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| ▲ | torginus 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I know some pretty sharp folks who fork for various police departments chasing illicit crypto related activity. The amount of stuff they can track including timing of transactions, entry and exit points, etc, and so over a long period of time means that most of the traditional anyonmization methods like tumblers simply do not work. Eventually someone, somewhere makes a mistake and the transactions and wallets can be traced. If you have dirty money to hide, it's much better to hide it in a bank in Panama, or fill a sports bag with gold bars and fly it out on your private jet than use crypto. Anything you can do from your bedroom, police can track from theirs. | | |
| ▲ | 0x3f 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | By definition the police only ever detect and catch those they are capable of detecting and catching. It's entirely in their interest to let people believe their capabilities are much greater than they really are. That goes double for the companies that sell this technology to the police. | |
| ▲ | MASNeo 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I am working to track and trace and time transactions and while this is possible when and if you know the identity of at least one participant it’s quite another thing when no identity is known at all. Criminals know that so it’s notoriously hard to pull off. Thanks to Daleware secrecy and lax Super PAC rules to disclose sources of funds it’s not going to get easier. So either your friends are genius saucers or they have effective government intelligence that would be highly appreciated. I’d be interested. You are spot on regarding the bedroom though. Exporting physical USD is far more lucrative, by the shipload, often by Chinese Money Laundering Organisations, for free. | | |
| ▲ | torginus 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Sorry, I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but I know that he usually goes after big fish - people who deal in bulk or are somehow involved in manufacturing, not dudes who order pills in the mail. These people are usually being investigated/surveilled otherwise, and he does work with the police, so you could say he has 'government intelligence'. | |
| ▲ | lucketone 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There is a third option, that those being tracked make mistakes |
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| ▲ | MarsIronPI 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Including sending and receiving Monero? (This is a serious question; I don't have a perspective on this yet.) | |
| ▲ | dylan604 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Anything you can do from your bedroom, police can track from theirs. This is why I have tape covering my webcam and music blaring. Oh, wait, that's not what you meant. |
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| ▲ | basilikum 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Bitcoin is traceable by design. That's how a public ledger works. It is merely pseudonymous. But it leaves complete public money trail. If your Bitcoin ever associate with your real identity, which they tend to do when you actually use them, your anonymity is gone. There is a reason why Monero exists. | |
| ▲ | ozgrakkurt 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don’t understand the point of this. It is no different than traditional finance. People do and did transfer drug money before and they will keep transferring drug money. I don’t see what blockchain has to do with that. On the other hand, I use blockchain personally for completely legal purposes and find it very useful. Easy to do international transfers, easy to buy different currencies even if local government is trying to make it hard. Also I have more trust in it compared to countries that I live in or travel to. Another big aspect of it is no hidden costs and borderline scamming behavior I get from credit card companies or banks when doing international spending or transfers. This is not even about the insane prices, the feeling of getting scammed is even worse. Also it is literally governments reason of existence to preserve order and catch criminals. Banning everything used by criminals is insanely stupid. Same idea with cryptography, same with internet, same with cash. | |
| ▲ | idontwantthis 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Every single transaction is public information. If you carry a wallet into Iran, and it's coins are used through 20 different transactions to purchase weapons, all of those can be traced back to their origin. | | |
| ▲ | paxys 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That's like saying every currency note is traceable because it has a serial number. If someone hands you a dollar today can you trace it starting from where it was printed to everything it was used for until it eventually got into your hands? Yeah you can look up bitcoin wallet IDs on the ledger, but you can also generate an unlimited number of wallets, and pass coins in any combination through any number of mixers and tumblers, and exchange it between multiple currencies (some of them truly untrackable). If people or organizations want to stay anonymous in the crypto ecosystem they can very easily do so. | | |
| ▲ | MarsIronPI 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The difference is that with cash we don't write the serial number of every bill for every transaction in an easily-accessible central ledger. There's no such thing as an off-the-books Bitcoin transaction, by nature. | | |
| ▲ | thinkmassive 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Most bitcoin transactions actually happen off-chain (aka "off the books"), mostly through exchanges but also through decentralized layers like Lightning Network. It's also possible to physically transfer value by exchanging a signing device or seed phrase. |
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| ▲ | kelseyfrog 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Except none of that happened. It didn't stay anonymous, it just went to Iran. | | |
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| ▲ | arcanemachiner 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Well, that depends on which cryptocurrency is used, doesn't it? | |
| ▲ | cammikebrown 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not if they used Monero |
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