How can we prevent criminals from using crypto for criminal activity, then? Has this been solved?

Food for thought, aka current real use cases for crypto:

Money Laundering: Criminals use cryptocurrencies to obscure the origin of illicitly obtained money through complex transfers and trades.
Ransomware Attacks: Hackers lock victims' data or devices and demand ransom payments in cryptocurrency for the decryption key.
Darknet Marketplaces: Cryptocurrencies are used as a medium of exchange on darknet marketplaces to buy and sell illegal goods and services, including drugs, weapons, and illegal content.
Terrorist Financing: There are instances where terrorist groups have used cryptocurrencies to fund their activities due to the difficulty in tracking these transactions.
Scams and Fraud: Cryptocurrencies are used in various scams, including Ponzi schemes, fake ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings), and phishing attacks to defraud investors.
Theft and Hacking: Cybercriminals target crypto exchanges, wallets, and users to steal cryptocurrencies.
Tax Evasion: Individuals and entities may use cryptocurrencies to hide assets and income from tax authorities.
Unregulated or Illegal Gambling: Cryptocurrencies are used in online gambling platforms that may not comply with legal requirements or are outright illegal.

And the cherry on top: 3-letter agencies are working behind the scenes to undo any kind of privacy and anonymity that these networks may offer. The end result will be a highly inefficient, crime-encouraging system with patchy oversight and no real guarantee of anonymity.

This post was edited by Ashirgo on Jan 31 2024 03:30am

That's like 0.001% of crypto global use.. You just copy pasted JP Morgan CEO's speech, congrats.

How can we prevent criminals from using cash for criminal activity then ? Has this been solved ?

Food for thought : (from last Edward's Snowden speech)

Having to live secretly is pointless if you live in some orwellian society.

I guess he means we should vote better so that doesn't even become a need

This post was edited by Melatonina on Jan 31 2024 04:10am

This source puts the number at 0.24% for 2023, and it only includes very specific types of criminal activity: https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2023-crypto-crime-report-introduction

On a societal level we definitely don't want a payment system which is enabling criminal activity, sorry pal.

Edit: pointing to cash is actually a weak "what-about" argument, because cash is quite cumbersome to handle, and can also be tracked thanks to serial numbers printed on currency. Also, if cash is already a problem, then why invent another system which is designed to make it even easier for criminals to conduct their business?

This post was edited by Ashirgo on Jan 31 2024 04:11am

Criminals don't use crypto for 99% of their activites genius, at best they use monero but if you look closely most monero transfers are nerds buying hardware stuff and 4chan accounts on their merchant site.

Sorry that you're not making as much ROI as I do, gotcha chump. get your 7th dose now

This post was edited by Melatonina on Jan 31 2024 04:12am

"How can we prevent bank robbers from using cars for criminal activity, then?"
i guess by going full dystopian autoritharian government overreach by forcing every car manufacturer to have a remote kill switch that governments (and hackers) can use

which would also fuck with everyday regular people that are just using the tool for regular use like going to work with their cars (hacker remote kill switch causing an accident cause why the fuck not)


https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/news-insights/anti-money-laundering-regulation-of-privacy-enabling-cryptocurrencies.html

(AML is short for "Anti Money Laundering"):




those attacks would happen in different form if it wasnt for a ransom
this is why proper opsec is important to teach and why security for big corporations is a fucking headache, not because it's close to impossible to have a secure infrastructure but because.. you want your employees to be able to play candy crush on their spare time or have a secure network? the answer usually is they wanna be able to play the candy crush so as the security department, u cringing and being like "alrighty, so candy crush it is so lets make some holes in that firewall, that's your choice boss, you're retarded but that's your choice, dont come crying to us when all that sensitive data is getting stolen and ransomware attacked, that's on you cause you want the employees to be able to play the candy crush on their spare time"

if it wasnt ransomware attack, it would just be stealing the data and selling it to the highest bidder
or using it to make a competing product, like what, chinese corporations never done that before?
everything can be turned into a profit without having to be a ransomware


that's the free market, what's illegal in some places might not be in some
in cases it also save lives from people not able to afford expensive brands of legal drugs (medicines) for some conditions in some places like cancer treatments or whatever



in the USA anyways... pretty much anyone can get their firearm at like wallmart or whatever, those unibombers, theatre shooters or whatever been making their thing with everyday wallmart items...
in the UK it's knife attacks, few years ago it was acid attacks...


yeah, the canadian truckers, that are literally the backbone of society by bringing food to the stores so that those city dwelers can get their food delivered with one click on their phone
well.. those canadian truckers been labelled as terrorists and their bitcoin donations been blocked and hijacked by the government because they terrorists u know

meanwhile bush and clinton that created and financed ISIS with the $USD fiat dollar of the america, well, nothing wrong there, canadian truckers bad tho


sure, scams are everywhere and by that i mean literally everywhere
in diablo 2 can get scammed, trading an enigma and last second switching for plain armor and not double checking, scammed
on paypal can get scammed, paying for a service then reverting the payment so ending with both the service + money back
on amazon and ebay can get scammed with fake items
your grandma can get scammed by receiving a voice call with your voice, AI generated and scamming her of everything


tbh, more like "cryptoexchanges" says they are getting "hacked" while just running away with customers funds that they just stole
cryptoexchanges never were meant to even be a thing in the first place, those are entities that are acting as banks while the point of bitcoin was for self custody without trust of a 3rd party
the ones getting fucked over those, honestly.... fuck them, they aint learning from Mt. Gox, they aint learning from FTX, fuck those people
regulations are in favors of those exchanges, not the general public, they allowing exchanges to be criminal entities while trying to regulate the general public


tax is theft
R.I.P daddy McAfee for being tracked down and suicided for not paying taxes to the instutitionalized mafia


lootboxes aint regulated which is predatory af
like, that's not a cryptocoin thing tbh...


exactly so just use USD cash for real crimes
the cartels aint using crypto anyways since there isnt even enough money in it for them to store those trillions worth of USD criminal money
the USD is what's financing wars, not cryptocoins
the USD is what been used by those weirdos on that island thing
the USD is what real criminals are using,
and by real criminal i aint talking about the few pot-heads that are too lazy to get up their ass to support their local 420 sellers by ordering online instead from vendors that they know have good products that are not dangerous and cut with fentanyl
the real criminals use USD, not cryptocoins

oh shit lmao, i remember that one, it's the one were they didnt even mention privacy coins at all
https://old.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/114vcnp/chainalysis_crypto_crime_report_2023_does_not/

Agree with all of this



Second comment though : "Chainalysis' relevance is based on their ability to accurately and comprehensively surveil networks."

Exactly, so they only found 0.24% that they could reliably attribute to illegal activity, and the real volume is even higher.

The real volume is higher aswell with fiat criminal activities, same with drugs traffic etc. we only get a tiny part of it most goes under radars, deal with it

I suggest you go to price checking 2k random charsi pvm boots bro, it suits better your skills

This post was edited by Melatonina on Jan 31 2024 05:06am

I feel you, man. The ROI has been sweet if you timed it right. I'm just saying it won't last forever because the whole crypto scene has become a big thorn in the side for many people who share some of the concerns that I mentioned.

A lot of ordinary people with no financial experience have invested in crypto schemes, so in my opinion, governments are unwilling to put a sharp end to the whole thing because this would harm the common man. I think they will let it slowly fade into nothingness instead, meanwhile working to undermine the core principles of the system, like anonymity, etc.

This post was edited by Ashirgo on Jan 31 2024 05:29am