Topic: Research; The use of Crypto currencies for cyber laundering (Read 274 times)

This has been established long time ago. We do not know "all" people who does this, but we have caught a lot of people who did, the accounts were tracked back and eventually shown that they were connected to each other. Which meant that the same person who created the NFT, was the same person who bought it for silly amounts as well.

This means that people overprice their own shitty stuff and then take advantage of the situation by selling it to others for cheaper if they have to. Do not consider just those 60 million type of stuff, people do this with even 200 bucks worth of stuff, this is why it is quite important to check the projects and see if they are legit or not.

Paper money is the most vulnerable and frequently used for money laundering without a trace, in my country when men on the darknet want to make transactions that can not be traced they choose to use the US dollar as the local currency in most cases money laundering in my country are done using the United States dollar as my traditional currency have low value and can not be easily carried around in paper form and if the deal is carried out using either the bank or blockchain it can be traced so Bitcoin is never a haven for money laundering.

Lot of criminals are using cryptocurrency for these kinds of activities for sure.
I am also curious here,
is using a bitcoin mixer/different chain mixer or converting your funds to different altcoins just to mix it also considered money laundering?
It seems one of the best ways to hide your identity is using mixers.

Wonderful suggestion for research. I believe there actually has been evidence of this going on in this brilliant NFT scheme -- which, by the way, is simply a lesson lifted straight out of the elite rich's world of "how to launder money using art". In this instance, an artist is commissioned a painting by said rich guy. But instead of paying the artist, said rich guy instead agrees that he will bid for and pay a ridiculous amount of money for it, using the services of auction house to promote and legitimise the deal.

Artist keeps promised share, auction house keeps promised portions and, if lucky enough, rich guy actually gets outbid by some other dumb rich guy -- bidder keeps profits. Clean.

In NFT, replace rich guy with NFT minter, replace auction house with NFT marketplace, and remove need for actual artist (you've got AI tools now minting NFTs on script).

P.S. Ought to look also into stablecoins and "defi" for more cyber laundering loveliness.

I'm not sure if OP is serious since they created the topic and went away for good but for the sake of argument I' suggest you forget about bitcoin and look into tokens namely NFTs.

Bitcoin is a currency and its market and the price is clear, not to mention the very transparent ledger storing all transactions. It is extremely difficult to launder money using bitcoin.

On the other hand it is not only super easy but it is happening every day using tokens. Here is a simple example with only 2 steps:
1- The money launderer creates a fake and useless token (mostly NFTs)
2- The same person buys that NFT for an unreasonably high amount of dirty money (like $60 million out of nowhere!)
Claims it was a legitimate sale and the received money is clean!

There are numerous examples of NFTs appearing out of nowhere selling something that by no standard should be worth millions of dollars and to make matters more suspicious, there is only one bid on that token buying it for millions!

What exactly are you looking for? I think the important thing to remember here is all money types are used in laundering cases. Sure bitcoin / cryptocurrencies have made a new way to launder money and some make it really easy to do so, but I hope this doesn’t get in the way of the fact that this is such a revolutionary piece of technology.  Not sure what else to provide.

Is it a true research topic or a made up topic.

Well, let's believe it's a research. Conducting research here is like asking me if my Parents are evil. I guess you'll know my answer.
Government cannot be speaking bad about Bitcoin and you want us to do same.
However if you wish to continue your research here, you can give us a questionnaire, either open ended or close ended. After which you filter your findings and ensure you indicate that you conducted the survey in a bitcoin forum.

Even now there is misunderstanding about bitcoin as a source used specifically for the money laundering. We need to spread more positive things about bitcoin which will make people understand the real usage and the purpose of bitcoin. We can't deny that bitcoin isn't used for bad, but our responsibility is to do it for the positive needs and spread the good. The usage of cryptocurrencies in money laundering is very small compared to the usage of dollar, but whenever there is a discussion about money laundering first it is talked about bitcoin which needs to change.

This is not correct. Or rather it is a popular misconception. The blockchain is a public ledger, transactions can be seen and traced, more often than not there is always a link, no matter how hard you try to eliminate them. Centralized exchanges have the data of their users, they watch their transactions and can always link it back to the sender or receiver. Politicians and other individuals have been laundering/embezzling/stealing money with fiat for so long with no traces, and of course there can be little or no traces with fiat, back in Africa and other places as well there have been numerous stories of politicians who stored up large sums of money under the ground, inside large buildings and in foreign banks. Fiat would always be the most convenient way to launder money cause you do not have to worry about the blockchain or third party services (mixers/centralized exchanges) giving you up when the government or other security agencies come calling.
Centralized excanges are third party services, and if you leave your funds with them then you do so at your own risk. Remember the Bitcoin network is all about control and freedom, and if 'Not your keys, then Not your coins', thus this (flaws of centralized exchanges) doesn't support your claims that Bitcoin is the easiest way to launder money.

Dont know on why there are people who dont really make out some simple research rather than on asking out on community.If this one talks about pros or positive then he might able to get directly
some answers but this one emphasis on its cons which we know that this isnt something that people do discuss on here and its true that it might be used on cyber laundering but come to think that
we've been already having this problem when we are already using the typical fiat so why need some emphasis?

A few quick google search about this topic will give you a lot of insight about crypto in money laundering topic rather than wait for answer here. Crypto is the easiest path to money launder due it's anonymity feature and mixers to erased your transaction prints. I believe you should start doing research on what CEX is a prime suspect on doing laundering because this will be an interesting input on this subject.

Bitcoin or cryptocurrency are not created for financial or cyber criminals but as in life, there are good and bad usability of all things. Because there are good and bad people in our society. Good people will use things in a right way. Bad people will use things in a wrong way. The same you can find in crypto market. There are good usability of Bitcoin but there are others use it for money laundering and illegal things. However, let's keep in mind that people are free to use Bitcoin. It's for everyone but don't judge Bitcoin is bad because there are bad people used Bitcoin.

Do you have any specific area which you want more specific inputs? In general, cryptocurrency is a blessing for the online scammers, black hat hackers and money launderers. Along with mixers and coinjoin kind of facilities, it has become very easy for these people to move funds with ease.

Do some research about NFTs. This is another big playground especially for money launderers. There are multiple darknet operators selling illegal things using cryptocurrencies. The list can just go on and on.

You will also encounter some puritans who will argue that crime used to happen when cryptocurrency didn't exist. That's ofcourse true! But there's no denying that cryptocurrency has provided convenience to these criminals.

If this is a research topic then you need to take a good  look at it once more OP.
Should be something more like;
The use of Crypto Currencies in fighting Cyber laundering in the society.
Awareness and Utilization of Crypto Currencies and Bitcoin by local marketing trader's.
Adoption of Crypto Currencies into world markets - An evaluation of the role played by government regulations.

You need to find both your dependent and independent variables.

It's a great idea but not looking for a problem and trying to solve it, this is how a researchable topic should look like if I'm wrong, someone quote me if I'm!
Advice:OP is a Newbie and shouldn't be bashed, guide the newbies and don't bash them, one thing Ddmr is known for!
Thank you.

Do you have any prior research that you have done first? What is the aim of your study as well? What are you planning to achieve once you have gathered enough data for it? Because for sure, that data wouldn't be readily available to anyone unless they are investigating it themselves, and they aim to prove that it is being used like that. As much as I don't want to see that being used like that, it's the reality.

What's your specific case about the topic? You can have different approaches to discuss about the topic. Please clarify which particular position you would wish to argue regarding the use of cryptocurrencies for cyber laundering. You might only be interested of the figures. Or you might only be interested to somehow counter it with figures involving fiat laundry. Or you might also wish to take a look at cryptocurrency more closely and try to have a grasp on why it is the choice by some cyber launderers. This would be more interesting to pursue. 

Are you asking us here if we think that cryptocurrencies are effectively utilized by money launderers in their usual business of illegally making their money come clean and become legal? In the past many years, there was this strong assumption that cryptos can be used by illegal means like money laundering, drugs and even human trafficking...essentially making it easier for them to do business and evade the authorities. Of course, that assumption is proven to be false in the ground as they prefer to be using fiat money which can be untraceable in many ways. And I am sure that records and figures will tell us that this is true...and that is the reason why money laundering is no more one of the many big issues thrown to the cryptocurrency industry.

If you're capable of making research other having a survey~ish approach, you'll now that only using crypto mixer can avoid detection of money laundering in crypto.

Possible scenario, is fiat to crypto.

If you're thinking laundering money from crypto to crypto then it will be easy to track due the publicity of blockchain transactions and it can be blocked deposits and freeze the assets of the address use to launder.

Don't assume that most people here is main purpose it to launder money, coz that's bs, if you'll compare to fiat.

Are you assuming that we're all here for using Bitcoin for illegal actions?
And you're assuming that people will come eager to share their stories of how they're laundering money?!

I hope that my wild (or not?!) assumptions (about your assumptions) are wrong, however, you're doing it wrong.
It's your paper, ... it's you who has to do the work, not us trying to figure out what would you want to write there.


Since the banks are the biggest known private companies caught doing money laundering, just imagine what can they will tell you if you come with this one-liner.
Now.. this is a free forum and we usually try to be helpful. But in order to get anything useful, you should start asking questions... even more, the right questions.

The truth is.....

Fiat money laundering are a lot more than Crypto laundering, because criminals do not have to worry about Blockchain forensics and modern technology that can be used to trace their criminal actions. A lot of these criminals are not technologically ready for the possible "honey traps" that might be used by the secret agencies to catch them.  

It is still much easier to launder money through the "tried and tested" old Fiat money laundering techniques. Syndicates have infiltrated the Banking system and they are using the Banking system to launder money for them.

"Banks and other financial institutions are used by criminals to launder their ill-gotten gains. Banking institutions are preferred money laundering tools for criminals because they offer a variety of financial services, including foreign exchange, deposits, cash transfers, and loans." - Source : https://www.renolon.com/money-laundering-statistics/