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Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

> It's still highly useful for buying illegal drugs, and for money laundering.

Yeah, 'highly useful' enough for the authorities and for everyone to see all the transactions on a public ledger to track down who paid for what and to identify anyone who attempts to convert the BTC to fiat as soon as it hits the exchange.

Totally useful for criminals and hackers. /s Especially when they are getting caught all the time by the authorities when they use Bitcoin.

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That is one of the weirdest blind spots here.

It has an immutable transaction log showing everything that ever happened. It’s a fundamental part of the currency/protocol.

That means if your wallet gets seized or compromised, someone can see every transaction you ever did, every counterparty, and every transaction each of those counter parties every did.

That’s a big yikes if you’re in a criminal enterprise!

There are ways now to make it less obvious/transparent who is who, but it still exposes a massive treasure trove of info to law enforcement once they start looking, that just doesn’t exist with cash unless someone goes through a ton of effort to create it.

Hell, if I was some 3 letter agency, I’d want as many criminals as possible to use Bitcoin!

I've also found it weird how often the response has been something along the lines of “you should use a mixer”, as if that technology is proven to be robust or apparent awareness that it's not a great idea to publicly give law enforcement evidence that you're trying to hide something, especially when your activity might attract scrutiny because you're providing cover to a high-priority crime. I would not want to be in court pleading for leniency on the grounds that you didn't know or intend that your transaction activity would help North Korea.

> to track down who paid for what

The 'for what' part actually isn't that easy, meaning LE at least needs additional data points. And then there is Monero.

> And then there is Monero.

OK, but the GP's claim was about Bitcoin, not Monero.

tumbling is easy enough and makes it impossible to link fiat identity to bitcoin identity.

And easy enough for exchanges to detect if the funds went through a mixer or tumbler and can block or lock the account that has received the tainted funds and will require you to identify yourself via KYC/AML checks and with the authorities.

So no. Using exchanges to swap fiat to crypto especially with large amounts of money is not anonymous or easy and it is certainly possible to demix and untumble the transaction trail with tools like Chainalysis.

Mixers and tumblers only makes it harder to trace, but never impossible.

All coins have gone through a tumbler at some point. I don't see how that proves anything.

> certainly possible to demix and untumble the transaction trail with tools like Chainalysis.

This is just wrong

> All coins have gone through a tumbler at some point. I don't see how that proves anything.

Even if that is the case, exchanges will still require your identity for AML regulations if you try to turn the tainted funds into fiat in [0] and [1], especially for large amounts.

Bitcoin is not anonymous and is completely traceable. The same is true for tumblers.

> This is just wrong

Your reply is not a refutation, but a denial without counter evidence.

[0] https://twitter.com/bittlecat/status/1207621591820951552

[1] https://twitter.com/McHodled/status/1222172084610027523

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