Hacker News Reader

You can't stop money laundering without subjecting every private interaction to warrantless surveillance. In an age of purely digital, peer-to-peer currencies, nothing short than banning the public from using strong encryption will stop money laundering.

View on HN

Seems like preventing the trade of digital goods stops money laundering fairly effectively...

So money laundering never happened before digital goods existed?

Yeah, because I meant all money laundering and not just this specific laundering situation...

You can't stop the trade of digital goods when people can encrypt their electronic communication.

As value becomes storable as purely digital information, the choice is either the status quo, where encryption makes money laundering trivial, or prohibiting public access to strong encryption, and instituting a Big Brother surveillance state without privacy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com