Topic: Bitcoin assets cannot be blocked - is that helping terrorists? - page 4. (Read 600 times)

We're thinking about the relation to how the Taliban are being funded now that IMF has already blocked them and will stop the allocation on their country after they took over the government. Whilst, we're aware of everyone keeping their assets in bitcoin, it's more intriguing that there would probably be those Afghanis that have kept their wealth into bitcoin and see this coming. Now their economy is about to collapse and at these times, their kept wealth with bitcoin is going to save them.

talking about this I might say that indeed bitcoin is a pretty good money thing because they use a pretty good system that is different from currency because it is already centralized and indeed cannot be blocked.
but on the other hand with a system like this there are indeed good things and of course there are bad things because bitcoin is also not always perfect and there must be loopholes, including one of them is the use of bitcoin which is free to be done by anyone including the terrorists themselves because it is very difficult to identify it whether it is terrorist or not when it is in bitcoin.
and indeed there are no certain restrictions and prohibitions here that cause this to happen.
but that doesn't mean I support terrorists here. What I emphasize is that on the one hand bitcoin can be a good alternative but on the other hand we cannot prohibit anyone who is here from conducting transactions, whether it is ordinary people or terrorists who use it for their benefit.

Being moderate in debates does not attract viewers and that is what the media wants so whenever they are discussing bitcoin they are going to invite the person with the most outrageous opinions about bitcoin without any evidence that what they are saying is actually true, has bitcoin been used like this by those people? I think there is very little doubt this is the case, however it is way more likely they use fiat as their major source of funding as fiat still dominates the world and no one talks about banning fiat.

Complete freedom has both advantages and disadvantages, government claims that many of the terrorism get funds in the way of cryptocurrencies but we also can clearly see that some of the government itself funding the taliban which is ofcourse recognized as terrorist group worldwide, so it means having government itself a bad thing right?!

The Taliban having access to sources of funding means they will be spending that money in acquiring arms and ammunition, explosives and technologies to strengthen their "terrorist" networks and mount more attacks on western countries and allies. That is how the logic goes for imposing sanctions and blocking funds. From what we have witnessed over the past decades, there is another aspect to it. These countries belong to them and they demand to be left alone. Whether it is the Arabs, the Afghans or the Taliban. Problems arise when the people are manipulated by other countries for their own geo-political interests. Like China manipulating Pakistan and Pakistan manipulating Afghans.

Maybe for once, if they can have unblockable money and they recognize that they have all the needed resources to earn a decent living and improve their own country, maybe then they won't be turning their coming generations into hardened soldiers and suicide bombers in teenage years. As a world, we have seen what happens when "Democracies" sanction "Dictators". (Saddam, Gaddafi, Mullah Omer). Maybe Bitcoin can be the chance to see what happens when they cannot play these games anymore.

This is all just a hope though. Bitcoin liquidity and ease of exchange would be nowhere near the kind of money that "terrorists" need as an organization. Your usual suspects like the CIA, CCP, KGB etc are far more efficient at funneling those funds than bitcoin.

Not that we are accepting the news, but we all know that bitcoin has it's bad side as well.


Even terrorist in Africa uses diamond, lots of assets are being used by criminals and terrorist around the world. But bitcoin being the new one, they wanted to get a taste of it and see how it goes for them. Maybe in time they will understand that it's not best to used them as they can easily be follow and track by any government agencies.

Send the coins through a few CoinJoin sessions and a few ChipMixer ones, proceed to do an atomic swap from BTC to XMR and you're done. With the currently existing and known tech, even the best intel department of the US gov would not be able to crack the code and trace them down.

This is not "helping" them though. In a fair world where everyone has the same rights, you can't say "no" even to a bad guy. It's either a fair game or not, and we already have the latter. Unfortunately though, with or without Bitcoin's existence, criminals have existed and they always found a way to launder, do their terrorism acts, defraud etc.

There will be no law in the world that will have only positive reactions and effects. Any good law will at some point be exploited by the "bad guys".. so yeah, we're not really helping terrorists, it's just that there will always be a small % of BTC's users that are bad guys.

So, can anyone prove that Bitcoin is used to assist terrorism ..or are we blindly accepting the fear mongering that are blasted on popular media channels? The same media channels that selectively showing only pro "vaccine" content and refusing to show anti-vax content?

Terrorist use a lot of different things.... like Gold coins and Diamonds and Silver and US Dollars ....etc.. etc.. but that does not suit the "Media" agenda to show that. (Bitcoin and Crypto currencies must be the bad guy.. right?) 

That is a good point. For some time bitcoins held by terrorists may be safely hidden, but money isn't useful if stored forever. Sooner or later, as this money is moved, it will left some tracks and intelligence department of USA plus their allies will find it and everyone else involved on the financial operations. Furthermore, funds held in bitcoin must have came from somewhere else, what means there is also a fiat origin that can be tracked.

It would be worse if the funds were held in paper money. Then I would say it is helping terrorists, because that is the only kind of money which leaves no traces. Ironically, it's the favorite method of storing money of politicians.

Most exchanges in countries like the US and Europe are now getting pretty restrictive when it comes to Know-Your-Customer type regulation. You'll be hard pushed to find many that will allow you to sell cryptocurrency directly to them without some sort of verification process. People tend to stick with the biggest companies as well because that will generally offer them better protection against hacks. You might find peer to peer transactions are a little less documented but the actual companies running things like LocalBitcoins also take the same documentation. All that together is making it pretty difficult to be anonymous and that is what nefarious criminals fear the most - creating a paper trail back to them.

Correct, blaming the tool for the actions taken by the person behind the tool is a mistake, we cannot ban cars, computers or telephones just because a lot of people use those tools to commit crimes, with that kind of logic we are going to need to go back to the Stone Age in order to feel secure, tools solve a problem and as long as the benefits that they bring are greater than the dangers and damages that they produce to society then we need to learn to live with the tool, and there is no doubt that bitcoin is very useful and even if some criminals decide to use it that must not be enough to enforce a ban or even heavy regulations.

Dollars, and indeed currencies in general, are not the most convenient means today. Cash - well, ok, you can carry suitcases in uncontrolled areas. Considering that all the "heads" of terrorist organizations (the final beneficiaries, not the executors are fanatics) keep their money in Western banks and normal countries - now cash has become a problem. Cashless accounts are also a problem. The account is blocked instantly, and unblocking is almost impossible in such a situation. Therefore, it is easier to use diamonds, crypto, and similar assets that are difficult to find and easy to move.

I always found "criminals use USD more" a very poor argument, because fiat is used for EVERYTHING much more than crypto.


Both centralization and decentralization can be used for good or evil. Bitcoin is important not because it is always better than banks in every situation, but because it's an alternative system that gives people more options and better opportunities in certain situations.

If Afghanistan government stored their money in BTC, they could have easily evacuated it by sending the coins to the US government or just taking the private keys out of the country. It's the storing of cash or gold would have been a problem because it would have required logistic solutions and the government fell in a matter of days.

The advantage of centralized custody in this situation though is that if Afghanistan government had some defectors or sleeper agents of Taliban, they could have taken bitcoins before they could be moved out of reach of Taliban, but with foreign custody it's impossible.

You have yet talked about the nature of decentralised currency and it is the fact that if the foreign reserve of Afghanistan were in crypto, it won't be a taught for America to consider to stop the release of such fund, except there are any means that the blockchain can stop the release of coin by the owner who got the access to their coin. Yes if the coin was in bitcoin, that won't be possible but now it has been frozen.
By the way, expect more sanctions from America and bilateral trade will be severed as Taliban tries to form another government.

I don't think so, they have to find a way to make use of that and they can't be out and about in public since they're a terrorist after all. Also, the cyber warfare against terrorist is pretty easy to be solved because they don't have that much access to advanced computers or have some update on how to use crypto since they're in constant hiding.

Agree, the fact is that this is only about the element of freedom of a country that does not want interference from other parties where the country is based on certain bases that have been passed down from generation to generation.

For example, Afghanistan is fighting drugs, but the proceeds of their weapons are obtained from buying and selling drugs between countries both in Asia and for countries in the Middle East. Isn't payment revenue using crypto transactions like XMR as an alternative to cover the openness of the Afghan group. Because there is a thread about the Afghan economy to which I am responding actually the United States is suffering a huge loss https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.57821696
The US is wasting too much time pursuing overseas economies as if it has the goal of draining resources in the rich Middle East.

I feel like that's an aspect that is often overlooked when it comes to the "Bitcoin funds terrorism" narrative. Unless the Taliban is running a mining operation or doing bounties / sig campaigns on Bitcointalk, Bitcoin isn't used to fund anything.

Generally I find it weird to put the onus on a currency. If the problem is terrorists buying weapons, maybe prevent the inflow of weapons. I find it hard to believe that the flow of weapons is harder to control than the flow of currency. Unless, of course, there's a conflict of interest involved.

If Bitcoin were so good at creating anonymous transactions then it would be used by all terrorists in the world, and by that logic there would be a lot more terrorism in the world than 10 years ago - but we all know that is not the case. The US has a very big problem at the moment, the fight against terror must continue, but against whom to fight if there are no terrorists?

Bringing Bitcoin into any serious connection with terrorism is an already worn-out story that makes sense just as much as meaningless accusations that Bitcoin is destroying the environment - it all comes down to the agenda "don't use Bitcoin because you help terrorists and because you'll stay in the dark".

That's what I thought too but there's also the possibility that they're going to go that route even though it's a bit advanced for some of them, I mean it's not like bitcoin's the only one that they can use to transfer funds right and it's much safer for the arms dealer because they don't have to be there physically and they can just send a representative to oversee the exchange.

I think so but the authorities can easily identify those who use bitcoin to fund terrorism campaigns. Also, it's unlikely for them to use it anyways, I mean their arms dealer will probably want fiat rather than a cryptocurrency being paid for their Assault Rifles and RPGs.