Canada Sanctions 34 Crypto Wallets Tied to Trucker 'Freedom Convoy' | Hacker News Reader

Canada Sanctions 34 Crypto Wallets Tied to Trucker 'Freedom Convoy'

coindesk.com

41 pointscamjohnson2627 comments

Unless these wallets have their private keys exclusively held by firm(s) that answer to Canadian law, sanctioning a few dozen crypto wallets is about the only thing less effective than thoughts and prayers.

It means that the truckers could have a hard time "cashing out the crypto" using popular offramp exchanges because their wallets will be blacklisted.

The fact that the truckers have allowed Canadian government to figure out what wallet addresses are being used is the real problem here. Don't create one wallet to receive multiple donations and make it public for everyone to see.

If you think big international exchanges aren’t going to care about Canadian sanctions you’re very confused.

Or banks just about anywhere. What are you gonna tell the risk management people? “Oh yeah. We’ve been sanctioned, but it’s just Canada so NABD”

I just can’t even begin to imagine the train of thought here.

That assumes:

* The wallet owners are smart enough not to have linked their IDs to their wallets (eg used the same wallet with a traceable transaction).

* That wallets owners don't try to use public/centralized exchanges to cash out

* That they are smart enough to use a laundry to actually fix the problem.

How does the Canadian government know the wallet addresses?

My assumption is that they are actively searching the financials of donors who transferred money to those addresses?

However, on the bitcoin side, what stops you from transferring your balance to a new address that isn't on the list? So this is about as effective as an ashtray on a motorcycle?

>How does the Canadian government know the wallet addresses?

These so-called 'wallets' are cryptocurrency addresses for receiving donations. Therefore they had to be made public knowledge so that people can donate to them.

>what stops you from transferring your balance to a new address that isn't on the list?

Probably nothing. Anyone who has the private key can do that, and possibly has plausible deniability. The money can no longer be moved through any Canadian exchange though, because the exchange will freeze it, according to this government order.

> The money can no longer be moved through any Canadian exchange though, because the exchange will freeze it, according to this government order.

s/Canadian/normal/

Nobody wants to touch sanction monies. Especially not worth the hassle for such a small amount.

If you're dumb enough to just transfer from a sanctioned wallet to an unsanctioned one, then use that, you will likely be found guilty of contempt of court and sanctions evasion. Since the BTC Blockchain is public this is very obvious to anyone with an internet connection.

You could use a laundry to try and "sneak" out. But that is difficult unless you pay a lot (50%?).

Trudeau declared an emergency and invoked an act that allows him to sanction these accounts and do other things without a court order at all, contempt of court is unlikely. If they had evidence to seize the money that would pass a court it would have already been in front of one. Trudeau has declared this a war-level emergency and he needs to suspend civil rights to maintain the sovereignty of the country. It would be laughable if it wasn't such a drastic infringement and suspension of rights in the face of a protest.

The transfer and the new address will be easily visible to anyone watching the original sanctioned address.

> However, on the bitcoin side, what stops you from transferring your balance to a new address that isn't on the list?

This is something people tend go to prison for.

> So this is about as effective as an ashtray on a motorcycle?

Nope, you just misunderstand how sanctions usually work.

>This is something people tend go to prison for.

Woah, didn't expect that one.

>Nope, you just misunderstand how sanctions usually work.

I'm certainly missing something.

My understanding is that bitcoin is specifically capable of bypassing sanctions:

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-circumvent-economic-sanctio...

As has been proven in the middle east, venezuela, russia, etc.

https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2018/06/can-bitcoin-end-i...

Here's my understanding of sanctions: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/10/economic-...

I'm not sure what I'm missing.

Though admittedly the one link touches on something real. Without sanctions, you kind of might open up the requirement for violence.

> Woah, didn't expect that one.

Trying to work around sanctions tends to lead to you violating a variety of laws around the world, anything from money laundering to bank fraud.

Why bank fraud? No bank will want funds originating from Canadian-sanctioned bitcoins, people holding these funds will almost inevitably have to defraud someone in order to cash them out.

> I'm not sure what I'm missing.

Regular bank transfers can work around sanctions too, governments have to do a lot of work to track the activities of those trying to work around sanctions.

Sanctions are a tool you use against your adversaries who are usually located in unfriendly countries, they are expected to be difficult to enforce.

In this case the people holding the private keys to the sanctioned addresses are probably located in the US, the DOJ will not look kindly on them.

Yes, USA, Canada, or entite Western world sanctions only work if you have their financial infrastructure in the way.

It makes 0 difference to a typical BTC cash out shop in the third world.

Bullshit. Third world banks still care about where your money comes from, they have more than just their own government to answer to. If you lie to the bank about the origins of the money, you’re almost certainly violating the law.

Sure, you can probably get physical cash in some third world country. Good luck financing protests in Canada with that.

> Third world banks still care about where your money comes from

They care even less than banks used by mobs owning half of Piccadilly, and those are not third world banks, but first world's most biggest, and most powerful ones.

> you’re almost certainly violating the law.

At least in Russia, you aren't. No provable damages = no charge. And even if it is, only "aggravated, and particularly large fraud" carries a criminal sentence.

> Good luck financing protests in Canada with that.

If you haven't been reading news as of last half a decade, "money in bags" worked spectacularly well for KGB financing political opposition in the West.

> Bullshit

Do not swear

> They care even less than banks used by mobs owning half of Piccadilly, and those are not third world banks, but first world's most biggest, and most powrful ones

Apples and oranges. Truck protestors are nothing like the ”mobs” you speak of.

> At least in Russia, you aren't. No provable damages = no charge. And even if it is, only "aggravated, and particularly large fraud" carries a criminal sentence.

Even if that’s the whole story, you still haven’t solved the problem of getting the money out of Russia.

> If you haven't been reading news as of last half a decade, "money in bags" worked spectacularly well for KGB financing political opposition in the West.

The KGB has not even existed for multiple decades.

> The KGB has not even existed for multiple decades.

KGB lives, merged with mafia, and now owns a whole nuclear state after a few rebrandings.

Why can’t we just refer to things with their real names instead of playing games?

Does the story just fall apart when “the mob” is revealed to be people like Chichvarkin?

Sanctioning a Monero address, AFAIK, is completely frivolous.

It's been a while since I played around with Monero, but from memory: sender addresses are not known in a transaction and recipient addresses are trivial to re-generate (to the point where you could opt to have a new recipient address per transaction if you wanted to).

I’m a big fan of Monero, but strongly disagree with you.

If used correctly, Monero can provide strong anonymity. It is possible to use Monero to hide your activities.

It is also very possible to fuck this up and end up in jail because you left a trail of evidence that reveals your attempts to launder the sanctioned Moneroj.

Sanctions are never foolproof, they’re about creating an adverse environment to operate in. Sanctioning a Monero address isn’t too different from sanctioning a company operating only in Russia.

I think you missed my point. You can just create a new address in the Monero GUI with the click of a button. You don't need to transfer the funds to a new wallet.

It's like putting a sanction on a burner phone or throwaway account, don't you think?

> It's like putting a sanction on a burner phone or throwaway account, don't you think?

So? That’s … normal?

I suggest you read up on how sanctions work outside of cryptocurrency, all of these concerns are already addressed.

Sanctioning Monero funds is useful, the people in control of the funds will need to answer questions about their origin in order to cash out. They will have to defraud banks and exchanges in order to sell their Moneroj.

Monero might allow you to conceal your transactions, but that isn’t necessarily going to help too much when the people in control of the funds are known to the government.

I suggest you read how Monero works. The people in control of the funds won't need to answer any questions about the origin in order to cash out because the origin of the funds are not known to the network. When they transfer their funds to a fiat off-ramp, the source of those XMR will not be known to the fiat off-ramp, so there is no way anyone can answer any questions about their source because it's simply not known to any receiving party.

I know how Monero works. In fact, I’ve made several commits.

> The people in control of the funds won't need to answer any questions about the origin in order to cash out because the origin of the funds are not known to the network

You misunderstand how AML/KYC laws work.

I've cashed out Monero and I've also sent Monero to someone else in exchange for cash in hand. At no point did I need to reveal to any party what address I received those XMR on. There is no KYC process that I know of which asks for "the address you received your XMR on".

If they don't want to do anything that looks like laundering, a peer-to-peer exchange would be another easy way to convert the sanctioned bitcoins to USD.

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