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Comment by daturkel | Hacker News Reader

Do you have any sources for your claim that Bitcoin is used for large Russian/Saudi assets? It seems like the volume of BTC traded for illicit purposes is large in aggregate, but I'm not sure I've seen evidence of individual transfers being big. There are many ways that bad or unscrupulous actors can transfer money now that are actually less risky than Bitcoin.

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I'm not commenting on the use of Bitcoin for Russian/Saudi interests, simply some information on Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing.

Money Laundering tends to be smallish sums deposited over time, resulting in large amounts. You can't wash 100MM in one go.

Terrosist Financing tends to be a very large number of small transactions from multiple global sources in a very short space of time into one account/wallet/location. Like crowd-sourcing, in fact exactly the same as crowd-sourcing.

Less risky than Bitcoin? In the end you have to get it out of the blockchain to be useful, so that's where the pointers from a law-enforcement perspecive are.

I have zero interest in Bitcoin, but the idea that terrorists finance happens through cryptocurrency is very naive. Terrorism is sponsored on the ground, with goods, not money that you have to convert to some other money first, and then buy things you need.

This is correct. International funding does happen. Funds travel across regions, countries, territoritories, very quickly, to enable the passing of goods on the ground.

Look at the BTC price fluctuations when another round of sanctions is added on Russia, when Cyprus cracked down on tax evaders or wduring the Saudi corruption crackdown. Everytime it peaks.

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