I would be interested in your thoughts on this(from Reddit)
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1kw7qw/economist_andrea_castillo_discusses_bitcoin/I love her, let's be a little bit real though. Bitcoin DOES facilitate money laundering and criminal transactions far more efficiently than cash. Bitcoin can provide the same services at any distance instantaneously through multiple addresses/mixing services etc. For example you could not have the effortlessly global and anonymous reach of the Silk Road without Bitcoin.
But anyway - doesn't bother me none. Black market businessmen are some of the most pragmatic and careful in the economy, so of course they will migrate to the superior system and legitimate businessmen will follow their lead. Even if Bitcoin only captured the blackmarket, the price would still go through the roof, so again - doesn't bother me none.
I think her point was that cash is still more anonymous than Bitcoin. Federal Reserve Notes don't have microchips in them recording their history. Plus every type of criminal has always accepted legal tender. Does that mean we should ban government issued money?
The truth is the drug cartels aren't really interested in Bitcoin. Places like Silk Road threaten the drug cartel business model. They're not going to encourage something that's against their best interests.
Drug cartels are worth about a trillion. Bitcoin is worth about a billion. If there was any serious money laundering going on, the market cap would be much higher.
Mm I disagree. People often repeat the line that cash is more anonymous than Bitcoin, but in a practical sense this is not true.
Yes there is no record of cash transactions, but the cash transactions between the buyer and seller are much less anonymous. To effect a cash a transaction you would have to physically hand the person cash or mail it to them, giving you far more information about the other party than in a Bitcoin transaction. This results in lots of trust issues, especially between criminals. Yes you could mail it to a PO box so that you wouldn't have to to know the identity of the recipient but this is really just psuedoanonymity - just like Bitcoin. Except in the mailing box case the anonymity would be provided by a government service - much riskier and less secure. The only way to effect a truly anonymous cash transaction would be a dead drop, and this is just not an effective business option because for a period of time the funds are out of control and can be stolen etc and this limited to geographic locality. Moving large amounts of cash is very clumsy as well.
Bitcoin solves all the problems of cash transactions perfectly. The psuedoanonymity is provided by an openly trusted service, the funds are always kept in control(Bitcoin transactions are basically a digital deaddrop), it can handle extremely large transactions, and you can do these deaddrops on a global scale, instantly. As she even said in the video, the value is that it alows the two parties to trust each other without knowing one another or involving a third party.
This makes Bitcoin the perfect monetary network for criminal activites as it provides a protective insulation between all parties. Something criminals dream of. And throwing off analysis of the blockchain is not hard, especially once the number of transactions really start to rise. Just some creative use of mixing services.
No the drug cartels haven't caught on yet, but I really do think it's only a matter of time. The benefits are too blindingly obvious to be dismissed for too long. Even if only used for transactions instead of stores of value.
Again, I believe in free markets so this really does not concern me, but other people need to realize this is the reality that Bitcoin provides.
TL;DR : An argument for Bitcoin being
more anonymous than cash transactions and the perfect monetary system for criminal networks
EDIT : changed post title to address point more accurately.
