Isn't this a pretty strong argument against Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? (I am being serious.)
Pre-Bitcoin, the scammer would have her call an expensive foreign premium-rate phone number or mail cash to a foreign address.
A foreign address is still an address, which if used to perpetrate crime on a large scale, would represent a point of vulnerability for the criminals even in a somewhat lawless country. Bitcoin's role in these crimes is analogous to an alternate universe, lawless by design, where criminals can retrieve ransoms anonymously and with impunity.
I love the elegance of the bitcoin protocol, but I am worred that the civilized world will have to clamp down on it. You just can't have a place where anyone with enough money (a few k EUR/USD) can perform murders without any reasonable risk of being exposed. This will effectively turn us into a bandit country like Russia. I also think it will become harder to effecticely clamp down on cryptocurrencies as time passes, so time is of an essence.
Your 'reasonable risk of being exposed' is when you plan and execute the hit. It's pretty difficult to do. Also, when your target winds up dead, the first investigation is into whether anyone might want that person dead (motive), not the money trail.
Any hitman worth his salt will already today know to get paid in cash or similar liquid assets. As opposed to the ransom situation, the payment of a hit can be arranged long before investigators start looking, so you can easily ship a boxful of cash to a dead drop and avoid ever meeting the hitman in person.
And even if there was a money trail, you couldn't hope to get to a hitman by following it unless you have the other end to start down - ie. you know the "customer", who's the bigger criminal anyway.
> This will effectively turn us into a bandit country like Russia.
No, the availability of anonymous payments is not the defining difference between Russia and 'us'. The rule of law is.
I strongly suspect that we will see a whitelist-endorsed-by-some-reputation-broker approach sometime in the future. The suggestion of this kind of thing usually creates a big backlash among many Bitcoin supporters (for good reasons IMO). But eventually there will be many folks using Bitcoin without any ideological attachment to it, and they'll be lured by the appeal of interacting with agents endorsed by some other party.
Isn't this a pretty strong argument against cash?
Isn't this a pretty strong argument against email attachments?
No; totally different arena.
> Isn't this a pretty strong argument against cash?
Cash is a lot more traceable than bitcoin transactions.
> Isn't this a pretty strong argument against email attachments?
? :)
This is extremely false. How did you get this idea?