Will crypto madness end?

[Biohazard777]

On 4/19/2021 at 5:10 AM, SorryClaire said:

Does it cause harm? No.

Sure it doesn't, just helps out a bit with trade in exotic items like drugs, guns, organs, people...

 

On 4/19/2021 at 5:10 AM, SorryClaire said:

Now cryptos rationale is in privacy on how you can spend it or when you can convert it to money without basically everyone going on whatever you did with it.

And what exactly do you need privacy for when it comes to your income and expenses?

[SorryBella]

2 minutes ago, Biohazard777 said:

And what exactly do you need privacy for when it comes to your income and expenses?

Never got amazon ads for similar/accompanying stuff after you order something?

[rafe_28]

3 minutes ago, Biohazard777 said:

Sure it doesn't, just helps out a bit with trade in exotic items like drugs, guns, organs, people...

That has been a thing loooooong before crypto and people still managed it. Also its not a reason to ban crypto. You could say crypto in trading in those areas is just a symptom not the cause

[Biohazard777]

1 minute ago, SorryClaire said:

Never got amazon ads for similar/accompanying stuff after you order something?

You can easily ad-block / ignore those. Not sure if you are messing me with or you seriously think that is a valid reason to make corruption and illegal trade easier?

 

2 minutes ago, rafe_28 said:

That has been a thing loooooong before crypto and people still managed it

Aaaaand we should make it easier for them?

[tikker]

2 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

You can easily ad-block / ignore those. Not sure if you are messing me with or you seriously think that is a valid reason to make corruption and illegal trade easier?

 

Aaaaand we should make it easier for them?

Crypto doesn't make illegal trading any easier than it already is. The only real problem is privacycoins whose aim is to be completely anonymous. Crypto in general is not anonymous and transactions are an open book, so if anything it makes it harder. You are only anonymous if the wallet can't be tied to you. The latest reports also show that criminal activity is lower than 1% for Bitcoin and that much more is happening with regular money. For example:

Quote

For Bitcoin specifically, blockchain analytics firm Cipher-Trace estimates that illicit activity makes up less than 0.5 percent of total transaction volume. Meanwhile, estimates of illicit activity in the econo-my as a whole, overwhelmingly conducted through traditional financial intermediaries and with tradi-tional fiat currencies, are on the order of 2 to 4 per-cent of global GDP.
https://cryptobriefing.com/former-cia-director-affirms-bitcoin-criminal-usage-is-significantly-overstated/

 

2 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

And what exactly do you need privacy for when it comes to your income and expenses?

This is a tricky argument. Having nothing to hide is very different from no privacy. Essentially with this you are saying that you are completely fine with any random person entering your house, going through all your possessions, reading all your emails and texts you've sent, listen to every phone call you made etc. Think about this:

Quote

Over the last 16 months, as I've debated this issue around the world, every single time somebody has said to me, "I don't really worry about invasions of privacy because I don't have anything to hide." I always say the same thing to them. I get out a pen, I write down my email address. I say, "Here's my email address. What I want you to do when you get home is email me the passwords to all of your email accounts, not just the nice, respectable work one in your name, but all of them, because I want to be able to just troll through what it is you're doing online, read what I want to read and publish whatever I find interesting. After all, if you're not a bad person, if you're doing nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide."

Not a single person has taken me up on that offer.

 

[Biohazard777]

1 hour ago, tikker said:

Crypto doesn't make illegal trading any easier than it already is.

You truly believe that, and that is the problem with the society today.
I'll tell you this much, if Crypto was around 15 years ago I would probably be a completely different person (in the wrong way).
If you'd like to know more I'll post my life experience.

 

1 hour ago, tikker said:

The only real problem is privacycoins whose aim is to be completely anonymous. Crypto in general is not anonymous and transactions are an open book, so if anything it makes it harder. You are only anonymous if the wallet can't be tied to you. The latest reports also show that criminal activity is lower than 1% for Bitcoin and that much more is happening with regular money. For example:https://cryptobriefing.com/former-cia-director-affirms-bitcoin-criminal-usage-is-significantly-overstated/

Cryptobriefing is a reputable source? Maybe I should provide a counter article by the British Sun or the Daily Mail (tabloids) for example?
If you take a look at reputable sources like official Europol, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime you will see a different picture. They will rarely posts percentual pie charts and graphs (eye candy yellow press likes to use), but they do post studies, what the current concerns are, how they are combating this new medium for money laundering and illegal trade, what can and can't be done.

 

1 hour ago, tikker said:

This is a tricky argument. Having nothing to hide is very different from no privacy. Essentially with this you are saying that you are completely fine with any random person entering your house, going through all your possessions, reading all your emails and texts you've sent, listen to every phone call you made etc. Think about this
Over the last 16 months, as I've debated this issue around the world, every single time somebody has said to me, "I don't really worry about invasions of privacy because I don't have anything to hide." I always say the same thing to them. I get out a pen, I write down my email address. I say, "Here's my email address. What I want you to do when you get home is email me the passwords to all of your email accounts, not just the nice, respectable work one in your name, but all of them, because I want to be able to just troll through what it is you're doing online, read what I want to read and publish whatever I find interesting. After all, if you're not a bad person, if you're doing nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide."

Not a single person has taken me up on that offer.

Those analogies have some serious flaws...

First of, you (or a complete random) looking at my income/expenses will not reveal my genitals magically to you, nor will it let you read my personal diary if I had one, nor will you let you touch my boxers, stand next to me while I take a dump etc.

As for giving random people access to my e-mail accounts via password... I am not concerned what they will read (have fun going though a million order receipts, junk, work related stuff and technical terms, past appointments etc.), I am concerned they will use it to send e-mails with stuff that I would never write, reset my other accounts etc. No wonder no one has taken up that offer.

Everyone I come across on the street can see if I am dressed well or poorly, they can see if I drive a banged up car or a fancy new one, everyone can see what kind of phone / watch I use, everyone can see which coffee I buy, what I ate for dinner at which restaurant, in which city locations I spend my time, It is also no secret to anyone where I go for holidays. None of those things are secret and that is perfectly fine by me, now tell me what kind of income/expenses do you have that should remain secret? Now you could say "but I intentionally dress like a hobo to hide my wealth from randoms", fine do whatever you wanna do, your right, but if something is fishy then I'd much rather have the investigators have a clean overview of the money going in and out from your bank account than trying to find a crypto wallet ID associated with you(if you slipped up and made the connection) after it goes through a mixer.

 

 

[tikker]

1 hour ago, Biohazard777 said:

You truly believe that, and that is the problem with the society today.
I'll tell you this much, if Crypto was around 15 years ago I would probably be a completely different person (in the wrong way).
If you'd like to know more I'll post my life experience.

Well Bitcoin was invented in 2008, so it's around for almost 13 years now. It's probably more worrying and a bigger problem with society that you (and people like you I guess) apparently turn into a criminal the second they gain some perceived form of anonimity with Bitcoin. If I give you 10k in Bitcoin the transaction is public and will literally say wallet A transferred 10k to wallet B; undeniable and irreversible. If I hand you 10k in cash nobody will ever be the wiser. Now you tell me which method a criminal transaction will prefer. Sure crime was high in the beginning, because it was new and very little of the world knew about it. Nowadays we have much more sophisticated ways to track transactions across blockchains or tie them to criminal activity.

1 hour ago, Biohazard777 said:

Cryptobriefing is a reputable source? Maybe I should provide a counter article by the British Sun or the Daily Mail (tabloids) for example?
If you take a look at reputable sources like official Europol, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime you will see a different picture. They will rarely posts percentual pie charts and graphs (eye candy yellow press likes to use), but they do post studies, what the current concerns are, how they are combating this new medium for money laundering and illegal trade, what can and can't be done.

About the studies, concerns and how to counteract crimes: of course they do this and all those concerns are valid, but concern =/= bad thing. They even (unsurprisingly) hold conferences with experts from all sides about this. Exactly the same things will be thought about for fiat, real estate or whatever market is involved in crime and money laundering. They're not going to let a currency go unregulated. Your "different picture" will not be "banish the evil crypto to hell", it will be a balanced report on problematic areas.

 

This is like news outlets reporting "Criminal used Bitcoin used to purchase chemical weapon!". Where are the headlines "Terrorist organisation bought bombs with USD!"? They don't hit the top because we've now simply accepted that our normal currency is used for loads of criminal activity and they're simply not interesting. We're certainly concerned that our hard earned dollars are used to buy drugs. Does that mean we need to ban the dollar?

 

This report by mentioned former CIA director I already posted. Here's another report from Chainalysis with easy to read graphs where they present 0.34% of crypto activity in 2020 was criminal activity:

Spoiler

https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-crypto-crime-report-intro-ransomware-scams-darknet-markets

 

In 2019, criminal activity represented 2.1% of all cryptocurrency transaction volume, or roughly $21.4 billion worth of transfers. In 2020, the criminal share of all cryptocurrency activity fell to just 0.34%, or $10.0 billion in transaction volume. One reason the percentage of criminal activity fell is because overall economic activity nearly tripled between 2019 and 2020.

Now let's look at Europol's point of view. Here is their 2020 Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment:

Spoiler

https://www.europol.europa.eu/activities-services/main-reports/internet-organised-crime-threat-assessment-iocta-2020

In 2019, the overwhelming majority of bitcoin transactions were linked to investment and trading activity so, despite considerable abuse, criminal activity corresponds to only 1.1% of total transactions. [reference to the chainalysis report]

The last two years have seen an increase in extortion spam...

The growing adoption of cryptocurrencies increases the number of vulnerable victims, so it is no surprise that thefts from individual and enterprise wallets have become more prominent.. <snip> Although the number of incidents was higher than in any of the previous years, the total amount stolen decreased <snip>

Cybercriminals will increasingly turn to marketplaces that support decentralised transactions. More marketplaces are likely to deprecate the traditional centralised model with deposit and escrow accounts in favour of direct transactions between buyers and sellers, decreasing the influence of market administrators and discouraging exit scams.

While Bitcoin still remains the most popular payment method (mainly due to its wide adoption, reputation and ease of use), the use of privacy-enhanced cryptocurrencies has somewhat increased albeit not at the rate expected by their proponents.

Extortion is nothing unique to crypto. They then report on how exchanges implemented KYC and such to strengthen security, which makes it much harder to get crypto without an identity attached to it. Their concerns about decentralised exchanges and privacy coins (whic they identify as the top threat) are fair and well founded. They are indeed something to keep an eye on. This is what they conclude:

Quote

Darkweb threat actors increasing reliance on encrypted email services, privacy-enhanced cryptocurrencies and BPH providers pose a substantial problem to law enforcement. This calls for increased KYC type policies.

All in all the numbers show that crime with it is still low. Crypto is an emerging technology. It's thus completely normal that risk assessments are made and that they take a conservative (i.e. somewhat pessimistic) stance. They also report on how encrypted chat apps pose a substantial problem, yet never call for an outright ban on any of the things they discuss. A search on the UNODOC website did not yield anything relevant to crypto. Perhaps you can provide your source on that.

 

I'm not denying there are friction points with crypto and law enforcement. I also believe law enforcement in this area will keep evolving and improving with time and that the black markets will slowly move away from big exchanges, centralised or decentralised. You will never eradicate black markets. Not in the real world and neither in the virtual world. If everybody would just behave and be a nice person we'd have no need for any law enforcement, but that's just not what people do.

2 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

First of, you (or a complete random) looking at my income/expenses will not reveal my genitals magically to you, nor will it let you read my personal diary if I had one, nor will you let you touch my boxers, stand next to me while I take a dump etc.

But giving up your privacy would mean that you have no objections to letting any random person do any of the things you list and subsequently sharing that information with whoever they like at any moment. Are you fine with that?

2 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

Everyone I come across on the street can see if I am dressed well or poorly, they can see if I drive a banged up car or a fancy new one, everyone can see what kind of phone / watch I use, everyone can see which coffee I buy, what I ate for dinner at which restaurant, in which city locations I spend my time, It is also no secret to anyone where I go for holidays. None of those things are secret and that is perfectly fine by me, now tell me what kind of income/expenses do you have that should remain secret?

So in your opinion me checking your bank account and every personal detail of your entire life whenever I like is the same as me seeing you order a cappucino in some cafe? I have nothing to hide, but you also have no business with my income or personal life if I don't want you to. That's the point around which this revolves. "No" wouldn't exist or even be tolerated in a privacyless world.

2 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

but if something is fishy then I'd much rather have the investigators have a clean overview of the money going in and out from your bank account

This is something completely different. If "something is fishy" they have cause to believe you are somehow involved or tied to illicit activity so they will investigate and get the required warrants when needed.

[RoseLuck462]

Cryptos that Robinhood supports like Bitcion and Dogecoin are vastly easier 5o buy on that platform makes it se like it won't go away any time soon.

 

I avoid using RH for crypto though because you don't have actual control over the coins you buy, you're just investing.

[Biohazard777]

2 hours ago, tikker said:

Well Bitcoin was invented in 2008, so it's around for almost 13 years now. It's probably more worrying and a bigger problem with society that you (and people like you I guess) apparently turn into a criminal the second they gain some perceived form of anonimity with Bitcoin. If I give you 10k in Bitcoin the transaction is public and will literally say wallet A transferred 10k to wallet B; undeniable and irreversible. If I hand you 10k in cash nobody will ever be the wiser. Now you tell me which method a criminal transaction will prefer. Sure crime was high in the beginning, because it was new and very little of the world knew about it. Nowadays we have much more sophisticated ways to track transactions across blockchains or tie them to criminal activity.

Cash in hand transaction is a logistical nightmare when you've got tens of thousands of stolen digital goods and you ain't selling all in one bulk, also each transaction is a risk... speaking from experience. If crypto was around back then as it is now I most probably wouldn't have stopped what I was doing. There were elaborate ways to avoid being caught, but almost all of them required a helping hand from questionable 3rd parties I didn't trust and there were no guarantees the trail wouldn't lead back to me, so I decided to quit.
I am commenting about this topic because I actually do have an insight about what is it like on that other side. I was a reckless, destructive, self-righteous and greedy, I am not denying that. I wish I could say my moral compass pushed me back onto a good path in life, but that wouldn't be the truth... the truth is that risks of being caught increased with every sale, that is the reason I stopped and changed my life around for the better.
This is why I can say with confidence, don't make it easier for them... maybe some of them have a change of heart, decide the risk is not worth it, or at least make them jump through a lot hoops to get the payout. All I would need today is some crypto wallets and a mixer, no particular skills, knowledge or connections... and I'd be a lot harder to track down.
TL:DR Poacher turned gamekeeper

 

2 hours ago, tikker said:

Your "different picture" will not be "banish the evil crypto to hell", it will be a balanced report on problematic areas.

I didn't say crypto is the source of all evil... just makes evil easier to slip by undetected, so why support it?
And of course it is gonna get regulated, as it should.
 

2 hours ago, tikker said:

A search on the UNODOC website did not yield anything relevant to crypto. Perhaps you can provide your source on that.

As an example, relatively new article:
https://www.unodc.org/southeastasiaandpacific/en/2021/02/darknet-cybercrime-southeast-asia/story.html
"Darknet criminal marketplaces have become more popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to a combination of technologies offering greater anonymization for both sellers and buyers. Features such as escrow payment systems and reputation metrics have increased. Cryptocurrencies are the payment method of choice, and while law enforcement try to identify the criminal end-users, the use of crypto-mixers, tumblers, or laundry services break the link between the initial purchase of cryptocurrencies and the final payment destination. This makes it more difficult for law enforcement to follow the money and bring high-risk offenders to justice. Alexandru Caciuloiu, Cybercrime and Cryptocurrency Advisor, highlighted that Bitcoin remains the main cryptocurrency used on the Darknet, but privacy coins such as Monero, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash are perceived as offering greater anonymity to cybercriminals."

Which is what I am saying all this time.
 

2 hours ago, tikker said:

This is like news outlets reporting "Criminal used Bitcoin used to purchase chemical weapon!". Where are the headlines "Terrorist organisation bought bombs with USD!"? They don't hit the top because we've now simply accepted that our normal currency is used for loads of criminal activity and they're simply not interesting. We're certainly concerned that our hard earned dollars are used to buy drugs. Does that mean we need to ban the dollar?

Exactly why I don't like to cite news outlets (be it crytpowatch, nytimes, daily mail etc.), hyped up headlines with little to no references and actual subject matter behind it.
I never said that regular currency or precious metals or diamonds or whatever are flawless, of course they are being used for nefarious purposes. My only point is that it is a lot harder to remain anonymous using those compared to crypto.

 

2 hours ago, tikker said:

But giving up your privacy would mean that you have no objections to letting any random person do any of the things you list and subsequently sharing that information with whoever they like at any moment. Are you fine with that?

When did I say I would give up all of my privacy? You keep putting that in my mouth and I keep correcting you heh.
I said "And what exactly do you need privacy for when it comes to your income and expenses?". Please don't deconstruct and rearrange what I said as you see fit.
And I stay by it, I would blink an eye if my bank records leaked or someone decided to take a look.
Someone knowing I bought 8 rolls of toilet paper is not the same thing as someone standing next to me and observing me while unload on my toilet bowl.
 

2 hours ago, tikker said:

So in your opinion me checking your bank account and every personal detail of your entire life whenever I like is the same as me seeing you order a cappucino in some cafe? I have nothing to hide, but you also have no business with my income or personal life if I don't want you to. That's the point around which this revolves. "No" wouldn't exist or even be tolerated in a privacyless world.

Good luck figuring out every personal detail from my bank account. Sure you will find out my hobbies, material possessions and my spending habits but if my bank statements are enough to define my life, spirituality and emotions then frak, this life ain't worth living, thankfully it ain't simple as that as we all (hopefully) know.
Figured you will cherry pick the least important example, cappuccino hah. Well actually in my case the choice of coffee would probably tell you more about me than what I ordered from Amazon yesterday.
As for would it be tolerated, majority is tolerating it right now.. if you are working a proper job paying your taxes then your income is not a secret, if you buy anything of substantial value (new car, boat, apartment, house) again not a secret, more about that bellow.

 

2 hours ago, tikker said:

This is something completely different. If "something is fishy" they have cause to believe you are somehow involved or tied to illicit activity so they will investigate and get the required warrants when needed.

That is the problem with anonymity that most cryptos provide in its current form, it doesn't just shield you from your neighbours and randoms... it also shields you from law enforcement, gov. agencies etc. 
You might find my views too extreme (all financial transactions publicly available and linked to individuals), same as I see crypto anonymity defenders views as too extreme. Best solution is probably somewhere in the middle, where all financial transactions are fully and quickly traceable given there is a warrant 1st.
Before someone calls me out and tells me "but you can't trace classical currency also if you...", yes true it is not perfect either but that kind of covering requires a lot more influence, power, resources... out of reach for most citizens.

[tikker]

41 minutes ago, Biohazard777 said:

I didn't say crypto is the source of all evil... just makes evil easier to slip by undetected, so why support it?
And of course it is gonna get regulated, as it should.

The thing is that with the "why support it" standpoint your are implicitely assuming the entire goal of crypto is to facilitate criminal activities. Still a majority of the attention or common knowledge about crypto seems to be as if it is made by and for criminals.

50 minutes ago, Biohazard777 said:

As an example, relatively new article:

Ah their website's search engine isn't too good then. Searching for crypto didn't yield any results.

43 minutes ago, Biohazard777 said:

When did I say I would give up all of my privacy?

By saying it's fine to raid your bank account youare implicitely agreeing to unwarranted invasion of privacy. Here's the twist: you say you have nothing to hide, why is your bank account fine to snoop in but not the rest? What are you hiding? That's how I see it will cascade down if we give up our right to privacy. In a way Bitcoin and the likes are themselves a privacy issue. If I transfer you some coin I can in principle trace what all future holders with it down the line as the blockchain records it all.

47 minutes ago, Biohazard777 said:

As for would it be tolerated, majority is tolerating it right now.. if you are working a proper job paying your taxes then your income is not a secret, if you buy anything of substantial value (new car, boat, apartment, house) again not a secret, more about that bellow.

But you still don't know how that big purchase came to be. They could have saved years for it or it could have been pocket change. The way to find out would be to observe their general lifestyle and go snooping in their bank accounts.

49 minutes ago, Biohazard777 said:

That is the problem with anonymity that most cryptos provide in its current form, it doesn't just shield you from your neighbours and randoms... it also shields you from law enforcement, gov. agencies etc. 
You might find my views too extreme (all financial transactions publicly available and linked to individuals), same as I see crypto anonymity defenders views as too extreme. Best solution is probably somewhere in the middle, where all financial transactions are fully and quickly traceable given there is a warrant 1st.
Before someone calls me out and tells me "but you can't trace classical currency also if you...", yes true it is not perfect either but that kind of covering requires a lot more influence, power, resources... out of reach for most citizens.

Luckily nowadays getting crypto is harder to do anonymously as you'll have to turn fiat into crypto at some point to start and most of the major exchanges now require KYC before unlocking the full trading potential of the accounts. I'd wager a lot (not all of course) of the "tainted" coins and wallets are from the beginning when we weren't as vigilant on it. Fiat is generally harder to trace than crypto I think (privacy coins aside again), but we'll need find a way to handle tumblers and privacy coins from a law enforcement perspective.

1 hour ago, RoseLuck462 said:

Cryptos that Robinhood supports like Bitcion and Dogecoin are vastly easier 5o buy on that platform makes it se like it won't go away any time soon.

 

I avoid using RH for crypto though because you don't have actual control over the coins you buy, you're just investing.

Yep, stay away from Robinhood

[rafe_28]

All i can say is TL;DR i am out of this convo guys xD

[Donut417]

On 4/19/2021 at 12:52 AM, Letgomyleghoe said:

The us doesn't even have reserve anymore, the US dollar isn't backed by anything more than a dream and a prayer.

We do. Gold is at West Point, Fort Knox and the US Federal Reserve of New York the last I have read. The US just no longer backs its currency by gold. But we still have gold holdings. Because being backed by Gold means that we can only print a limited supply of money, basically equal to the gold supply. By not being under the gold standard we can print an unlimited amount. OF course the more that is printed, the less value it has, which equals to inflation. 

[12345678]

Also jesus christ

 

it's really something mad buying hardware to make more money rather than buying hardware to waste time on video games

[rafe_28]

25 minutes ago, 12345678 said:

it's really something mad buying hardware to make more money rather than buying hardware to waste time on video games

It is? How does this come? Its a legimate way of using your hardware imo. It can do it Natively without modding anf programs were designed to do it that way. 

[12345678]

11 minutes ago, rafe_28 said:

It is? How does this come? Its a legimate way of using your hardware imo. It can do it Natively without modding anf programs were designed to do it that way. 

besides that my statement was purposely provocative

 

sometimes (like now), I do worry if the replies are serious or not, by consequences are you joking? your statement has literally no sense

[WkdPaul]

On 4/18/2021 at 10:45 PM, oskar23 said:

Im totally blown away that something that you cant have in your hand has such high value like bitcoin and many other abstract coins. Where is logic behind it?

Meanwhile in the digital age ; Netflix, Prime Video (not just the VOD, look at the recent "buying movies" scandal), Spotify, etc ...

[12345678]

besides things have value only because people give value to them

 

money is literally printed paper, who can be printed as much as you want (well technically not, if so you do risk to get like venezuela), even so, it has a pretty nice value

[rafe_28]

2 hours ago, 12345678 said:

sometimes (like now), I do worry if the replies are serious or not, by consequences are you joking? your statement has literally no sense

It was an opinion. But u didnt answer my question. Why do you think its mad to mine crypto?!

[Derkoli]

On 4/21/2021 at 9:33 AM, Biohazard777 said:

Aaaaand we should make it easier for them?

What?

 

It's as easy to launder money through a bank as it is to launder money via Crypto.

 

In september of last year shares for JP Morgan plummeted after their report showed that they helped launder 514 Billion USD. Deutsche bank helped launder 1.3 Trillion USD last year aswell. 1.3 Trillion USD is over half of the overall market cap for all Cryptocurrencies combined.

On 4/21/2021 at 6:21 PM, RoseLuck462 said:

I avoid using RH

I would avoid them for everything at all costs. After the BS they pulled during the GME/WSB hype and the recent DOGE bull run, they've proved themselves to be simply un-trustable.

[Biohazard777]

On 4/23/2021 at 1:16 AM, Derkoli said:

What?

 

It's as easy to launder money through a bank as it is to launder money via Crypto.

 

In september of last year shares for JP Morgan plummeted after their report showed that they helped launder 514 Billion USD. Deutsche bank helped launder 1.3 Trillion USD last year aswell. 1.3 Trillion USD is over half of the overall market cap for all Cryptocurrencies combined.

Source?
What I found on that topic:
 

Spoiler

"In all, an ICIJ analysis found, the documents identify more than $2 trillion in transactions between 1999 and 2017 that were flagged by financial institutions’ internal compliance officers as possible money laundering or other criminal activity — including $514 billion at JPMorgan and $1.3 trillion at Deutsche Bank."
https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/global-banks-defy-u-s-crackdowns-by-serving-oligarchs-criminals-and-terrorists/

A lot of money for sure, but that is a time period of 18 years...why overdo it with "last year" (you said that twice)?

And then you underplayed this part: "1.3 Trillion USD is over half of the overall market cap for all Cryptocurrencies combined". 

When crypto market cap surpassed 2 Trillion USD already...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-05/crypto-market-cap-doubles-past-2-trillion-after-two-month-surge
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/06/cryptocurrency-market-cap-tops-2-trillion-for-the-first-time.html

What do you think, what is going to be the crypto market cap in let's say 18 years? 
 

On 4/23/2021 at 1:16 AM, Derkoli said:

It's as easy to launder money through a bank as it is to launder money via Crypto.

Anyhow, I've already covered this, especially when it comes to big players:

 

On 4/21/2021 at 8:11 PM, Biohazard777 said:

Before someone calls me out and tells me "but you can't trace classical currency also if you...", yes true it is not perfect either but that kind of covering requires a lot more influence, power, resources... out of reach for most citizens.

Lastly I originally said "illegal trade easier", not money laundering. Sure it can be used for money laundering as well, but my primary point is illegal trade, and the reason is simple, the very nature of cryptos: decentralized system + anonymity (for most cryptos).
Let's say you find yourself in possession of vast amounts of stolen email accounts or steam accounts or digital keys for software or stolen source code or private celebrity photos... and you wanna sell those. You tell me what is the best way to get payed and avoid the money being traced to you?

[tikker]

10 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

Let's say you find yourself in possession of vast amounts of stolen email accounts or steam accounts or digital keys for software or stolen source code or private celebrity photos... and you wanna sell those. You tell me what is the best way to get payed and avoid the money being traced to you?

Cash or a way of transferring that makes it hard to trace origin and destination, which the majority of crypto doesn't have. The main worry are privacycoins like Monero. There have been claims of progress in tracing it probabilistically, but nothing significant yet as far as I know. You'll still need to obtain it without a trace, however, which is more difficult with all the KYC measures being enforced lately. If you've already drawn attention to yourself I think crypto is immediately a lot harder to deal with anonymously than it seems.

[Derkoli]

17 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

And then you underplayed this part: "1.3 Trillion USD is over half of the overall market cap for all Cryptocurrencies combined". 

When crypto market cap surpassed 2 Trillion USD already...

1.3 trillion is over half of 2 trillion. I was in no way incorrect in that statement. Half of 2 trillion is 1 trillion. 1.3 trillion > 1 trillion.

[MartinTheActor]

On 4/19/2021 at 3:45 AM, oskar23 said:

Hey

Im totally blown away that something that you cant have in your hand has such high value like bitcoin and many other abstract coins. Where is logic behind it? Can government ban that down the road? Im not sure if people mine that to exchange for dollars or just mine to hold. I hear a lot of speculations that dollar value will go to 0 due to crazy amount of money that was printed out last year. Whats your take on any of that people? What currency will we have in few years? Is it worth to keep dollars or buy gold/silver instead?

To just go back a bit here, and throw in a new wrinkle...

The UK Chancellor, an economically illiterate man in my opinion, has instructed a new committee to look into creating a British cryptocurrency. It would, from the sounds of it, be centralised (I mean wtf?) and administered by the UK Treasury and Bank of England. ‘Britcoin’ not bitcoin? UK considers new digital currency | Reuters

I won't lie, I don't totally feel like cryptocurrency makes sense for the wider market. As a lot of a nation's economy is built on trust, the wider population have to be able to trust any cryptocurrency looking to replace traditional reserve/centralised currencies. Could you explain in very simple terms, crypto to a tech illiterate 91 year old? I couldn't, not in a way that would make them trust and use such currency.

So much of an economy is built on what boils down to promissory notes after all. For the UK, a £1 coin, or £5 note used to mean that what you held was worth that weight of stirling silver. Hence our term Pounds Stirling. That's pretty simple to understand, I deposit material goods with my bank (i.e. silver), they give me a promissory note for that amount. There's still the trust obstacle there because you're trusting the bank that stores your notes and coins to make sure they're available to you at any time you wish, but established history has given people that trust. Sure, we in the UK no longer back our currency through commodities like silver, but that's still I think the way most people understand currency. It's worth a mutually agreed upon amount of 'stuff' (Gold, Silver, Wheat, Oil, whatever).

With a crypto though, I feel like it's not just a lack of trust. I feel like it's also something that feels 'not real'. Since the days when I was a scout I've kept a £1 coin and £5 note on me whenever I go out. It's usually somewhere hidden and away from my cards or phone. The idea being that if I get into real trouble I have some resources with which to at least call someone. Now, I've not paid with cash in well over three years, and if I ever come across a trader who doesn't accept my card I usually just leave the items and go to a different store. Even so, that plastic card is a real, physical association with the amount of currency I have. I, like most of us, have been taught to trust it, keep it safe. So, the lack of a physical promissory note of any kind (like a coin, bank note, or card) I think it the very real hurdle to crypto on a widespread form. 

I sort of feel like we're on the precipice where one clever, co-ordinated group would be able to undermine any crypto or digital currency. Call me old-fashioned but I really would feel better if everyone sort of agreed that my £1 was worth 1lb of silver (or something else). Of course that's still left wide open to a vault somewhere being robbed by thieves, but when thinking digitally scale is everything. Imagine if the Carbanak Group/Gang were stealing physical goods or money. It's going to be an order of magnitude more difficult to steal a billion in even physical banknotes. The relative ease with which they could steal currency digitally kinda shows the massive weakness of how we think about money in our modern world. Digital/Cyber attacks allow financial crime to be committed on much larger scales is my feeling. What if they next turn their attention to crypto? Is there someone out there right now working out how it could be destabilised? Given that as student coders we're trained to always act as if our code is being attacked, my feeling is yes it's only a matter of time.

I won't lie, I don't quite understand all the ins and outs, so if I've got something really wrong here I apologise. Main point I think was the whole UK gov seriously looking into their own crypto.

[tikker]

1 hour ago, MartinTheActor said:

The UK Chancellor, an economically illiterate man in my opinion, has instructed a new committee to look into creating a British cryptocurrency. It would, from the sounds of it, be centralised (I mean wtf?) and administered by the UK Treasury and Bank of England. ‘Britcoin’ not bitcoin? UK considers new digital currency | Reuters

These are just digital currencies (centralised, bank issued, transactions stored somewhere), not cryptocurrencies (specific from of digital currency, decentralised [ideally], not bank issued, transactions stored on a cryptographically secured ledger), which a lot of countries are looking into now. The US is looking into a digital dollar, the EU into a digital euro, Japan into a digital yen etc.

1 hour ago, MartinTheActor said:

won't lie, I don't totally feel like cryptocurrency makes sense for the wider market. As a lot of a nation's economy is built on trust, the wider population have to be able to trust any cryptocurrency looking to replace traditional reserve/centralised currencies. Could you explain in very simple terms, crypto to a tech illiterate 91 year old? I couldn't, not in a way that would make them trust and use such currency.

Crypto is designed, among other things, to eliminate the need for trust. You don't need to trust an individual actor in the network as long as the network can reach consensus about the truth. For mineable coins it's basically you vs the world. You would need to own the majority of the hashrate in order to mess with consensus and even then the most you can do is stop transactions from going through or spend the same coin twice. For proof of stake coins you risk your own funds when validating transactions. For Ethereum's plans, for example, you'll basically lose whatever you staked if you start accepting fraudulent transactions..

1 hour ago, MartinTheActor said:

So much of an economy is built on what boils down to promissory notes after all. For the UK, a £1 coin, or £5 note used to mean that what you held was worth that weight of stirling silver. Hence our term Pounds Stirling. That's pretty simple to understand, I deposit material goods with my bank (i.e. silver), they give me a promissory note for that amount. There's still the trust obstacle there because you're trusting the bank that stores your notes and coins to make sure they're available to you at any time you wish, but established history has given people that trust. Sure, we in the UK no longer back our currency through commodities like silver, but that's still I think the way most people understand currency. It's worth a mutually agreed upon amount of 'stuff' (Gold, Silver, Wheat, Oil, whatever).

The pound is a fiat currency, which means it is no longer backed by anything. A £5 note is worth £5 because the government says so and you can pay £5 worth of taxes with it. Banks also don't have all your money. In fact everything would collapse if everybody were to withdraw all their money at once.

1 hour ago, MartinTheActor said:

So, the lack of a physical promissory note of any kind (like a coin, bank note, or card) I think it the very real hurdle to crypto on a widespread form.

If it sticks around it'll just be a matter of time. Just like when banking went digital and debit/credit cards came around.

1 hour ago, MartinTheActor said:

I sort of feel like we're on the precipice where one clever, co-ordinated group would be able to undermine any crypto or digital currency. Call me old-fashioned but I really would feel better if everyone sort of agreed that my £1 was worth 1lb of silver (or something else). Of course that's still left wide open to a vault somewhere being robbed by thieves, but when thinking digitally scale is everything. Imagine if the Carbanak Group/Gang were stealing physical goods or money. It's going to be an order of magnitude more difficult to steal a billion in even physical banknotes. The relative ease with which they could steal currency digitally kinda shows the massive weakness of how we think about money in our modern world. Digital/Cyber attacks allow financial crime to be committed on much larger scales is my feeling.

One big reason to avoid gold, silver or whatever is that you have no control over them. Ignoring the cases where we print so much money it becomes even more worthless than it already is, we are not dependent on the world supply of said metal or how much we have extracted in the past year. The problem regarding stealing billions also has the opposite real life equivalent: it is orders of magnitude harder to physically transfer a billion from one place to another than it is to wire it across.

1 hour ago, MartinTheActor said:

Digital/Cyber attacks allow financial crime to be committed on much larger scales is my feeling. What if they next turn their attention to crypto? Is there someone out there right now working out how it could be destabilised? Given that as student coders we're trained to always act as if our code is being attacked, my feeling is yes it's only a matter of time.

As far as crime goes, a lot still happens in regular fiat currency and criminal crypto activity is less than 1% of all crypto activity according to the latest estimates. People often falsely assume that crypto is hard to trace and anonymous, both of which are no longer true or false generally speaking. Not to say it isn't a problem, it does offer some pseudo-anonymity. The flip side is you crypto is hard to steal unless generally you or the exchange where your coins are have screwed up. Cryptos are push currencies, so I can't charge your wallet for X BTC, you need to conciously transfer that X BTC to mine. The only way an attacker can have access to your wallet is if they have stolen your private keys or recovery keys, which means you or the exchange have messed up regarding the importance of keeping that information locked down. As for the attacks, see above. There have been 51% attacks and what not but so far we have recovered.

[MartinTheActor]

1 minute ago, tikker said:

 

Crypto is designed, among other things, to eliminate the need for trust. You don't need to trust an individual actor in the network as long as the network can reach consensus about the truth. For mineable coins it's basically you vs the world. You would need to own the majority of the hashrate in order to mess with consensus and even then the most you can do is stop transactions from going through or spend the same coin twice. For proof of stake coins you risk your own funds when validating transactions. For Ethereum's plans, for example, you'll basically lose whatever you staked if you start accepting fraudulent transactions..

I can see what you're saying, but this is the problem part for me. Explaining to someone why you can trust crypto (if they're not tech inclined) is not an easy task. I honestly don't think it'll gain mainstream traction. I know people younger than myself who just don't understand tech. Despite all the talk about digital natives, my younger brother (there's over 22 years age difference due to different fathers) has a stunning bad grip on tech and even basic concepts. Sure, our IT teaching in the UK is in a dire state, but he's literally never known a world without smart phones or google. For his last birthday (13), I bought the components and got him to build his own computer. As we went I tried to explain what each thing did, how it worked, the basic concepts. His disinterest was complete. He will never, I'm fairly confident, be interested or even capable of understanding crypto or how it works. I don't know that there's anyone who could explain why, as you put it crypto was designed to eliminate the need for trust. 

I do have a clear bias against digital and crypto currencies though, and accept the inherent problems with inflation, valuations, reserves etc. 
 

Quote

As far as crime goes, a lot still happens in regular fiat currency and criminal crypto activity is less than 1% of all crypto activity according to the latest estimates.

It's worth saying I don't equate crypto with crime. The two are not linked. What I was getting at was digital tech makes crime on a larger scale easier. Look, for example at spam/scam. If a scammer wanted to send out 10,000 phishing letters via post, the cost and logistics are pretty high. If the same scammer wants to send 10,000 emails, well it's almost infinitely easier and cheaper. 1, 10, 100, 100,000 scam emails is essentially the same cost and set-up requirements.

I resisted digital communications with UK's HMRC (Tax, Customs department) for a very simple reason. Scams and phishing attempts are at record highs currently. Previously HMRC could send out a very clear message: 'We will only communicate by letter, so any digital communication is a scam'. It's expensive, old fashioned, but it's secure. These days they have to communicate a very complex message and shunt responsibility for defending against scams onto the individual. When some phishing attempts are so convincing this is just poorly thought out. Banks are frequently the same on this. Their customers fall victim to easily scalable scams because the banks communicate in predominantly digital methods, and as they're unable to be clear about what is and isn't a legitimate communication they fail to protect their customers. Side note: There are many contender banks that have managed to pull off clear messaging defending customers from fraud by only communicating through their app's built in chat, so it is possible to prove what I'm saying wrong. Sadly, no mainstream bank that I'm aware of does this.

The point therefore was that if someone does find an exploit, or attack against a crypto or digital currency, I can only imagine that it'll be similarly easy to scale up.