Given the large amount of currency in circulation and the constant increase in its supply, it's logical to assume that the percentage would be lower, wouldn't you think? :)
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64 sats \ 4 replies \ @gmd 4 Mar
Does anyone have a good estimate? Here's what perplexity says:
The percentage of US dollars used for illicit activities is estimated to be significant. While specific figures vary, some sources suggest that the share of illicit transactions involving US dollars ranges from 0.1% to 5.1% in dollar-value terms. Additionally, a joint task force conducted by the US Treasury, Federal Reserve, and Secret Service previously estimated that up to 50% of cash is used by criminals and tax cheats. These figures indicate that a notable portion of US dollars is involved in illicit activities. Comparatively, the use of Bitcoin for illegal purposes is reported to be significantly lower than that of the US dollar, with estimates suggesting that only $0.00125 in Bitcoin is used for illegal activities for every $1 used for money laundering. This highlights that while both traditional currency and cryptocurrencies can be involved in illicit activities, the prevalence of illicit transactions involving US dollars appears to be higher than those involving Bitcoin.
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It's common knowledge that using fiat for illicit activities is more anonymous. What year is this data from? With the increase in the supply of fiat and the increase in the value of Bitcoin, these values may be outdated.
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16 sats \ 2 replies \ @gmd 4 Mar
It's perplexity.ai (which I use more than google these days) so it learned this gestalt answer from crawling the web, and cites some sources but doesn't seem like there's any great data out there... (the sources linked seemed rather hand-wavy)
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This estimate is especially interesting because of the methodology. It's well worth a read.
2017
In other words, more than a third of all US currency in circulation is used by criminals and tax cheats.
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Ah, okay! There must be some studies out there with this data. I'll do a quick search.
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