Girl gets raided by police looking for bitcoins

[anonymoustroll420]

The *only* way to counteract it is to make it impossible by improving bitcoin privacy at its core.

CoinJoin and joinmarket are cool. Will be interesting when joinmarket is more mature.

[countryfree]

We don't know the whole story, yet. We need more facts. I've done many bank transfers all other Europe, and suspicious transactions will be be notified to the tax authorities by the banks, but that's not enough to get you raided by police. The police must have had something else against that woman.

[cellard]

The *only* way to counteract it is to make it impossible by improving bitcoin privacy at its core.

CoinJoin and joinmarket are cool. Will be interesting when joinmarket is more mature.

But aren't those essentially the same as mixers but decentralized? The fact that you are not relying on a centralized host that can store and handle logs to authorities is a step in the right direction for increased privacy, but ultimately, the problem remains: you could end up with coins that are from criminal origin after the mix.

So I don't see any other way out but to somehow obscure every single address. And I don't think this can be done at this point, it should have been designed like this since day 1.

We would need to hide the actual addresses. With Confidential Transactions, we will be able to hide the amounts, now we need to hide the addresses too, make them some random useless string of characters with no correlation or something. We need something quick.

[BitDane]

Hmm... nowhere in the post does it say police are looking for Bitcoins. In fact, if I understand correctly, it was her EURO transfer that caught attention (her complaining at the end swearing to only use crypto instead of fiat indicates this).

Yeah I have not found any line stated that the police arrested her because he bought or use Bitcoin.  It was the transfers that were tagged as money laundering maybe because it exceeds the limit and with no proper documentations.  I also think that this is just another click bait since I read the reply and it seems that they are not fond of  OP's account.

[Mbokani]

And Coinbase happen to be the biggest one.
Please think, in the future, this will be the norm. All major service providers are going to end up like this, it's only a matter of time the government throws endless resources into blockchain analysis linking it all to all possible gateways like exchanges in order to catch everyone that is unlucky to be holding coins that are traced back to criminal activities.
The *only* way to counteract it is to make it impossible by improving bitcoin privacy at its core.

How do you suggest to improve the privacy of bitcoin when you can monitor everything ,the government will come up with solutions to identify major players in the bitcoin echo system in the future without a doubt,until then everyone is free to trade without any restriction.It is really unfortunate to see police knocking at doors just for handling bitcoin,if that is the case.

[Yakamoto]

>Germany
FOUND YOUR FUCKING ISSUE M8

It's not surprising at all for this to happen in Euro countries, and I especially find that Germany is the worst offender when it comes to things like this. I'm giving up hope for anything to go well in Europe for a long time until they get a government change, right now it seems like their entire government structures are interested in absolute control over their subjects and anyone who might be slightly suspicious is someone that needs special attention (but, of course, natives are nazis and the hordes coming across the borders are peaceful migrants /s).

[cellard]

And Coinbase happen to be the biggest one.
Please think, in the future, this will be the norm. All major service providers are going to end up like this, it's only a matter of time the government throws endless resources into blockchain analysis linking it all to all possible gateways like exchanges in order to catch everyone that is unlucky to be holding coins that are traced back to criminal activities.
The *only* way to counteract it is to make it impossible by improving bitcoin privacy at its core.

How do you suggest to improve the privacy of bitcoin when you can monitor everything ,the government will come up with solutions to identify major players in the bitcoin echo system in the future without a doubt,until then everyone is free to trade without any restriction.It is really unfortunate to see police knocking at doors just for handling bitcoin,if that is the case.

You don't wait "until then". That is a recipe for disaster. You get ready before things happen. And im certain governments will only get increasingly tyrannical as BTC reaches $10,000 and starts challenging gold as a solid store of value outside of the system. I count on the likes of gmaxwell and others that understand the importance of privacy, to keep thinking about innovative ways to obscure bitcoin transactions (ideally at protocol level)

[Hydrogen]

This happens in the united states, not with bitcoin but with regular money.

Its normal for police to confiscate money they found when conducting simple searches. Example:

Aggressive police take hundreds of millions of dollars from motorists not charged with crimes

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/

The DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) has also been known to confiscate money medical marijuana sellers have in their safe & keep it.

Police are becoming thieves everywhere it seems.

[jbreher]

This happens in the united states, not with bitcoin but with regular money.

We don't know the real story here as of yet.

What we do know, is that here in 'Mer'ca, bitcoin is sometimes the pretext employed by the jackboots to ruin your life.

It's a dangerous world out there, my compatriots. Try to stay safe.

[MingLee]

And Coinbase happen to be the biggest one.
Please think, in the future, this will be the norm. All major service providers are going to end up like this, it's only a matter of time the government throws endless resources into blockchain analysis linking it all to all possible gateways like exchanges in order to catch everyone that is unlucky to be holding coins that are traced back to criminal activities.
The *only* way to counteract it is to make it impossible by improving bitcoin privacy at its core.

How do you suggest to improve the privacy of bitcoin when you can monitor everything ,the government will come up with solutions to identify major players in the bitcoin echo system in the future without a doubt,until then everyone is free to trade without any restriction.It is really unfortunate to see police knocking at doors just for handling bitcoin,if that is the case.

You don't wait "until then". That is a recipe for disaster. You get ready before things happen. And im certain governments will only get increasingly tyrannical as BTC reaches $10,000 and starts challenging gold as a solid store of value outside of the system. I count on the likes of gmaxwell and others that understand the importance of privacy, to keep thinking about innovative ways to obscure bitcoin transactions (ideally at protocol level)

Definitely something to look into, I don't want to seem like a shill but it definitely looks like going through a mixer is a good idea and it'll only be a better and better idea as time drags on. The more you can obscure your funds the better I'd say.
It's almost depressing to see how aggressive governments get when you get outside of their system and start to use things not directly under their control. Either way, we have interesting times ahead of us.

[freedomno1]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/68nh7q/knock_knock_police_you_have_bitcoins/

I think this deserves it's own thread, and it shows how much we need Confidential Transactions, CoinJoin, Schnorr sigs, Mimblewimble, and whatever else we can do to improve fungibility of bitcoin.

The fear of ending up in trouble due owning BTC that may have been connected to criminal activity in the past is a very reasonable concern.

How do we solve this? Tone Vays already said that he is pretty scared to sell his BTC because he doesn't know if he is going to end up having problems.

Depends on what she bought maybe it was traced to SR or something if not then its sketch for how strictly they enforced KYC/AML.
Otherwise not interesting per se.

[iamTom123]

Girl using bitcoin.  You know damn well this is fake news! For the rest of us swinging dicks, try buying Dash or something.   There hasn't been a news article yet where the pigs have confiscated a shitcoin.  Like 99.99% of the population,  I'm sure they don't even know such things exist.

This can be a good advice. We can all use Bitcoin but for converting and transferring the money we can use altcoin like Dash or maybe even Monero as most authorities are only looking at Bitcoin being the prime cryptocurrency. I am quite happy that until now my government is not that very interested yet to look at the Bitcoin phenomenon as a source of taxing avenue and maybe implement some strict measures to enforce laws to us.

I am sure that this sad story with that girl above will not be the last one and there would be similar stories in the coming days until such time that Bitcoin can be fully recognized by governments for use by the people. However, people who are utilizing Bitcoin for money laundering and terrorism should really be prosecuted.

[pooya87]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/68nh7q/knock_knock_police_you_have_bitcoins/

I think this deserves it's own thread, and it shows how much we need Confidential Transactions, CoinJoin, Schnorr sigs, Mimblewimble, and whatever else we can do to improve fungibility of bitcoin.

The fear of ending up in trouble due owning BTC that may have been connected to criminal activity in the past is a very reasonable concern.

How do we solve this? Tone Vays already said that he is pretty scared to sell his BTC because he doesn't know if he is going to end up having problems.

stop with the fucking drama, this has nothing to do with bitcoin, or owning bitcoin. it was a shady activities that got that person into trouble. and trust me when i say this but even with all the things you named here criminals like that person can not hide, and it can even get worse for them because they are literary laundering money with all the features you listed here and that is an additional crime on top of all their other criminal activities that you can find being mentioned in the comments on reddit (ie drug market).

[Kakmakr]

Ok, She will be charged with money laundering and tax evasion and if they are lucky and they found some evidence that it  is related to drugs, then she might be brought with drug charges too. Then some of the police officers will be charged for stealing some of the coins, because we know the story already. ^smile^

The focus should not be on why she was raided, but rather how Bitcoin was used to catch criminals and if Bitcoin can be used to hunt people down that are innocent of any crime. < should it be as anonymous as cash >

[Carlton Banks]

Politicians, celebrities, businessmen and all their surrounding clique get away with drug crime all the time, and their influence on addicts and all the immorality surrounding that culture is much more pernicious than that of this girl. Someone did a chemical analysis of surfaces in bathrooms of the EU parliament one time, and there was significant residues of cocaine and heroin all over the place

Sounds to me like she wasn't rich, wasn't powerful, but being pretty stupid was her only real crime. I'm noticing that no-one's saying "And what about who sold her the drugs? And the person who sold that dealer the drugs?"

[nuela]

Why do the pilots catch him if these girls have bitcoin?

[alexsamudra]

I think there is a mistake that these girls have made to look for bitcoin, this is quite interesting also the news.

[Sithara007]

Too bad for the girl. She broke the rules, and now she might have to pay the fine. A similar incident occurred in the US as well, some two years back. Even in the US, you need a license, if you trade above $12,500 in Bitcoins.

[Amph]

Girl using bitcoin.  You know damn well this is fake news!

For the rest of us swinging dicks, try buying Dash or something.   There hasn't been a news article yet where the pigs have confiscated a shitcoin.  Like 99.99% of the population,  I'm sure they don't even know such things exist.

There are no girls with bitcoin, unless their boyfriends gave it to them.

well this is false, there are many girls using, it especially those that do sexycam, they prefer bitcoin because it's more anonymous than receiving fiat, and saving them from other trouble

so this may look legit, but again this is a story of someone that made an illegal activity and related for whatever reason to bitcoin, which again is never the wrong thing

it's seems that every time someone want to use bitcoin he/she is seen as a scammers or criminal or whatever, when the thing always lie behind the person using it, no different than using fiat money

[KennyR]

Too bad. This seems to be something strange. The entire story looks to be an attempt to describe something, but till the end it's not clear. Governments of some support as well some deny for specific reasons and with limitations. As said in a quote girls use it commonly for camsex and other anonymous needs. So some truth seems to be hidden in the story.