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- Low liquidity on exchanges for privacy coins, meaning if you order 5m Monero it drastically increases the price

- FSPs may question and refuse to facilitate a Monero purchase due to its niche usage

- Major exchanges don't list XMR and you want as few hoops as possible to allow the victim to pay, can easily just switch your btc for XMR later, that's fairly simple on a decentralized exchange or a shady offshore one.

Criminals will keep doing what works until it stops working. There are botnets that still do command and control over IRC.

I thought you can easily wash the money by converting it through an anonymous cryptocurrency and then out again anyways.

The networks don't interoperate, so you need a "trusted" party to provide this service.

An atomic exchange fulfills this requirement, assuming your capable of auditing the code that runs the swap smart contract.

Most dark markets are indeed shifting towards Monero

A few crews have started asking for Monero.