French police arrest terror financing ring that used Bitcoin coupons

[Emitdama]

It’s good news that they were caught, but I hate seeing news like this that has something to do with Bitcoin. Maybe some people will not understand it, but this is a very bad news for Bitcoin. If there continues to be news like this, the government might be prompted to start declaring Bitcoin illegal and you know what that means for cryptocurrency market.

Bitcoin is a good technology, but some people are hell-bent on destroying everything by misusing it for the wrong purposes. I’m always happy when these evil people are caught by the government and punished for their crimes, but at the same time I am sad that they are using Bitcoin for all these crimes.

[NotATether]

Regarding the coupons, I don't think it's good to  encourage people to use physical bitcoin-like money as a substitute for digital bitcoin. Because bitcoin was never designed to be used physically in the first place. We shouldn't try to backport bitcoin's functionality to physical usage because it doesn't make sense to do so, these "crypto coupons" are cumbersome and hard to redeem.

In an era when everyone is transitioning from cash payments to credit cards (despite all the risks of using banks that have been outlined in several threads here), we should be trying to get all adopters to use electronic devices to store and send their bitcoin.

China has already achieved fully digital payments so it's not like it's impossible.

[barto123]

Should have bought a digital gift card from Bitrefill - paid in lightning. You don't need an ID to open an account. Massive loophole in the system right now. Good luck tracking lightning, especially after conjoining the UTXO. Law enforcement agencies are going to struggle hard as privacy tech improves - they should just give up, but they won't.

[ChrisPop]

Whenever I hear this kind of news, people reaction is "OMG... they've used Bitcoin to keep their transaction underground, BTC is bad 'cause it facilitates terrorism, etc." and my answer will always be "What do you think CASH is used for? If I remember good there was a study done which said that the ratio of cash used in illegal transactions vs btc is like 99% to 1%.

Bad actors will always find a way to sneak through. Our aim should be to eliminate that human behaviour, not the tools.

[emrecemsan]

These kinds of news are often reported in the news of major media outlets which make people think that bitcoin is only used for illegal purposes and a dangerous thing. If terrorist financing was provided by the euro, would we stop using the euro?

[Welsh]

It’s good news that they were caught, but I hate seeing news like this that has something to do with Bitcoin. Maybe some people will not understand it, but this is a very bad news for Bitcoin. If there continues to be news like this, the government might be prompted to start declaring Bitcoin illegal and you know what that means for cryptocurrency market.

Bitcoin is a good technology, but some people are hell-bent on destroying everything by misusing it for the wrong purposes. I’m always happy when these evil people are caught by the government and punished for their crimes, but at the same time I am sad that they are using Bitcoin for all these crimes.

I'm with the stance that it doesn't have anything to do with Bitcoin. It just so happens that the terrorist group used Bitcoin like any other currency. Its like saying that terrorism is everything to do with guns, when its not. There's perfectly valid reasons to own a gun, although I tend to side against guns in the majority of circumstances coming from the UK, and seeing the issues that they cause, but I acknowledge the right for those in America to own a gun, but just because terrorists use guns, doesn't mean its to do with guns, and the same for Bitcoin. There's probably a better comparison out there to be made, but I don't see why Bitcoin is pinpointed here, when the real news headline is that terrorism still exists in 2020.