Topic: Bitcoin A Tool For CyberCriminals (Read 1161 times)

Yeah, it's a lot like cash.  I think that's his point.  Aside from bitcoin speculation transactions 99%+ of which are done on exchanges (that are not regulated enough for them yet), You see BTC1000+ transactions in roughly the same set of circumstances you'd see transactions that require a steamer trunk full of $100 bills.

Which, mostly, aren't legal transactions.  How often do steamer trunks full of cash change hands outside of contraband smuggling, trafficking, etc?  And that's what the cops are looking at.

It doesn't matter, in their minds, if 99% of the transactions are perfectly legal <BTC1 transactions where somebody is buying a dozen pairs of socks from overstock.com or equivalent; what they're looking at is that half, possibly more, of the bitcoins changing hands in private user-to-user transactions are doing so in illegal deals. 

The same reasoning probably applies to cash, except more like 99.99% of transactions are legal and %10 of the cash that changes hands does so in illegal deals.  And the banks where people exchange cash are already regulated to a degree that they're comfortable with. 

+1
Cash is a tool for criminals. Does that really take an expert to realize?

Cash is a tool for criminals, and while Bitcoin might be much easier for cybercriminals, I don't think we should be too focused on that fact.

Tate is probably highly concerned that Bitcoin cannot be shut down like Liberty Reserve.
It's about time the Freedom movement did something huge. 

Every one said something wrong about something that is revolutionary and can change the future, when the personal computer was released, many people said it will make the world to come to a sudden end. And some people were so convinced that there will be no market for computer, but time proved all of them wrong, time will prove them wrong also, everything can be used for good as well as wrong, a piece of wood can be used to fuel the fire of a furnace or can be used to smack a person in the head and kill, as a coin has two sides, this will not stop rather will be there always, even US dollars has a good side and a bad side, so does any other currency, time will prove them wrong

Feeding the homeless is a crime thus ending hunger would be a crime.

Don't you love this planet?

But that is the beauty of bitcoin. No one can really control the bitcoin, the protocol or block chain, totally different from fiat money, even the govs. So they are panic to blame bitcoin itself. It is probably the reason why the adopting rate doesn't grow much yet. A lot of media reports are just focusing the scams and hacks around crypt world.   

Sure they did. This is nothing new. Money Packs and gift cards have been around much longer than Bitcoin. That's what pedophiles and terrorists were using and they are still around.

We can't deny that bitcoin is a perfect tool for CyberCriminal.
In recently, the police have to pay a ransom to the hacker with Bitcoin, which is never happened before.
Sure, any tools could be a tool for criminal.

The way to counter his opinion on BTC is to ask a question. A> Why does Bitcoin make it easier for criminals to exist with anonymity? Law enforcement have unlimited resources to trace these coins and they have the backing of most laws to force access to information, which is not available to the general public.
How many other easier methods are used to pay for criminal acts? << Dollar / Diamonds / Gold>>
They are frustrated, because they lack behind on proper knowledge and tools to catch these criminals and it's easy to shift the blame onto BTC. ^sad^

No matter fiat money or bitcoin, they are just neutral tools, which can be used for the normal transactions by honest ppl, or for the illegal activities by the criminals. They have no fault at all. It just depends on who are using it and how to use it.   

Dollars, A Tool For AllCriminals. 

Provided that the recipient has some way of receiving the bitcoins, then I would think it's easier than using cash but it also brings a lot of downsides as you rightly point out. Cash can still leave a trail which conventional tools used by the government can easily uncover. And when it comes to cybercrimes which is what the OP is about, using cash isn't really a realistic option.

For most people, in order to get cash in the first place, you need to get it from a bank or a bank's ATM, or collect it by doing business activities. This isn't a huge problem if you're dealing with hundreds or a few thousand dollars worth of cash but it becomes unrealistic when you're dealing with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. More significantly, the IRS has been known to clamp down on businesses that deal mostly in cash and signs that the business is avoiding taxes by using cash to pay its employees can still be discovered during an audit.

Finally, the IRS also encourages people to report employers who try to avoid taxes by awarding whoever reports it with a small percentage of the seized funds:


Source: http://www.irs.gov/uac/Whistleblower-Informant-Award

With cash, this would be easy for the IRS (and by extension, other branches of the government) to achieve. With a typical Bitcoin wallet, this would be difficult. Even if you had terrible security practices in place and your transactions gave away your identity, it would still be highly difficult to track down and prosecute since conventional tools and techniques that the FBI and IRS use to detect illicit fiat transfers obviously don't work with Bitcoin. And with a properly secured and encrypted Bitcoin wallet, this sort of stuff would be impossible.

right ... a mixer service would obfuscate the money trail to an even greater degree ... but almost not needed anyway since the public ledger is pretty much useless in terms of tracking money for law enforcement in the first place , such as determining who's employing illegal workers , since all that viewable public ledger means is your anonymous btc address generated by the overseas exchange is connected to their dozen anonymous btc addresses to which they can receive payments ... granted , it's a great deal more complicated than driving down to the bank to withdraw cash and pay your illegals every week or month , but as soon as you send your bank transfer to hong kong , and that becomes btc on your address and that gets sent to other addresses , it is impossible to determine *who* or indeed if you've paid anyone for labor ... in terms of tracking money , it would look like you're sending 1 big bank transfer overseas periodically for the purpose of trading in btc , rather than constantly withdrawing large sums of cash for no apparent reason ... seems to me that consistently withdrawing enough cash to pay a bunch of people whilst owning an agriculture business (for example) would indicate employing illegals , whereas sending money overseas whilst owning an agriculture business would point instead to converting some of your private assets to btc ... the whole point would be to make it look like you're engaging in privately trading in btc with your own assets , rather than pulling money out of the bank for paying illegals , easier or not , it would make it look like you're doing one thing while doing a different thing ... right ?

Bitcoin is perfect for large organize crime rings, which are spread over multiple countries and continents. The thieves will accumulate their earnings in Bitcoin, and then transfer it to some other country, where they convert it to fiat. A perfect example is Cryptolocker. The victims were mostly from Europe, Turkey and the US, while the perpetrators were from Russia and Ukraine.

That said, this Tate Jarrow guy is a complete idiot. This is the same guy who was behind the closure of Liberty Reserve. If crypto is used for criminal activities, then it is the responsibility of the FBI to prevent that. If they are not capable of that, then they should admit their failure rather than trying to ban the crypto all together.

easier via obfuscation of the money source , that's the key ... not easier to receive or use obviously for the workers , because , yknow , it's not ... but most migrants can afford a used $20 phone after 1 job , shit man , homeless people have cell phones ... as an illegal employer , i'd find it easier to pay my dozen illegal farmworkers by kicking out 1 btc to their addresses each month , which I can easily pull from my btc exchange account rather than having to go to the bank and withdraw thousands of dollars in cash to pay them with every month ... benefit/ease would be to the employer of obfuscation of having paid anyone at all ...

i suppose arson vandalism assault etc or really any crime not involving money is just as easy with or without btc ...

hooooooly shit i never even thought about it ... but bitcoin could be used to pay illegal immigrants off book now that you pointed it out ... nevermind the obvious that it's used by cyber criminals drug traffickers and sex criminals , everyone knows that ... is there no crime bitcoin doesn't make easier to commit through obfuscation of the money source ?

Everything can be a tool for criminals. Bitcoin isn't an exception. (Let's ban crowbars as many burglars using those things.)

He is not wrong in what he says. The demand in ransoms by cybercriminals is mostly now through bitcoin.
But yes it isn't the only way to look at it.
Maybe he needs to be told about the scams that have happened with fiat as well. 

However as for the cybercrimes there is no easy solution to this and it will certainly get a lot worse.  Benefits of cryptocurrency vastly outweigh these cybercrime cases.

.... says the USSS agent Tate Jarrow.
http://bitforum.info/t/secret-service-agent-labeled-bitcoin-as-a-tool-for-cybercriminals/702

I just think that this agent did not do his homework.

You just cant judge a thing with its lopphole. Maybe it can be utilized by cybercriminals 'for now'

Report never mentioned how useful bitcoin will be for people migrants who are working in the US and other first world countires.

Bitcoin might even end hunger for cryin out loud.