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Comment by asynchrony | Hacker News Reader

Crypto assets are only valuable insofar as they can be exchanged for real world goods and services (mostly people seem to want US dollars). Purely crypto backed stable coins lack a stable relationship to the real world.

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Interestingly, in dark web markets, it is often exactly the opposite scenario. No one wants USD and they all want crypto.

At some point they'll want to exchange their profits for real goods and services. They will rely on some exchange service to cash out eventually.

If most of the criminal money is used to transact with other criminals, then most of the money doesn't need to convert to USD.

The real kicker is whether the other criminals are willing to accept bitcoin which they know won't convert to USD.

You could certainly accept bitcoin for black market transactions and spend bitcoin on black market transactions, but wouldn't most participants want to transport their gains to the real world eventually?

Those crime bosses eventually want to buy a new mansion, Porche, a yacht, jewellery/stuff for their wife/gf, you know, anything to actually enjoy their life in real world. They eventually need to exchange their ill-gotten gains for real money. They can't stay in BTC forever. Basically they want to turn the BTC they got from their criminal activities to a clean cash not linked to crime. There are various way they might go about it, basically similar techniques as money launderers use.

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