I think that sort of depends on your opinion of US foreign policy. Anti money laundering laws are basically there to stop people doing things the US doesn't like. So if enforcing them means (say) less terrorist attacks GREAT! But the same laws are used much more frequently to try and enforce drug prohibition. That's meh at best in my opinion. And occasionally you see the US use them to prevent countries like Iran buying medical supplies in a pandemic. That's pretty shitty.

I'd give the US more points for enforcement (which you are correct is strongly pursued) if I thought the laws being enforced were less self serving in the first place...

> But the same laws are used much more frequently to try and enforce drug prohibition.

Drug cartels in the western hemisphere turn out to be pretty violent, to the point where you can think of them as terrorists -- bombings and other mass casualty events.

The other point you make is valid, though.

Cartels are only involved due to prohibition. If it were ended, it would be pharmaceutical (ie industrial chemical) companies selling the drugs.

Sigma-Aldrich and Bayer don't seem like terrorist organizations to me. Or perhaps I missed the headline where Pfizer was caught beheading people?

No, companies wouldn't behead people. That's silly. It's way too messy and doesn't scale.

Terrorist companies would be smarter than that. Sell and market a highly addictive, deadly drug, and profit from it making it look like it's all above board.

Then they blame the users for getting hooked on it on the first place after getting the doctors to prescribe it heavily using kickbacks. And thousands upon thousands of people die.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-sackler-familys...

I’m sure our victory in the drug war will come any moment now.

The solution to that is pretty simple.. end drug prohibition.

> The financial sector appears to be the one sector where US authorities actually do a good job to stamp out crime

Yeah, they're really great at that /s. It wasn't just last month that it was revealed that US banks laundered $2T. How many people got arrested for that? The Fed even said the disclosure of the banks internal reports was the crime.

FinCEN received 2 Million SARs last year. They have 333 employees.

https://www.rferl.org/a/global-banks-reported-2-trillion-in-...

How is the number of employees relevant? The point is the massive hypocrisy and inconsistent enforcement. Personally I think the $10k SAR threshold is stupid, it hasn't been adjusted up for inflation since it was put in place in 1970 when an oz of gold was $35.

Internally I am sure they are filtering them somehow, likely ignoring lower amounts, but why would the government voluntarily increase the minimum? They would then have less data. Better to just collect it all and selectively use some of it.

Sure, it's better for them if their goal is total financial surveillance. It's not better for people who care about financial privacy, and it makes a mockery of the rule of law when laws are enforced selectively in secret like that.

Not really surprising that increasing numbers of people would just stop caring about breaking such laws.

I'm Iranian, why does the US government get to decide whether or not I can move my savings? Is my existance a crime?

The US government decides what checks a financial institution must perform when dealing with US customers. In this case, BitMEX knew there were serving US customers while not performing the US-required checks.

You, as a non-US citizen, can do any transaction you want with BitMEX. BitMEX, as a company with US presence in NY, must make sure that you are not a US citizen (maybe based on your declaration that you are not one).