[berkes]

It is not.

It's not anonymous, but pseudononymous. It's a public ledger, for everyone to copy and analyze. It's a public ledger that's mathematically proven to not have mistakes in it.

Exchanges are highly regulated. KYC is rediculously tight.

Sure, Bitcoin allows one to flee/fly to some criminals' paradise with their entire wealth stored in their brain (or on a napkin). And as long as they keep the money in crypto or black, it's unstoppable, really.

But it's a terrible medium to turn black money into white money. One of the worst of all options, really. And that's what laundering is.

Now, it's used for laundering. But that's more because its a great and easy store of value in itself. Not because a public, tracable ledger without any anonymity other than pseudonimity is a great system for laundering, because it's the exact opposite of that.

And certainly, if you mix in monero, defi, otc-trades and -there they are- "corrupt bankers", crypto as a whole can turn black money into white, circumvent blockades, fund terrorism and whatnot. But hardly easier or simpler than paper-money, gold, and corrupt bankers already can.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> But it's a terrible medium to turn black money into white money.

Isn't that what NFTs are for?

Create a stupid image, sell it on Open Sea as an NFT, bam, you've cleaned the money. Just claim it on your taxes similar to selling art and you're in the clear.

[berkes]

How does "creating an image and selling it" clean black money? It's not as if creating it comes with great costs that could be funded with black money, right?

Isn't the scheme that you then buy it from yourself, or via a proxy, somehow?

[Sohcahtoa82]

That's what I meant. You buy it from yourself on Open Sea. I just worded it very poorly.

[bronson]

So why is basically all ransomware paid in Bitcoin?

[berkes]

That's not laundering. That's getting paid.

If you want to transfer money in a way that's unblockable, unceasable, and pseudonomic, Bitcoin is a good system.

If you want to then convert that into dollars, it's not.

Ransomware is paid in Bitcoin despite it being terrible to launder.

[bb88]

Nobody wants some silly digital "coin". Everyone wants US greenbacks.

[berkes]

Nobody wants US greenbacks. You can't even use them to stay warm for long.

What people want is the value it represents in a way they can manage that value.

I don't want fictional numbers in some asset fund that say I own zero point not not not 1 percent of some company in stocks either. Or even numbers that say I have money on an account. I don't want gold in my sock-drawer, either. It's the value this represents (and the trust that this value will give me real stuff that I actually need, like a pizza, in future).

Bitcoin, to many, over the years, has acquired this too. There's real and obvious proof that people trust that Bitcoin has value. Not all people. But enough.

[bb88]

The US greenback is defended by a country with a very strong defense that includes a nuclear weapon arsenal.

How does bitcoin defend itself?

[berkes]

> How does bitcoin defend itself?

By being peer-to-peer, distributed, international and permissionless. As long as there are people invested in it (in the broad sense) it will continue to exist.

It's defense mainly is "energy wasted" as in: one acqcuires bitcoins by proving one has burned ridiculous amounts of energy¹. And a attack would need one to burn more energy than half of all others doing the same. Energy comes at a short term cost², and the amounts that Bitcoin requires in order for one to attack it, currently are unnatainable. Not even the largest nations have enough energy to waste/redirect to overtake, or shut down bitcoin.

So far, all attempts at stopping it (for groups of people, citizens of a country, as a whole etc) through legislation, network blockades, have failed and so far it's defended itself perfectly. Certain use-cases have been blocked successfully, and in many cases bitcoin suffered severe losses (china-bans-bitcoin meme).

But, AFAIK, not a single soldier has been killed to defend bitcoin. Not a single bomb detonated over civillians and not a single war-crime committed, yet bitcoin runs fine. So, if that's whats needed to make "greenbacks" valuable, then how can people honestly think thats a good system?

¹ (yes, in a time of an energy crisis...)

² (and long term, but no-one is paying that anyway for the last 100+ years, yet we all are paying for it).

[tugu77]

Yeah, especially the people scamming others.