[farresito]

Are you really untraceable if you switch from ETH to BTC and then to dollars or euros? I don't really know how Ethereum works, but if every transaction is recorded, whichever exchange he used would have the origin ETH and destination BTC wallets and whichever bank account it's going to, wouldn't it? I would appreciate some insight on that.

[the_stc]

You're totally traceable. Always assume third party records are public.

We're working on a guide for people to invest anonymously with us. It's not so simple. Monero is great, but their current defaults are too low to guarantee the privacy they say they have, and changing the defaults makes your transactions stick out.

What you have to do is:

1. Exchange into Monero.

2. Churn with Monero. This means you'll send your XMR from your wallet to your wallet, over and over again. Probably once every 3-6 hours, randomly. The destination address is private in Monero, so sending to your own wallet is fine.

3. After some time (1-3 days) send to another exchange to get Bitcoin/Ether/etc. Need to look at trade volumes to make sure you don't stick out. And probably not send out the same amount you put in. Keep half or some chunk and slowly leak it back to Bitcoin.

4. Optionally one could stack on a couple of Bitcoin mixers, on the idea that you won't have the bad luck to hit two compromised mixers. But each one will take ~2% so it adds up.

At that point you have coins reasonably unrelated to your earlier identity. Getting them into cash is a whole other guide.

[CuriousCosmic]

if you switch between networks you suddenly no longer have a transparent transaction. Mind you, the details of the transaction (i.e. which account BTC the ETH was converted into) can be retrieved, but not without some effort and paperwork from authorities.

If you say, split up the ETH and tumble it into a number of smaller wallets, transfer it to BTC with a bunch of seperate accounts and/or exchanges, and then tumble it again on the BTC side, then it no longer is as simple as requesting one transaction from one account.

Now you have to trace the currency through the tumbler, request information on n number of accounts while providing details indicating that all n accounts are tied to some crime, and then trace all of said currency through another tumbler.

At this point, if it all ends up into one BTC wallet, you could find them. However if it ends up in a number of smaller BTC wallets, you also have to now prove that those wallets are all owned by the same person and not just a bunch of wallets owned by seperate people who happened to have a total of x amount of BTC adding up to roughly the equivalent value in ETH minus transaction fees.

It goes from one step with some paperwork into months worth of work by a team of skilled people, a tonne of paperwork, and a high probability of ending up with a dead end after all of this.

[albertgoeswoof]

>if it ends up in a number of smaller BTC wallets, you also have to now prove that those wallets are all owned by the same person and not just a bunch of wallets owned by seperate people who happened to have a total of x amount of BTC adding up to roughly the equivalent value in ETH minus transaction fees.

This could be considered handling stolen goods, and could be prosectuable. Anyone who has access to the private keys that have been involved could potentially be considered an accessory (provided they have spent them and not reported the transaction).

[CuriousCosmic]

It could, but the point I was making is that you have to make the case that they are intentionally holding the stolen currency and not just having been paid said currency for a service of some kind.

[albertgoeswoof]

I'm not sure that holds, it's like getting paid for a service with marked currency. At best you would have the currency taken off you, and investigated/forced to disclose details of all your transactions, at worst you would be considered for handling stolen goods.

[Cthulhu_]

If you look at purely their respective transaction logs, then probably not. However, you need an exchange to do the transfer. You could do this offline, sit with a guy who is willing to transfer the funds outside of one of the known exchanges - I don't know if there's anyone offering this yet, I can imagine in certain circles this does happen, but it requires a lot of trust.

A lot of the online exchanges are government-regulated nowadays though, and require photo ID for you to be able to do things. Mind you, it should be fairly trivial to forge or use stolen IDs. I think Coinbase asks for a second ID at one point, probably for larger transactions. But either way, those will have a transaction log, so they can see the path from wallet > fiat > bank account, and from there the banks, also regulated, can point to you (and they do / should check your ID with a bit more scrutiny).

TL;DR it's only untraceable if you can do the exchanges between cryptocurrencies and to fiat in real life with shady characters.

[dharma1]

>You could do this offline, sit with a guy who is willing to transfer the funds outside of one of the known exchanges - I don't know if there's anyone offering this yet,

Has been a thing for a few years now - https://localbitcoins.com/

[6127qz17]

And also what happen when your dollar or euro bank account takes +30 millions in few days ? Do banks have alerts when someone's account activity is unsual compare to historic usage ?

[the_stc]

Your account will almost certainly be frozen until you show up and convince the bank you're not a money launderer. Given the complexity of AML laws, you probably actually are at that point. And therefore the conversation with the bank might not go in your favor.

[CuriousCosmic]

Instead, you just pull a few thousand a week for a few years, pay taxes, and leave the rest in BTC, using that to pay for as much stuff as you can/want.

[yellowapple]

The "right" way to launder cryptocurrencies is normally to use it to buy a whole bunch of Monero (or some other cryptocurrency with stronger claims of anonymity), then bounce that around a bit before using it to buy Bitcoin (which is then sold for fiat or used directly).