How do I find out if a coin is tainted? Are there lists? Or services that check.

[philipma1957]

pretty much a simple question is there a way or company that gives tainted coin status.

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There is no way you can know a tainted coin. What the centralized platforms are using to know tainted coins is because they tainted it by themselves because they noticed that the coin passed through a coinjoin. If you coinjoin your coins and send it to a centralized exchange, they may seize it and tell you to provide your identity.

Some cases are not coinjoin, but coins used in drug or weapon purchases and something like that. I can use fiat to buy a gun and the money later ended on an innocent hand. That is how coins are also. We can even assume that all coins are tainted. If you need a clean coin, you will need to buy the coin directly from a miner from a newly mined coins.

[goldkingcoiner]

pretty much a simple question is there a way or company that gives tainted coin status.

I think "tainted" is an arbitrary label which just gets abused by exchanges as a reason for withholding funds.

Pretty sure that they simply use AML tools like Chainalysis, Elliptic, CipherTrace, Crystal Blockchain etc. which basically only filter out the coins that come from unregistered exchanges, illegal services and mixers.

If you contact those service providers, they might provide you with a blacklist or something that you can use to check your own transactions.

[philipma1957]

I have a business partner that is looking to do large escrow movements. 100 btc and up.

I don’t want people dumping tainted coins on him.

I have seen a few addresses marked bad on a few threads. I am hesitant to let the person offer to do escrows unless there is a mechanism to protect him from a tainted coin dump.

I suppose I can word contracts a certain way but I really would like to check for tainted stolen etc since it wont be small amounts.

[Potato Chips]

amlbot.com also can check an address and return a risk score for little to no fee

But because there is no from-a-to-z guidelines or tech that every platform follows in regards to taints, receiving a low risk score does not necessarily mean the client is off the hook. Utlimately, it would depend on how each custodial platform investigate -- they may or may not use amlbot tech and/or use it in combination with other tools so other variables are at play as well.

[Upgrade00]

I don’t want people dumping tainted coins on him.

What describes "tainted" coins to you?

If it's coins that have been mixed or coinjoined in the past then you can use chain analysis tools which are available. Researching on how mixers work, identifying their addresses directly and recording them can help your filtering.

If you're looking out for coins that have been involved in illegal activities, then you'll have to do the same by looking out for addresses that have been blacklisted to belong to scammers along with the UTXOs and block them.

[Lucius]

There is only one way for someone to be sure that he will not buy or in any other way come into possession of what some call "tainted coins", and that is to buy Bitcoin directly from the miners, and such coins used to be called "virgin coins", and it was said that some even pay a premium price for such coins.

Considering that we have about 19.6 million BTC in circulation, of which we mined 10+ million in the first 4 years, and another 5.25 million after 8 years, all the bad things that happened in the first years and after that in some way marked all that coins. Of course, every BTC seizure that has happened since then has cleaned up a lot of BTC in some way.

[yhiaali3]

I have a business partner that is looking to do large escrow movements. 100 btc and up.

I don’t want people dumping tainted coins on him.

I have seen a few addresses marked bad on a few threads. I am hesitant to let the person offer to do escrows unless there is a mechanism to protect him from a tainted coin dump.

I suppose I can word contracts a certain way but I really would like to check for tainted stolen etc since it wont be small amounts.

If this large amount of Bitcoin will come from multiple sources, I expect that the process of verifying the cleanliness of each address separately will take a long time and may be expensive.

Instead, why not try to buy this amount from one of the Bitcoin mining pools, or there is another option that may be more difficult, as you can buy it from US government confiscations, this way you will guarantee that you will get 100% clean Bitcoin.

[philipma1957]

There is only one way for someone to be sure that he will not buy or in any other way come into possession of what some call "tainted coins", and that is to buy Bitcoin directly from the miners, and such coins used to be called "virgin coins", and it was said that some even pay a premium price for such coins.

Considering that we have about 19.6 million BTC in circulation, of which we mined 10+ million in the first 4 years, and another 5.25 million after 8 years, all the bad things that happened in the first years and after that in some way marked all that coins. Of course, every BTC seizure that has happened since then has cleaned up a lot of BTC in some way.

That's my opinion which is why I have delayed advising the people asking me to do hi end escrow amounts unless they can get into a direct relationship with coinbase. I do not see the 1-3% fees working if they get 100 'bad' BTC coins in an escrow.

[zasad@]

AML services do not guarantee 100% results. If your business partner carries out large escrow movements, then he needs to enter into an agreement with AML providers in order to later avoid accusations of illegal activities. This will reduce legal risks for his business.

[Lucius]

That's my opinion which is why I have delayed advising the people asking me to do hi end escrow amounts unless they can get into a direct relationship with coinbase. I do not see the 1-3% fees working if they get 100 'bad' BTC coins in an escrow.

In addition to direct purchase from miners, it is possible to get "clean coins" if they are bought at auctions - and the US has a considerable amount of seized BTC that it occasionally sells at auctions.

However, even if clients would buy 100 BTC through the OTC of one of the well-known CEXs, wouldn't that be a sufficient guarantee that that BTC is "clean" enough to not have problems with it in the future?

[zasad@]

That's my opinion which is why I have delayed advising the people asking me to do hi end escrow amounts unless they can get into a direct relationship with coinbase. I do not see the 1-3% fees working if they get 100 'bad' BTC coins in an escrow.

In addition to direct purchase from miners, it is possible to get "clean coins" if they are bought at auctions - and the US has a considerable amount of seized BTC that it occasionally sells at auctions.

However, even if clients would buy 100 BTC through the OTC of one of the well-known CEXs, wouldn't that be a sufficient guarantee that that BTC is "clean" enough to not have problems with it in the future?

https://cryptonews.net/news/bitcoin/28718789/
"The U.S. government’s holdings of 210,392 BTC worth $14.4 billion make the country one of the largest holders of the coin.

The head of CryptoQuant, Ki Young Ju, noted that the U.S. Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, and other departments have not sold a single Bitcoin (BTC) since July 2023. The government’s unrealized profits increased 2.4 times."

I would say that such auctions do not happen very often.

[stompix]

I would say that such auctions do not happen very often.

The US Marshall is no longer doing auctions for digital assets such as crypto unless it's a repayment seizure, they re doing OTC deals, same happened as per the article you quote:

In March 2023, the U.S. transferred BTC confiscated from the Silk Road hacker to Coinbase. In April, the government sold another 9,861 BTC. Then, in January, government officials announced their intention to sell some of the cryptocurrency associated with the Silk Road case. The statement mentioned assets of 2,934 BTC.

You will only hear about those sales after the fillings for each case are submitted.

As for Phil, initial question, aml bots are crap!
I don't know who was lying about that but look how an adress that was funded via crypto.com

First, AMLBOT entity is a completely different company, which we have client-customer connections only. You can check full info about their company on their website https://amlbot.com/, and you have all their legal information available at the header of the AML report. AMLbot is a trusted tool widely used (not only by us) to ensure the safety of crypto transactions, for any questions about how their system works you can address the information on their website. We must note that the AML reports like one you received are issued automatically and cannot be changed nor by us, neither by the company behind the bot itself, so there is no conspiracy to rip you off your money behind that

AMLBOT is overpriced garbage that nobody is taking serious.
And I'm going to prove you how crappy that service is right here

OP deposited through tx
https://mempool.space/tx/b1fcd509833b9a6d6ce142806c1bced2780bc6acb4695ce3e8a04a227ba1ad53
From 13oLHMtTujmYBVsKJEgY4nzxKiWSB4qEWo  to your adress at bc1qrv44amv8myhlug9wuxt4u23aq8jud8he4nm9h4

13oLHMtTujmYBVsKJEgY4nzxKiWSB4qEWo  was funded in:
https://mempool.space/tx/215a81bd42ea6b060de813222b5fe1a2d600a3c20a13aba7a8e6214eb97b609d
‎0.94691470 BTC from bc1q7cyrfmck2ffu2ud3rn5l5a8yv6f0chkp0zpemf

bc1q7cyrfmck2ffu2ud3rn5l5a8yv6f0chkp0zpemf
is crypto.com wallet
https://glasschain.org/btc/address/bc1q7cyrfmck2ffu2ud3rn5l5a8yv6f0chkp0zpemf

Second, about the data you see in the report itself: if the transaction has a risk level from 51% to 100%, that means that the tokens are either stolen, used in the Dark Market or the  assets are obtained by fraud and blackmail, Mixers, exchanges and services related to illegal activity (full list of 42 positions can be found in the report you posted).

It might trigger a ton of false positives and at the same time label them as clean coins from an exchange despite those being stolen from somebody via phishing.