[lmeyerov]

Sort of, especially if you can do a network of these.

Amazon is an Everything store, including more easily washed financial products like gift cards that companies normally avoid for these reasons. I bet they can use their proceeds to exchange for these.

I am curious if, by having a linked AWS account fueled by these, if there is a way to fully wash. E.g., bitcoin mining sets a super lossy floor.

(We do graph analytics, where mining webs of transactions & their meta data is super interesting. Funny behaviors like these pop out as weird and extreme looking topologies when looking at them :)

[leetcrew]

how do you wash a gift card? I would assume the original method of payment for the card is logged somewhere. unless you can turn around and sell the gift card for cash really quick, you would be stuck holding evidence.

[lmeyerov]

Yep, it's a time-sensitive market, as they're racing teams that will take days/weeks/months/never to catch up.

* Dark web resellers: "20-50% take for X cards at Y $ in Z time" => additional jumbling (drop shipping, ...) and exit points (discounted $ for anonymous purchases for/during illegal activities)

* Normal marketplaces: "$100 starbucks card, 10% off!"

* Sell to physical retailers like small corner stores

The approach & time will all impact % retained

Edit: Here's a fun one, esp. when you think through all the ground operations / people in the drug supply chain: https://losspreventionmedia.com/gift-cards-have-become-a-com... . We work with a lot of sec/fraud teams, where I've repeatedly heard the story "At $100M-1B revenue the finance wizards started a gift cards program, but it became such a pain point that we canceled it."