Isn't this like the #1 use case for crypto?

Everyone wants an untrackable unblockable currency that is out of government control until the day it is used for things they don't like, then suddenly "government please control this!"

• chihuahua

  today at 7:57 PM

  I thought the #1 use case for crypto was ransomware, followed by shitcoin rug-pulls, and the ability to commit theft without recourse.

  Sending money to Iran is just a minor edge case.

  • rwmj

    today at 8:23 PM

    That's a rather narrow view of crypto's uses. What about subverting democracy by bribing the President?

    • carshodev

      today at 9:49 PM

      Has the lack of crypto ever stopped this from happening? Look up cases of gold bars being found in senators houses, those are actually MUCH less tracable.

      Shitcoins and Shitstocks(some SPACs) do allow of a legal way to "give" others money through the transfer of value in a way that is technically legal. This again is not crypto specific though.

    • whynotmaybe

      today at 8:28 PM

      For me it was buying a computer from newegg but I confess I'm not playing in the same league.

      • quinnjh

        today at 8:49 PM

        What was the benefit to you over using USD? (actually wondering)

        • whynotmaybe

          today at 9:06 PM

          1. Get rid of the few mBTC I had left after I realized how bad I'm at crypto trading

          2. Fully live the concept of buying something physical from a virtual money I got by mining some now defunct coins.

    • today at 10:08 PM

  • boplicity

    today at 10:23 PM

    Money laundering has always been a core feature of cryptocurrency, not an edge case.

  • amelius

    today at 10:47 PM

    You forgot gambling on crypto exchanges.

  • lazyasciiart

    today at 8:42 PM

    Isn't it just a subset of #3?

  • joe_the_user

    today at 10:23 PM

    Not that snark isn't warranted in this situation but you have to consider that the ability to turn energy into globally accepted (but notably not-actually-untraceable) cash-equivalent is a key piece of the corrupt bitcoin puzzle. It offer opportunities to everyone from third world oligarchs and pariahs to those who happen to be able to tap an electrical grid. Technically, this is indeed "theft without recourse" but you're reply seems to imply corruption isn't included.

    Moreover, the chances are the reason Binance nixed the investigation of bitcoin going to Iran is because so much of the bitcoin economy is driven by entities like Iran (google AI say they have 4.5% of global mining plus random search link [1]).

    Edit: Iran also want bitcoin sent to because bitcoin isn't actually untraceable so getting clean money for dirty matters.

    [1] https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/iranian-crypto-activity-geo...

  • numbers_guy

    today at 8:34 PM

    Back in 2011 I remember a lot of people talking about how the Chinese oligarchs were using it to evade currency controls and funnel their wealth out of China.

    • carshodev

      today at 10:10 PM

      Yes but we should be reminded that this also allows people to be protected from government overreach.

      If you say something the Chinese government does not agree with they can choose to take all your money and control of your company instantly. Not just oligarchs although those are the bigger targets due to the high value.

      Even a small business owner could THEORETICALLY have their assets and equity seized for saying something which goes against the current ruling party, and this is not specific to China it could happen in any modern country.

      Crypto allow someone to distribute their wealth in a way where they can be free to speak their mind and still protected even if the country which their business is based out of decides to take action against them.

  • hilliardfarmer

    today at 8:06 PM

    What a deeply troubling and cynical comment.

    As far as I know, nowhere in the Bitcoin white paper or the original code base. Does it say anything about what you seem to think it's use cases are.

    Bitcoin has one main use, digital cash, that can be sent instantly and for free or a very low fee.

    Edit: I would agree though, that anything other than that is probably a scam.

    • wpietri

      today at 8:32 PM

      It seems entirely accurate to me, at least in a POSIWID sense.

      The original theory of Bitcoin was, as described in the paper, decentralized digital cash. But in practice it was never optimized for what normal people use cash for. As system like that would be something like M-PESA.

      Even at the time, cash was declining in usage. In the 18 years since, it has declined a lot more. And for good reason, because what most people want for most things isn't digital cash, but digital money. E.g., debit cards and Venmo.

      So pretty naturally Bitcoin has value only for a few niche use cases that are not well served by more effective systems. Various sorts of crime, mostly. Digital cash, sure, but the kind that's transferred in unmarked envelopes slid quietly across the table. The kind that is delivered in a briefcase.

      As a side note, it also failed in its goal of being decentralized. The mining power is very concentrated. Much more so than the banking industry, for example. And most users keep their Bitcoin on deposit in centralized services. So it's again basically banking but worse.

      • carshodev

        today at 9:54 PM

        Although it was originally intended to be cash it actually now is used as a "store of wealth" It allows people to build up wealth and be able to preserve it from government intervention and inflation. If you have stocks the ownerhsip and registration is controlled by a government and can be taken at any time from you.

        Look at china where if you have a large company and take a stand against the government all your equity will be wiped out and you will be either imprisoned or banished to another country.

        Cash in a government bank account is the same way, you can wake up one day and all your assets will be seized, your credit cards will stop working.

        Bitcoin works because you can technically have your wealth memorized. You can memorize a string of charcters that allow you to bring money with you no matter where you go. NO government or other human can steal it from you (except through torture) but you can also easily not memorize it and instead distribute the keys throughout the world in opposing countries meaning even if you are attacked by one country you still have some wealth kept in another.

        A store of wealth is what bitcion allows. True freedom from governments stealing your money because you have ideas which they do not agree with.

        This in my mind is the main usage of bitcoin.

        Other coins like stablecoins, or the btc lightning network have high value because they make transactions much cheaper as traditional banking systems are complex, error prone, and costly.

      • maest

        today at 10:05 PM

        POSIWID = the Purpose Of the System Is What It Does.

    • natpalmer1776

      today at 8:16 PM

      Men of principles often mistake the experience and observations of others for cynicism when it does not align with said principles.

      This applies to a great deal, not just bitcoin.

      • toomuchtodo

        today at 8:34 PM

        Relevant citations:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality

        "We must take the world as it is and not as we would like it to be." - Maurice Allais

    • datatrashfire

      today at 9:37 PM

      the problem is as a means of cash it’s inferior to existing systems in pretty much every dimension. more expensive, slower, more risk, higher volatility. the cash story for crypto is not good.

      • carshodev

        today at 9:56 PM

        This is incorrect, bitcoin is slower and more expensive, but bitcoin should not be used as cash, coins like stablecoins which direclty track US dollars or altcoins with lower fees should be used, the lightning network also is useful for transactions.

        Bitcoin CAN be used as a store of wealth and the slowness actually makes it better as the slowness is part of the same process that makes it safer, harder to hack/takeover, and gives it value.

        You should not look at all crypto as one thing.

        • idop

          today at 10:30 PM

          My brain hurts[1].

          [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrVj8B41t0U

    • lambda

      today at 8:20 PM

      What? "Instantly and for a very low fee"?

      Fees have historically gone up above $100 per transaction. They've since added hacks on top of the original Bitcoin protocol to get the price back down again, but the original design was not good for low fees.

      And transactions can take 30 minutes or more to settle, that's hardly instant. If you accept a transaction instantly, it's relatively easy for someone to scam you by double spending.

      So, no, Bitcoin doesn't make a great digital cash. Maybe a better wire transfer. But the biggest benefit of it is to be unblockable and unrefundable, which makes it great for scames and illegal activity, plus the speculative nature of the pricing, which is great for gambling on.

      • kevinak

        today at 9:23 PM

        Bitcoin via the Lightning Network is near cost-free and instant. And it's not a hack, it's just a network of payment channels.

      • whynotmaybe

        today at 8:29 PM

        >And transactions can take 30 minutes or more to settle >Fees have historically gone up above $100 per transaction

        So it's cheaper to use Paypal ?

        • lambda

          today at 9:11 PM

          They've since added some hacks to enable it to handle more transactions and bring the price down. Effectively, the network had hit its limit on the number of transactions it could fit in a block, so you had to pay high fees to get accepted in a block, the miners simply couldn't accept all transactions; but they've added ways of fitting more transactions into a block that have helped drive prices back down again.

          So now it's back to being cheaper than Paypal, but yeah, there was a time when there were $100+ transaction fees. And it may hit that again if transaction numbers go up enough to fill up blocks with the new implementation.

          • tromp

            today at 9:32 PM

            High tx fees are an essential goal in Bitcoin's design: in the long term, when the block subsidy becomes insignificant, Bitcoin's security will rely almost entirely on tx fees.

      • SOLAR_FIELDS

        today at 8:24 PM

        Pointing at the BTC transaction fee and saying it is super expensive is like pointing at a problematic car model and saying all cars are bad.

        There are any number of other popular coins out there that have the same or better liquidity as BTC that charge tiny fractions of the fees. And also settle in seconds.

        You're saying Bitcoin like BTC, but the parent commenter was probably referring to the giant ecosystem of coins, that happens to include BTC, but also many other much faster and cheaper options, that are used to globally remit payments every day.

        What it's replacing, by the way, Western Union, Wise and the like, is also pretty unblockable and unrefundable.

        • lambda

          today at 8:30 PM

          What? I was replying to someone who explicitly referenced the Bitcoin whitepaper, they were clearly talking about BTC. And the protocol from the whitepaper was actually pretty bad, from a cost and transaction time point of view. It's gotten a bit better with some hacks layered on top of it.

          And yeah, the thing is, payment systems that work approximately as well as BTC exist without being cryptocurrency and using up so much electricity on mining. The main difference is that they don't operate in some areas where BTC still can (like evading sanctions, like this), and the speculative nature of BTC (which is actually a net negative on using it as a cash).

• cs702

  today at 9:39 PM

  It's also the #1 use case for $100 US dollar bills. Most US $100 bills, in fact, are not even in the US.[a][b]

  US $100 bills are the currency of choice for small-time crooks and evildoers around the world.

  They are also the currency of choice for big-time crooks and evildoers. Briefcases of US $100 bills have long been used for illicit payments, as depicted in numerous books and movies.

  Just because crooks and evildoers use US $100 bills doesn't mean they are not useful and valuable to honest people too.

  What Binance did was wrong, no doubt, but Binance ≠ crypto.

  --

  [a] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2022/oct/innocent-...

  [b] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/12/177051690/most...

  • crazygringo

    today at 10:10 PM

    There's a major distinction, however, in that it's a heck of a lot harder to safely and reliably lug briefcases or suitcases full of $100 bills from Chicago to Tehran, than it is to click and transfer some Bitcoin. Which is the whole point.

    • cs702

      today at 10:26 PM

      Yeah, crypto is a safer, more reliable alternative for many use cases, including those that are fundamentally honest. For instance, if you're an honest person trapped as a citizen in a despotic authoritarian state that doesn't respect your property rights, crypto may be the safest, most reliable alternative for storing your hard-earned savings.

  • dylan604

    today at 10:06 PM

    > Just because criminals and evildoers use US $100 bills doesn't mean they are not useful and valuable to honest people too.

    Like all of the ATMs near a dispensary that was always out of cash because 20 individual $20 bills runs out a lot faster than 4 $100 bills. Until dispensaries became legal, it was rare for me to see an ATM with anything other than $20s. Now, I see $20, $50, $100 dispensing machines regularly.

• garrettgarcia

  today at 7:42 PM

  It's clearly not untrackable. It's never been untrackable. That's how they know it went to Iran.

  • paxys

    today at 7:45 PM

    Only because in this case they used a centralized exchange. The amount of actual circulation to countries like Iran and North Korea is likely many orders of magnitude higher that what is knowable.

    • torginus

      today at 7:55 PM

      I know some pretty sharp folks who fork for various police departments chasing illicit crypto related activity. The amount of stuff they can track including timing of transactions, entry and exit points, etc, and so over a long period of time means that most of the traditional anyonmization methods like tumblers simply do not work. Eventually someone, somewhere makes a mistake and the transactions and wallets can be traced.

      If you have dirty money to hide, it's much better to hide it in a bank in Panama, or fill a sports bag with gold bars and fly it out on your private jet than use crypto.

      Anything you can do from your bedroom, police can track from theirs.

      • MASNeo

        today at 8:26 PM

        I am working to track and trace and time transactions and while this is possible when and if you know the identity of at least one participant it’s quite another thing when no identity is known at all. Criminals know that so it’s notoriously hard to pull off. Thanks to Daleware secrecy and lax Super PAC rules to disclose sources of funds it’s not going to get easier.

        So either your friends are genius saucers or they have effective government intelligence that would be highly appreciated. I’d be interested.

        You are spot on regarding the bedroom though. Exporting physical USD is far more lucrative, by the shipload, often by Chinese Money Laundering Organisations, for free.

        • torginus

          today at 10:44 PM

          Sorry, I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but I know that he usually goes after big fish - people who deal in bulk or are somehow involved in manufacturing, not dudes who order pills in the mail. These people are usually being investigated/surveilled otherwise, and he does work with the police, so you could say he has 'government intelligence'.

        • lucketone

          today at 9:20 PM

          There is a third option, that those being tracked make mistakes

      • 0x3f

        today at 8:17 PM

        By definition the police only ever detect and catch those they are capable of detecting and catching. It's entirely in their interest to let people believe their capabilities are much greater than they really are. That goes double for the companies that sell this technology to the police.

      • MarsIronPI

        today at 8:20 PM

        Including sending and receiving Monero? (This is a serious question; I don't have a perspective on this yet.)

      • dylan604

        today at 10:08 PM

        > Anything you can do from your bedroom, police can track from theirs.

        This is why I have tape covering my webcam and music blaring. Oh, wait, that's not what you meant.

    • basilikum

      today at 9:38 PM

      Bitcoin is traceable by design. That's how a public ledger works. It is merely pseudonymous. But it leaves complete public money trail. If your Bitcoin ever associate with your real identity, which they tend to do when you actually use them, your anonymity is gone.

      There is a reason why Monero exists.

    • idontwantthis

      today at 7:50 PM

      Every single transaction is public information. If you carry a wallet into Iran, and it's coins are used through 20 different transactions to purchase weapons, all of those can be traced back to their origin.

      • paxys

        today at 7:56 PM

        That's like saying every currency note is traceable because it has a serial number. If someone hands you a dollar today can you trace it starting from where it was printed to everything it was used for until it eventually got into your hands?

        Yeah you can look up bitcoin wallet IDs on the ledger, but you can also generate an unlimited number of wallets, and pass coins in any combination through any number of mixers and tumblers, and exchange it between multiple currencies (some of them truly untrackable). If people or organizations want to stay anonymous in the crypto ecosystem they can very easily do so.

        • MarsIronPI

          today at 8:21 PM

          The difference is that with cash we don't write the serial number of every bill for every transaction in an easily-accessible central ledger. There's no such thing as an off-the-books Bitcoin transaction, by nature.

        • kelseyfrog

          today at 8:13 PM

          Except none of that happened. It didn't stay anonymous, it just went to Iran.

          • paxys

            today at 8:17 PM

            Did not happen != cannot happen

            • kelseyfrog

              today at 8:22 PM

              A lot of things can happen, but what did happen is the coins went to Iran.

            • today at 8:20 PM

      • arcanemachiner

        today at 7:54 PM

        Well, that depends on which cryptocurrency is used, doesn't it?

      • cammikebrown

        today at 7:55 PM

        Not if they used Monero

    • ozgrakkurt

      today at 7:54 PM

      I don’t understand the point of this. It is no different than traditional finance.

      People do and did transfer drug money before and they will keep transferring drug money. I don’t see what blockchain has to do with that.

      On the other hand, I use blockchain personally for completely legal purposes and find it very useful.

      Easy to do international transfers, easy to buy different currencies even if local government is trying to make it hard. Also I have more trust in it compared to countries that I live in or travel to.

      Another big aspect of it is no hidden costs and borderline scamming behavior I get from credit card companies or banks when doing international spending or transfers. This is not even about the insane prices, the feeling of getting scammed is even worse.

      Also it is literally governments reason of existence to preserve order and catch criminals. Banning everything used by criminals is insanely stupid.

      Same idea with cryptography, same with internet, same with cash.

• carshodev

  today at 9:46 PM

  Unblockable yes, untrackable no. Also portable is the main ability of crypto.

  The reason that this could be found out is because every transaction is recorded so it can be linked back through the chain once it hits another exchange that is KYC'd.

  If I have a gold watch and I wear it through the airport go to turkey melt it down and give it to an iranian, then buy a fake watch and return home noone will every know that this transaction took place.

  This would be 100% impossible to track in any reasonable manner. If I went to an exchange transfered bitcoin to a person then they spent this bitcoin in a way that linked it to their identity this would provide a full audit trail that would link me to that person. Also this audit trail could NEVER be removed or altered.

  There are ways to use bitcoin in an untracable manner just like gold, you can have a cold wallet and transfer the keys to someone else. The cold wallet password could be only memorized and thus have no physical trace and no transaction record could take place whatsoever, but this is the OPPOSITE of what an exchange does.

  Also cash and bank systems are not as resistant, they can fail, be hacked, be altered, people can use shell companies and fake identities.

  Some cryptos like monero try and hide the transaction path but even this crypto has some vulnerabilities making linking it to people possible in some cases.

• ericbuildsio

  today at 8:04 PM

  Could someone explain to me where the myth of "crypto = untrackable" comes from, and why it's still being perpetuated?

  Storing a record of every single transaction on a publicly accessible blockchain sounds trackable by design

  • subscribed

    today at 8:19 PM

    In the case of bitcoin, surely.

    Some other coins not so much trackable, and that's the reason some countries don't like them: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/binance-delist-monero-zcash-4...

    • ericbuildsio

      today at 8:52 PM

      Fascinating, I didn't know that Zcash / Monero worked that way. Thanks!

  • _alternator_

    today at 8:31 PM

    The truth is there are some currencies that are by design untrackable—monero and zcash, for example, which use privacy preserving techniques to avoid tracking. (IMO zcash is a better implementation than monero, but shrug.)

    Bitcoin and ethereum and most other crypto currencies are absolutely traceable in the sense that anyone can see who you send your money to. And all of the implementations have the core challenge of getting back to fiat—at some point, you withdraw cash or otherwise pay a real person to do something for you. There’s no way around that.

  • basilikum

    today at 10:11 PM

    Bitcoin ist pseudonymous. If you never attach your real identity to your Bitcoin you remain pseudonymous. Now that's a very big if and why states heavily try to enforce KYC for exchanges.

    The reality is a lot more messy. Different chains have different properties. Things like CoinJoins for Bitcoin or TornadoCash for Ethereum exist which aim to break the money trail. Mixers are a thing which are a trusted entity doing the same on a "trust me bro" basis.

    Monero seeks to be untracable by design using zero knowledge proofs and ring signatures over multiple possible sources for every transaction.

    Even with standard Bitcoin it's more complicated. One time change addresses make tracking harder. Say I send you 1 BTC in a transaction. Now you want to spend 0.5 of these Bitcoin. However with Bitcoin you can only ever use an incoming transaction in full. Every transaction has a number of inputs (a previous incoming transaction) that it spends and a number of outputs. An output can only be unspent or spent. The amount of the outputs must match the amount of inputs. So what you do is you use that input of 1 BTC and create two output of 0.5 BTC each. One is to the recipient address and one is to an address of your own (the change address). If you create a new change address for every transaction nobody but the recipient can know which output belongs to the recipient and which is your change address.

    In reality that is a weak defense and there are many usage patterns (e.g. one output being a round number and the other one not) that can give away which one the change address is.

  • nytesky

    today at 8:25 PM

    I think it’s part of the Origin Story.

    Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto almost 20 years ago. There are a number of wallets that people believe belong to Satoshi (have they proven they belong to SN?)

    Yet the identification of Satoshi has eluded a global hunt to identify him. Maybe law enforcement has not been involved, but the mystery definitely suggests that BitCoin can help mask identity.

    • 47282847

      today at 8:51 PM

      The wallets attributed to Satoshi have not seen any coin movement so it only shows that one can publish code pseudonymously, not that one can use BTC anonymously.

  • XorNot

    today at 9:03 PM

    It's the overconfidence of 90s kids who knew how to program the VCR and use the modem.

• wnevets

  today at 8:32 PM

  > Isn't this like the #1 use case for crypto?

  What is even the point of crypto if you can't commit crimes with it?

• jacobjjacob

  today at 9:21 PM

  It’s 100% trackable. It’s anonymous but there are many datapoints that could be used to deanonymize if the transaction parties are not extremely careful

  • carshodev

    today at 10:06 PM

    Exchanges are not anonymous at all though. They are directly linked to your identity as required by US law, but physical btc can be traded anonymously as its technically just a string of letters and numbers. You could transact with it through just telling someone this string if you trust them enough.

• today at 8:16 PM

• bigstrat2003

  today at 9:13 PM

  The #1 use case for crypto is that it's anonymous like cash. And yes, this enables people to use it for crime... just like they use cash. The unavoidable cost of freedom has always been that some people will misuse it. Personally, I would rather have freedom even if it gets misused than not have freedom even if it means crime is over.

  • hn_acc1

    today at 10:38 PM

    I'll bet $100 that the percentage of crypto used for crime is higher than the percentage of cash used for crime.

  • throw0101a

    today at 9:26 PM

    > The #1 use case for crypto is that it's anonymous like cash. And yes, this enables people to use it for crime... just like they use cash.

    Not quite like cash: collecting and transferring US$1.7B in cash—actual physical paper—is probably more logistically challenging than BTC.

    I understand the argument for freedom, but depending on the scale/dosage many things that could be fine in small quantities aren't as good in large ones.

• moralestapia

  today at 8:44 PM

  What's funny is that Bitcoin/Ethereum are now the most tracked ledgers on the planet. If I wanted to do some shady value exchange it would be my last choice.

• today at 8:58 PM

• bko

  today at 9:48 PM

  > Everyone wants an untrackable unblockable currency

  What are you talking about? Crypto is defined by its trackability (immutable, permission-less, verifiable ledger of every transaction in history). Please refrain from commenting on things you're unfamiliar with.

• torginus

  today at 7:49 PM

  Can't anyone basically sanction entire wallets, and mark them, and make some legislation that any transaction involving coins originating from those wallets be rejected by all payment processors and exchanges in regulated markets?

  I mean, they obviously can, but probably they have elected not to do so. But if crypto becomes a tool in the hands of enemy nation states, such regulation can't be soo far off.

  Though that would create a secondary market for these 'tainted' coins, and would probably have far-reaching consequences into the crypto ecosystem.

  • wmf

    today at 8:01 PM

    OFAC already sanctions crypto wallets. https://ofac.treasury.gov/faqs/594

  • wat10000

    today at 7:58 PM

    You can't track individual coins, so you'd have to "taint" entire wallets. Using a mixer would taint the mixer and every wallet it sent to. I'd think this would end up tainting almost everything before too long.

    Bitcoin also doesn't require the receiver to authorize a transaction, so if you had control of a tainted wallet, you could taint other wallets at will, wielding it like a weapon.

    Doesn't seem feasible. Not that this always stops legislators.

    • StopDisinfo910

      today at 8:07 PM

      > Using a mixer would taint the mixer and every wallet it sent to. I'd think this would end up tainting almost everything before too long.

      Is that actually an issue? I am looking for it but I can't see a downside.

      • 0x3f

        today at 8:19 PM

        It was at least in theory an issue when they tried to sanction mixers. In fact people would purposely send tainted crypto to well known wallet addresses of celebrities etc. making them technically run afoul of OFAC

      • wat10000

        today at 8:36 PM

        Depends on your goal. If you want to keep the system going while blocking "dirty" money, it's not going to work. If you want to use that as a stealth method of banning the whole system, then full steam ahead.

        • StopDisinfo910

          today at 8:44 PM

          Would banning the whole system have any downside? It's still unclear to me what crypto is supposed to be useful for.

• expedition32

  today at 9:29 PM

  Money laundering is only good when our people are doing it.

• wat10000

  today at 7:54 PM

  It seems to me that the people who want the unblockable currency out of government control are not the same people who want to block money transfers to countries like Iran.

• fredgrott

  today at 8:02 PM

  you mean its not used for the Paul brothers latest meme coin rug pulls?

• EA-3167

  today at 7:57 PM

  I'd argue the #1 use case is ransomware and scamming, but this has to be a close second. Honestly the journey from "The blockchain is the future, everyone must see that" to where we are now really feels like the one we're taking with 'AI'.

  In the end it will still exist, but the use case is going to be so much less inspiring than people want to believe, outside of medical and fundamental research at least.

• dpedu

  today at 9:03 PM

  Not just the #1 use case, the only use case. Real money is better in every scenario other than crime.

Contrary to a lot of comments here, the only way to use bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency) without tracking is to mine it yourself, and even then...

Where did you get it? Purchased/transferred? Where did they get it? What else did the person with that wallet do?

If the answer is "mined", even then, you have to actually do something with it, right? Buy something? Where is that something shipped? At worst you'll have to pay customs on it, and have it actually get through customs. At best, your address is in a database now.

Have it shipped somewhere obscure? Video cameras are everywhere. Have it shipped to someone else's house and steal it off their porch? Again, cameras everywhere.

Not have a physical item? Just a service? That's pretty much the closest you'll get to anonymous money transfer and full usage (along with whatever VPN you prefer).

Cool that was a fun mental exercise. Now everyone tell me why I'm wrong!

• joe_the_user

  today at 10:50 PM

  Yeah, crypto as normally managed is one of the most traceable currencies. The block chain is in fact a complete log of transactions. Naturally that means there are no untraceable uses despite your sound-of-one-hand-clapping thought experiment.

• VirusNewbie

  today at 9:36 PM

  I mean, I can meet you in an ally, transfer some satoshis from my wallet to yours, you hand me a wad of cash/jewels/MtG/collector funkos and you might not even know my name.

  • mikkupikku

    today at 10:48 PM

    Sounds like a setup to get robbed tbqh.

  • nine_k

    today at 10:30 PM

    Hmm, doesn't this work equally well with a wad of $10 and $20 notes? I mean, yes, notes could be clandestinely marked. But aren't bitcoins also traceable after the first transaction?

    • VirusNewbie

      today at 10:48 PM

      yes but harder to move 10M in cash around from country to country.

      I'm assuming I'm purchasing/selling a lot of MtG/Funko here in this example.

  • beAbU

    today at 9:44 PM

    True, but this does not happen for large transactions, due to being vulnerable to the $5 wrench attack (1)

    For big transactions where something of actual value is exchanged, both parties will want an escrow, and this is where a public exchange comes in.

    1 - https://xkcd.com/538/

    • himata4113

      today at 10:33 PM

      Except that there is a huge trusted network for this. The world does not revolve around americas and europe. Not everyone has issues cashing out millions of crypto from a bank. This has been especially prevelant with countries that host a lot of Russian immigrants ever since the SWIFT ban, the regulation is extremely lax and there is minimal data shared to western institutions.

      I have heard from friends who are in these countries observing transactions that go into the millions of dollars that are being cashed out (not even laundered) like it's just another day. Nobody asks questions, nobody cares either and if you bring it up you will likely lose your job in few months or so.

Is Iran supposed supposed to be banned on Binance?

• carshodev

  today at 10:03 PM

  Every US company/citizen is not allowed to do trade with Iran due to the ITSR laws except under highly specific situations.

  It gets more complex if a company is multinational though.

  A citizen can travel to Iran but even if they buy something there on holiday if they bring it back to the US they need to go through complex customs procedures to make sure its legally brought back in.

• arjie

  today at 9:31 PM

  It's a US-sanctioned country so allied nations play along with the sanctions and Binance is located within that US sphere of influence so Iran is supposed to be currently banned, yes.

If one of two options can't be regulated or tracked, that is the option that will predominantly be used by actors who have outsized interest in being regulation or being tracked.

Remember that the CEO of Binance was pardoned by Trump after pleading guilty to financial fraud.

• ourmandave

  today at 7:44 PM

  I wonder if the pardon bribe is less if your crime is something near and dear to the Orange King's heart.

• paxys

  today at 7:46 PM

  It's more than just that.

  > President Trump granted a pardon to Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, who had spent four months in federal prison in 2024 for his role in the firm’s crimes. The Trump family’s crypto start-up, World Liberty Financial, has forged close business ties with Binance, and Mr. Zhao was a guest this month at a conference at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla.

  • lavezzi

    today at 9:45 PM

    it's more than just that:

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2026/02/09/trump-st...

    > Binance holds about 87% of USD1, the stablecoin issued by a Trump family crypto venture—a greater concentration than any other major stablecoin has at a single exchange, roughly $4.7 billion of the $5.4 billion total supply.

• seydor

  today at 8:59 PM

  Binance should be considered a US instrument now.

• michaelteter

  today at 8:30 PM

  Iran obviously missed the memo. All they have to do is setup a wealth fund and invest heavily in a Trump venture; then they can become a most favored nation and forego all this conflict.

• guywithahat

  today at 7:53 PM

  Sure but wasn't his prosecution generally regarded as political? The Biden admin went hard against crypto towards the end largely to appease donors, at the disservice to consumers. Gary Gensler changed a lot of rules without notice, and targeted people who had previously looked towards the SEC for guidance and followed the rules. Certainly I remember (at least at the time) the arrest of CZ was regarded as political, which is presumably why he was later pardoned and not commuted

  • giaour

    today at 8:59 PM

    Perhaps CZ's prosecution was generally regarded as political among the people you talk to regularly, but the contemporaneous media consensus (at least to my recollection) was that Binance had openly flouted US law for years and was finally being reined in. E.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/22/business/binance-crypto-c... was representative.

  • 47282847

    today at 8:56 PM

    Regarded, by whom? Not by financial experts such as Matt Levine. It looks like the prosecution followed the books and the law and the long-held SEC position. If you’re honestly interested, Levines newsletters at the time carry a lot of detail, the given reasoning beyond politics, and historical comparison to non-crypto decisions.

    It’s too easy of a spin to later declare events as all political; one should be careful to make that claim unless accompanied with good arguments.

    Regarding plea deal/guilt: there is sufficient material publicly available to come to the conclusion that yes Binance willingly and knowingly invested effort into circumventing the law and SECs policies. Regardless of whether that law was set up for “political purposes“ or not, it was not some honest mistake or differences of interpretation. Don’t fall into the trap of rewriting history.

  • g947o

    today at 8:01 PM

    Citation needed.

    Bear in mind that this guy pleaded guilty in a court case. Even if the prosecution is political, the facts don't lie.

    • mikestew

      today at 8:10 PM

      Bear in mind that this guy pleaded guilty in a court case.

      In my mind that doesn't mean shit. Prosecution said, "if this goes to trial, we'll try to get life in prison. Or you could take our plea deal." That is why 90-some percent of prosecutions (EDIT: in the U. S.) go plea deal instead of trial.

      • EricDeb

        today at 8:30 PM

        I would imagine very rich people have extremely good lawyers though that can tell them very accurately if they will get off if it goes to trial.

        • mikkupikku

          today at 10:50 PM

          The best lawyers in the world won't be able to give you any guarantees about how a jury will feel.

    • wat10000

      today at 8:08 PM

      When it comes to extremely rich people, "political prosecution" generally means that the behavior was absolutely criminal, but that it's usually something they let rich people get away with.

      • guywithahat

        today at 8:34 PM

        It can also mean it's political. Famously (whether you think he's guilty or not) John Kiriakou pled guilty because he knew John Brennan was going to throw the entire might of the justice system at him. When he talks about the experience, his decisions are made with consideration to the fact the president's inner circle wanted him in jail and he wasn't fighting a fair battle.

        • wat10000

          today at 10:28 PM

          I'm not sure how that's relevant, since John Kiriakou does not appear to be particularly wealthy.

https://archive.today/t2pG6

• lioeters

  today at 7:52 PM

  Stop using archive.today, they've been found to inject malicious code. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092006

  • kristianp

    today at 8:53 PM

    Do you mean this? https://gyrovague.com/2026/02/01/archive-today-is-directing-... the malicious code wasn't injected, it was served with their captcha.

    They shouldn't have used users to ddos someone's blog, but this seems like a one off attack against a perceived threat to the service's privacy. I don't condone that ddos attack, but it's been a very useful service over the years.

  • c420

    today at 9:11 PM

    Here's a more functional alternative: https://pressreleased.alwaysdata.net/

• boplicity

  today at 7:30 PM

  Please understand that circumventing copyright makes it more difficult for journalists to make a living.

  • ericmay

    today at 8:09 PM

    Copyright isn't being circumvented - the content of the website is made available for the public and the website just grabs what is publicly available.

    • boplicity

      today at 10:16 PM

      Redistributing copyrighted content is the literal definition of copyright infringement. Using it for your own purposes, without distribution, is another story.

      This link was posted with intent to facilitate the distribution of copyrighted material. The person who posted it justified posting the link by saying some people don't have a subscription.

      I understand that some people think copyright shouldn't exist, but it clearly is being circumvented here.

  • unyttigfjelltol

    today at 7:50 PM

    Is there a micropayment option or something? I wish I could friction-free, buy access to these sites al al carte without dealing with them directly or setting up a recurring subscription directly with them.

    • chihuahua

      today at 8:07 PM

      Best we can do is a monthly subscription, with every dark pattern known to man to prevent cancellation.

  • blell

    today at 7:55 PM

    They should learn to code.

  • toomuchtodo

    today at 7:31 PM

    I'm a subscriber, but not everyone is.

    • freitasm

      today at 7:42 PM

      Subscribers can share the link as a gift, so readers can see the original, not the proxied version.

      • toomuchtodo

        today at 7:44 PM

        I cannot trust that a gift link does not tie to my IRL identity I subscribe under. I can trust that archive links do not. The NY Times gets my money either way. It's an opsec concern. Trust no one.

        If someone wants to post gift links in every thread, just let me know who to pay to enable that, I am happy to.

    • boplicity

      today at 7:36 PM

      And by making it easy for them to circumvent copyright, they have even less incentive to support the journalists who did the reporting.

  • afavour

    today at 7:43 PM

    I don't know why this is downvoted, it's the truth. NYT actually has a "gift article" functionality that makes it easy to share articles with non-subscribers.

  • this-is-why

    today at 7:49 PM

    You are 100% correct. I find the attitude that everything should be free a bit tedious. But then again, why does the truth have to be paywalled while lies are free. I believe it is a detriment to society that we cannot publicly find reporting. Yes I know now come the cynics who will argue bias. But that’s just a failure of reading comprehension, not fair reporting doctrine.

    So yes. I’m with you 100%.

The article title doesn't say "Fired". The HN title is kind of misleading.

• resoluteteeth

  today at 7:36 PM

  It not the original title but I'm not sure it's "misleading"

  > Within weeks, Binance fired or suspended at least four employees involved in the investigation, according to the documents and three people with knowledge of the situation. The company cited issues such as “violations of company protocol” related to the handling of client data.

  • ocdtrekkie

    today at 10:44 PM

    Wild that Binance's primary concern was that the privacy of the people committing crimes with their service was being violated.

    Hear no evil, and let the money roll in.

• liamconnell

  today at 7:38 PM

  I think NYT uses multiple titles for some articles. I had copy pasted it

  • selridge

    today at 10:22 PM

    This is correct. They will A/B test titles AND update the title w/o warning over time, often 3-6 times per article post publication.

    They used to change the URL a bunch of times after publication! Seems crazy because it is but they did. Caused a whole problem on Wikipedia because “title + day + work + url” suddenly wasn’t stable.

  • knallfrosch

    today at 9:16 PM

    They A/B test titles. You can see it in the URL, where the recessive title often lives on. They may also use different titles for print/digital.

  • kg

    today at 7:49 PM

    You can see https://bsky.app/profile/nytdiff.bsky.social for some examples of how the NYT frequently revises titles and abstracts after publication. Most of them seem harmless at least.

• aswegs8

  today at 7:34 PM

  >Within weeks, Binance fired or suspended at least four employees involved in the investigation, according to the documents and three people with knowledge of the situation. The company cited issues such as “violations of company protocol” related to the handling of client data.