[HenryBemis]

But why would someone pay $50 for a $5 transaction? A criminal perhaps to stay under the radar. A sensible person would go for the cash option and pay $5 for $5.

If on the other hand someone was to launder money ;) then still the fee is tooo large to launder petty cash (pay 55 dirty to get 5 clean). An efficient money laundering rate is anything north of 50% (100 dirty --> 50-70 clean).

[Fnoord]

> An efficient money laundering rate is anything north of 50% (100 dirty --> 50-70 clean).

That's supported by what I read in "Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground" by Kevin Poulsen. Book's about Max Butler alias Iceman who ended up as in the higher echelon as vital gear of a carding gang. They'd have people who'd shop and resell the items instantly, as if new. The shoppers also need to get paid, obviously.

Blockchain's entirely public, so Bitcoin is terrible for money laundering. Not any better than USD.

Monero is apparently anonymous though. Though I take the term anonymous with a huge grain of salt since its always a relative term, not an absolute binary flag.

[stale2002]

Money laundering is not the glorious vision that Satoshi sold to me or the world. I really don't care about that use case. If THAT is all that bitcoin is good for, then I hope it dies.

I got into bitcoin because I believed in a peer to peer electronic cash system.