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Comment by paulsutter | Hacker News Reader

> Bitcoin is great for illegal goods/services

> Tax evasion and escaping capital controls are also possible with Bitcoin

Bitcoin is about as useful as lucky sunglasses for illegal transactions. Just ask Ross William Ulbricht.

I don't engage in illegal transactions. But if I did, I wouldn't use a mechanism that leaves a permanent, publicly available record just waiting to be de-anonymized.

> Bitcoin is powerful because it allows people to circumvent regulations, as it does not rely on the traditional banking system.

False. Regulations do not limit themselves to the traditional banking system. Bitcoin is about as useful as lucky sunglasses for avoiding regulation. Sure you can get away with it a few times,....

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Uhhhh, you haven't heard of mixing? I mean, not Blockchain.info mixing, that one doesn't work. But there's even a push for CoinJoin (by gmaxwell, one of the maintainers of the Bitcoin source code).

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0

Also, regulation is about as useful as enforcement. If you ain't in the US, enforcement is pretty weak and therefore you can get away with it MANY times.

> Just ask Ross William Ulbricht.

Ross William Ulbricht wasn't caught because of Bitcoin. I read the FBI report and there was absolutely no mention of the blockchain if I recall correctly.

Shouldn't Bitcoin have given him magic immunity?

All the people who transacted on Silk Road, do you think they should sleep well at night? Or do they all nervously await the statute of limitations expiration?

You don't think the FBI has the blockchain loaded into Palantir where they can map all those transactions against all the other data they have? The more traces you leave behind the greater the chance for that one slip up that links it all together.

Maybe the seller slips up and orders a pizza from the wrong wallet. Now they have him, and using the post office scan data they got you. Add as much complexity as you like, there's a way to unravel it. And you can't go back and take it out of the blockchain.

> Shouldn't Bitcoin have given him magic immunity?

No, why do you think that'd be the case?

> All the people who transacted on Silk Road, do you think they should sleep well at night?

Probably not. But certainly not because the FBI will track them through the blockchain, that's just ridiculous. There's absolutely no way to prove someone owns Bitcoins unless you get access to their wallet.

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