Pales in comparison to money laundering with US real estate.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-kle...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-kle...
Someone money launders with crypto and it’s on the front page. A bank launders hundreds of times more and it’s just another day. Perhaps you could say it’s because of the novelty of crypto, but I suspect the motives run deeper - crypto is a threat to modern financial institutions and turning public interest against crypto is in the best interests of the establishment.
I don't think it's inexplicable that we hate an ongoing environmental disaster.
You can still hold that bitcoin is bad, but that particular argument is not viable and comes from ignoring what the other side is saying.
The point is that a huge fraction of the crypto economy is outright extortion or fraud, not that it's the source of all evil in the world.
I'm not sure that's true. Do you have a citation?
What is clear is that a huge portion of the crypto economy is based around cryptocurrencies (particularly bitcoin) being financial assets.
While it's good to check sources, keep in mind that original research is also valid.
After all, you made a similarly uncited assertion.
Indeed, the criticism is not of the facts but of the logic. My critique is primarily of your rhetoric. You requested a citation without offering a rebuttal. Yet, you you made a claim that appears to be equally well-founded, or as you're implying, un-founded.
Saying "citation needed" is a somewhat bland, passive-aggressive statement that itself lacks content. I'd have (and still would) appreciate reading the rationale for your skepticism.
Your criticism of me amounts to the fact that I asked for a citation of a statement I was skeptical about. I think that's pretty plainly not a legitimate criticism.
I think that you are the one who is being passive aggressive here.
If you thought my comment was passive aggressive, you could have just said so. (It generally is not passive aggressive to ask for a citation, but I can see how someone could think that.)
If you wanted me to explain the rationale for my statement, you could have just directly asked, instead of criticizing me in the way you did, which seems indirect and unfair.
> ... pretty plainly not a legitimate criticism
What's plain to you isn't plain to me, and vice versa. I think you missed the main thrust of my argument, which is getting at the hypocrisy of asking for a citation and then making an uncited claim. Perhaps more importantly, it's asking for logical argument to accompany requests for a source.
There's a related issue in the current scientific paradigm, fetishizing statistical p-values. People are so distracted by the veneer of a p-value (or a citation) that they forget to look for a plausible causal mechanism.
By the way, you still haven't explained your skepticism of the original statement you replied to.
A person asking for a citation is not disallowed from making a claim. Someone else is free to ask for a citation from me, in return.
You are not only incorrect, which is fine, but you're unjustly calling me a hypocrite, which, personally, I consider to be a rather non-nice thing to say.
Furthermore, my request for a "citation" was supposed to be equivalent to asking for "any sort of rationale." You are interpreting that overly legalistically. I'm was just trying to have a conversation, OK? And I did it in a polite way. I would have been happy to hear a rationale that was not a citation per se. It would even have been OK for the person I was responding to to say, "I don't know, I just suspect it," or "I heard it anecdotally," or whatever.
> There's a related issue in the current scientific paradigm, fetishizing statistical p-values. People are so distracted by the veneer of a p-value (or a citation) that they forget to look for a plausible causal mechanism.
I agree, although that's not related to my behavior here.
I'm annoyed by the same thing you are, which is when people use "citation?" as though it's a counter-argument. But I wasn't doing that. I wish I had just said, "What's your rationale for saying that." But you know what? I can't predict when someone is going to misinterpret a perfectly reasonable and polite thing I've said.
I think the thing I was responding to is exactly the (rare) kind of thing where an actual citation probably is the kind of answer someone with a rationale would want to give, as opposed to a causal explanation or some other sort of evidence. So you're preaching to the choir, here. I get what you're saying, i.e., that many people ask for citations in a context where a citation doesn't really make sense (for example, a controversial medical claim where there are probably numerous studies that seem to disagree with one another). This just isn't that sort of context. I could see myself making the same point you are making in a different context. It annoys me to be lumped in with those people that you and I are both justifiably annoyed by.
> By the way, you still haven't explained your skepticism of the original statement you replied to.
I just don't think it's true. I know that cryptocurrency is being treated as a financial asset. I haven't seen evidence that extortion or fraud are a major fraction of what's going on with cryptocurrency. I have enough familiarity and experience with the field to think that my sense of this is probably correct.
Bitcoin is 66% of the market cap of cryptocurrency. It's clear that bitcoin is being used widely as a financial asset (it's available in multiple funds you can get in brokerage accounts, there are many high-volume OTC desks, there are derivatives, there is now lending). There is a lot of journalism showing that large sums of money are flowing into bitcoin as a financial asset; for example, the company MicroStrategy purchasing $425M of bitcoin, or Robinhood facilitating bitcoin trading, or GBTC accepting inflows of hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase bitcoin.
In contrast, I'm aware of ransomware, but I suspect it's probably a very small fraction of the bitcoin/cryptocurrency economy (but, as I said originally, I would be interested to see evidence contrary to that). My sense is that it's pretty hard to effectively launder money with cryptocurrency, unless you stay out of the US and Europe and parts of Asia, i.e., unless you stay in the places where it's already probably easier to launder money. But again, that's just my sense, so if someone has an explanation contrary to that, I'd be interested to see it, which is why I asked.
I view many of the smaller crypto coins as scams, so there is actually an interpretation of OP's statement that I agree with - I guess it depends on how you define "fraud" and "a huge fraction." Again, bitcoin is 66% and is clearly not a scam (though it would be fair to ask why that's clear if someone doesn't already know - but my answer right now would be, go research it yourself, I can't take the time to explain all that). Bitcoiners may be misguided or wrong, but it's not a scam.
Anyway, back to the topic of Bitcoin. I think your assessment is right in that the bulk of Bitcoin transactions are speculative investments. However, given that the value of Bitcoin as an asset lies in its assumed eventual use as a currency, the original comment might also be correct in that non-speculative transactions are predominantly related to illicit activities. I'm unaware of any common legitimate purpose beyond financial speculation.
When one thinks of world trade, there's (these numbers are from a faded memory of an international trade class about 2 decades ago, so they're horribly wrong) something like $50 billion in goods exported daily. That's the world economy. Then there's $500 billion in currency derivatives traded daily to ostensibly enable exports across currencies, but it's really just speculation. It's not real trade. So when someone talks about the Bitcoin economy, it's hard to know whether we should be talking about just the actual economic activity conducted using Bitcoin as a currency, or whether we should include the speculative trades as well.
If you call my comment hypocritical, I think you're calling me hypocritical. Apparently you don't think so. That's fine. It could be a cultural difference. Let's not litigate it.
> There's no need to defend a turn of phrase so vigorously. If you'd just led off with, "No, I didn't mean it like that," as you've done here, then I'd have shut up.
I don't think this is a charitable thing to say. If there was no need for me to defend it, there was no need for you to "attack" (criticize) my comment in the first place. If you don't agree, that's fine. Again, let's not litigate it.
> I mean, come on, surely you recognize how "Do you have a citation?" falls into the camp that both of us apparently dislike.
I don't agree. As I already explained, I think it's OK to ask for a citation, in a certain context. I don't think I was doing the thing you're complaining about and which annoys me. If you disagree, that's fine. Let's not litigate it.
I would have liked for you to find a way to continue communicating without continuing to criticize, but it didn't happen. Oh well. Let's call this conversation finished. Take care. On the bitcoin stuff you are bringing up, that looks fine to me. I don't have anything more to say about that.
Think about how difficult it was to enforce copyright law in 1970 versus 2010. In the former, copyright enforcement was a matter of having enough lawyers to sue enough enterprises. In 2010, everyone has a commercial-scale copyright infringement device in their pocket. You practically can't enforce the law to the same level purely because the targets are too small and numerous and going after them is a PR nightmare. This is why the music industry fought against consumer-grade recording technology for so long (and lost). Regulating large businesses is a fundamentally more tractable form of law enforcement than individuals.
I would replace 'money laundering' with privacy and anonymity.
These properties are desirable. These properties give the individual undertaking the transaction a semblance of control. These properties prevent authorities from taking that control away except by using the law, which i think is a fairly good way to enforce control.
So if the individual feel that the law is unfair, they have the option to _not_ obey. If enough people choose to _not_ obey, it forces the court's hand and legislator's hand - this serves society.
Under centralized control, the individual does not have the option to not obey, because their transactions require approval from authorities. This approval becomes a chilling effect for change, and it makes it easy to target them before the general society is able to transition or understand. Civil disobedience is thus impossible under centralized control.
And I notice you once called me GPT-3.
What a Blade Runner future we live in.
Cryptocurrency is designed specifically, by virtue of its decentralized and trustless nature, to facilitate money laundering. It was a design goal. This is what it's for. That and of course, collecting the proceeds of ransomware. Another way of describing 'money laundering' is transferring value, without the permission of a centralized government authority, with the intent to conceal the source of funds (hey it's your money right?).
That it has yet to achieve the same scale is not relevant.
All sorts of illegal activities aren't done at scale, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be policed. Otherwise you'll be pointing to the small scale right up until the moment it's not small anymore, and then it's too late.
1. Houses are meant for you to live in. Not super contentious I wager.
2. Trustless and decentralized means you can transfer value without the permission of a centralized authority. I believe that's frequently touted.
3. Money laundering is transferring money without the permission of a centralized authority with the intent to conceal the original source of funds.
That's the wrong part, even if it was just hyperbole for literary effect then you are conflating legal terms you don't really understand then. Money laundering is a legal term that requires an illicit origin, not merely circumventing the permission of a centralized authority. You were correct that it is designed to ignore the concept of centralized authorities, the rest was either a completely incorrect extrapolation of that, or hyperbole that did not give the effect you thought it did as it just undermines your point and the strength of your argument.
> Money laundering is a legal term that requires an illicit origin.
I'm not 100% sure if it requires both an illicit source and intent to conceal or not. It might, but it sounds like we both have half the definition.
For instance, structuring -- breaking apart large transactions into smaller ones to avoid a currency transaction report -- is illegal regardless of whether the source of funds is criminal or not.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-this-inte...
Okay. And that's partially why I'm open to the idea of the government ceasing to use public resources on whitelisting all transactions, instead of debating you over whether something is or isn't money laundering.
Structuring is a different crime than money laundering, which is actually another exhibit on why I want the government to cease using bothering using public money and resources on whitelisting all transactions. I read enough court cases on Google Scholar about paranoid people doing legal things convicted for only structuring on Google Scholar to make this opinion, and this was before HSBC got a slap on the wrist for literally accepting cash deposits from the literal cartel and getting caught, undermining the whole point of whitelisting transactions to begin with.
I assume you mean according to USC (ie USA law), could you cite which section please?
https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
and pretty much trying to avoid any monetary reporting threshold is a criminal charge whether you intended to or not.
so this one is funny because almost every fairly poor person I know, the kind of people that would rarely have over $10,000 at once ever, are the exact people that would harbor some belief about doing X, Y and Z to "avoid transferring over $10,000"
believe it or not, jail, right away.
Thinking about workarounds, of course carrying money over the border is limited to $10k too, but this was amusing (in a 'I can't believe they were that petty' sort of way):
>"There was also a case in Canada in 2013 where fluctuating exchange rates caused a man to have his funds seized. In this situation, the man carefully calculated and was carrying just under $10,000 CAD. However, by the time he reached the airport two days later, the exchange rate tipped his combination of USD and CAD dollars to over $10,000 CAD. Sniffer dogs detected the undeclared cash and the CBSA seized the total amount from him." (from https://clearitusa.com/u-s-customs-cash-limit/)
and carrying a cheque that's signed counts as carrying >$10k. So, I wonder about carrying a Bitcoin wallet?
Or maybe that's intentional.
In reality, like with cryptocurrency, trying to attribute intention where you only see an effect is just manipulative.
If it was its designed goal, it would've also included provisions to provide proofs anonymously, and reduce physical traceability.
I very much see some cryptocurrencies tried, and some are moderately successful with it, but none have progressed much on the former other than by using crypto signing by some centralised, or semi-decentralised entity which processes the ledger, or does proof of work. So, none of the popular cryptocurrencies have achieved a true "non-chain" way of working, which does not rely on a continuous record of the global state of the ledger.
The cryptographic trust in such mechanism would be much less than in a non-anonymous ledger, where the state of all wallets is recorded for everybody to see, and check for signs of something weird.
That is simply false. Virtually every cryptocurrency is 100% traceable.
Yes, there are a few cryptocurrencies for whom untraceability is a design goal. Obviously this does not include Bitcoin (which is the subject of this thread), and in general it doesn't include the vast majority of cryptocurrencies.
One single counter-example of someone who failed to take necessary precautions when committing a crime doesn't mean the tens of thousands of people you never heard of haven't been very successful.
Maintaining proper opsec for any significant length of time is extremely difficult, nigh impossible. Almost everyone will fail at some point. With pseudonymity, a single failure ever means everything is lost. With anonymity, only that single failure is lost.
.init: generate a new wallet and return its public key, the public key of another wallet (probably one per service for obvious reasons) with at least a DIME to mix and a opaque token identifying (only to you) the pair.
.fini: given a token from .init and a transaction that adds up multiple source UTXOs and sends 1 DIME to each of a (sorted) list of wallets that includes the .init-generated wallet, sign that transaction with your source wallet.
.link: given a DIME size in BTC and a (.onion) URL implementing this interface at that size, add it to a internal list.
.list: given a DIME size, return (possibly a random subset of) the list from .link for that size.
For best results you'd need to formalize this interface a bit more and popularize it for better entropy and better plausibility of "well, I guess someone else thought this was a good idea to imitate". Speccing a client to interact with such services (feeding data from .list back into .link and collecting keys from .init to build transactions for .fini) is left as a excersize for the reader.
The key point is that you have disposable pseudonyms that will mix their coins with anyone who offers a valid mixing transaction. Assuming there is demand for mixing from anyone other than you (if there's not, you can't really do anything anyway), this captures that demand in order to satisfy your own mixing needs, while also allowing others to bootstrap the exact same trick by adding their own backends via .link.
There's QOS and anti-DOS issues to be solved, but it's definitely something that in principle can work.
And suddenly, it becomes a SPOF for those people.
You probably have some good points to make, but saying something like this is just willfully not engaging in communication with the other side of the argument. That is an egregious strawman which obscures whatever valid points you actually have.
No it's designed to eliminate debasement and inflation