Sometimes, living in the Bitcoin bubble, I forget how there are still large segments of the population that believe governments should be able to control where you go and how you use your money.
This story in The Economist uses a British law enforcement operation involving a Russian influencer, British drug gangs, sanctioned oligarchs, and Irish crime families -- all the most exciting things -- to explain why money without middlemen is actually really, really bad.
This sounds good, until you think about what those “intermediaries” actually do. Bankers, lawyers, accountants and others involved in the conventional financial system are under onerous government restrictions to keep criminals and terrorists out of it. They are obliged to report suspicious transactions to the authorities and fined heavily if they don’t. The global finance industry now spends more than $200bn a year complying with the laws that have been put in place over the last five decades to stop money-laundering and financial crime. Banks report tens of millions of transactions to their in-house financial-intelligence units and block many of them while they’re being checked.
Yes, the purpose of intermediaries is to rat on you. There is a $200 billion tax added to financial services for the purpose of stopping "bad people" from using money. While this may be convenient for governments, I don't know that it benefits any of us that much. This argument could be used for any technology: the internet, cars, books, language.
You can use it as you would a dollar, but without any of the checks and scrutiny that come from moving actual dollars around. It is the financial equivalent of being able to turn up at the airport, open a secret door and go straight on to the plane, without any X-rays, passport inspections, customs controls or intrusive questions.
Additionally, the author is very optimistic about the effectiveness of traditional law enforcement:
If Zhdanova had tried to move that much in banknotes, the consignments would almost certainly have been intercepted at borders. If she had tried to use the traditional financial system, banks would have noticed she was dodging sanctions and frozen the transfer. Converting the cash into a cryptocurrency such as bitcoin would have helped her evade these checks, but it was an expensive and unreliable option.
Apparently, people never successfully move large amounts of money via the traditional banking system or across borders without government approval.
It ends with this banger:
Tether’s efficiency makes money-laundering so easy anyone can do it.
The Economist? More like the Communist.
The E-Communist
I ended my subscription in 2013 or earlier
You had a subscription? Ha!
I deserve to be ridiculed
I’ve never been so excited about Tether.
If only there were something that could do all that cool stuff and function as a store of value.
I think the one thing to be really excited about is that when people control their digital dollars on their phone with a set of backup words they are on boarded onto a small part of public key tech that allows them to understand bitcoin later
Underrated idea.
Most of the Tether flows are on public, auditable distributed networks so I don’t understand how it can be “money launderers’ dream currency”.
I think easily sending money to friends regardless of where they are or from is wonderful. Money should be a tool that everyone can freely access. I hope people will start using Bitcoin more though. Is the USD keeps going down in value, perhaps people around the world will start wanting USD less.
somewhat related:
view on primal.netIs this a real post? Say it ain’t so!!!
It's going to come down to how badly apps like primal want adoption.
Money laundering with a token that can be frozen at the press if a button. I don’t buy it
Not hypothetical, either:
#1023108
The article makes zero reference to Latin America except one:
Either way they won’t affect Tether much since it is not based in the United States. In January the company moved its headquarters from the British Virgin Islands to El Salvador – Ardoino said that the government of Nayib Bukele shared his vision of financial freedom.
USDT is popular in Latin America, especially El Salvador and Argentina, because digital dollars provide relief for people living in countries with hyperinflated currencies.
Another reason why I stopped reading the Economist.
slight edit:
forgot quotations marks
nooooooo, I have this tab open and started reading already.
Scoresby picking up the @den slack!
thiiiiis was a pretty good take too https://x.com/TheOneandOmsy/status/1942715218263494788
https://xcancel.com/TheOneandOmsy/status/1942715218263494788
Like I said, less yoga and outdoors, more keyboard!
I am a little surprised to see this take. To me anyone who has watched Tether or Circle knows that they can freeze your funds with a snap of their fingers because it is centralized. It isnt something like DAI, a decentralized stablecoin, where one entity could just freeze the funds if they wanted to. After all we have seen both Tether nad Circle freeze funds both tied to hacks directly and others times that it was a "I am not sure but maybe they were part of the hack" funds.
At the end of the day though hard cash esp. the good ol US dollar is by far the most laundered money because paper money is hell hard to track.
Yeah, it felt a lot like the bitcoin mining hit pieces various outlets have published. It's not reporting; it's somebody working on their agenda.
Yeah its freaking Elizabeth Warren talking points when crypto is mentioned anywhere lol. There was a hearing some time ago where the witness fact checked her over the whole money laundering and criminal activity idea.
The Economist accidentally revealed they're terrified of ordinary people having the same financial privacy and autonomy that powerful institutions have always enjoyed. Their panic signals the system's vulnerability. 😆
This part...THIS PART:
So, let me see, the writer uses HSBC as an example. For those who want to understand this, please check how much this bank is related to drugs cartels and dead people. To audit USDT, you have on-chain analysis, you're exposed as fuck. And besides, do you know how much is the participation? Look:
Sweet Lord, the hipocrisy is high.
I’m not sure if the limit’s still the same, but I remember reading that Tether has a minimum redemption limit of 100k. And chances are, Tether probably has to report those redemptions to someone.
This is an amazing article... amazing for how silly and tone deaf it is.
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