270 Addresses are responsible for 55% of all cryptocurrency money laundering

zdnet.com

35 points·belltaco··6 comments

I wonder why Bitcoin still has its place on the throne. I mean you've got privacy coins, you'd think individuals + corporations + criminals would all be in favour of that. Then again, corporations typically use an intermediary.

Criminals also run large, slow organisations prone to conservatism and groupthink.

Network effects. If you're a darkweb seller you know most people want to send BTC they purchased straight from a KYC'd exchange, this is preferable as any extra friction is bad for business. You would lose 70% of your customers if you only accepted monero, which has been delisted from any exchange with a fiat gateway. You can always switch the funds into Monero later on anyway to save your own privacy. Your customers being pwned for using non-privacy coins doesn't matter, so long as they only lead back to your darkweb nickname.

> which has been delisted from any exchange with a fiat gateway.

False, see kraken.com

What prevents you from anonymously exchanging bitcoins for privacy coins?

Forgive a possibly naieve question, but is this not prima facie evidence to a jury, of a link to the criminal act?

I mean, if its that few, surely this is tractable for LEA action?

pseudonymous does not mean anonymous. Nor (I would think) does the coin have to emerge into real world currency for causal chains to become strong evidence of linkage. Do some microtransacts, see the money wind up in the place, then find the people behind the wallet, by unrelated info eg when they "spend" it on you (browser grabs, other paths)

Seriously, this feels like an entirely tractable path to work on, and close off.

(not that Visa/Mastercard couldn't have shut down the CC scams going on either)

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