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| ▲ | rangestransform 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Any circumstance where the onus is on a private citizen to prove innocence instead of the government to prove guilt is a perversion of justice. Stupid voters and the government will destroy all privacy for the sake of "the guns, the gangs, the children" | |
| ▲ | olalonde 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's extremely simple until it's not. Let's say you bought 100$ worth of BTC back in 2012 with cash at a meetup. Now it’s worth $1M, but you can't prove its origin. You now have a perfectly law-abiding person that risks being accused of "money laundering" just to keep what's rightfully theirs. | | |
| ▲ | yogorenapan 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I've had this exact problem before, though not with such high amounts. To make it worse, it was Monero rather than Bitcoin, which made tracing impossible. In the end, I just had to produce emails/documents proving I was paid in crypto a couple years back & the associated increase in value since then. I got the crypto into my bank via a sketchy non-kyc exchange and somehow they didn't care about that at all. | |
| ▲ | XorNot 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Bitcoin literally has an immutable transaction record baked into it's model. You would be able to point to the timestamp when you took possession of the wallet which would prove providence unambiguously. | | |
| ▲ | mothballed 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | There's no KYC to take possession of a wallet, how would you prove the wallet wasn't just traded to you (maybe even yesterday) instead of moving the bitcoins? | | |
| ▲ | ajross 4 days ago | parent [-] | | AML statutes don't invert the burden of proof! If the government wants to prosecute you for taking money, they still have to prove you took the money beyond a reasonable doubt. I'm always amused by the paranoia in the xxxcoin communities. If the government had and exercised the power you believe it does, why on earth do you think putting your money in bitcoin or whatever would provide any protection at all? Edit: case in point: > KYC and AML invert the burden of proof and are essentially an exception to the 4th amendment Oooph. | | |
| ▲ | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > If the government wants to prosecute you Their point is that the government does not prosecute you, they threaten the banks with "regulatory incidents" if they don't comply. The result is that some people find it difficult to ever open a bank account with no means to "clear their name" as it were. | | |
| ▲ | ajross 4 days ago | parent [-] | | That doesn't seem to be a point made upthread in the chain to which I was responding. The contention was that people could lose assets or be prosecuted. And no, they can't, that's ridiculous. | | |
| ▲ | mothballed 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I follow some forums on international banking from time to time, occasionally I read the story of the guy who's deposits got AML flagged so they simply cut him a check, of course after they put him on world-check or some other banking black flag database that prevents him from depositing the check anywhere else. In that case in theory they don't lose their assets, but I have no idea what happens next. | | |
| ▲ | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | cash the check at Walmart? | |
| ▲ | ajross 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Seems like that would be a good anecdote to cite and not "I read it once on some forum", no? I mean... come on. Yes, it's possible it went down like that in a way that confirms all your libertarian priors about government overreach or whatnot. But given the sourcing, my money is on "Some rube got roped into taking 'payment' as part of a laundering scheme and was left holding the bag". Real fraud is rampant and pervasive. Libertarian fantasies are usually just that. | | |
| ▲ | mothballed 4 days ago | parent [-] | | There's a poster on here called 'rabite' more commonly known as 'weev' who claims he was cut off entirely from the banking system despite being nominally innocent in the USA (he also claims he hates libertarians so I presume it's not part of a libertarian conspiracy). IIRC he moved to Transnistria (which has very loose money controls and basically controlled by the mob) and then bought apartments in Ukraine via cryptocurrency. Getting your account shut down and then receiving a check is definitely a real thing, if you're someone like 'weev' idk what you would do next, but it seems like he found one of the few ways around it. He has no valid serious convictions that I'm aware of, the only one he has was reversed because it was prosecuted in the wrong jurisdiction (and aside, had some other serious appellate arguments to consider if they hadn't chosen jurisdiction as the reason to vacate). |
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| ▲ | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > That doesn't seem to be a point made upthread in the chain to which I was responding. That is fair. I've noticed that these things often go unsaid. I was just offering clarification. (And I'm glad I was close enough since I don't like misrepresenting others.) |
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| ▲ | mothballed 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | KYC and AML invert the burden of proof and are essentially an exception to the 4th amendment, that's why they're so controversial. I tried to open a bank account when I was moving states before I had a local state ID or any utility bill or proof of address, no one would do it because they stated the standard the feds hold them to for KYC would essentially presume I am guilty of lying and require me to provide documentation to prove I'm not. |
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| ▲ | olalonde 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That works until it does not. What if you transferred the BTC to other wallets or exchanges in the meanwhile? Even if you still had access to the original wallet, what proves that it was really yours? etc. | | |
| ▲ | vkou 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | What if you tried your best to do everything that a money launderer does without actually doing any money laundering? If you and your friends are just innocently idling in a your car wearing a ski mask in the middle of summer with a shotgun and a large duffel bag, in front of a bank that was robbed in this manner four times last month, you're highly unlikely to, at minimum, beat the ride. | | |
| ▲ | olalonde 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | What I described is actually extremely mundane. Maybe you started with Bitcoin Core and later switched to a lighter SPV wallet like Electrum when the blockchain got too big. Maybe you bought a hardware wallet and moved your BTC offline. Maybe you sent some to Binance to invest in Ethereum at some point. There are countless reasons to shuffle BTC around - and countless reasons why you couldn't prove your full transaction history dating back to 2012 - none of which involve any crimes. | | |
| ▲ | vkou 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Has anyone ever been convicted for doing a few on-exchange trades and conversions? You should be keeping your receipts for tax purposes, it's on you to provide them up to a statue of limitations. Or is this just a theoretical concern for anyone who isn't laundering Bitcoin stolen through ransomware or from exchanges? | | |
| ▲ | fragmede 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Chris Borden went to prison for Bitcoin related financial malfeasance. https://youtu.be/cuIRvn89988 | | |
| ▲ | vkou 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Was he actively involved in money laundering, theft, fraud, or tax evasion? Did the jury have reasonable grounds for voting to convict? | | |
| ▲ | fragmede 3 days ago | parent [-] | | He sold Bitcoin without doing KYC and went to prison for operating an exchange. He sold Bitcoin to someone he knew was somehow involved with cocaine. I don't know how morally wrong what he did was, but legally it sent him to prison. | | |
| ▲ | vkou 2 days ago | parent [-] | | This seems to be... WAI. And not just a guy getting punished for doing a few perfectly legal trades. It's hard to do all of the above by accident. |
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| ▲ | olalonde 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | You missed the point. The point was that there are many ordinary and mundane reasons why you wouldn't be able to prove the full chain of custody for the BTC you acquired in 2012. It would be a real practical concern if you are a law-abiding person. If you're a criminal, it's not much of a concern since laundering money is relatively easy. | | |
| ▲ | XorNot 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Yes but the claim is those are hard to track details, and then what's described is a timeline of consistent interaction with the money which you're now planning to claim you have no knowledge of. And some of those interactions are taxable events - e.g. if you are exchanging out of cryptocurrency denominations, then by US tax law as a US citizen that was a taxable event. [1] https://www.blockpit.io/tax-guides/crypto-tax-usa |
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| ▲ | abullinan 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] |
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| ▲ | mothballed 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sounds like that criteria would match about 50% of people with child support or alimony orders. |
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| ▲ | multjoy 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Unless you’re using mixers then it is relatively trivial to follow your BTC around the blockchain. That is the very point of it. The issue of provenance is an issue regardless of the type of funds. In most jurisdictions the burden of proof is civil, so more likely than not. | | |
| ▲ | olalonde 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Sure, you can trace the full transaction history of any BTC through the blockchain... but that doesn't prove anything. At minimum, you need all the private keys involved (e.g. not possible if you used an exchange or deposited/withdrew from some online service or lost/deleted an old wallet). Even if you had the full list of private keys involved, going back to 2012, what proves that they were really yours and, like another commenter pointed out, that you didn't just acquire them yesterday? | | |
| ▲ | XorNot 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Which is a more complicated scenario then originally claimed, which was "I bought a $100 of BTC in cash many years ago and held onto it since then". If you cashed out that BTC via an exchange for example, then there will be bank transaction records showing you did but also welcome to "you were likely due taxes on your gains in the interim because it's no longer $100 of BTC - you took possession of much more in cash and later bought BTC again". Which is to say, you were ongoingly interacting with the money at decreasing intervals from the present. The original claim is easy to prove: it'll be in a wallet which was held for that amount of time. The bank isn't obligated, unless you turn up covered in blood, to prove that you didn't just beat a guy with a hammer till he gives you the password - because you'll go down for that crime by other means. But very few people engaging in ongoing criminal transactions are going to have a supply of aged BTC accounts to use in trade for goods and resources, and certainly you'll trigger red flags if you keep turning up with a brand new "held it for years" account of $50,000 each week. I mean we know this: because it makes headlines when untouched BTC accounts start moving. | |
| ▲ | Imustaskforhelp 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I genuinely don't understand why mixing plus swapping into monero doesn't make sense. Simply swap into monero and then send it to anybody else.. Maybe lets say you have 100$ in btc, you convert it to 100$ in monero and just spend 10$ 10 times in a span of a week and I am sure that nobody can keep track of it. |
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| ▲ | pests 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Forget on-chain, how do you prove you had control of the wallet IRL off-chain at the time of the trasnactions? | |
| ▲ | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Suppose you deposited btc into an exchange, traded it back and forth for a while, and then withdrew. The withdrawn coins come from a communal exchange wallet, so the chain of evidence on the blockchain is lost. |
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| ▲ | Imustaskforhelp 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Monero? Zano? (if you could actually see that monero actually hasn't been hacked as people say and it was all just a marketing gimick though I'd still be cautious and maybe keep my money in monero short term??) |
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| ▲ | ajross 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | That example doesn't work. The blockchain shows that you purchased it for $100! At absolute worst, you "laundered" $100. Likely the statutes don't even apply to numbers that low. | | |
| ▲ | olalonde 4 days ago | parent [-] | | See my other replies for why that doesn't work. | | |
| ▲ | ajross 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Your other replies rely on "assume the government has powers it does not and/or the judiciary is willing to suspend the burden of proof in criminal cases". I mean... yeah. It's true. If you assume we live in a totalitarian dystopia then sure, the government can do terrible things. But needless to say such a government doesn't need to pass boring AML laws to do that. It can just throw you in jail because it wants to. The actual rule of law under which we live doesn't have that property. |
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| ▲ | nroets 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | No, some financial institutions like Binance only allows clients to get statements for the last year or so. P2P transaction details go back only a couple of months. Sometimes your employer goes out of business. Employees do not always preserve their payslips. Then there are countries like Georgia, it's culturally acceptable to buy real estate with cash. If no valuation of the property was made, it becomes very difficult to prove where the money came from. | |
| ▲ | ycombinatrix a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | TSA & DEA regularly steal cash from travelers |
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