zlacker

Mixing is not laundering.

The difference is that laundering provides you with an explanation for wealth and/or income. Example of laundering: buy a business (with clean or borrowed money), have fictional customers "spend" their cash money at your business every day, then report your income and pay taxes. Now if anybody asks about where you got your money, you have a seemingly legit explanation.

Mixing does none of that. So mixing may be trivial, but laundering is not.

edit: now that I think about it, is that why NFTs are so popular? Are people pretending to have gotten capital gains, while in reality they're buying these things from themselves? That would explain a lot.

>>wcoene+(OP)
tornado.cash puts your crypto in a completely fresh account (using smart contracts). You can claim that you earned this crypto mining it back in 2010. You can definitely come up with a decent excuse for this.

Then you can convert those crypto (in new account) into fiat money.

Everyone will know you are lying, but they will never be able to prove it.

>>Alexan+c1
That sounds impossible, wouldn't people be able to see that the account didn't have those coins in 2010?

>>wcoene+(OP)
Regarding NFTs, that's how the high art market works. It's for money laundering. "I just sold this Picasso, that's where this money came from Mr Taxman"

>>whatsh+4n
It's very common to use more than one account, and send money between them for various reasons.

>>wcoene+(OP)
I love how you're just realizing that NFTs are a pure money-laundering scheme. Just wash trade your bored ape and "sell" it to your alter ego and bam! Legitimate income for the cost of some ETH gas.

>>wcoene+(OP)
Wrt NFT: yes. Just like the art business is great for laundering, so is the art+crypto combo of NFT’s.

At least, that’s how I think about it.

>>Alexan+c1
you would need to show crypto addresses from 2010 and prove that you still have access to them

>>Alexan+c1
If you read the indictment, they claimed they had bitcoin from mining in 2011, the exchange asked for further proof, and they just abandoned the bitcoin (~$150k). The exchange surely notified the authorities, because who abandons $150k of legit bitcoin?

So claiming it was from mining didn't work in this particular instance.

They don't need to prove you are lying in all instances, it's enough to prove you are lying in one instance. They will get you for that one instance where you didn't launder it properly if they are after you.

>>whatsh+4n
I think the point is that it technically isn't illegal to mine coins, later mix them, and then sell them. It is very suspicious though.

>>323+gS
I'm surprised the exchange notified the authorities. Are they forced by law?

>>wcoene+(OP)
Regarding NFTs and money laundering, see the inimitable Matt Levine here (second story, Oh by the way):

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-01-19/washin...

> This is called “money laundering,” and the essential component of money laundering is generating fake taxable income. If you take $13,800 out of your (legitimate, previously taxed) bank account, and you use it to buy cryptocurrency in a wallet that you tell your accountant and the IRS about, and you then use that cryptocurrency to buy a Meebit, and then you take $50 million out of your sack of illegal money, and you use it to buy cryptocurrency in a wallet that you don’t tell your accountant about, and then you use that cryptocurrency to buy the Meebit from your declared wallet, and then you take the $50 million of cryptocurrency out of the declared wallet and put it back in your (legitimate) bank account, and then you write the IRS a check for $20 million saying “ah I’ve been selling NFTs, what fun I have had, but I have to pay the IRS my fair share,” then … I am obviously not going to give you advice on crime but it’s possible you’ve got something there? Like, nobody has any idea what a Meebit is worth, so this string of outlandish numbers is somewhat plausible? It’s possible that some number of NFT wash trades have a purpose other than pumping up volume on NFT platforms?