yes, hashchaining is useful [LWN.net]

yes, hashchaining is useful

Posted Jan 14, 2018 12:01 UTC (Sun) by ras (subscriber, #33059)
In reply to: yes, hashchaining is useful by Cyberax
Parent article: Welcome to 2018

> Bitcoin also enables untraceable (for now) money laundering.

All joking aside, Bitcoin is no longer the favoured way of doing this. Unlike Bitcoin, Monero was designed to be anonymous. That doesn't really matter while mixers and it's equivalents like SatoshiDICE are tolerated. But now that Bitcoin's fees are $34 versus $4 for Monero, the oppressed traders you mention are discovering the benefits of privacy guaranteed by crypto, not government disinterest.

Give these people were the true backbone of Bitcoin, this enlightenment may well be the death knell the end of the first successful crypto currency to crawl out of the primordial cyber soup. It''s sad to watch, but I guess future generations will view it with the same disinterest they have for the extinction of the Lucy's (Australopithecus afarensis) mob.

> Suppose I am a successful crack cocaine dealer wishing to untraceably launder a stack of $100,000 USD utilizing Bitcoin, without fearing that ordinary procedures available to the FBI could be used to get me locked up in jail. How would I go about doing that _exactly_?

Create an wallet, which is effectively a random number that no one can trace. Ensure payment is made to said random number. This effectively arranges for the transfer of traceable fiat to a random number, denominated in Bitcoin. That isn't much use until you reverse the process. Here are two approaches:

1. Redeem those bitcoins in a country / bank that is out of reach of your country, or

2. Transfer the funds to a mixer. Eg, bet the entire lot at SatoshiDICE. The money from your anonymous wallet will put into the pool of all other bet placed at the time. SatoshiDICE will then transfer the outcome of your bet from that mixed pool to a wallet you nominate. I have no idea what the odds or payout are, but you can imagine it might be double if you win, or perhaps 3% less if you lose. In the long run you will lose 1% or something. That's the house fee for the laundering service.

This sort of privacy was always available to someone who was willing to pay a few $10K for it, as the Panama Papers made plain. Of course the Panama Papers are also the reason I used the word "was" and not "is". Now crypto currencies make this sort of privacy available to the rest of us. But as Cyberax points out the "rest of us" includes ransomware and kidnappers, so maybe that's not such a great thing. But the libertarians should be happy, as we are all equal now.

> A bank that is not connected to the SWIFT network will be rather useless, since it won't be able to accept wire transfers. It'll be limited to cash operations only.

Yes, that's true. But have you looked at Ripple's client list? It's bloody big, and it wants to replace SWIFT. And banks connected to Ripple but not SWIFT *can* accept wire transfers from other banks connected to Ripple. Not that this has anything to do with crypto currencies. Even Ripple's internal currency, RXP, which they call a crypto currency has very few of the properties I said above all crypto currencies had in common.

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yes, hashchaining is useful

Posted Jan 18, 2018 3:08 UTC (Thu) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link]

"1. Redeem those bitcoins in a country / bank that is out of reach of your country, or"

That doesn't result in 'clean money' that you can spend in your home country and not have trouble explaining where it came from to the first authorities that decide to ask.

Likewise, if you have the cooperation of a corrupt foreign casino, you can always claim to have just won the money at that casino. So make sure that whatever you describe isn't boiling down to something that is not a more effective strategy than that.

as much techno-liberty/privacy/security as you can afford, sigh

Posted Jan 18, 2018 5:10 UTC (Thu) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link]

"Of course the Panama Papers are also the reason I used the word "was" and not "is". Now crypto currencies make this sort of privacy available to the rest of us."

Hashtag - "As Much Privacy, Security, and Freedom as you can afford."

The important aspect of bringing parity between the rich elites and the masses as far as advanced technological capability (vis a vis privacy, security, currency liberty, and all other fun stuff) is that it facilitates the only forseeable way to get law/{s,enforcement} to begin to balance justice amongst those classes. That and the Leaker method you highlighted. But absent the ability to conjure a Snowden, the way to get good law wrt to tech based privacy/currency-liberty is to enable the masses to be as nefarious as the monied elites previously were. If the shenanigans are only being pulled by the 0.1%, it's too easy for them to get their mainstream media pal$ to hype the narrative that better laws aren't needed. That and the imbalance was clearly a form of injustice to begin with. Of course there will always be lots of ways the rich will be more powerful, but it seems worthwhile to level the bigger playing fields as much as and whenever possible.