> It is fairly hard for authorities to trace the wash: in Bitcoin land, block rewards are the least-tainted kind of coins.

Also, the most anonymous.

But I thought Bitcoin mining hardware was all online-only sales?

We're not talking about buying a couple of miner machines here, but financing a whole warehouse filled with them.

Which would make it harder to conceal the dubious origin of the money.

Not really.

From the p.o.v of the seller of mining hardware, he's just selling hardware in exchange for money, and he has no KYC/AML requirement, he's not a bank, he's just a regular business.

And any other company involved in building the mining operation are the same way.

Right but the point of laundering is that you have cash you want to legitimize, so it must "re-enter" as cash. But hardware mining sales are all online, not cash, hence my original comment!

Unless you're buying crates of stolen GPUs off the black market with heaps of cash.

I am betting these guys have some connections.