Bitcoin Hash Rate Rapidly Growing Despite Price

Re:Bitcoin Hash Rate Rapidly Growing Despite Price by sonnyblarney on Friday July 13, 2018 @03:08PM (#17525777)

"If not, what kind of business provides you with hashing equipment from dirty money?"

That part is easy. Other businesses don't know if your money is dirty, the issue is transactional, i.e. buying without a receipt in the tax domain you're in.

So, if you can somehow take 'dirty USD' and buy ASICs anywhere outside of America, it will probably work.

The purpose of Money Laundering is to get money into a bank account that the government will recognize as legit, but 'dirty money' can still be used for whatever reasons for nefarious purposes, a lot of it even from 'good businesses'.

Buying a few ASICS in cash from individual stores will not raise eyebrows like walking into a Ferrari dealership with cash might.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Bitcoin Hash Rate Rapidly Growing Despite Price by pas on Friday July 13, 2018 @04:46PM (#17526552)

How do you account for the cost of the ASICs then if it was bought with dirty money? Or the method is to start a legit business and make it waaaaay more profitable on paper (with all the dirty money)? (Like it "used to" be with laundries and/or casinos?)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Bitcoin Hash Rate Rapidly Growing Despite Price by sonnyblarney on Friday July 13, 2018 @08:10PM (#17527889)

If the BTC business is supposed to be legit, you just wouldn't put the ASICS on the books as assets. But I don't think the BTC business would necessarily need to be legit in the first place.

It does seem like a powerful opportunity for nefarious activity, and this may be keeping the price propped up on some level.

Organized crime is big business and they aren't stupid.

Sadly.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Bitcoin Hash Rate Rapidly Growing Despite Price by pas on Saturday July 14, 2018 @09:51AM (#17530344)

I know they aren't stupid, but they need a non-transparent, hard-to-audit business. Like a restaurant. The IRS (or the relevant tax authority) won't count how many meals you have served, and you can price it as high as you like.

Or you can just do a festival and claim that you had a lot more visitors. It's hard to count people after all, and easy to print fake tickets.

So, I simply think that ASICs are not the things used for money laundering, because their output is very constant, and the hashrate is public knowledge, so easy to verify how much money you made.

[ Parent | on HN ]