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Comment by trade_unionist | Hacker News Reader

Can be traced. Monero is another option but I've heard it can be traced too. I certainly wouldn't bet my life on it. But in either case you still have to convert it into cash at some point.

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Do you have a link to any current research showing that Monero can be traced?

I'm interested in facts, not rumors.

Coinjoin and coinswap is quickly making the tracing very difficult.

Difficult ≠ impossible.

Chainalysis says that Coinjoin introduces taint: https://go.chainalysis.com/rs/503-FAP-074/images/Advanced-Ob...

I believe that if someone uses something that's private by default, then its okay. However if someone uses someyhing that isn't private by default, but goes through efforts to try to hide the source of the funds, then it's suspicious.

Not just that it can be traced, there's a long-lived distributed ledger of the transaction. In a way, it's one of the worst choices.

I agree that a long-lived distributed ledger is problematic. However it sounds like you're implying that Monero can currently be traced. If you have any links to any recent/relevant research, I'm interested in hearing about it. I'm not interested in speculation or rumors like the other comment wrote.

Launder it through an MMO like EVE online

yeah but then all the authorities would have to do is go ask the people at Eve online what Bitcoin address was used to pay

No, you pay another player Bitcoin for ISK, and then sell the ISK to another player for USD

Still traceable.

Authorities follow Bitcoin transactions and ask questions which points them right to you.

And if you do it all at an internet cafe in Bangkok from behind 7 proxies and a fake beard?

No, you give the other player the entire wallet, you don't actually do a transaction

Then the investigators go to that person, and they point them towards you.

Eve knows the source of the ISK.

This is what these investigators do all day... track money as people try to move it around. They are good at their jobs

You're going to try to launder millions (maybe tens or hundreds of millions) of dollars through an MMO and think no one will notice? Good luck.

This isn't something I made up. Criminals have been using MMO's in-game currency to launder money for over a decade. The trick is to launder slowly over a long period of time. Very hard to catch.

I used Second Life (I believe, but may have been something else) years ago (a decade ago?) because it was one of the easiest ways to put money into anonymous paypal accounts (anonymous credit cards that get accepted by paypal weren't really a thing here back then). I bought crypto, used it to buy their in game currency, then cashed out their currency to the paypal account.

You pay a few percents of fees, and it's not "the NSA will not be able to find you", but it was more than good enough for my mildly paranoid ass.

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