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by crunchyfrog 995 days ago
A wants to give a bunch of money to B for a reason that they want to remain hidden (e.g. a bribe, illegal purchases, etc.). So B puts an NFT up for sale and A buys it for an inflated price. Now B has a plausible explanation for the source of the money.

You can do this with other assets like fine art or real estate but it is a lot more complicated. NFTs are a simple way to launder money online.
1 comments
moralestapia 995 days ago
Nice opinion, too bad it's ... not money laundering.
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GenerocUsername 995 days ago
Found the guy holding the bag
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crunchyfrog 995 days ago
Ok, what do you call it when someone tries to conceal the origin of money?
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moralestapia 995 days ago
>what do you call it when someone tries to conceal the origin of money?

Maybe just "concealing the origin of money"? Btw, in your scenario you actually left a public, immutable record of the transaction, which is pretty much the opposite of what somebody engaging in this activity (i.e. not LARPing) would want to.

Money laundering has to do with turning so-called "black money" into clean money. In your example, that is not happening anywhere. If A's money is dirty, B will be dirty as a consequence; whereas if A's money is already clean, B should be fine, so, why bother? It's just a regular transfer of money, you just used a fancy technolord mechanism but not different, in essence, than writing a check or using venmo or w/e.

Also, for anyone thinking they could outsmart RICO[1] (or their country's equivalent) with some PNGs of badly drawn apes, that is just so stupid it's actually quite funny. Levine would have a field day with that.

Also also, congrats, all that money you "laundered" with your fancy tokens is worthless now, per TFA. Very smart.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corru...

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fragmede 995 days ago
If it's not happening, why do the Fed's seize popular crypto tumblers, like Bitcoin Fog, Helix, ChipMixer, and BestMixer.io?

If you think the NFT marketplace crashing resulting in monetary loss is the first time a business deal has gone wrong between criminals, I'm not sure what to tell you.

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moralestapia 995 days ago
Please enlighten us @fragmede, did any of those mixers processed NFTs?

>If you think [...] is the first time a business deal has gone wrong between criminals

Huh? Feels kind of dumb that I have to type this but ok, here you go, "No. I do not think this is the first time a business deal has gone wrong between criminals".

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fragmede 995 days ago
I don't know where I claimed those particular mixers mixed for NFTs.

My point was that mixers, used for "concealing the origin of money", have been sized for money laundering.

The criminals tried some crypto shit to launder their money. It didn't work. Ah well, back to buying car washing shops for them.

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