Yeah, but retrieving actual useful currency from that wallet becomes nearly impossible. At that point, the only way, really, is peer-to-peer transaction. And even then, it seems fraught.
Comment on How a 27-Year-Old Codebreaker Busted the Myth of Bitcoin’s Anonymity
daniskarma@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Transactions are public. But wallet ownership is not.
That’s why it’s widely used in cybercrime. You can make a wallet and authorities may know which wallet receibe the money, but it may be imposible to link that wallet with an actual person.
prole@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
maness300@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yeah, but retrieving actual useful currency from that wallet becomes nearly impossible.
Then how do people set up drug empires built around it?
Use your brains.
circuscritic@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
The same way they do everywhere else… Complex webs of money laundering, but that’s not cheap, or easy.
maness300@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Or nearly impossible, as evidenced by the litany of small-time vendors who have been operating for years.
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 5 months ago
And it becomes much, much easier to track down and remove anonymity the moment real currency transactions are made. Because of KYC requirements, the only way to stay anonymous with crypto is to keep your crypto transactions entirely outside of the real world. Once your digital anonymous currency interacts with real money you’ve not anchored your wallet to your identity.
FaceDeer@kbin.social 5 months ago
There are places you can exchange crypto that exist outside of KYC requirements.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Impossible using the blockchain itself, but not as impossible when you add more traditional investigative techniques to hmthe mix.
7heo@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Provided that the exchanges are cooperating (voluntarily or by law).
Why do you think NK and other “impenetrable” countries are so fond of it? It provides them with the means to monetize something otherwise pretty useless: their relative independence and the resulting potential for secrecy.
They are turning into new-age Swiss banks.
And one does not need a strong currency to achieve that: other cryptocurrencies are also perfectly usable.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
People don’t need an exchange either. Someone can create a physical paper wallet with no copy of its keys and who ever holds it owns it.
Organized crime has existed for a while, the boss rarely gets their hands dirty and the grunt isn’t involved and in the know enough about the bigger crime to be charged too harshly if their part in it was discovered.
7heo@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
The point of the exchange is to have an offline ledger. That is, to hide parts of the information, so that it is then impossible to relate information.
You cannot do that with a paper wallet.