Illegal activities is giving cryptocurrencies a bad image

[Ulven]

Unfortunately encryption lives the worst moments, Because of the subversive acts that are exposed by scammers, I think in the near future encryption will find the perfect way to eliminate those.

[cabron]

You should realize that its not blockchain that makes some crypto transaction illegal, its those people behind the transactions. Blockchain only offers transparency of all transactions which means the ledgers are there for all to check that a particular transaction happened but beyond that blockchain ain't going to jail those criminals. Its the governments responsibility to keep the rules so indeed regulation is needed.

[Febo]

Illegal activities is giving cryptocurrencies a bad image

Anything illegal gives a bad image to anything, so why not an innovation. Difference is that new things have more room for illegal activities then some old things. There was way more crime on Wild west 150 years ago as on today's west. At least in % of population. Things needs time to mature. But crime had never stop an innovation.

[Bravext]

People hate what they don't understand and really hate what they don't know, this is a simple fact. Money or raw cash has been used to do so many illegal activities and I haven't heard anybody talking about banning the use of money in the world, the internet is the same, who can count how many illegal activities has been done with the internet? Nobody is talking about banning it, people would always find ways to commit crimes with any new innovation and that shouldn't be a basis for banning it.

[K4C]

Criminals would always be criminals and where there is innovation and money involved, you can bet that there would be criminals there too, these criminals are giving Cryptocurrencies a bad image but let us not forget that good guys exist in the space too and are giving crypto a positive image, let's focus in that and try to always research before falling into any scams.

[el kaka22]

I think this period of crypto has been in the past and not anymore. Yes there was a time when bitcoin was equal to drug selling and all bad stuff that dark net markets were doing and during those times people saw bitcoin as something illegal whereas bitcoin wasn't illegal, what people were doing with those bitcoins were the illegal stuff but it was so unseparable that nobody really understood it.

Nowadays, people know bitcoin is just a currency and you can make money with it so they see it as an investment nowadays and not a bad thing which created a wave of people buying bitcoins in order to get rich and that is not good because bitcoin is not something like that however if that is what it takes for people to stop seeing bitcoin as a bad thing and start seeing as a good thing than I am fine with it.

[alexforneus]

And due to it blockchain as technology are starting to position itself like something different from crypto. There are a lot of dark money here

[coin-investor]

It is no coincidence that a technology that facilitates a lot of illegal practices is the technology that is have troubles gaining approval from world governments.

I read a recent publication that says, According to CipherTrace: Thefts, scams and other misappropriation of funds from  crypto holders and exchanges have resulted in a $4.3 billion in losses in the year 2019 so far, and this will likely go on until there is sufficient oversight for cryptocurrencies and blockchain related activities because the world givernments cannot relinquish control to the masses in the way that the blockchain wants.

Regulations is needed to attain mass adoption

I just want to add the recent Ponzi scheme that's dumping Bitcoin in the market just yesterday over $3 billion were scammed to 10 million investors, the amount has now doubled this year alone,

You can read the article here
https://cointelegraph.com/news/3b-ponzi-scheme-is-now-allegedly-dumping-bitcoin-by-the-hundreds

It's coming from a ponzi scheme Plustoken and they are in existence just last year imagine it's only one year yet they've generated over $2 billion investment, the authorities from Vanuatu have made an arrest already and they turn it over to the Chinese authorities, Chinese are really very much into Ponzi scheme now

https://cointelegraph.com/news/3b-ponzi-scheme-is-now-allegedly-dumping-bitcoin-by-the-hundreds

[jouns]

It is no coincidence that a technology that facilitates a lot of illegal practices is the technology that is have troubles gaining approval from world governments.

I read a recent publication that says, According to CipherTrace: Thefts, scams and other misappropriation of funds from  crypto holders and exchanges have resulted in a $4.3 billion in losses in the year 2019 so far, and this will likely go on until there is sufficient oversight for cryptocurrencies and blockchain related activities because the world givernments cannot relinquish control to the masses in the way that the blockchain wants.

Regulations is needed to attain mass adoption

The point here is not even theft and fraud, but that the continued existence of the asset is impossible without its regulation at the legislative level. Further development of all projects using tokenization depends on regulation.

[Jolly.Roger]

I do believe some cryptocurrencies got a bad image due to a lot of media attention on their associated illegal activities, but at the same time
those cryptocurrencies have very little actual usage / transactions in those illegal activities.

Link : https://blockonomi.com/ciphertrace-crypto-money-laundering-ending/

Bitcoin’s privacy is considerably inferior to the privacy protections Monero and Zcash make possible, but BTC is still the money of choice in these dark markets.
Why? It appears to be because bitcoin is simply easier to use in these contexts, CipherTrace explained:

“[Our] results show that privacy coins are barely used in dark markets and at dark vendor sites (e.g. only 4% of instances involve Monero (XMR) […]What this suggests is
that while privacy coins may seem like a boon to criminals, drug gangs and terrorists, the barriers to entry for buying and selling Monero and other anonymous tokens makes
them impractical for most dark market purchases and ransomware payments. They are most useful as a payment rail and to obfuscate chain hopping to more liquid tokens.”

Of course, bitcoin mixers can provide users with privacy, but one can safely assume that not everyone on the dark web is resorting to mixers. In that sense, more and more
dark web activities are having their transactions permanently open-sourced on the Bitcoin blockchain.

See also : https://dashnews.org/private-bitcoin-transactions-over-double-all-privacy-focused-cryptocurrencies-combined/

Even the usage of illegal activities through Bitcoin simply pales in comparison with illegal activities through FIAT and its traditional banking system.

Quite right, crimes in the traditional financial much more than in the crypto.

[ganeshramk]

This is absolutely right. These illegal people are looking the very nice long term opportunities. They are not realizing that for sure.

[Coltpython]

Without regulation, cryptocurrency will continue to be erratic, volatile and unreliable. Scams from crypto projects alone is one thing to contend with. Now add the problems of manipulation as well from both whales and some exchanges and you will see that a lot still needs to be done

[drumamat]

It is no coincidence that a technology that facilitates a lot of illegal practices is the technology that is have troubles gaining approval from world governments.

I read a recent publication that says, According to CipherTrace: Thefts, scams and other misappropriation of funds from  crypto holders and exchanges have resulted in a $4.3 billion in losses in the year 2019 so far, and this will likely go on until there is sufficient oversight for cryptocurrencies and blockchain related activities because the world givernments cannot relinquish control to the masses in the way that the blockchain wants.

Regulations is needed to attain mass adoption

I agree that illegal activity provides a negative perspective to people who do not understand cryptocurrency. I agree that cryptocurrency is regulated by the government. With government regulations, people who are not familiar with cryptocurrency will think that cryptocurrency is not a tool for criminal activity but an official investment tool

Why did you decide that the government can solve this problem? You just decided to give up and are ready for someone to solve everything for you?I believe in the power of the community and hope that it will attract people to the mass use of cryptocurrencies.And the fact that someone uses cryptocurrencies for bad things does not mean that absolutely everyone treats cryptocurrencies negatively.

[Dannev]

you should understand that in the real banking sector there are money thefts and hacker attacks are ten times higher. much more money is lost there than in the cryptocurrency market

There's no market that is not vulnerable to hackers attacks and stuff. Corruption is everywhere and cryptocurrency world is not left out. That's is not to say that crime and illegalities dwell more in the crypto space.

[xiboothrezi]

Illegal activities are not new in this world. not only in cryptocurrency, but illegal activities will also always exist in all fields because there are always people who try to commit fraud to get the maximum profit even at the expense of others. we need to understand that all things have positive and negative sides, ordinary people will only look bad if there are many illegal activities, whereas other benefits are still many if we are able to prepare security and understand every risk.

[pinkpanther03]

It is no coincidence that a technology that facilitates a lot of illegal practices is the technology that is have troubles gaining approval from world governments.

I read a recent publication that says, According to CipherTrace: Thefts, scams and other misappropriation of funds from  crypto holders and exchanges have resulted in a $4.3 billion in losses in the year 2019 so far, and this will likely go on until there is sufficient oversight for cryptocurrencies and blockchain related activities because the world givernments cannot relinquish control to the masses in the way that the blockchain wants.

Regulations is needed to attain mass adoption

Just like Bitcoin when it was started during 2009 many of the community underestimated what could it be in the future, lot of negative thoughts were it is a piece of shit ponzi scheme according to them but after a years most big investors embraced, believed and supported bitcoin where it became the reason to make its price value got increased in the market up to now look at the price of bitcoin, smae goes with altcoins they also faced that kind circumstances, only sad things was during 2018 most of the ico became an instrument by the scammers that's the good image of altcoins became bad in the sight of many here.

[BennyK]

I don't buy the idea that cryptocurrency is the only currency or means of funding or facilitating payment within illegal activities. Cryptocurrency were launched some few years back but the question is, where these illegal activities not in existence years and centuries before cryptocurrencies were launched? Let's leave crypto to be and learn to appreciate such innovative and revolutionary technology of our time.

[SirLancelot]

You’re saying the happening. A lot of people now sees Bitcoin as a very bad thing, cause they now believe that it is a currency that is being used by criminals and people who make use of the dark web. Bitcoin is good, just that those bad people are now taking advantage of it and using it to carry out their evil activities on the web without being caught. Lastly was the hackers that hacked Binance and then made use of a coin mixer and the way it is now I don’t think they are going to be caught, cause it seems to be like they are gone for good, making use of a coin mixer makes a coin difficult to trace.

So, this time around I wonder how they are going to be traced. It is stories like this that makes people see Bitcoin as something bad and it causes more hatred for crypto. We really need to find ways to stop such things from happening.

[suvo05]

This is why some counties impose ban on cryptocurrency trading. Rather than looking at its usability and the technology some of the gov look this as a threat to the country. So I think its really a challenge for the crypto developer and the Gov ensure that the crypocoin will not be used in any illegal activities .

[arpon11]

you should understand that in the real banking sector there are money thefts and hacker attacks are ten times higher. much more money is lost there than in the cryptocurrency market

The real theft are in governments and the banking system! But that did not justify the rate of scamming and fraudulent activities that are going on in crypto currency space. $3billion has just been currently moving to mixer service by a Ponzi scheme operator and that was investors money. If it is in the banking system at list bank could report it to governments financial crime bodies, because it is centralized those type of funds can be traced, unlike what is happening in cryptocurrencies' fraud.