Remix.run Logo
▲ otterley 5 hours ago

The real value in crypto is for storing black market currency. Before, it had to be stored in cash where it could be stolen by other criminals or confiscated by law enforcement. (Watch Narcos if you want to see a pretty good dramatization of how Pablo Escobar buried his money in caches around Colombia.) If Bitcoin was around at the time, Escobar certainly would have used that instead.

It does have speculative value, as well, but I suspect that if you subtract speculative investments, the remaining total market cap of crypto is the value of criminal profit.

▲fpoling 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I doubt Escobar would use Bitcoins to store funds. They are traceable and are too volatile to store illicit gains. But to carry transaction he would use them on massive scale surely. Cash is sort of the opposite. Not very convenient to carry big illicit transactions but as a store of value it is a way better thing.

▲otterley an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe not Bitcoin in particular, but other cryptocurrencies might do. Consider that for a very long time (and possibly still), ransomware attackers were demanding payment in Bitcoin, so these traceability considerations might not be as dissuasive as you might believe.

Bitcoin’s price volatility also seems no worse than the possibility of losses of cash due to theft.

▲bennyelv 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

But he could orchestrate a bunch of people to mint artistic NFTs that could be traded around a bit to enable him to make loads of money that he could cash out “legitimately”…