Virgin Bitcoin the Most in-Demand Crypto

[akeegan]

Thought this was super interesting to learn. Dave Jevans, CEO of Ciphertrace says that virgin Bitcoins are BTC that do not have a transaction record associated with them.

These coins are useful for money launderers to help mask the source of their illegally procured funds and cannot be linked with any wallet or other cold storage.

Has anyone ever heard of virgin Bitcoin before?

https://cointelegraph.com/news/virgin-bitcoin-most-in-demand-crypto-that-is-regulated-differently

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[figmentofmyass]

Thought this was super interesting to learn. Dave Jevans, CEO of Ciphertrace says that virgin Bitcoins are BTC that do not have a transaction record associated with them.

These coins are useful for money launderers to help mask the source of their illegally procured funds and cannot be linked with any wallet or other cold storage.

Has anyone ever heard of virgin Bitcoin before?

https://cointelegraph.com/news/virgin-bitcoin-most-in-demand-crypto-that-is-regulated-differently

for years, i've been hearing about investors who are paying a premium for freshly mined coins. they don't know how regulators and law enforcement will view taint in the future, and they don't want to be associated with any unlawful or questionable behavior just in case. i think it's a little ridiculous, but then again, i also recognize that fungibility isn't perfect in bitcoin.

it never occurred to me that freshly mined coins could also be valuable to money launderers, but it makes sense for the same reasons.

[Reid]

Okay, that is something I didnt knew.

But how will you know if it is a minted one?
Do miners are the only ones who have this?
I mean, it will already be tainted once it joins the flow or be sold to an exchange right?

So regulars like me wont have the chance to have it unless I go directly to a miner? Which will be a problem coz I dont know even one.

[odolvlobo]

I'm not convinced. How do the criminals obtain the newly-minted coins without exposing themselves?

Also wouldn't gold do just as well? A gold bar does not have a transaction history associated with it.

[CryptoBry]

This is indeed very interesting. Naturally, money launderers will opt to use Bitcoin which is untainted or having no transaction history yet though, of course, we could not be sure if this can really be effective in helping them avoid tracking. As for me, I don't care how many transactions my Bitcoin got into the most important thing is that I have some in  my wallet.

[pooya87]

laundering 101

when you want to launder money, it is not just about swapping it with "clean" money! the "money" is not literary dirty for you to want to clean it literary! and what is being explained here is the literal meaning of cleaning/laundering money. you "swap" dirty with "clean" money and that does NOT really clean the money.

lets use an example. lets say you are earning $1000 per month, have expenses, pay taxes,... so the government knows you earn that much. then you decide to start a meth lab and earn $1 million in a month. you have no way of explaining where you got $1 million from when you are earning $1000 per month! if you now convert it to bitcoin, you would have $1 million (or 100BTC) that you still have no way of explaining how you got but now it also has a timestamp on it which you can not deny like saying you had it all along from 2009. it is now clean when you got it and how much you have. the dollar didn't have the timestamp and the amount wasn't clear!!! so the question is why would anybody want to do this?
you know what this sounds like? it sounds like saying if you convert that $1 million to €1 million it would become clean (magically)!

what launderers do in reality is that they fake a business or something like that, then run the money through that. for example you start a restaurant and instead of saying you had 10 customers you say you have 1000 and run the money through that and pay the taxes on that $1 million, now it is clean because it seems like it is gained through a legitimate way.

with that said, there are people who are buying these newly generated coins but they are doing it because they don't want to go through exchanges and do a KYC and also they want clean coins for whatever reason but it has nothing to do with "illegally procured funds".

[maxreish]

I never thought virgin bitcoin existed. And i wonder how those aren't linked any transactions. I fast search about what you are talking about from the link you have provided. I only read about the purpose of masking transactions for illegal activities. Correct me if I'm wrong but I only read about those illegal activities that instead of using coin mixees, it was suggested to use this virgin bitcoin.

[Kakmakr]

I have a Do it yourself, Virgin repair kit, It is called ChipMixer.com   ... So my bitcoins goes through several dirty hands, before it reach me and I have to "clean" it or I get blamed for all it's bad use. The tool I use to "wash my hands" is my trusted Mixer service called ChipMixer.com

I do not do this to hide any crime or to actually launder money, I do this to protect myself from other people who might have used the bitcoins that was send to me, for nefarious uses.  

[mocacinno]

I've heared this rumour before, but other than removing any taint, i don't think it'll be usefull for actual money laundring... It's been said before: people laundring money will probably setup fake businesses to do this (see pooya87's post).

The act of getting payed trough the coinbase transaction is relatively straightforeward tough: just rent some hashrate and mine on p2pool. They pay out their miners trough the coinbase transaction. However, the company you rented hashrate from will make some profit, they'll know your ip and they'll know the transaction that's been used to pay them for the hashrate. Also, the p2pool operator you're working with will take a certain profit margin (unless you setup your own node).
It'll be far from impossible for a 3 letter agency to track you down...

In the end you'll end up with a sizeable portion of your funds gone, but you'll have address(es) funded with coinbase transaction. NOT good for money laundring, good for removing taint.

PS: p2pool pays using the PPLNS algo and they don't find that many blocks regularly (they sometimes hit a dry spell)... Mining with them is partly gambling. If they find a block after you've submitted a lot of shares, you'll get more funds than you'd have gotten with a different pool (you'll make a profit), if they don't find a block shortly after you stopped mining, you might end up getting nothing at all...

[HeRetiK]

But how will you know if it is a minted one?

Because Bitcoin transactions are transparent. Each coin can be traced back to its original coinbase transaction, ie. the moment they were mined. A coin is freshly minted if it hasn't been used in any transactions since that original coinbase transaction.

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I found that bit quite interesting:

Russian conspirators involved with the alleged 2016 election hack in the U.S. were presumed to have funded their operations in part via a host of different Bitcoin mining operations based across the globe.

Honestly I think it's less about avoiding taint from previous usage in criminal activities but rather about ease of anonymously procuring substantial amounts currency:

a) If you buy coins from an exchange they'll have your data on record
b) If you buy coins for cash it (1) doesn't scale well and (2) will eventually trace back to an exchange (ie. your seller will have to have bought the coins from somewhere)
c) Purchasing directly from a miner is much better but still introduces a liability
d) Which only leaves running a mining operation yourself (unless you have someone trustworthy at (c))

Since "clean" money always comes at a premium this also means that there are miners out there that are willing to mine at a loss. Hm.

[kryptqnick]

Thought this was super interesting to learn. Dave Jevans, CEO of Ciphertrace says that virgin Bitcoins are BTC that do not have a transaction record associated with them.

These coins are useful for money launderers to help mask the source of their illegally procured funds and cannot be linked with any wallet or other cold storage.

Has anyone ever heard of virgin Bitcoin before?

https://cointelegraph.com/news/virgin-bitcoin-most-in-demand-crypto-that-is-regulated-differently

I knew some people saw special value in 'clean' Bitcoins that were not used before, but it never occurred to me that it could be useful for money launderers. Now that you put it like that, it kind of makes sense. Still, though, I don't understand why someone would go into the trouble of finding these virgin Bitcoins to make sure there are no traces to investigate if one can simply use an anonymous (private) cryptocurrency like Monero or Dash. I am not hanging out in the DarkNet, but I heard that people there switched from Bitcoin to these cryptos, because, even though some doubt their full anonymity, they are clearly more anonymous than Bitcoin.

[mocacinno]

I doubt the existence of virgin bitcoins. The laundering happened to all bitcoins as well as all fiat currencies, so there is no point in it

Virgin bitcoins = unspent outputs created by coinbase transactions (virgin bitcoins isn't a technical term, but the previous posts in this topic made it clear what the OP was trying to say). They exist, they're real, it doesn't matter whether or not your doubt their existence. I find the rest of your post hard to follow, i have no idear which message you're trying to convey. Maybe you can try to reformat your sentence?

[timerland]

This is very interesting, but I am very suspicious about how to get these virgin bitcoins. If it was truly a "virgin bitcoin", wouldn't it mean that they can't transfer the bitcoins to the buyer's address (because it'll have a transaction then?). Does this mean that users would have to acquire the private keys of the wallets that already have the bitcoin in it? Sorry, but I don't understand how a person would buy these virgin bitcoins, input from others would be much appreciated. This does help clear things up and is very interesting though

“Dark Tx histories also impede the fungibility of the btc if these tokens have a lower value. This a big concern for hedge funds that are concerned that their entire fund could be tainted by a few bad tokens. While this is less likely to affect those holding small amounts, larger traders could potentially, and unwittingly, hold larger amounts of stolen assets, lowering the value of their investment pool through association.”

The biggest issue from buying BTC from other people/exchanges/platforms - it would just eventually get tracked back to coinbase/an exchange.

Even if it was a thing, money laundering would be much more profitable/easier through just routing it through fake businesses and then using BTC that way.

[BitMaximum]

Thought this was super interesting to learn. Dave Jevans, CEO of Ciphertrace says that virgin Bitcoins are BTC that do not have a transaction record associated with them.

These coins are useful for money launderers to help mask the source of their illegally procured funds and cannot be linked with any wallet or other cold storage.

Has anyone ever heard of virgin Bitcoin before?

https://cointelegraph.com/news/virgin-bitcoin-most-in-demand-crypto-that-is-regulated-differently

for years, i've been hearing about investors who are paying a premium for freshly mined coins. they don't know how regulators and law enforcement will view taint in the future, and they don't want to be associated with any unlawful or questionable behavior just in case. i think it's a little ridiculous, but then again, i also recognize that fungibility isn't perfect in bitcoin.

it never occurred to me that freshly mined coins could also be valuable to money launderers, but it makes sense for the same reasons.

Virgin Bitcoins do not have any history of transactions at all. Regulators continue to tighten the control of cryptocurrency transactions. There is the demand in Virgin Bitcoins and it effects to their price. More demand the higher price.

[putukin]

Okay, that is something I didnt knew.

But how will you know if it is a minted one?
Do miners are the only ones who have this?
I mean, it will already be tainted once it joins the flow or be sold to an exchange right?

So regulars like me wont have the chance to have it unless I go directly to a miner? Which will be a problem coz I dont know even one.

Even if you find a miner, not everyone will want to satisfy your request.

[buwaytress]

Heard about it before and yeah also wondered about it, but I think those no longer have the same value as once thought of, if they even still do at all these days.

If the argument is that with blockchain analytics getting better, and more able to identify taint, then it also should be true that those in the public can also identify "virgin" bitcoin easily. You can't stop anyone from just spraying dust to taint those btc anyway. Be fairly easy to build a database of all new coins generated to see which wallet they belong to, and then just taint them.

Also, if analytics really are getting better, adn they will, then any onchain transacting will still lead to these illicit activities to being identified.

So. Pointless. To me and most users.

[thirdprize]

I assumed Richard Branson was getting in on the crypto scene for a minute.