bitcoin and money laundering

[Kprawn]

Government officials use diplomatic bags, to launder money, smuggle diamonds and drugs, and it's seldom reported. But when crypto currency is used as a vehicle to do these things, it's all over the Press. Make you wonder why that is? 

Legal private companies launder money, on a daily basis, and seldom get caught. And if they do, they just close shop and open somewhere else, under a new name.

It's just another "method" for people to launder currency, but most of this is tracked. The protocol was not created to launder money, it was created, as a alternative to a failing fiat currency, which is used for money laundering too.

[allthingsluxury]

Sorry, not sure I understand your statement / questions 

[hloren70]

Bitcoin is only pseudoanonymous (though if you hide your IP and use new addresses every time it is pretty much anonymous).

That being said, I can't wait to see what extra anonymity features that Zerocash will be bringing to the table when it is released!

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

online currency bitcoin can basically be used for various transactions. For example, for legal transactions such as wordpress.com, Galatic virgin airways, republikhost.com, and various social donations like to wikileaks.

On the other hand, the digital currency can be used for the benefit of a greater portion of illegal internationally. Illegal acts that include money laundering, gambling, drugs, and even protitusi.
But it is possible if in the U.S. ensued with bitcoin money laundering. If there are politicians who commit this crime, the police will be very difficult to handle. Unless, if they cooperate with or exchanher bitcoin users who understand the concept of bitcoin

I don't think that it is nearly as easy for politicians in the US to hide money as you seem to think it is. Their finances are fairly public and moving large amounts in and out of bitcoin exchanges isn't going to help them evade the public eye as much you think.

If you mean that they could take corruption payments directly in bitcoin, then yes, I see what you mean there. That does make it easier for them. But even so they still have to cash it out somehow, or buy things with the bitcoin. Or they could hold bitcoin if they felt that it was a sound investment.

All and all, it's not much different than cash. A corrupt politician could accept a briefcase full of cash and have the same problems washing it as he would with washing the bitcoins he would receive instead. Also, using bitcoins requires a little bit of technical familiarity and a lot of the US politicians are well known for being technically inept.

The biggest challenge of laundering money with bitcoin is moving it into and out of fiat. It is very easy to have bitcoin that you control not be associated with previous transactions but is much more difficult to exchange it for fiat without raising any kind of red flag

[OROBTC]

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ShakyhandsBTCer

Not too hard to exchange your BTC for my cash...  PM me if interested.  NOT huge quantities.  Not a cop nor a crook.

It's really hard for me to find BTC for cash, hardly anyone I know has any at all.  And I want to be off the grid buying BTC.

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

...

ShakyhandsBTCer

Not too hard to exchange your BTC for my cash...  PM me if interested.  NOT huge quantities.  Not a cop nor a crook.

It's really hard for me to find BTC for cash, hardly anyone I know has any at all.  And I want to be off the grid buying BTC.

I am not saying that I am having trouble laundering my BTC personally.

My point was that for a money launder it is difficult to exchange BTC for fiat.

NOT huge quantities. 

This is my point exactly as money launders usually need to move "large" amounts of money.

[Harley997]

Bitcoin is only pseudoanonymous (though if you hide your IP and use new addresses every time it is pretty much anonymous).

That being said, I can't wait to see what extra anonymity features that Zerocash will be bringing to the table when it is released!

You can use blockchain's shared coin to get the same effect as zerocash but with shorter TX confirmation times as zerocash has all TXs in a shared coin format and when one party "backs out" of a TX then the TX will fail and all the parties will need to try again by all signing a new TX

[redwhite037]

If bitcoin is "property" and not currency, then it certainly cannot be accused of involvement with money laundering, but that would make it a currency.

[dadugan]

If bitcoin is "property" and not currency, then it certainly cannot be accused of involvement with money laundering, but that would make it a currency.

Different government agencies treat it differently.

It can be a currency to one department and property to another department.

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

If bitcoin is "property" and not currency, then it certainly cannot be accused of involvement with money laundering, but that would make it a currency.

That is not true. People often use real estate to (attempt to) launder money all the time and real estate is not in any way currency. The same holds true with gold, diamonds and other "untraceable" assets

[validium]

Bitcoin is only pseudoanonymous (though if you hide your IP and use new addresses every time it is pretty much anonymous).

That being said, I can't wait to see what extra anonymity features that Zerocash will be bringing to the table when it is released!

You can use blockchain's shared coin to get the same effect as zerocash but with shorter TX confirmation times as zerocash has all TXs in a shared coin format and when one party "backs out" of a TX then the TX will fail and all the parties will need to try again by all signing a new TX

If your trying to launder coins i would suggest for you not to use sharedcoin as it has been proven not to be so anonymous

Link:
http://www.coindesk.com/blockchains-sharedcoin-users-can-identified-says-security-expert/

[moreia]

This gotta be posting bot, or someone really really not into English. Bitcoin and corruption....ppl were corrupted even before money as we know it existed, so i dont see why ppl can not be corrupted with BTC (if that was OP's question)

I agree...what type of post was this?!
Gave me a headache couldn't get my head around it.

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

Bitcoin is only pseudoanonymous (though if you hide your IP and use new addresses every time it is pretty much anonymous).

That being said, I can't wait to see what extra anonymity features that Zerocash will be bringing to the table when it is released!

You can use blockchain's shared coin to get the same effect as zerocash but with shorter TX confirmation times as zerocash has all TXs in a shared coin format and when one party "backs out" of a TX then the TX will fail and all the parties will need to try again by all signing a new TX

If your trying to launder coins i would suggest for you not to use sharedcoin as it has been proven not to be so anonymous

Link:
http://www.coindesk.com/blockchains-sharedcoin-users-can-identified-says-security-expert/

You can be tracked by an attacker with shared coin but not with 100% certainty. IIRC one of the articles about this said that it could identify the recipient of a transaction with 25% certainty.

The researchers matched the senders with the recipients by looking at matching input/output amounts on a TX. This problem could easily be solved by either of two ways:

1 - Have the coins take two (or more) paths to their destination. This would mean that you would have to participate (via the blockchiain.info web wallet) in more transactions and would take longer to set up. Alternatively it could be set up so that you can have multiple ultimate output transactions, possibly with a different number of intermediary transactions.

2 - Charge some kind of randomized fee for the service that is paid at random times throughout the process.

[Benjig]

"encryption tools could effectively turn off law enforcement’s ability to surveil criminal and terrorist suspects online."

When a government begins to spy on everyone all the time, dark wallet is an example of what is going to then transpire. Hey, NSA?

[Marlo Stanfield]

...

ShakyhandsBTCer

Not too hard to exchange your BTC for my cash...  PM me if interested.  NOT huge quantities.  Not a cop nor a crook.

It's really hard for me to find BTC for cash, hardly anyone I know has any at all.  And I want to be off the grid buying BTC.

Have you tired localbitcoins.com?

It's pretty good. Last stat people were throwing around was that it's in over 8000 locations now. Shouldn't be too hard for you to find some BTC.

[efreeti]

"encryption tools could effectively turn off law enforcement’s ability to surveil criminal and terrorist suspects online."

When a government begins to spy on everyone all the time, dark wallet is an example of what is going to then transpire. Hey, NSA?

Dark wallet, tor, I2P are not effective tool to stop agency such as NSA.

[Marlo Stanfield]

"encryption tools could effectively turn off law enforcement’s ability to surveil criminal and terrorist suspects online."

When a government begins to spy on everyone all the time, dark wallet is an example of what is going to then transpire. Hey, NSA?

Dark wallet, tor, I2P are not effective tool to stop agency such as NSA.

The statement "encryption tools could effectively turn off law enforcement’s ability to surveil criminal and terrorist suspects online." is true. The NSA is very unlikely to be able to break strong encryption. I can't speak for any of the specific tools you mentioned, beacuse who knows what the NSA has their hands on at this point. But a new tool that uses strong encryption open sourced and created from scratch should be safe from prying eyes.

[DannyElfman]

Bitcoin is only pseudoanonymous (though if you hide your IP and use new addresses every time it is pretty much anonymous).

That being said, I can't wait to see what extra anonymity features that Zerocash will be bringing to the table when it is released!

You can use blockchain's shared coin to get the same effect as zerocash but with shorter TX confirmation times as zerocash has all TXs in a shared coin format and when one party "backs out" of a TX then the TX will fail and all the parties will need to try again by all signing a new TX

If your trying to launder coins i would suggest for you not to use sharedcoin as it has been proven not to be so anonymous

Link:
http://www.coindesk.com/blockchains-sharedcoin-users-can-identified-says-security-expert/

Shared coin when used in conjunction with other mixers can mask your identity.   

[validium]

Bitcoin is only pseudoanonymous (though if you hide your IP and use new addresses every time it is pretty much anonymous).

That being said, I can't wait to see what extra anonymity features that Zerocash will be bringing to the table when it is released!

You can use blockchain's shared coin to get the same effect as zerocash but with shorter TX confirmation times as zerocash has all TXs in a shared coin format and when one party "backs out" of a TX then the TX will fail and all the parties will need to try again by all signing a new TX

If your trying to launder coins i would suggest for you not to use sharedcoin as it has been proven not to be so anonymous

Link:
http://www.coindesk.com/blockchains-sharedcoin-users-can-identified-says-security-expert/

Shared coin when used in conjunction with other mixers can mask your identity.   

Well if you use sharedcoin+other services doesn't it just mean you are incurring an extra cost because your paying for a service(sharedcoin) that doesn't deliver what you want.

So IMO using sharedcoin in the first place is just a waste of your coins

[arbitrage001]

Bitcoin is only pseudoanonymous (though if you hide your IP and use new addresses every time it is pretty much anonymous).

That being said, I can't wait to see what extra anonymity features that Zerocash will be bringing to the table when it is released!

You can use blockchain's shared coin to get the same effect as zerocash but with shorter TX confirmation times as zerocash has all TXs in a shared coin format and when one party "backs out" of a TX then the TX will fail and all the parties will need to try again by all signing a new TX

If your trying to launder coins i would suggest for you not to use sharedcoin as it has been proven not to be so anonymous

Link:
http://www.coindesk.com/blockchains-sharedcoin-users-can-identified-says-security-expert/

Shared coin when used in conjunction with other mixers can mask your identity.   

XMR coin is currently partnering with I2P developers to see if they can bring anon coin into the market.

Darkcoin already have two failed implementation. The current framework the coin operates on may not even be possible to implement a truly anonymous coin.