Except it's not hidden in a laptop. Your balance and your entire transaction history is on the blockchain for everyone to see.

Imagine a tumbler, where fractions of bitcoins are taken in (say 100 bitcoin split into 1000 pieces each) then from 1000 people (including you and you're "illicit" 100 bitcoin) and then you get back 100000 pieces, passed on to another tumbler until eventually you get back 100000 randomized pieces = 100 bitcoin. Where did all those pieces come from and why? How do you connect that in the blockchain ledger to prove the income is illicit?

Is bitcoin tumbling feasible anymore?

First problem: transaction fees are currently over $10 per transaction.

Second problem: max transactions per block (2k?). Wouldn’t a single tumbling instance of 100k pieces completely fill 50 bitcoin blocks, effectively browning out the system?

What happens if the tumbler "loses" your bitcoins?

Same thing that happens when a bookie "loses" your bet. Probably nothing. There are illicit activities which use systems of trust based on past behavior just like in the "legal" world and there are usually consequences.

Coinbase, shockingly, violated trust on both sides and is still being hyped. Doesn't take much to understand what a terrible investment that is.

You still need to deposit cash to crypto. Since those things are mostly not bought with crypto.

> Imagine if you were a drug dealer smuggling in a million dollars of cocaine into Chicago from Mexico

Now imagine I smuggled in from Mexico to Chicago this[1] but I don't know how to take back this[2]

What kind of genius/idiot criminal would I be?

[1] https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/6d0c827943b8dc8c2c7449974d0...

[2] https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/u6097/CBP-AMO%20-%20...

It does look to be about double the work, which is less bad than a larger multiple, but still well worth optimizing.

> but still well worth optimizing

are we still talking about criminals?

I don't think something that make it worth optimizing for but is intended to optimize criminals activities is really desirable.

Anyway, there's no advantage with crypto, the smuggler didn't smuggle 1 million dollar worth of cocaine from Mexico, cocaine is moved in much larger volumes, if a few pounds are lost, it's part of the business risks, criminals understand it and sometimes facilitate it, so that police can make big splash announcements and everybody is happy.

money is another thing entirely.

that million dollar worth of cocaine has been cut in hundreds of smaller doses, that are being paid mostly in cash.

so now every corner dealer has a pile of cash that use to pay the bigger dealer and so on.

first of all, you can't buy crypto with cash. You should go through another person who already owns enough to sell them to you, which means another breadcrumb that could lead back to you in case that other person is caught.

also, cash has some disadvantages over a usb pendrive, but one big advantage is that it's harder to lose a briefcase than a usb drive and they don't break as easily.

so the smaller dealers have no incentive to do it.

the average dealer has no incentive on buying crypto to pay the larger dealer, because he gets rid of the cash pretty fast and keeps his cut that invests into criminal but legal activities so that the facade is clean.

the larger dealers have now a pile of cash that need to handle anyway, they can't ignore it and make it disappear just because it takes too much space.

let's go back to the smuggler (probably a cartel man) that moved cocaine from Mexico to Chicago

they have bank accounts in Panama and don't care about moving large sum of money anonymously or through perfectly clean American front men.

The system already works, there was an article the other day on front page titled "The war against money laundering is being lost" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26786810), so why change it for an asset that has not even a stable value?

I guess they tried at one point, but there's too much attention on them now, so criminals with capital C dropped them and let only their kids play with it so they can pay for their college expenses.

We are still talking about criminals. By "well worth optimizing", I meant worth to them.

I'm not defending that Bitcoin is a solution to moving money, I'm attacking what I perceived to be an argument that it's not a problem for dealers because they can just do to cash as they do to drugs.

What if you bought physical assets with it? Exchanged with an escrow account.