Topic: Tether Cryptocurrency Becoming ‘Preferred Choice’ Among Money Launderers - page 2. (Read 879 times)

If stable coins are used for money laundering, I am sure criminals will more favorite to use Tether USD than other stable coins because it is a biggest stable coin.

Tether USD marketcap is $97B and a second biggest stable coin is USDC has only $28B in marketcap. The third biggest stable coin is DAI with only $5B in marketcap. These numbers show domination of Tether USD in stablecoin area.

https://coinmarketcap.com/view/stablecoin/

Tether like other stable coins, can be froze in your wallets.
PSA: Most Stablecoins Can Be Frozen, Even in Your Own Wallets
USDT banned addresses.

@zasad@. If the information is true and if proven that CZ knows this or if he is directly involved on these occurrences on Binance then he can be sentenced for assisting terrorist groups on moving funds. However, the argument I was making is different. I am arguing more about the stablecoins being illegaly used for crime and terrorism or if an exchange CEO can be charged for terrorism if he has no knowledge of these occurrences.

Will Tether and Circle be complicit if terrorists uses USDT and USDC to move their money? Would it make the issuer of the dollar complicit if they used American dollars? Will Apple be complicit if they used iphones for terrorism?

What do you think of this argument?
This is very easily done by the wrong hands in order to get a reason to impose sanctions on any company or even country.

https://abc7chicago.com/israel-hostages-binance-crypto/14378652/
The lawsuit accused Binance of processing numerous transactions for Hamas between 2017 and 2023, "providing a clandestine financing tool that Binance deliberately hid from U.S. regulators."

@zasad@. I very much disagree that CZ and Binance can easily be declared as terrorists and can also easily be proven in court. That is a very head shaking argument.

In any case, if it was easy and if sentenced in court as terrorists, this would certainly create a very dangerous precedent on who else will easily be proven as terrorists in court. Everyone can and will easily a terrorist including car companies, mobile phone companies, banks and many other companies' products and service that were used by terrorists and drug cartels would be under investigation.

I understand the problem, I think in Russian and write in English, and over many years I have become convinced that Russian-speaking and English-speaking people have completely different logic.
Read our conversation with stompix
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5439961.120
CZ and Binance are not terrorists, but they can easily be accused of this and this can even be proven in court.
After my last argument, our dialogue ended.

There are 2 major stablecoin issuers in the world: Circle and Tether.
Coinbase owns shares of Circle, Coinbase has very close ties to Blackrock and other large American banks and they have their own interests.
And Tether is an extra company in this market, which is not under US jurisdiction.

There is nothing personal here, this is a business where the main goal is to defeat competitors.
Tether may be accused of having links to terrorist financing. And then all its assets in the United States will be frozen or confiscated, and the stablecoin may lose its peg to the dollar. The trial will take a long time, and during this time the company will go bankrupt and lose its reputation in the market.

And it is more profitable for the US government to block more assets, so it is more profitable for them to have a larger capitalization of Tether.
Another interesting fact was told to me by an international lawyer that USDT is very popular in Russia (I fully confirm this), Asia, and Europe, and USDC is popular in the USA.
If I were the United States, I would ruin Tether, causing a big loss to competitors from other countries and adding hundreds of billions to my budget, completely legally

@zasad@. It would certainly be head scratching to call Tether terrorists because they are not terrorists. If the terrorists use American dollars, are the issuers of the dollar terrorists? If the terrorists used a certain brand of cell phone to activate their bombs, is the cell phone company a terrorist?

In any case, what are you implying on Tether's capitalization and being called a terrorist? Is the when the American government waits for a company to reach a certain size before the takedown hehehehe.

The capitalization of Tether USDT is currently about 98 billion dollars. I think it’s too early to call them terrorists.
Tether is backed by American bonds, meaning they have already given most of their money to the American economy, and for this they received an unofficial work permit. When Tether's capitalization reaches several trillion dollars, they can be called terrorists and their assets as collateral taken away.

The fud against Tether is very head shaking and it appears it is becoming very clear who might be responsible and where this is coming from. I speculate that this is coming from the American government and with the help of Tether's biggest competitor Circle hehehe. It would not be shocking if the new mayor of bitcoin is helping also.

Caroline Hill of Circle have made their position very clear when she begged the lawmakers in congress to give the treasury department the authority to crackdown on Tether.


Mayor of Bitcoin

In a February 15 Congressional hearing, Caroline Hill, Senior Director for Global Policy and Regulatory Strategy at Circle, has called on Congress to grant the Treasury Department the authority to go after Tether and its banking partner Cantor Fitzgerald. Hill said that the US Treasury Department should have the authority to take action given “Tether’s reputation” as well as available data that “they are contributing to terrorist financing and other malign activities.”

Read in full https://www.blockzeit.com/circles-caroline-hill-asks-congress-to-go-after-tether/

Any inadequate tax regime always causes a shadow market. I have cited Moscow and St. Petersburg many times as examples of the largest shadow markets in the world.
But these shadow exchanges have branches in many countries and are constantly expanding. If you close them, then many other small exchangers will open in their place, which will work much more secretly.
All information on https://www.bestchange.ru/ and https://kurs.expert/

The banking system is one of the worst systems humans have created to loot humans. What the banks advertise is the biggest fraud, they say that every bank user needs to save money and invest in the banking system while on the contrary they take that money and invest in business to make more money. They are using a user's money to earn profits and when they are asked to share the profit they only pay peanuts.

The status of banking in my country is so bad that if you keep money in your bank account you would hardly earn any interest. If you invest in any banking-based schemes the amount of interest you get is very less. That was the primary reason why the middle class in my country invested in stocks and now they are investing in crypto. The government does not like it and that is why they implemented the highest tax slab for crypto trading.

And the crisis of the banking system in the world is prompting people to assume that cryptocurrencies will occupy a certain share in the global financial market. All states print money. Cash hodlers lose 7-15% per year in countries with good economies and bank interest does not even compensate for these losses, but only slightly reduces the losses.

You are making an important point here that I also agree cryptocurrency will win when we stop exchanging it for fiat. It took a lot of years to let go of gold and adopt a paper and it will take some years for your statement to come true. It is very clear that now Monero is more acceptable than Bitcoin currently as I went for a small ride into the zone of the darknet. The sellers are the same but now most of them are asking for Monero and there are very few who are now asking for Bitcoin. Understandably the congestion and the fee are the main concerns.

Monero is more secure for anonymous payments, has lower fees and does not require mixers.
There are no big problems with exchanges either, and Ratimov made a very useful guide, which he later deleted.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231108171939/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5461917.0
Cryptocurrency will win when there is no need to exchange coins for cash and it will be possible to pay with cryptocurrencies for goods and services.

Earlier it was mostly Bitcoin that was accepted as a mode of payment in the Darknet. With mixers getting seized and authorities focusing more on Bitcoin they started accepting Monero side by side with Bitcoin. Now, almost all darknet websites are asking for Monero as a payment method and it will go on until they face issues with Monero. I mean if you focus on the basic necessity of money laundering it was always meant for converting black money to white. Now, with cryptocurrencies and before the implementation of the tax it was easy for them, it was the best way to convert black to white. With harsh taxation policy and regulations, it is still a favorite way, but I feel they are now using DEX rather than CEX as it requires mandatory KYC.

I saw some darknet sites, and they mainly use Bitcoin and Monero. Centralized stablecoins are not as popular.
Criminal activity when money is stolen and settlements between people, which will then not be declared to the tax authorities, are different options. And the second option is more common in business relationships.

I understand and I agree to what you are saying but what about the perception. Criminals know that USDT is pegged to USD, would they dug deep to find about DAI. No, they will not as once an order of payment is set in the criminal world they rarely shift to any other mode unless, they get scrutinized by the authorities. I agree that Tether can be frozen, by the time it gets frozen as the government is involved the amount gets shifted to another wallet and gets cashed out. It is still a convenient way to operate in countries that have local exchanges as it is acceptable in most countries in their local exchanges. The point is to get USD pegged currency, convert it to local currency and utilise it for illegal activities.

DAI has huge liquidity for exchange for the most popular stablecoins USDT and USDC
https://app.uniswap.org/tokens/ethereum/0x6b175474e89094c44da98b954eedeac495271d0f
DAI is backed by a large amount of USDC
If the tokens are criminal, then a loss of 1-2% on the exchange will not be critical, because cashing out costs much more.

I agree with both of you that DAI should be preferred over USDT by those who participate in money laundering. But, the question is how is DAI pegged and how is USDT pegged? Criminals want USD and not a stable coin which is not pegged 1:1 with USDT. That can be one of the reasons why they do not go for DAI and the other issue could be converting DAI to USD as USDT is available for conversion on most P2P exchanges whereas DAI is not. Another thing that came to my mind is that these are criminals who are not interested in understanding the concept of DAI. Their perception of USDT as it was the first stablecoin is that it is backed by USD and it might be the only way these criminal organizations deal in cryptocurrency.

It is true, but if they can freeze the account due to authorities report, then if regulatory pressure increases, they will do so through administrative decisions, then reports from the local police. Tether relies primarily on its bank accounts to maintain the stability of the currency, and a single decision can threaten its existence if the authorities decide to freeze their bank accounts Or impose restrictions on treasury bonds that are used to support currency stability.

DAI has wider options in the event that pressure is imposed on it.

DAI is free from blocking, but criminals use USDT because they are aware of the complex procedures that the police must follow to get USDT blocked. And as a rule, these tokens can change several addresses, the winner will be the lucky one who sends the tokens to a centralized crypto exchange and receives a block.