Topic: Bitcoin and kiddie porn (Read 776 times)

That's so bad to bring the worst reputation for this platform, I think this type of news is getting spread out massively and the government will disclose the bad impact of this cryptocurrency. when people see the worst things in here, then they will also get disinterested about this platform, I think every coin has two sides, but people only talk about the dark side of the cryptocurrency, but it has a lot of good impact in our community those are not published yet in the public media. so we have to reveal the goodwill of this platform so that people's perception will get changed and they will feel safe about this virtual platform.

No matter how positive was the goal to create such technology like Bitcoin, there are always those who used it in a distinctively abusive way. So, with that I have to agree with you. Looking at the bigger picture, Bitcoin has nothing to do with how the criminals used it because of its  complete anonimity when doing transactions, because It wasnt designed to be used that way in the first place.
So, media who always drags down Bitcoin everytime a crime happened which involves Cryptocurrency is pure stupidity.

Regardle of the means of transaction, cyber crime is still there. It's not only about bitcoin because evwn with fiat, crimes like this are still rampant. They're just using it since it's hard to trace transactions. Like as always, their taking too much advatage from bitcoin.
Anonymity is not a bad side of bitcoin. It only depends on the situation if they're using it for bad purposes. Bitcoin was never intended for people like them.

Big yuck to those who love children pornography.

Mass media taking it as a good click bait knowing that people will be interested with news behind Bitcoin. The general issue is not Bitcoin but the child pornography but since attaching Bitcoin to this kind of news will attract more readers and followers so it's best for publicity to dragged Bitcoin even this crytpo currency is not really the issue behind. Admit it or not this is really just for bringing audience to the site.

Criminals always find ways. And they are leading innovation often, which has positiv aspects as well.
It is like a cat and mouse game. Most crime happens via USD... but in some years there is no classic cash anymore.. but what if there is a market niche for a cash, then sth will fill that niche

Sure. Blame privacy. How come 99.9% of use also have privacy but do not do this shit? How come? Clearly, the problem is not privacy but the sick and twisted individuals themselves.

For me there is two kind of paedophiles...

The "good phedophile" Someone who knows they have urges towards children or want to engage in relationships with children but decide not to and withhold themselves. These are people who know they are sick and do not choose to be sick but are forced to live with it. Most of these people never abuse children but fight the constant urge. I have some sympathy for these people since it truelly is not their fault they are the way they are and they accept and realize it is an issue. These people deal with their sickness responsibly.

The Bad paedophiles... These are the scum of the earth. They either do not know nore do not care that they are sick. They see no problem with their behaviour. These are the type that abuse children and feel nothing. Collect pictures and videos and spread them around the internet. True pieces of shit. They do not even try to fight their urges and actually feel nothing for their victims. The "good paedphile" would feel extremely guilty or possible take their life of they did what the bad paedophiles did. The bad ones do not care a bit though.

There is hope for the "good paedohpile" but none for the bad. The only answer is to put them down, I want to say put them down like a sick dog but even the illest of dogs is amazing in comparison.

Why are there more threads like this? have to go to another link to get information, why not just summarize it and write it down for discussion?
I can't help but do it because it's quite interesting.

This is one of the abuses of freedom in cryptocurrency, anonymously. Difficult to trace. We must be able to be wiser in using the internet. Whereas sexual exploitation of children, pornographic content can stand alone without cryptocurrency, or with other payment systems, this only adds to the poor image of cryptocurrency.

You are right they just use bitcoin as payment and nothing more it will not add or less child pornography .
Even without bitcoin this scenario will still continue they will use other online payment , It just shows how effective bitcoin payments can be in terms of online transactions .

Bitcoin has nothing to do with the rise of children's pornography. It is primarily access to the internet and also poverty in many countries, that is spearheading the child pornography niche market. How much percent of the population actually used Bitcoin compared to those using Fiat? Much smaller is this percentage, but they want to make a bad name for Bitcoin as an excuse to lobby against it. Yet, they have been using FIAT for years for criminal activities, child porn, and to wage wars. It's as if child porn never existed before and they keep bringing this stupid argument up that it's Bitcoin's fault for the rise in child porn.

I think the reason lies not in Bitcoin which give people privacy and anonymity but in people themselves. Or you want to say that the amount of sick and down-at-heel people is increasing since Bitcoin had been launched? Nope, they always existed and they don't need Bitcoin to hide and find a way to bring their darkest dreams and desires into reality.

One drawback of the anonimity bitcoin can provide its users. Although exchanges that implements KYC could help, it is still a lot harder to backtrack the transactions made to the specific persons involved. Sure, they can get the bitcoin address but they can't really figure out whom it was.

Until there are no standard regulation and identification of bitcoin addresses is made, all these illegal transactions would still exist. It has been known to the community that it's being used to these acts, mostly in the deep web. Privacy and freedom to transact almost anywhere without intermediary os beneficial, but could also be harmful, depending on who uses its capabilities.

People can get almost everything in the darknet because that market is open for every stuff that they cannot buy in the online store. I think using bitcoin or fiat is the same, but pedophilia is prohibited. We cannot judge the only bitcoin is used to buy illegal things. But yes, bitcoin is available in the darknet, so when people buy using bitcoin in that market, we don't know what they want to do with the stuff. The thing that we need to take attention is how the law can catch them who did the illegal thing, especially if they operate an illegal business. It will be a job for every people in any country and not just for the police.

It is not fair enough to cornering bitcoin just because this news. And also, I'm still happy being called as bitcoin user although this kind of news still popping up in the future. The reason is simple, I didn't do an illegal activity that using bitcoin and I'll never do that.

Bitcoin can be included as a currency (I said it because some people out there is not agree to call bitcoin as currency they just call it as an asset) so, all people is free to using it, I won't blame them because they have a right to using it. Yeah, just assert in the privous post money fiat is  worse than bitcoin if I compare it.

So many shallow, lazy over-moralistic posts above. Also most still seem ignorant to the meaning of "Dark Net" - there's nothing remarkably nefarious about it beyond its name. What has this forum become?

only people that don't know much about it say that


Silk road was positive overall, checking out the forums on Silk road was part of what convinced me Bitcoin could work. People were mostly nice folks (although they were alot of them middle-class drug addicts despite that) trying to help each other, it was a real marketplace where trust and information drove the prices, and scammers were handled by regular people, not government regulation. It was clearly messy, but it was clearly also working.


child abuse porn and guns were disallowed. The most popular drugs were marijuana (which is on the verge of losing it's UN-imposed illegal status worldwide), and prescription drugs. That's right, legal drugs were 2nd most popular on the Silk Road (although obviously it's still illegal to sell them without a medical prescription, but that's often true of marijuana too)

It's really disgusting to hear that Bitcoin or even other altcoins are being used in pornography transactions but we even without the existence of Bitcoin, I'm sure that they will still find ways to transact. I wish that the government could find ways to catch these criminals without blaming cryptocurrency.

I am very happy to hear this news because the police have arrested many people on sexual and pornographic harassment sites, especially those who use children who are used as roles in pornographic scenes, they deserve to be hanged and not forgive so there is no mercy so there is no again such cases later so as not to destroy the future generations of our children.

and the term they use on such porn is "candies"

Dark web have a lot of stuffs that is sure too sensitive for everyone, you'll get goosebumps (in a bad way) when you see new things that is either brutal or confidential, you are going to have a rough time coping up with those shit. Anyways, even in the beginning, cryptocurrency is already in a bad spotlight in terms of illegal activities in the dark web, example to that was in the Silk Road.

People are abusing not just each other but also whatever that gives them the benefits of advantage to do something bad and yet earning big amount of money.

No place in Bitcoin (BTC) space or its blockchain!  

Re: SCAM: Bitcoin SV (BSV) - fake team member and plagiarized white paper ...

The fact that being pseudonym had been taken advantage by these people. They see it as a gateway for criminal acts considering it took almost 4 years for authorities to caught these maniacs. Imagine of how many videos are being sold from their 8 terabyte storage.

I pity those children. 

Yeah, we don't should compromise in any kind of sexual abuse. Always should give good direction to your kids. So that they never use that kind of components.

250k videos? I don't believe that.

I wish people would actually go on the deep web instead of talking rubbish. There is nothing really on the dark web. It is just unindexed files and a shitton of scams and a few weird forums. Buying drugs and a few other illegal medical things. To access kiddie porn on the dark web you have to actually know the address and be in the circle with the rest of these child abusing lunatics. You cannot accidentally stumble upon kiddie porn it doesn't work that way. It's not like they advertise it. Besides the clear web has everything the darkweb has. There is nothing new about the darkweb that has not already been done 100x before. People need to educate themselves about the darkweb seriously.


What a load of crap. You pay anonymously by handing someone paper notes. So are you doing bad things? Am I doing bad things? If no then you talking crap because you just said people meaning if you give anyone the ability to be anonymous they will.

Your argument is just as ridiculous as blaming chat apps on child abductions. We give people a means to chat online and they abuse it? Sorry buy you are talking nonesense now.

Unfortunately, there are really something like this in the internet (dark web i mean) that do such crap things in exchange of money. And this digital paymeny have been made for anonymous transactions.


That's how they ruined the cryptocurrency's reputation for the sake of high money returns. Glad that authorities have settled and arrest those who are responsible for this child abuse act.

Lol! I must not be hearing this properly! Kids should be taught how to standup for themselves" as it ever occur to you that the people behind this terrible act normally move in group to adopt children? Even adults are rarely able to standup against 4-5 able bodied men and fight them off not to talk of a kid,
You can only wish not to encounter such people.

*Pseudo anonymity, that's why they were able to seize the bitcoin of the criminals.



Imagine if they had somehow managed to pay in cash?

How do you find the location of that money?

At least with blockchain, you can track the funds publicly once the investigation is released and those involved arrested.

"Welcome To Video is one of the first websites to monetise child sexual abuse using bitcoin, which allows users to hide their identities during financial transactions.
Users were able to redeem the digital currency in return for “points” that they could spend downloading videos or buying all-you-can watch “VIP” accounts. Points could also be earned by uploading child sexual abuse images."

of course, its privacy when you nake transaction using crypto. but it cant be crypto fault, you cant blame crypto. i think, the owner cause the trouble, and for me it doesnt give effect on bitcoin, but for people that dont know about bitcoin will give negative think because they can cheated

This is the best example on how bitcoin will be negatively impacted. How bitcoin is not accepted by many institution, and how bitcoin might fall. So, if we wanted to continue utilizing bitcoin and to continue our plans with bitcoin, then we should always be responsible and do our business legally. Even if it is such a small percentage of illegalities, it can affect the reputation of bitcoin and might lead to higher damage.

I believe that any technology can be used for illegal activities, for example: a telephone, Internet and of course cryptocurrencies, however, the great benefits of a project or system should not be committed just because there are criminals, it is true that cryptocurrencies offer privacy, but before its existence, even if people carried out these illegal practices, then we must strengthen values ​​in society and apply the weight of the law.

I've found it like that, they use sex to get bitcoin, the more terrible is that many people follow it, we can't get rid of disgusting things like that, but we can only stay away and hate what they do, so we don't belong to a business that they made ..

It's not the fault of the technology that it is used for horrible things. Many privacy advocates lament the fact that Tor is used to hide illegal and depraved activities that take place online, but they understand that it is not the fault of the technology and that the technology still provides a net good for the world.

Yes, it sucks that when you give people privacy and anonymity, they use it for depravity, but that's not the fault of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, or Blockchain technology. Most likely if Bitcoin didn't come around they would have built their own alternative system by now for anonymous payments anyway. So realistically, the fact that Bitcoin is mentioned in this case is pretty irrelevant.

in the end, tech just keeps making it easier for these people to do this stuff, despite it also making it easier to catch the dumber ones


what we really need is kids like this:

(this is the nutty kid from the 80's movie Mad Max 2 with the razer-edged boomerang )




and I'm almost not joking

Kids don't get taught to stand up for themselves, instead it's "go tell teacher if anyone does something bad", which is a fat lot of good once it's too late (or if the teacher is the pedophile )

these pedos need to actually fear that the kid will bite their fucking face off

Well,  I think we'll just hope some content writers from the crypto-community would make a positive note about it and write some positive stuff about Bitcoin, at least to balance the public's perception about it.

I was thinking of a good title like this - "How Bitcoin help caught hundreds of pedophiles and disabled a child sexual abuse website!" or maybe you could suggest something more catchy? 

well, they did report that transaction from exchanges were used to trace the money? I see what you mean, they could've made that an explicit positive aspect, but that's little different to if paypal or the banking   system was used. Arguably, they could have focused on people that were not caught, but maybe the FBI didn't release the full details. Not sure.

This is what I'm trying to say, that media outlets failed to emphasize the key role of Bitcoin in identifying those perpetrators yet none has ever surfaced discussing its importance!

Could it be there is a grand conspiracy to discredit Bitcoin and portray it as the ultimate villain and the cause of all evil? Or either they are just sensationalizing news that has Bitcoin involvement to sold their stories? Or this may be a product of subjective reporting which are often biased against Bitcoin! Imho.

The hilarious part about Monero, is that you don't get the anonymous features unless you use a console only wallet with the specific options, ie. far far from user friendliness. But that's ok, people should know better. If the criminals ever get smart enough there, authorities would have to fall back to more classic approaches, such as infiltrating the thing, or often, making the thing themselves.

Ever heard that joke about the Communist party in the USA being all FBI? Same thing.

Carlton Banks has a decent point though - BTC is fairly easy to use for new customers, compared to XMR (where you can't see the transactions, need several things to send one, etc).

BTC might not be the safest or the most anonymous crypto-currency for criminals to use, but it offers benifits over fiat currency and there isn't need for the criminals to use Monero.

The Guardian is a shitty publisher that manipulates articles to support whatever cause they support, and this time they set their eye on BTC.

That's so sad to hear that bitcoin is now been mentioned to child sexual abuse. In this case bitcoins, popularity might get lost due to this news that will give bitcoin a bad image that it is being used in illegal transactions and it's against the law. It is very important to take good care of its image in order for bitcoin to get more investors.

But glad to know there are some authorities who were able to trace transactions in the blockchain and they will caught the bad guy who abuses those innocent children. We can't deny the fact that Bitcoin transactions are usually common on the dark web.

this is the sort of subtle editorial-based slant that corporate media like The Guardian use.


they could have covered any number of positive stories about Bitcoin, especially in their technology section. But instead, they choose articles with a negative connotation, then report on it in a dry and dispassionate way. Readers are left to draw their own conclusion, but when they've heard another 20 crime based Bitcoin stories already in the last 5 years, they will come to the conclusion that The Guardian's financial firm clients (who buy advertising in The Guardian) want: Bitcoin bad

no different when Bitcoin XT was covered in The Guardian, they used editorial bias to slant readers towards the corporate culture's preferences. They interviewed the attackers (who went on to work for Goldman Sachs invested firm Circle) and devoted a whole article to a dev-team takeover that the users (the normal everyday people The Guardian pretend to represent) did not want. And for the accomplished developers with decades of industry experience and contributions to open source software used all across the internet? They got no article, despite the fact that Bitcoin's users followed them. Guardian quietly kept it's mouth shut, that was their repetent response, disgusting behavior.


"The Guardian"? They only do one kind of guarding: their corporate buddies, whether they're attacking open source software projects (Bitcoin is not the only example), or whether they're deciding that Trump and Clinton (and Bill Gates, Katie Couric, Woody Allen etc etc) being connected to billionaire pedophile human-trafickers is too tabloid

Here's a more important question to ask: What could we do about it?

The answer is nothing. You can't stop people from spending and receiving money. You can't stop people from using anonymous payment methods, including cash if nothing else. You can't regulate every monetary transaction in existence, nor should you want to.

Child porn was being monetized long before Bitcoin existed. The internet and a broader digitization of money -- credit cards, VCCs, e-money services, online banks, and yes Bitcoin -- allowed this grisly industry to flourish.

There's no way you could directly blame anything on Bitcoin, though. If these people couldn't use Bitcoin, they would just use something else.

Child pornography is very common in the dark web plus the common payment they've been using to access the site is mainly the Bitcoin. This news is nothing new it is widely happening around the world some of these children were from different countries and is also a victim of human/child trafficking.

I'm glad that the authorities find the responsible people of making these injustice and unlawful crime.

Well, obviously they didn't. Bitcoin isn't terribly anonymous, especially if people don't use a different address on each transaction. In these types of operations often the weak link lies in the laziness of the people involved. In any investigation, they have to find out which address belongs to whom, and then start solving the puzzle.

Linking the alleged operation to Bitcoin is stupid, Bitcoin has nothing to do with it, its a coin like any other, and if people think they can evade justice with it, they have to think twice. Yes its "possible", just like its possible with fiat, but that doesn't mean its going to "protect" you if you don't have a clue.

There are many details that we will never know. Did the site changed the address for payments on each payment? I doubt it. Did the users? unlikely. Can the agents infiltrate and start gathering incriminating data? probably. And none of it has anything to do with Bitcoin. If anything it may be that Koreans like Bitcoin but that's about it.

The media, as usual, wants to correlate Bitcoin with evil, always. Since the very beginning, back when Satoshi still posted, with the Wikileaks donations.

Once upon a time the Slipknot group wrote a song 'people = sh*t' Unfortunately, Bitcoin is used on the black market, including for kiddie porn. It's disgusting, I want these people to be punished and be jailed to prison

Bitcoin is not related to kiddie porn, it's bad people who use Bitcoin in bad places. This is not bitcoin's fault. Even those bad people use all the digital money in bad activities when Bitcoin is anonymous, but they can cheat on other digital money by using a fake identity or fake IP! Is it Bitcoin or other money's fault? No way. Is Kiddie porn a new thing in the world? No, it's not. It was available even before Bitcoin creation! You can't blame Bitcoin or other privacy coins rather try to blame those shady people.

It's been there before Bitcoin was created. They've been there on the darkweb for decades. Bitcoin just made these criminals more free and made their life easier because of its features. Actually Bitcoin is just one of the most used by criminals these days. There are several alternative cryptocurrencies out there are being used for illegal doings.

Indeed that is the reason most people wanted privacy so that they can do their desires without other knowing it.  This is the sad truth about having freedom/privacy, those who have nefarious intent exploit this kind of freedom in order to do their illegal stuff, and this kind of stuff is also holding back Bitcoin for so long since government can never condone such act.

What's negative about this news can someone explain?

Child porn was there in the 70s and 80s and the number of pedophiles who are found and brought to justice is increasing thanks to the Internet and people helping to track them down.
When there was no Bitcoin it did not stop them from trading porn for dollars and they are still doing it.
They were caught.
Thanks to this more people will hear about Bitcoin
Those idiots could've chosen a really anonymous cryptocurrency and not Bitcoin.

Well, it is a good thing to know that even law enforcement now has been knowledgeable about tracing crypto transactions in order to caught those illegal activities. It will stop that kind of business and also protect children from being abusement. Well, probably the criminals did not have much idea on bitcoin transactions, that's the reason why the authorities were busted them and shutting down their sites. I'm just happy to know this kind of news, sounds like it will trigger to adopt other countries in bitcoin since some illegal activities will be caught.

Not exactly how I get it but I think meant that when cryptocurrency provides privacy, those bad actors are going to be taking advantage of its features.

Well BTC isn't exactly an anon coin, it can be traced and can actually help authorities when these criminals misunderstood btc to be untraceable. Anyway The news didn't blame BTC  or any crypto for being part of their operation.

Honestly this is one of the most neutral news I have seen related to the crypto industry more specifically towards Bitcoin. I've read the whole article hoping for some silent jabs against Bitcoin being the main tool for this crime to happen but I was surprised there was none found in the whole article. This is what I am hoping for news media sites are not insinuating on anything against cryptocurrency and they are more focused against the crime involved and not Bitcoin entirely. Back then you will see a lot of new sites go in the opposite direction where it made Bitcoin like the main ingredient for this crimes to happen that is why we got a bad impression from the start.

maybe the government and the law enforcement agencies should do a better job of bringing their colleagues to justice?


there are countless stories now from 20th century about people in politics, the police, showbusiness or intelligence being involved in sexual abuse of children, some of the most egregious examples were going on right under their noses.

Jeffrey Epstein is the most blatant example recently. This guy was a billionaire hedge fund associate, hung out with Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Kevin Spacey, Bill Clinton and dozens more powerful world figures. He got an 18 month sentence in 2008 for having sex with a 13 year old girl, and spent most of it on "office leave" flying his private jet to his private island in the Caribbean (where he regularly trafficked teenage girls to sexually abuse, and where alot of these celebrities, corporation owners and former world leaders seemed to enjoy visiting )

Out of that 18 month "sentence", Epstein served 13 months. For good behavior . He slept in prison, then went straight out after breakfast to the airport where his private plane was housed, on "business". He donated several million dollars to the low category prison he slept at too, but they took a little time and gave it back. Presumably they thought that whatever corrupt deal he was trying to get from them wasn't worth a few million dollars.


The "justice" system and the "prison" system let that happen. The newspapers knew, but because it embarrassed very powerful people, they kept their mouths shut till summer 2019 (almost 10 years too late), then did a quick expose at the time of the year (summer) while most people quit reading the news because there's no serious stories (politics, finance and sport are out of season all summer long)


Not 1 Bitcoin involved, and the US justice system did everything they could to cover it up and help the people involved look as good as possible. And the newspapers made one of the most corrupt scandals ever look like it was important for 5 minutes, when they knew about the whole thing for 10 years. The Trump-haters are the biggest hypocrites here; Trump was significantly involved with this guy in the 2000's, and it's hard to believe that someone as well connected as Trump (especially as Trump's daughter was a teenager at the time) did not know he was a sex trafficker of teenagers. And yet the Trump bashing media said ZERO about it, when all the facts were available to them the whole time, and very likely because of Bill Clinton and other Democrat siding people's involvement too (one of Epstein's co-conspirators was a guest at Clinton's daughters wedding, after Epstein was finished with prison, and while still a part of Epstein's staff )



So don't give me this "government good, Bitcoin bad" crap, they give zero fucks when it's their friends that are the pedophiles

This shows how popular it's becoming and at the same time how little understanding of cryptocurrency payments these people have. They chose Bitcoin as the best payment method but got caught so it proves to the media that bitcoin still can be traced and that it doesn't guarantee anonymity. It works only as long as people aren't ready to dedicate a lot of resources to tracing it. This means that if you want to hide your shopping habits or gambling addiction it's perfect but if you hire hitmen or pay for child porn you're going to get caught.

This is one of the negative effects for bitcoin because it is abused for disgusting transactions and very pornographic, and that is one of the reasons the government prohibits it because it is misused for negative things and crime as a transaction tool.
must be completely eradicated which can damage the image of bitcoin for the worse.

Same a like with how people really knew how fiat money being used illegally by those people who intentionally control over it. There's always other side of the stories, they are just highlighting things since particularities of bitcoin is really undeniable. We should learned how to work with such things and expect that not only those who intend to use this currency for good will exist but also those people who wanted to take advantage will keep looking for another outlet to perform their illegal activities.

bitcoin is a code. bitcoin has no arms, bitcoin has no legs, bitcoin has no brain, it is people who have arms, legs and a thinking brain (allowing them to distinguish right from wrong) that are committing crimes. It's the same with gun ownership laws. For some people, who own a gun is to commit crimes, but let's say we have an alliance invasion someday? How will civilians defend themselves? Sometimes news channels don't seem to think before posting or commenting on things

Hahaha made my day mate lol 😂

Why every crime that happens always be blamed for bitcoin?dos this pornography is already here even bitcoin wasn’t existed?then why now pointing fingers just because of privacy?

Well there are lots of this to come so be ready fo that mate,anyway this will be here even without bitcoin

“Through the sophisticated tracing of bitcoin transactions, IRS-CI special agents were able to determine the location of the Darknet server, identify the administrator of the website and ultimately track down the website server’s physical location in South Korea.”

How does that work then?

Well, we should be thankful for Bitcoin and blockchain technology because if it wasn't conceived, the world will be overwhelmed by these sick bastards who prey on  children's innocence! I think they thought that BTC would be safe to use  and could give them absolute privacy thus were encouraged by it to do their evil deeds thinking that by using this technology, it could make them anonymous and unstoppable!

But in fact,  if they have not been careful enough, they could be traced through their Bitcoin transactions and their identities could also be revealed - that could connect them to that monster website, which I think will give a strong evidence to guarantee an indictment!

If you think that sharing child porn is privacy  . If they use those privacy privileges then they will be prosecuted and be in the jail for a very long time.
There are certain things you need to obey and that does not include these sort of illegal activities and i am glad they are arrested and sent to jail for a very long time but since you mentioned bitcoin alongside these porn sites, only fools will use bitcoin for illegal activities .

Probably they ABUSE it.
And this by far is sick and gross of pedophiles. I might assume that the site is the one who advise to use bitcoin as mode of payment to those who want to hide their identity.

On the best side, the criminals are now behind bars, however some surely will wait the news to be over and business as usual again.

The core problem is not the medium of payment, but the people itself. Tools are just tools, sophisticated or not. Some will always find a way to use it for something wrong. What 'society' needs to do is to make sure people like that get caught or prevent somebody else from doing the same thing.

Education, inclusivity, and other social aspects must be good. Else, police will always have to work hard.

It's very disappointing at the side of bitcoin and cryptocurrency. These kind of illegal activities harm and give negative image to bitcoin. They're just making bitcoin bad at peoples' eyes by using crypto for their dirty deeds. People like them are very disgusting! They're sexually abusing minors and even selling it for money? It's on of the reason why some government oppose to crypto because of the people like them

It doesn't matter which currency exists, sick criminals will use whatever means they have in order to pursue their interests. It's sad but it happens. This is the same reason why you can find traces of drugs on all USD.

This is the bad side of bitcoin and what forces the government to go against it, they can't control the usage of bitcoin. Bitcoin is widely used in the deep web from buying drugs and this kind of child pornography. Sellers/merchants from deep web most prefer this kind of payment because it is anonymous and security are favoring their side.

When there is something good there will be something bad relative to the same. This can be overcome only when the public realizes the real purpose for which bitcoin came into existence. When we get to pay anonymously, people easily take advantage of the same. With technology of artificial intelligence there needs to development of bots to restrict such websites from accepting bitcoin.

oh The Guardian have been like this for years


Guardian.com always tries to appear as if they're liberal. They publish stories idealizing liberal values, as long as it's not actually happening in a real world example. The Guardian will tell you endlessly that bottom-up liberalism with people controlling their own lives is great, as long as we're just thinking about it.

But as soon as someone actually does something to let people control their lives, The Guardian switches into authoritarian mode, scolding their readers in advance for even considering making a choice that empowers them against the powerful by concentrating on how normal people abuse any power they do get (as in this case).

It's like a psychopathic cult leader personified in print.


And when the Goldman Sachs backed takeover of Bitcoin failed (which The Guardian published a very positive article about), suddenly they changed their editorial stance on Bitcoin and only ever published the worst stories they could find. Supposedly there are still a fair few commercials for banks in The Guardian's pages



and they can also read what I'm going to say now and see "The Guardian"


In the 1970's, The Guardian were part of the "sympathy for pedophiles" movement, along with a bunch of UK politicians. This went on for several years, until when the organisation (which was literally called Pedophile Information Exchange ) that was running this bullshit got busted for being, guess what, crammed full with child abusers using it's charity status to organise child abuse together.

The Guardian? Totally innocent of course, despite helping to popularise the sympathy.

Child sexual abuse and child porn are abhorrent and I am glad that site and its users were busted, of course.  What I did not like about the article was that it seemed to put bitcoin front and center in all of that disgustingness, as if to paint bitcoin with the same vile brush as kiddie porn.  And this is just not fair.

It isn't as if this stuff hasn't been around for long.  That kind of pornography has probably existed since the early days of photography, and before that it was probably done as paintings.  How did perverts pay for it then?  It most certainly was not with cryptocurrency, so that article should have mentioned bitcoin *maybe* one time if at all.  The payment method for such foul crap is irrelevant in my opinion.

This is how a smear works, but this does not point to any fundamental problem with bitcoin itself.

it's easy to forget how steep the learning curve is just to use Bitcoin. We were sufficiently motivated that it didn't feel like a chore, but a huge amount of people would feel lost from step 0. Working out XMR would feel like trying to hack into a military mainframe to those people (I think you've literally still got to run the full blockchain, and use the command line for everything with XMR).



it's like a gun, people can use powerful tools for good reasons and reprehensible ones


and then the most reprehensible people will say "only we should have the right to use guns"

That's true - there's been some issues with dash's privacy in the past, XMR is definetly the safer option.

It's pretty weird with this current situation, there's a lot of easier options with privacy, that are also more secure but a lot of people are just oblivious to it.

There is an interesting statistic somewhere where it showed that the amount of fiat transactions on the darknet where more then the bitcoin ones.

The good news is that finally this cyber-criminals was arrested but the bad news is that they are using bitcoin as method of payment for their illegal activities. this kind of news will add another bad impression for bitcoin to anyone who reads it and does not have any knowledge about bitcoin. hopefully some organization could put a stop on this in the future and media should educate their readers that bitcoin is not only used in illegal activities.

And then they are getting caught by the authorities one by one. And then we have fiat being used by cyber criminals as well. So it's going to cyclical, but I wouldn't call it a flaw, in the first place it was not design by Satoshi to be exploited as such.

I guess this is just part and parcel of bitcoin, others might find in very useful as mode of payment, store of value and investments assets. But on the other hands, bad actors had bad intent. But we can't really blame it to bitcoin, blame the system that we have.

I hate those people who uses children for the urge of their lust. This is not good and not forgiven. I hope they will never be a parent, they don't deserve it.
About this pornography! there are videos over the internet not just pedophiles must be stopped. there are unwanted videos (scandal) that must also be stopped.

There is no place for child pornography anywhere and those who profited from this business should be jailed and be not allowed to freely roam in the outside world again...until they are maybe 80 years and by then there is no more libido left to do anything unworthy like exploiting innocent children for the porn industry.

Sad that the main operator South Korean named Jong Woo Son is just a young guy at 23; had he chosen to just be involved with cryptocurrency he can't be facing the possibility of being incarcerated for many years.  I am sure he is also a very talented young man with a good future ahead if not for this child pornography business. Anyway, good luck to him and I hope he can be a changed man by the time he is back from prison.

Now, it must be emphasized that authorities actually got aided by the open Bitcoin transactions on the ledgers in finding out the culprit. So in this case, Bitcoin has become a tracking tool instead of just saying that it has been utilized for illegal transactions. This is to make the story fair and straight. Cryptocurrency (except maybe private coins) can be an ally to those working against illegal marketplace.

This is a better article for this news: https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-authorities-analyze-bitcoin-transactions-to-shut-down-child-porn-ring

Unfortunately, this was a big issue long before Bitcoin was created. These people will use anything at their disposal, be it BTC or USD. At least something is being done about it.

Clowns are very fast to blame bitcoin on any little thing that happens, when the bitcoin start that it's has become the major problem of the world we see all this problem even before the turn of this millennium that's far before bitcoin came in

But people are going to read these stories and see bitcoin. 

You know, I am absolutely outraged by the facts, where children are used in such a way... but you know, this topic is alive for a long-long period of time. Kiddie porn has not appeared with the anonymous way of payments, as well it has not appeared because of the creation of the cryptocurrency or blockchain. Such kind of people also use cash for this, or some other types of payments that are too hard to search or to prove. the problem is not in the anonymous coins, but in not health peoples' heads. I do not think that in case the crypto will be forbidden (just imagine), the kiddie porn will disappear at once. it is a pity, but it is a fact.

I definitely wouldn't trust Dash with proper anonymity. XMR is a better candidate. It's revealing that its use hasn't really exploded in that area. Just goes to show that even scum prize convenience above safety.

There's other ways to do this as well, just because something new has a way for other people to abuse it doesn't mean that it's necessary bad.

Look at stuff like fast food, new phones and technology, etc. They all have a bad side to them, and just because a small minority is able to utilise this side, does this mean phones, and laptops should be banned?

Also, I'm still under the impression that it would be much safer to use coins like XMR and Dash. Isn't it?

At this stage in time I think you'd have to be more than a little dim to use BTC for anything nefarious at all. Law enforcement aren't going to tell you how good they've become at tracing things and the tiniest slip up on the user's part would be enough to blow their cover.

well, there is still a massive percentage of $(and other) in cash used for drugs, weapons, prostitution etc.. so, we are talking of a method of payment, and obviously that there will be a percentage of crypto payments as well, there is nothing we can do here to stop it

It's the same with the guns. You give people guns, and most of them will protect their homes and do no sh!t but some will rob a bank with it. You can't stop it, the world is full of morons out there and those will find always a way to do their sh!t.
I'm happy they got caught.

 

Get on Tor, buy some bitcoin at an anonymous exchange, put it through a couple of mixers and hey presto.  It certainly makes life easier for the bad guys.  Freedom and privacy are a double edged sword.  Yes you can do great things with them but you can also do bad things as well.  Are we as a community OK with that?

And yet this 'anonymous' payment method led straight to their doors with a piddling amount of detective work. It seems a lot of them sent BTC straight from exchange accounts linked to their IDs.

No doubt it has monetised disgusting behaviour in a way that wasn't possible before. It's likely in future it'll put more people like this away.

Yes, you did misunderstand it.  I was implying that if you give people ways to pay anonymously and they will use it for bad things.  And there is no way of tracing the people doing bad things.  

I'm sorry. Are there no other ways to purchase these fucked up things, unless you use bitcoin?

They are simply painting Bitcoin, once again in a bad light, making the reference that these acts are only possible due to the services Bitcoin provides, but this is far from the truth...

Just look at the other crypto-currencies out there. Several privacy coins with better privacy then BTC, not to mention the numerous fiat untraceable payment options.

Sick, depraved people will always find a way to satisfy their disgusting urges. I can guarantee you though that bitcoin used for this kind of shit is going to be a tiny, tiny % of that disgusting market.

The illegal sex market is probably huge worldwide & most of it will be via fiat so don’t start trolling about bitcoin.

Even without bitcoin and digital currency these pronographic activity especially sexual eploitation among children are already rampant in the dark web. Its just so happen that they use cryptocurrency as a mode of payment and thus cryptocurrency is placed in negative spotlight. This sure will bring again bad image to the cryptocurrency community and will make non crypto users think that cryptocurrency is a dark web money. As long as people do not change whatever currency is available be it digital or fiat, pedophile cases and pornographic activity will still occur.

wait wait 
You are angry because that site is closed?
I hope I've misunderstood your post
There is no mercy for pedophilia!

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/police-arrest-hundreds-over-international-child-sexual-abuse-website

You give people privacy, they use it.