Topic: Bitcoin illicit transactions are less than 1% (Read 218 times)

I wonder what exactly the researchers classified as "illicit".   I am more comfortable with the word Immoral than Illicit to make things easy to understand around the World. What is illicit to one society/person may not be illicit for another, but Immoral can be better way to classify illegal/evil things for all societies. This will be more useful in a decentralized global network like Bitcoin. If tyrannical government asks my Decentralized community to release an information about its cititizen, probably to get him/her jailed for illicit activities, i will likely refuse  if what the citizen is accused of is not bad/immoral.


By the way, I believe the percentage of immoral activities dark currencies like fiat are used for could be way higher than mere 5%

This is the progress of bitcoin itself. Although bitcoin used to be used for payments and illicit transactions, Now that bitcoin is really becoming public and transparent in front of everyone, we can all use and store it. And very much the benefits of that. Even some of us use it to invest.

That's the dilemma everybody has
You want bitcoin to hide your identity completely you are opening a door for illicit activities, authorities find a way to track your coins, illicit activities go down but so does your privacy as your every move is going to be tracked. So....

But I'm really wondering about those numbers, especially if you use indicators as volume and number of transactions.
Those numbers are different in the blockchain compared to a bank, let's just think how tumbling works, it is one tx or 10? What's the volume, the one coin that gets tossed around, or the combined outputs making it 10?
I'm buying a thing from the shop, then the shop batches transactions deposits in one, and sends half to exchange how you quantify this?
Not even mentioning the simple consolidation of outputs a lot of people from simple users to business are doing.

But to be honest, I think that for large scale illicit activities bitcoin is not the optimal choice, for small scams and for a guy accepting a bribe or trying to hide it might work but with all the costs and the lack of cheap and fast options to transfer it into cash it's probably a no go for organized crime...yet. They could use it for moving large sums of money from country to country but that are probably rare events and besides, monero does that better.

That does make sense. Scams are linked to literally every single currency out there(FIAT, Crypto, Paper, Digital etc), but crypto haters made it seem like crypto scams are the worst kind thanks to dark web etc.

Also, many governments actively promote anti-crypto crap due to which many people get brainwashed into thinking that cryptocurrencies are illegal and should be avoided at all costs.

The whole ‘bitcoin is used by criminals’ FUD is just banksters & government shills trying to protect their livelihoods.  Crime has been facilitated with cash & before that precious metals for hundreds of years. Anything with value can be used as a medium of exchange & crime isn’t going away.

Ignore the FUD, buy BTC.

To know the transaction clearly, a fairly detailed data analysis is needed. because tracking illicit transactions makes the parties involved will be interrogated by the authorities.
So, when the government carries out a layered KYC level that says in order to make it easier to identify personal data transparently, then what if the data is leaked and misused. Lately, data leaks have been increasingly overflowing, as long as the government is able to guarantee the security of my personal data, it is very ready. but if there is a leak that keeps repeating, then our privacy is even more insecure.

People can use anything for that even simple rocks and coupons or gift cards for that purpose, so I would not say that fiat money is spreading any evil around the world.
You can use bitcoin, money or knife and axe for good or for bad things, and no regulations will ever change that.

These 1% accounts for those activities which they traced, though I'm certain that there's more than the figure they came up with. But with the way how bitcoin works, and add to it the blockchain analysis tools that they are improving constantly, it's not a suprise that this 1% figure is really, really close to the actual number.

The media and the banks are constanly peddling the narrative that bitcoin is a safe haven for illicit transactions, without ever acknowledging that their fiat money is what's spreading evil around the world.

It's really good to see this statistics. Because as we all know, Bitcoin has been indicated as it is used for illegal activities a lot. But it seems like things are way different than this. By the way, this kind of people also forget how much fiat is used for this kind of activities also.

Wonderful statistics. This is a good evidence against people who keep saying that bitcoin only uses for illegal purposes. Since many people has considered bitcoin as an asset, it gets more attention from both supporters and haters. But I suppose those imbeciles will never accept this piece of fact. All they want is to get rid of bitcoin once and forever

I am sure that the number of paper currencies that were used in illegal activities is worth much more than this number. I think it is not less than 10% as a minimum. In any case, this report is very good in favor of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies that have long been accused of being used in illegal activities. Or for money laundering, this report is a white point in the Bitcoin newspaper and governments should stop using this ridiculous charge.

After all bitcoin ended ironically being less used for illicit activities than fiat money. What a surprise for the establishment which has been bad mouthing bitcoin for several years already regards criminals dealing with the digital currency. In fact bitcoin doesn't give any additional benefit to criminals which could lead them to avoid being caught. It's not anonymous or untraceable.

And yet, unfortunately, the regulations for cryptocurrency are increasing. They are getting stricter and stricter daily. Even the right to privacy is already somehow infringed due to the stringent requirements imposed on people involved in cryptocurrency trading and other related activities even if there is no compelling or valid reason for them to divulge all their personal information. They are now treated as if they are all involved in illegal transactions and it is their obligation to prove otherwise.

The majority of cryptocurrency is not used for criminal activity. According to an excerpt from Chainalysis' 2021 report, in 2019, criminal activity represented 2.1% of all cryptocurrency transaction volume (roughly $21.4 billion worth of transfers).

That's a great news for the bitcoin community. Because whenever any country plans to ban bitcoin the major reasons are mainly two,

1. Money laundering
2. Terrorism financing

So it's great to see such positive reports in favor of bitcoin. There might be some confusion around the legitimacy of such report but it's a net positive at this turbulent time of the market.

I see that why they consider crypto as part of a transaction tool of all kinds of fraud because they want to have a basic reason to prohibit crypto from being trusted by the public.  The kyc they use is only an alibi to control our crypto assets.  Because without this control they will not have the power to boycott, let alone attract the circulation of this crypto.  In fact, fiat has funded various types of crimes in this world.  Bitcoin has just been born in the last 10 years or so.  However, various kinds of evil existed before it was formed.  So this reason is not a rational reason.

You can identify the illicit transactions by linking them through blockchain analysis with known addresses. The problem is this is that if you believe that they have accurately identified most of the illicit transactions, then you're insinuating that Bitcoin is not doing enough for privacy; granted most people involved in these would be more inclined to cover their tracks than the average Joe. Interesting to note that the study actually states this limitation of the estimates.

The narrative that Bitcoin is used solely, or has a huge proportion of illicit transactions is wrong. Media outlets will do anything to sensationalize fake news and people would consume it willingly and probably won't even bother checking the facts.

Don't say that, didn't you know that FUD spreader doesn't accept this as a fact because it goes against their agenda. The problem with illicit activity is that the data might be incomplete because there are definitely a lot of this activity that has passed through the poor sight of our current policing system.

Bitcoin finally have some good reports based on real facts and research proving that illicit transactions are making less than 1% of all Bitcoin transactions, and even former CIA director Michael Morell confirmed that.
Real question is how many of traditional fiat currencies have been used for illicit activity and according to the UN it is between 2% and 5% of global GDP, and I bet it is even bigger than that.

One thing I noticed in this report is that governments are probably preparing new and more strict KYC regulations for exchanges and they are especially concerned about other coins and DEX exchanges, more than about Bitcoin.

We need more reports like this, and especially after recent Bitcoin is bad for environment narrative, with more facts and less sensational headlines.



Must read 11 pages full report: https://cryptoforinnovation.org/resources/Analysis_of_Bitcoin_in_Illicit_Finance.pdf