Period. Full stop.

-Dave

All of this, and although I hate to say it, is where the more regulations will get more investors, comes in.
@o_e_l_e_o is correct all of it does nothing.
But, and I have said it many times over the years, this is where big government makes people feel all warm and fuzzy.
I don't really care what happens to my bank. The FDIC will cover me to $250k
I don't really care what happens to my brokerage, the regulators cover me to an amount larger then I will ever have.
Yes it costs me money, since the banks and brokerages have to follow rules and that costs them profits, but it is what it is.

I can figure out a lot of risks and stuff myself in the crypto world, and do not want the government sticking it's nose into it.
But....there are a lot of people who can't and want that security and won't invest without it.

Is there another solution? I don't know.

-Dave

And many users use the same username / email / password across many platforms. So if they got that information from another breach, although the scammers would not be able to log in without access to your 2FA, they would know it's a valid account. So that would allow a bit better targeted phishing scam.
As always not your keys not your coins....

-Dave