[Cryptography] Our leader opines on cryptocurrencies

[jamesd at echeque.com]

On 2019-07-25 7:00 pm, Peter Fairbrother wrote:
> Suppose the DEA bust someone with a few drugs, paid for by bitcoin. 
> "Hey, we'll go light on you if you tell us about the blockchain 
> transaction".
> 
> So they can, quite easily, find the dealer's bitcoin wallet. As soon as 
> the dealer buys anything with those bitcoins, due to the public nature 
> of the blockchain they know the seller's wallet. If the seller is legit 
> and his ownership of the wallet is public - and why not? - they ask him 
> who paid him and what for. Does he have the dealer's address?

Common use cases for bitcoin privacy are buying gray market drugs such 
as testosterone over the internet, and publishing crimethought over the 
internet.  Works for those cases, provided one takes appropriate precautions

So, if you get bitcoins for drugs, and you want to use your bitcoins to 
buy from amazon, you launder the bitcoins first.  I launder my bitcoins 
regularly, not for drugs, but for crimethoughts.

You want to publish evil crimethoughts, so you rent a server using 
bitcoin.  You get the bitcoin by donations, or by buying them from 
friends rather than by buying them through coinbase .  They will not be 
able to dox the person paying for the server.

Again I generally buy my bitcoins from a friend of a friend, and launder 
it on top of that.  Trying to track me through my bitcoin transactions 
is like trying to track me through the serial numbers on cash 
transactions.  Doable in principle, but difficult in practice.

If you buy bitcoins for fiat money through coinbase and spend them on 
something illegal, then you are toast.  And if you acquire bitcoins from 
something illegal, then turn them into fiat money through coinbase then 
you are toast.

So, don't do that.  If you stay away from coinbase and similar, you will 
usually be fine.  It is the websites that are the problem.


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