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by HNfriend234 1897 days ago
If they want to launder the funds all they have to do is used a decentralized exchange to convert the bitcoin into something like monero. Monero has an encrypted blockchain and a bunch of other anonymization features. So once you convert it to monero, poof, the funds simply disappear into the ether just like that without a trace. They can then convert it back into bitcoin if they want as well.
2 comments
g00gler 1897 days ago
Wouldn’t they have some trouble getting it into an exchange to change it to XMR?

I assume that even if they moved some portion of it, say 10 BTC, to N different wallets, those transactions would be traceable to the exchange?

I’m not sure how XMR works but then the exchange would know at least which wallet the XMR was sent to.

I’m also not sure of the law surrounding a P2P transfer (IE receiving stolen property) but I’m guessing you might be SOL if you did a trade with them on a P2P platform as well...

Very interested if someone in the know would like to chime in

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sjtindell 1897 days ago
Defi exchanges can help with this. You essentially give your money to a smart contract and receive whichever other token you’d like.
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Gaelan 1897 days ago
But what exchange (in its right mind) would take those bitcoins? They're permanently tainted, and are likely very hard to convert into fiat currency, and therefore have, I expect, near zero value.
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spurdoman77 1897 days ago
The exchange taking it wont be knowingly taking it, it is likely just a exchange that doesnt have system for detecting it.

There are thousands of btc exchanges all around the world. For sure there are some where they dont even know about bitfinex.

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Salgat 1897 days ago
All it takes is one country like Switzerland legalizing cryptocoin tumbling. You send your bitcoin to a single address along with millions of others, and it sends out to millions of addresses different values, with no traceability between the sender and receiver (if done correctly, such as batching all transactions over a month into a single event). It would be used by many legal entities also in order to hide their activity (rich people don't want their financial activity known to the public even if it's completely legal).
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