900,000 illegal bitcoins.

[theskillzdatklls]

I wonder what the site defines as illicit/illegal activities. What laws(in relation to countries transaction origins?) are they based on? And how did they really determine this? Did they factor in the deflationary nature of Bitcoin? 1 BTC in 2010 would be worth alot more today... When did this research take place, by the way?
Can thesame method be used to determine how much of physical/digital fiat currencies and precious metals are used for illegal activities... maybe from 2015 till now? Just want to know if the research is reliable and can be repeated with good results. Also to  compare the illicit transactions to other currencies and determine how bad things  are.

That was my thought. When a government does a huge drug bust they will say things like "$100 million of drugs taken off the streets" but they are referring to the street level resale of the drug to dramatically over inflate what is happening here to boost their own ego, get more government funding and what have you.

Probably no different here. By over-exaggerating the amount of BTC or their value, you make a more compelling argument to legitimize whatever it is you are attempting to prove. Of course they aren't entirely wrong. Just view their numbers somewhat skeptically.

[Jet Cash]

Oh dear - whatever next?

I'm waiting for someone to discover a covid infected Bitcoin.

[Rikafip]

I am worried about the fact that these shadow bitcoins can enter the market at the most inopportune moment and in one way or another affect the movement of the bitcoin price.

Why do you think that those who own those "shadow" bitcoins (as you called them) would mindlessly just dump them ? After all, they are interested in profit, so why would they behave any different than others?

To answer you question, no, I do not worry about such scenario. Bitcoin survived so much already and at this moment stuff like that can't hurt him in the long run, and that's what's most important.

Oh dear - whatever next?
I'm waiting for someone to discover a covid infected Bitcoin.

Yep. It amazes me how people keep finding ways to worry about BTC.

[charlie137]

one could only imagine such graph for any fiat 

[vapourminer]

Oh dear - whatever next?

I'm waiting for someone to discover a covid infected Bitcoin.

i soak all my bitcoins in bleach so its all good.

[Shasha80]

In my opinion 900,000 illegal Bitcoins circulating in the market does not affect the price of Bitcoin, because we will not know
where illegal Bitcoin is. So in my opinion it is mixed with legal Bitcoin, and investors will not be able to differentiate in the end.
The most important we can invest smoothly and can make a profit from Bitcoin.

[panganib999]

One day, all these bitcoins will somehow hit the market.  

It's very possible that our coins are already mixed with illegal coins those were marked on the addresses. You never know.

Does this worry you much?
It doesn't for me.

When we deal with cash, we do not know the source of that cash whether it came from an illegal or legal source one hand before me.

Indeed. Since we are in a vast market like this in crypto, we certainly do not know where and from what hand does it come from because cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin is just being transacted and circulated across the market coming from different addresses and we do not even concern if the source is a legitimate or an illegal one. Yes, most Bitcoins are coming from illegal activities and transactions which we certainly know and care about like we do on physical money or cash because if ever that came across from a dirty stuff, then it is not our faulty anymore because currencies are normally being circulated to be used up by many people so we do not care anymore and should not worry if ever it came from somewhere illegal.

[lobat999]

By comparison, the above mentioned BTC allegedly used for illegal activities only sums up to  more than $ 9.79 billion and its almost traceable!

Now a recent statistics shows a frightening amount of more than $ 232 billion (see link below)  on illegal drugs spending alone and we have to consider that most of these transactions were made possible by using fiat money which is almost untraceable.

I think if those BTC hits the market, which I assume is happening right now, I think it doesn't have a big impact if we ought to compare it to illegal transactions using fiat money. Imho.


Source: https://www.worldometers.info/drugs/

[Velkro]

It's very possible that our coins are already mixed with illegal coins those were marked on the addresses. You never know.

Does this worry you much?
It doesn't for me.

Pretty much this. You never know what coins you receive, if they were before involved with some illegal activities.
Same with dollar bills, most of them have trace of cocaine on them, and you care? Not really, because if you would, money would lost its main value and purpose.

[romero121]

The number of bitcoins associated with illegal activities is quite high compared to the entire sum circulated in the market. This isn't a big issue, because with the circulating sum of USD and other fiat, there will be more and more volume of fiat associated with the black market and illegal activities. For the same do we ignore using the fiat on our daily needs. Same will be with bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, we need to use it in the right way and teach good about bitcoin to the world.

[AakZaki]

~snip~
The problem with all the exchanges monitoring the coins is that if the coins are coming through mixers then they might mark those coins and they might even confiscate the coins asking for the source.

Ask the source of the original coins that come with the mixer whether it is allowed, or indeed some exchanges have the authority to be able to find out. Like the Chipmixer platform which was created for a privacy.

Many illegal Bitcoins are produced by scammers who then eliminate traces by using a coin mixer platform. it's like a knife that can be used for good things and can also be used for bad things.

[hermawan9416]

What do you mean illegal bitcoins? No matter how they are used, it is important that they are in circulation and continue to be bitcoins.

[cr1776]

This is like saying "there are 900,000 trillion trillion trillion oxygen molecules associated with illegal activity because someone breathed them in while committing a crime, all of these molecules will somehow be breathed in by someone else."

Who decides what is illegal and where?
Who decides if someone has already used the "illegal" bitcoins and an innocent party owns them?

Think about all the gold (or silver) in the world.  At some point it is virtually guaranteed that it was either stolen, someone was killed for it, some evil dictator/totalitarian ruler/emperor/king/queen etc,  forced people to surrender it to him/her (spoils of war, taxes etc) or it was mined by slave labor.  Does that mean that all gold is tainted?  No, it means that evil and immoral people are in the world and they did something bad with some object.  

It doesn't mean that the object is good or bad, it means that the use to which is was put was bad.  Forks don't make people fat, guns don't kill people, actions by people using those implements do so.

This whole "analysis" is just idiotic.

[ChiBitCTy]

These are definitely interesting numbers, but it certainly doesn't come as any surprise to me that the numbers are this high.  I would love to see the numbers for fiat currency, they would be so far beyond these numbers it's not even funny. I think it's important people keep that in mind.

[Zionatin]

What criteria do they go by? How do they get to these numbers? Unless I missed it and I apologise if I did and I am just being silly but as far as I can see I can't find an explanation as to where and how these calculations come from. Saying darkmarket activity is all illicit is not true at all. There many gambling websites for example that exist on the darkweb. Hell there was an old man selling cookies and no it was not a code word for drugs or it normal cookies not space cookies or anything.

Other things they sell on the darknet are for example medical supplies that otherwise would have cost an arm and a leg. It is disgusting that medical supplies are not sold at cost or close to it. A read about a man who needed inhaulers or some breather apparatus for his wife and he got it on the dark web for multiple times cheaper. I don't call that illicit. If anything they people selling medical supplies for such high prices are the real criminals.

Another thing is. Anything you get on the dark web you can get on the clearnet. The darknet is not this mysterious place of wonder. It's boring as hell and it's like a 56k modem. Sure there is some wierd stuff but you can see that on the clear web too. Another thing is most of the things there are scams. There are no hitmen and things like this. If you pay someone to make a hit where would they? They could just take the money and do nothing.
People watching too much damn TV.

[KrisAlex18]

Who do really cares to check or verify on which their transactions came from if it is from a illegal activities or from the good ones? First of all, we are into a vast world of cryptocurrencies so basically we do not really know into who and which hands the cryptocurrencies we have got from numerous transactions really came from because it is quite impossible to track it down due to many numbers of transactions being processed day by day. Who do really know or even care to identify it first if the transaction they receive came from safe hands or not? Whatever or wherever the Bitcoin transactions we got came from will not be duly our responsibility anymore since usage and transactions of Bitcoin and being done continuously and simultaneously in circulation like paper money so it is just normal that there are cases money whether digital or cash will have a chance to came from illegal activities which we are already not aware because we do not even know that it happen.

The point is indeed there are many Bitcoin usages that can be related on illegal activities but why to worry about if you do not even have relation to those guys. It is just so happen that upon circulation of the cryptocurrency, a chance of obtaining transactions coming from illegal activities could be possible. But that was just because of the circulation process. Actually we do not care at all into who will be the transaction be sent out or who will be the next one to handle those after we have done transacting it.

[crzy]

Its hard to deny that bitcoin is being used in darkmarket because it is still happening where many people want to transact using bitcoin to remain anonymous and spread their illegal activities. Stolen funds are high as well because of many failed exchanges before and I hope they improved a lot today to lessen the stolen funds. Scammers will continue to increase that volume, protect your bitcoin.

[erikoy]

Its hard to deny that bitcoin is being used in darkmarket because it is still happening where many people want to transact using bitcoin to remain anonymous and spread their illegal activities. Stolen funds are high as well because of many failed exchanges before and I hope they improved a lot today to lessen the stolen funds. Scammers will continue to increase that volume, protect your bitcoin.

I have read a thread here that has been scam for 100k usd that is huge money involve but he was being scam. Others that are being phished out with their bitcoin wallet. There are many malwares nowadays that could be accidentally downloaded like some of them are annoying ads that keep popping out whenever you navigate to other sites. So, one should be careful online if device was being used to access funds in the wallet. To keep the wallet safe from online it may be a good practice to use offline wallet and just access whenever it is really needed.

[Sanitough]

It will hit the market if it's not frozen, we have a lot of mixers and these people know what they are doing.

Still that's bitcoin, whether coming from illegal or legal, it has the same value and acceptable anywhere as long as it's properly clean by the money launderers. This is a huge money, and more so in the future as the demand increases for sure, but we can't deny that illegal activities will continue to rise if the market regulation is not that strict, but just like fiat, we should not expect that bitcoin is purely for legal transactions only as the decision lies in the hands of the holders, actually, we might not know that our bitcoin now was already pass in different wallets and some of these wallets have use that bitcoin for illegal transactions.

[mezzaluna]

That is really some large chunks of Bitcoin being labeled as illegal. Though we cannot be too sure if they can track it, but even if they plan on tracking every single Bitcoin or transactions being made on these blocks, it will surely take too much of their time. Lets just hope that whatever we are working on the Cryptocurrency Industry, we are earning them through hard work and not scamming other people since credential matters in the Industry.