[Notch123]

Only read the abstract, but this doesn't seem surprising seeing that crypto, despite maybe noble intentions, has evolved in the worlds' easiest way to launder money and the president himself happily makes a couple of 100 mil with his own shitcoin.

[Stagnant]

In the grand scheme of things crypto-related money laundering is just a drop in the bucket compared to the amounts being laundered using more traditional methods.

[PaulHoule]

Most crypto coins (not Monero) are pseudonymous. If a particular bitcoin wallet comes to somebody's attention they can investigate hassle anybody that this person tries to trade with, tell exchanges not to redeem cash, etc.

Thing is these tactics aren't just available to the authorities but also to anyone like intelligence agencies, the mafia, etc. so the confidentiality problems are much much worse with crypto.

[paulgerhardt]

> Most crypto coins (not Monero) are pseudonymous.

It's worth reading the OSPEAD report from the Monero Community: https://www.getmonero.org/2025/04/05/ospead-optimal-ring-sig...

> Monero users with extreme threat models should be aware that anti-privacy adversaries can leverage timing information to increase the probability of guessing the real spend in a ring signature to approximately 1-in-4.2 instead of 1-in-16.

So slightly worse odds than Russian Roulette. Cool. Cool.

[akimbostrawman]

It's not Russian roulette. It's a guess you still don't know if you are right. There is still plausible deniability.

Hopefully FMCP will get implement soon to mitigate these issues.

[whatsupdog]

> tell exchanges not to redeem cash

Try telling it to Chinese, Russian, Indian exchanges.

[PaulHoule]

Also... I dunno about India (I think of it as a dysfunctional democracy) but China and Russia are notorious authoritarian economies that people want to take money out of and that's a big part of the global money laundering problem. You might have a problem that your money is in Bitcoin but turn it into Rubles or Yuan and now you have another problem.

[PaulHoule]

What if it is the Chinese or Russian or Indian governments you're worried about? None of those have a libertarian attitude, even if they think it's cool to thumb their nose at Uncle Sam from time to time.

[pavlov]

But it’s intentionally set up to be much more accessible than the traditional laundering methods.

Crypto advocates love this “drop in the bucket” excuse. By the same logic, it’s not a problem if I manufacture extra strong alpha-PVP and hand it to school children, because my drug distribution is just a drop in the bucket compared to the global cocaine trade.

[salynchnew]

"This isn't a problem yet" is the argument, but... if you do enough money laundering for long enough and grow the share of crypto as a share of the economy....

[kalaksi]

> Crypto advocates love this “drop in the bucket” excuse.

Or so you think.

[multjoy]

It is absolutely not a drop in the bucket.

USDT is the money launderer’s dream. If they can get it into crypto (and there are a number of firms who are barely disguised criminal finance portals), the world is very much their oyster.

[Notch123]

No clue, but likely