[aspenmayer]

Now show cashing out.

This isn't meant to be a gotcha or a takedown, as I appreciate that you're one of the few HN users knowledgeable about crypto who isn't a shill or dismissive of crypto out of hand.

For those who aren't familiar with this industry, there are folks whose job it is to solve these problems with KYC being less effective than it ought to be. Many work in industry as devs, and many do the same as part of the Department of Justice or an affiliated agency or approved third party contractor. There are relevant working groups that bring all relevant parties together for operations. I don't want to assume that you don't know this, but you should not make it out like crime is easy, or that it pays. That said, government salaries are criminally low across the board. I can only assume the private sector of this niche pays better, as it can't very well pay much less than the public sector. Why this is the case is absurd, as it is mostly to do with pay scales and levels, and the near-impossibility of paying workers more, even when it's ready money that is already allocated.

[yieldcrv]

You cash out in your personal account by launching a memecoin and buying a tiny bit on launch (or minting extra for yourself)

the baked xmr funds are once again swapped into virgin addresses that all buy your memecoin, with your clean funds you sell your position into the liquidity pool of the pumped coin

it looks the same as any other launch. are they bots, are they retail degens? who knows, pay capital gains tax and move on.

you can modify this by having the virgin addresses with dirty funds launch and pump the coin too, as long as your clean address buys near the beginning and sells into liquidity

this can all be scripted and done with unlimited amounts, a “bundler” can manage many virgin addresses with a nice GUI now, specifically to be multiple buyers and sellers of a launch

you can unlink your clean funds in less (or equally) restrictive ways for other reasons and privacy, but its clean enough to pay taxes on and be free and clear

[aspenmayer]

That isn’t cash, that’s just more crypto, or am I reading you wrong?

The liquidity pool will get you back into mainline cryptos, but then what?

[eszed]

Sell your mainline crypto for money-money, and declare it on your taxes? Isn't that straightforward to do, nowadays? Not trying to be snarky: I've never been involved in crypto, but I thought I understood it in principle.

Sidenote: The GP's point was an Aha! moment for me about memecoins. I never got why anyone ever bought into these at all, but money laundering makes perfect sense.

[yieldcrv]

you understand it

but one thing you’re missing is that people dont know which ones will be money laundered - or attract gobs of capital for unknown reasons - and go up in price wildly. so people play at all levels depending on their risk appetite since the profits from a coin being pumped are so wild.

these things launch with a marketcap in the low thousands, and run to marketcaps in the millions and billions for tens of thousands of % gains. its what retail has always wanted from the IPO market, but instead of waiting decades for every rule to slowly change with no sign of the private sector using those rules, they have the crypto ecosystem now and its been a hit.

as far as financial market innovation goes, the liquidity pool code is pretty novel and an active area of research and competition, a candidate of something to graduate to - or intertwine with - the traditional markets

[eszed]

Ah! It's penny stocks, then. My grandfather lost a ton of money "investing" in those, over the years - but his occasional hits, generally when he happened to piggyback a pump scheme (a gold mine scam in Papua New Guinea particularly sticks out), more than made up for it, at least to him.

[yieldcrv]

Yep

In fact its more like every unincorporated idea and general partnership and incorporated business all thrusted into visibility and publicly traded status all at once, right along side private equity backed corporations and ones that have actual institutional underwriters and IPO’d, issued and trading 24/7/365 with no circuit breakers or halts of any kind!

If the respected traditional market didnt have its layers of filtering via syndicates and the exchanges, it would look just as scammy

you can filter for stronger crypto projects, more consumers and investors simply need to, and crypto skeptics need to become more discerning to levy a more equivalent standard

[aspenmayer]

I mean, I kind of get it, I made a small amount from the Uniswap airdrop, and that was before pump.fun existed or whatever the hip thing is this cycle. I don’t think folks can usually count on airdrops but if you are making the crypto then you can do the math and price in an upside. I don’t see anything shady there per se as long as the tokenomics are solid. It’s the same as any crypto offer, buyer (and seller) beware.

I appreciate your explanation for me and for everyone else. I’m glad that crypto is being legitimized. It’s a cool technology and I think it should be profitable because it’s a technology whose time has come. I think its usage for money laundering is unfortunate, but ledgers offer introspection that is an opportunity for enforcement. I think it’s just another cat and mouse game, same as it always was. Most folks aren’t doing anything underhanded and just want to use the technology to do cool things. The law is catching up, but it had to be dragged to the table. This should have happened years ago in my opinion.

[yieldcrv]

No rebuttals there

I think the previously hostile regulatory environment has caused a lot of innovation, that is more resilient and useful for capital formation, new sectors, industries. the cryptosecurities market in 2012 was really ghetto, the ICO market in 2017 was baaaad but working around securities regulations since registration+liquidity was impossible. 2024’s pump.fun should be for entertainment only, but it does standardize the token issuances in ways that werent there before

the bad stuff should be ignored by consumers or cleaned up

but at the end of the day it will always be up to consumers and investors to be more discerning, for critics to criticize bad organizations individually instead of indict all of crypto when something goes wrong. the lack of discernment allows for most bad actors to act with impunity, and encourages the ones that do eventually face consequence

[yieldcrv]

the liquidity pool will get you back into mainline cryptos, you transfer that back to your personal coinbase or any crypto exchange account, sell for your nation’s currency, transfer to your bank account.

can take a few minutes from liquidity pool to your bank account, to a few hours. several days in the worst case.

[aspenmayer]

This just in: cashing out is out, direct investment is in.

Bullish's $1.15B in IPO Proceeds Entirely in Stablecoins in Public Market First - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44957496

[yieldcrv]

yep. one of the understated and more abstract realities of crypto money laundering, as well as licit crypto profits and revenues, is that many crypto natives don’t want their nation’s currency or any fiat.

its been like this for over a decade.

you can get out of volatile coins and into stablecoin onchain.

you can buy goods, services, and investments whether with the volatile coins or with stablecoins.

stablecoins also have a redemption mechanism, so when you move them to an exchange, the conversion isn’t “selling for usd” (which has a fee) its just redeeming them for free. Coinbase can take USDC straight to your bank account for example, removing one step.

when I was running a small hedge fund half a decade ago, our third party fund administrator could take investor funds in crypto for us that would be accounted for on our books in usd for further investment.

a lot of crypto ETFs are taking funds in crypto right now too, there is a tax advantage that Bloomberg wrote about a month or two ago