Everyone wants an untrackable unblockable currency that is out of government control until the day it is used for things they don't like, then suddenly "government please control this!"
When I think about it, I know people that have been involved in all of those areas (always on the wrong non-criminal end). However, I'm not sure I know a single person that has made a regular transaction in some cryptocoin.
Back in 2011 I remember a lot of people talking about how the Chinese oligarchs were using it to evade currency controls and funnel their wealth out of China.
Not that snark isn't warranted in this situation but you have to consider that the ability to turn energy into globally accepted (but notably not-actually-untraceable) cash-equivalent is a key piece of the corrupt bitcoin puzzle. It offer opportunities to everyone from third world oligarchs and pariahs to those who happen to be able to tap an electrical grid. Technically, this is indeed "theft without recourse" but you're reply seems to imply this kind is marginal.
Moreover, the chances are the reason Binance nixed the investigation of bitcoin going to Iran is because so much of the bitcoin economy is driven by entities like Iran (google AI say they have 4.5% of global mining plus random search link [1]).
Edit: Iran also wants bitcoin sent to it because bitcoin isn't actually untraceable so getting clean money for dirty matters.
It's also the #1 use case for $100 US dollar bills. Most US $100 bills, in fact, are not even in the US.[a][b]
US $100 bills are the currency of choice for small-time crooks and evildoers around the world.
They are also the currency of choice for big-time crooks and evildoers. Briefcases of US $100 bills have long been used for illicit payments, as depicted in numerous books and movies.
Just because crooks and evildoers use US $100 bills doesn't mean they are not useful and valuable to honest people too.
What Binance did was wrong, no doubt, but Binance ≠ crypto.
There's a major distinction, however, in that it's a heck of a lot harder to safely and reliably lug briefcases or suitcases full of $100 bills from Chicago to Tehran, than it is to click and transfer some Bitcoin. Which is the whole point.
> Just because criminals and evildoers use US $100 bills doesn't mean they are not useful and valuable to honest people too.
Like all of the ATMs near a dispensary that was always out of cash because 20 individual $20 bills runs out a lot faster than 4 $100 bills. Until dispensaries became legal, it was rare for me to see an ATM with anything other than $20s. Now, I see $20, $50, $100 dispensing machines regularly.
Only because in this case they used a centralized exchange. The amount of actual circulation to countries like Iran and North Korea is likely many orders of magnitude higher that what is knowable.
The truth is there are some currencies that are by design untrackable—monero and zcash, for example, which use privacy preserving techniques to avoid tracking. (IMO zcash is a better implementation than monero, but shrug.)
Bitcoin and ethereum and most other crypto currencies are absolutely traceable in the sense that anyone can see who you send your money to. And all of the implementations have the core challenge of getting back to fiat—at some point, you withdraw cash or otherwise pay a real person to do something for you. There’s no way around that.
Bitcoin ist pseudonymous. If you never attach your real identity to your Bitcoin you remain pseudonymous. Now that's a very big if and why states heavily try to enforce KYC for exchanges.
The reality is a lot more messy. Different chains have different properties. Things like CoinJoins for Bitcoin or TornadoCash for Ethereum exist which aim to break the money trail. Mixers are a thing which are a trusted entity doing the same on a "trust me bro" basis.
Monero seeks to be untracable by design using zero knowledge proofs and ring signatures over multiple possible sources for every transaction.
Even with standard Bitcoin it's more complicated. One time change addresses make tracking harder. Say I send you 1 BTC in a transaction. Now you want to spend 0.5 of these Bitcoin. However with Bitcoin you can only ever use an incoming transaction in full. Every transaction has a number of inputs (a previous incoming transaction) that it spends and a number of outputs. An output can only be unspent or spent. The amount of the outputs must match the amount of inputs.
So what you do is you use that input of 1 BTC and create two output of 0.5 BTC each. One is to the recipient address and one is to an address of your own (the change address). If you create a new change address for every transaction nobody but the recipient can know which output belongs to the recipient and which is your change address.
In reality that is a weak defense and there are many usage patterns (e.g. one output being a round number and the other one not) that can give away which one the change address is.
Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto almost 20 years ago. There are a number of wallets that people believe belong to Satoshi (have they proven they belong to SN?)
Yet the identification of Satoshi has eluded a global hunt to identify him. Maybe law enforcement has not been involved, but the mystery definitely suggests that BitCoin can help mask identity.
Unblockable yes, untrackable no. Also portable is the main ability of crypto.
The reason that this could be found out is because every transaction is recorded so it can be linked back through the chain once it hits another exchange that is KYC'd.
If I have a gold watch and I wear it through the airport go to turkey melt it down and give it to an iranian, then buy a fake watch and return home noone will every know that this transaction took place.
This would be 100% impossible to track in any reasonable manner. If I went to an exchange transfered bitcoin to a person then they spent this bitcoin in a way that linked it to their identity this would provide a full audit trail that would link me to that person. Also this audit trail could NEVER be removed or altered.
There are ways to use bitcoin in an untracable manner just like gold, you can have a cold wallet and transfer the keys to someone else. The cold wallet password could be only memorized and thus have no physical trace and no transaction record could take place whatsoever, but this is the OPPOSITE of what an exchange does.
Also cash and bank systems are not as resistant, they can fail, be hacked, be altered, people can use shell companies and fake identities.
Some cryptos like monero try and hide the transaction path but even this crypto has some vulnerabilities making linking it to people possible in some cases.
The #1 use case for crypto is that it's anonymous like cash. And yes, this enables people to use it for crime... just like they use cash. The unavoidable cost of freedom has always been that some people will misuse it. Personally, I would rather have freedom even if it gets misused than not have freedom even if it means crime is over.
> The #1 use case for crypto is that it's anonymous like cash. And yes, this enables people to use it for crime... just like they use cash.
Not quite like cash: collecting and transferring US$1.7B in cash—actual physical paper—is probably more logistically challenging than BTC.
I understand the argument for freedom, but depending on the scale/dosage many things that could be fine in small quantities aren't as good in large ones.
It’s 100% trackable. It’s anonymous but there are many datapoints that could be used to deanonymize if the transaction parties are not extremely careful
Exchanges are not anonymous at all though. They are directly linked to your identity as required by US law, but physical btc can be traded anonymously as its technically just a string of letters and numbers. You could transact with it through just telling someone this string if you trust them enough.
What's funny is that Bitcoin/Ethereum are now the most tracked ledgers on the planet. If I wanted to do some shady value exchange it would be my last choice.
> Everyone wants an untrackable unblockable currency
What are you talking about? Crypto is defined by its trackability (immutable, permission-less, verifiable ledger of every transaction in history). Please refrain from commenting on things you're unfamiliar with.
Can't anyone basically sanction entire wallets, and mark them, and make some legislation that any transaction involving coins originating from those wallets be rejected by all payment processors and exchanges in regulated markets?
I mean, they obviously can, but probably they have elected not to do so. But if crypto becomes a tool in the hands of enemy nation states, such regulation can't be soo far off.
Though that would create a secondary market for these 'tainted' coins, and would probably have far-reaching consequences into the crypto ecosystem.
You can't track individual coins, so you'd have to "taint" entire wallets. Using a mixer would taint the mixer and every wallet it sent to. I'd think this would end up tainting almost everything before too long.
Bitcoin also doesn't require the receiver to authorize a transaction, so if you had control of a tainted wallet, you could taint other wallets at will, wielding it like a weapon.
Doesn't seem feasible. Not that this always stops legislators.
It seems to me that the people who want the unblockable currency out of government control are not the same people who want to block money transfers to countries like Iran.
I'd argue the #1 use case is ransomware and scamming, but this has to be a close second. Honestly the journey from "The blockchain is the future, everyone must see that" to where we are now really feels like the one we're taking with 'AI'.
In the end it will still exist, but the use case is going to be so much less inspiring than people want to believe, outside of medical and fundamental research at least.
Contrary to a lot of comments here, the only way to use bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency) without tracking is to mine it yourself, and even then...
Where did you get it? Purchased/transferred? Where did they get it? What else did the person with that wallet do?
If the answer is "mined", even then, you have to actually do something with it, right? Buy something? Where is that something shipped? At worst you'll have to pay customs on it, and have it actually get through customs. At best, your address is in a database now.
Have it shipped somewhere obscure? Video cameras are everywhere.
Have it shipped to someone else's house and steal it off their porch? Again, cameras everywhere.
Not have a physical item? Just a service? That's pretty much the closest you'll get to anonymous money transfer and full usage (along with whatever VPN you prefer).
Cool that was a fun mental exercise. Now everyone tell me why I'm wrong!
Yeah, crypto as normally managed is one of the most traceable currencies. The block chain is in fact a complete log of transactions. Naturally that means there are no untraceable uses despite your sound-of-one-hand-clapping thought experiment.
I mean, I can meet you in an ally, transfer some satoshis from my wallet to yours, you hand me a wad of cash/jewels/MtG/collector funkos and you might not even know my name.
Hmm, doesn't this work equally well with a wad of $10 and $20 notes? I mean, yes, notes could be clandestinely marked. But aren't bitcoins also traceable after the first transaction?
Every US company/citizen is not allowed to do trade with Iran due to the ITSR laws except under highly specific situations.
It gets more complex if a company is multinational though.
A citizen can travel to Iran but even if they buy something there on holiday if they bring it back to the US they need to go through complex customs procedures to make sure its legally brought back in.
> Every US company/citizen [...] if they bring it back to the US
Is that relevant here?
> Binance Holdings Ltd., branded Binance, [...] was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao. Binance was initially based in China, then moved to Japan, subsequently left Japan for Malta, and currently has no official company headquarters.
The founder seems to have been born in China and is Canadian.
I still also don't understand if Iran is supposed to be banned on Binance or not.
It's a US-sanctioned country so allied nations play along with the sanctions and Binance is located within that US sphere of influence so Iran is supposed to be currently banned, yes.
It's not like Western(-ish) nations have much of a choice here. As soon as your banks and financial system depend on the USD in any way, it comes with a mandatory dose of US imperialism and extraterritorial jurisdiction.
If one of two options can't be regulated or tracked, that is the option that will predominantly be used by actors who have outsized interest in being regulation or being tracked.
> President Trump granted a pardon to Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, who had spent four months in federal prison in 2024 for his role in the firm’s crimes. The Trump family’s crypto start-up, World Liberty Financial, has forged close business ties with Binance, and Mr. Zhao was a guest this month at a conference at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla.
> Binance holds about 87% of USD1, the stablecoin issued by a Trump family crypto venture—a greater concentration than any other major stablecoin has at a single exchange, roughly $4.7 billion of the $5.4 billion total supply.
Iran obviously missed the memo. All they have to do is setup a wealth fund and invest heavily in a Trump venture; then they can become a most favored nation and forego all this conflict.
Perhaps CZ's prosecution was generally regarded as political among the people you talk to regularly, but the contemporaneous media consensus (at least to my recollection) was that Binance had openly flouted US law for years and was finally being reined in. E.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/22/business/binance-crypto-c... was representative.
Regarded, by whom? Not by financial experts such as Matt Levine. It looks like the prosecution followed the books and the law and the long-held SEC position. If you’re honestly interested, Levines newsletters at the time carry a lot of detail, the given reasoning beyond politics, and historical comparison to non-crypto decisions.
It’s too easy of a spin to later declare events as all political; one should be careful to make that claim unless accompanied with good arguments.
Regarding plea deal/guilt: there is sufficient material publicly available to come to the conclusion that yes Binance willingly and knowingly invested effort into circumventing the law and SECs policies. Regardless of whether that law was set up for “political purposes“ or not, it was not some honest mistake or differences of interpretation. Don’t fall into the trap of rewriting history.
It not the original title but I'm not sure it's "misleading"
> Within weeks, Binance fired or suspended at least four employees involved in the investigation, according to the documents and three people with knowledge of the situation. The company cited issues such as “violations of company protocol” related to the handling of client data.
This is correct. They will A/B test titles AND update the title w/o warning over time, often 3-6 times per article post publication.
They used to change the URL a bunch of times after publication! Seems crazy because it is but they did. Caused a whole problem on Wikipedia because “title + day + work + url” suddenly wasn’t stable.
You can see https://bsky.app/profile/nytdiff.bsky.social for some examples of how the NYT frequently revises titles and abstracts after publication. Most of them seem harmless at least.
>Within weeks, Binance fired or suspended at least four employees involved in the investigation, according to the documents and three people with knowledge of the situation. The company cited issues such as “violations of company protocol” related to the handling of client data.
They shouldn't have used users to ddos someone's blog, but this seems like a one off attack against a perceived threat to the service's privacy. I don't condone that ddos attack, but it's been a very useful service over the years.
Is there a micropayment option or something? I wish I could friction-free, buy access to these sites al al carte without dealing with them directly or setting up a recurring subscription directly with them.
Copyright isn't being circumvented - the content of the website is made available for the public and the website just grabs what is publicly available.
I don't know why this is downvoted, it's the truth. NYT actually has a "gift article" functionality that makes it easy to share articles with non-subscribers.
You are 100% correct. I find the attitude that everything should be free a bit tedious. But then again, why does the truth have to be paywalled while lies are free. I believe it is a detriment to society that we cannot publicly find reporting. Yes I know now come the cynics who will argue bias. But that’s just a failure of reading comprehension, not fair reporting doctrine.
Isn't this like the #1 use case for crypto?
Everyone wants an untrackable unblockable currency that is out of government control until the day it is used for things they don't like, then suddenly "government please control this!"
I thought the #1 use case for crypto was ransomware, followed by shitcoin rug-pulls, and the ability to commit theft without recourse.
Sending money to Iran is just a minor edge case.
That's a rather narrow view of crypto's uses. What about subverting democracy by bribing the President?
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Well, you could also use it to buy a pizza and find out it that your pizza cost a billion dollars a few years later.
When I think about it, I know people that have been involved in all of those areas (always on the wrong non-criminal end). However, I'm not sure I know a single person that has made a regular transaction in some cryptocoin.
Money laundering has always been a core feature of cryptocurrency, not an edge case.
You forgot gambling on crypto exchanges.
Isn't it just a subset of #3?
Back in 2011 I remember a lot of people talking about how the Chinese oligarchs were using it to evade currency controls and funnel their wealth out of China.
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Not that snark isn't warranted in this situation but you have to consider that the ability to turn energy into globally accepted (but notably not-actually-untraceable) cash-equivalent is a key piece of the corrupt bitcoin puzzle. It offer opportunities to everyone from third world oligarchs and pariahs to those who happen to be able to tap an electrical grid. Technically, this is indeed "theft without recourse" but you're reply seems to imply this kind is marginal.
Moreover, the chances are the reason Binance nixed the investigation of bitcoin going to Iran is because so much of the bitcoin economy is driven by entities like Iran (google AI say they have 4.5% of global mining plus random search link [1]).
Edit: Iran also wants bitcoin sent to it because bitcoin isn't actually untraceable so getting clean money for dirty matters.
[1] https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/iranian-crypto-activity-geo...
What a deeply troubling and cynical comment.
As far as I know, nowhere in the Bitcoin white paper or the original code base. Does it say anything about what you seem to think it's use cases are.
Bitcoin has one main use, digital cash, that can be sent instantly and for free or a very low fee.
Edit: I would agree though, that anything other than that is probably a scam.
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It's also the #1 use case for $100 US dollar bills. Most US $100 bills, in fact, are not even in the US.[a][b]
US $100 bills are the currency of choice for small-time crooks and evildoers around the world.
They are also the currency of choice for big-time crooks and evildoers. Briefcases of US $100 bills have long been used for illicit payments, as depicted in numerous books and movies.
Just because crooks and evildoers use US $100 bills doesn't mean they are not useful and valuable to honest people too.
What Binance did was wrong, no doubt, but Binance ≠ crypto.
--
[a] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2022/oct/innocent-...
[b] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/12/177051690/most...
There's a major distinction, however, in that it's a heck of a lot harder to safely and reliably lug briefcases or suitcases full of $100 bills from Chicago to Tehran, than it is to click and transfer some Bitcoin. Which is the whole point.
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> Just because criminals and evildoers use US $100 bills doesn't mean they are not useful and valuable to honest people too.
Like all of the ATMs near a dispensary that was always out of cash because 20 individual $20 bills runs out a lot faster than 4 $100 bills. Until dispensaries became legal, it was rare for me to see an ATM with anything other than $20s. Now, I see $20, $50, $100 dispensing machines regularly.
A briefcase of $100 notes is just around 1 million. That's like a tip you give to a waiter these days in the world of crypto.
At the scale of cryptocrime, you'd be looking at trucks filled with $100 notes.
It's clearly not untrackable. It's never been untrackable. That's how they know it went to Iran.
Only because in this case they used a centralized exchange. The amount of actual circulation to countries like Iran and North Korea is likely many orders of magnitude higher that what is knowable.
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Could someone explain to me where the myth of "crypto = untrackable" comes from, and why it's still being perpetuated?
Storing a record of every single transaction on a publicly accessible blockchain sounds trackable by design
In the case of bitcoin, surely.
Some other coins not so much trackable, and that's the reason some countries don't like them: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/binance-delist-monero-zcash-4...
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The truth is there are some currencies that are by design untrackable—monero and zcash, for example, which use privacy preserving techniques to avoid tracking. (IMO zcash is a better implementation than monero, but shrug.)
Bitcoin and ethereum and most other crypto currencies are absolutely traceable in the sense that anyone can see who you send your money to. And all of the implementations have the core challenge of getting back to fiat—at some point, you withdraw cash or otherwise pay a real person to do something for you. There’s no way around that.
Bitcoin ist pseudonymous. If you never attach your real identity to your Bitcoin you remain pseudonymous. Now that's a very big if and why states heavily try to enforce KYC for exchanges.
The reality is a lot more messy. Different chains have different properties. Things like CoinJoins for Bitcoin or TornadoCash for Ethereum exist which aim to break the money trail. Mixers are a thing which are a trusted entity doing the same on a "trust me bro" basis.
Monero seeks to be untracable by design using zero knowledge proofs and ring signatures over multiple possible sources for every transaction.
Even with standard Bitcoin it's more complicated. One time change addresses make tracking harder. Say I send you 1 BTC in a transaction. Now you want to spend 0.5 of these Bitcoin. However with Bitcoin you can only ever use an incoming transaction in full. Every transaction has a number of inputs (a previous incoming transaction) that it spends and a number of outputs. An output can only be unspent or spent. The amount of the outputs must match the amount of inputs. So what you do is you use that input of 1 BTC and create two output of 0.5 BTC each. One is to the recipient address and one is to an address of your own (the change address). If you create a new change address for every transaction nobody but the recipient can know which output belongs to the recipient and which is your change address.
In reality that is a weak defense and there are many usage patterns (e.g. one output being a round number and the other one not) that can give away which one the change address is.
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I think it’s part of the Origin Story.
Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto almost 20 years ago. There are a number of wallets that people believe belong to Satoshi (have they proven they belong to SN?)
Yet the identification of Satoshi has eluded a global hunt to identify him. Maybe law enforcement has not been involved, but the mystery definitely suggests that BitCoin can help mask identity.
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It's the overconfidence of 90s kids who knew how to program the VCR and use the modem.
Unblockable yes, untrackable no. Also portable is the main ability of crypto.
The reason that this could be found out is because every transaction is recorded so it can be linked back through the chain once it hits another exchange that is KYC'd.
If I have a gold watch and I wear it through the airport go to turkey melt it down and give it to an iranian, then buy a fake watch and return home noone will every know that this transaction took place.
This would be 100% impossible to track in any reasonable manner. If I went to an exchange transfered bitcoin to a person then they spent this bitcoin in a way that linked it to their identity this would provide a full audit trail that would link me to that person. Also this audit trail could NEVER be removed or altered.
There are ways to use bitcoin in an untracable manner just like gold, you can have a cold wallet and transfer the keys to someone else. The cold wallet password could be only memorized and thus have no physical trace and no transaction record could take place whatsoever, but this is the OPPOSITE of what an exchange does.
Also cash and bank systems are not as resistant, they can fail, be hacked, be altered, people can use shell companies and fake identities.
Some cryptos like monero try and hide the transaction path but even this crypto has some vulnerabilities making linking it to people possible in some cases.
The #1 use case for crypto is that it's anonymous like cash. And yes, this enables people to use it for crime... just like they use cash. The unavoidable cost of freedom has always been that some people will misuse it. Personally, I would rather have freedom even if it gets misused than not have freedom even if it means crime is over.
> The #1 use case for crypto is that it's anonymous like cash. And yes, this enables people to use it for crime... just like they use cash.
Not quite like cash: collecting and transferring US$1.7B in cash—actual physical paper—is probably more logistically challenging than BTC.
I understand the argument for freedom, but depending on the scale/dosage many things that could be fine in small quantities aren't as good in large ones.
I'll bet $100 that the percentage of crypto used for crime is higher than the percentage of cash used for crime.
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> Isn't this like the #1 use case for crypto?
What is even the point of crypto if you can't commit crimes with it?
It’s 100% trackable. It’s anonymous but there are many datapoints that could be used to deanonymize if the transaction parties are not extremely careful
Exchanges are not anonymous at all though. They are directly linked to your identity as required by US law, but physical btc can be traded anonymously as its technically just a string of letters and numbers. You could transact with it through just telling someone this string if you trust them enough.
What's funny is that Bitcoin/Ethereum are now the most tracked ledgers on the planet. If I wanted to do some shady value exchange it would be my last choice.
Money laundering is only good when our people are doing it.
> Everyone wants an untrackable unblockable currency
What are you talking about? Crypto is defined by its trackability (immutable, permission-less, verifiable ledger of every transaction in history). Please refrain from commenting on things you're unfamiliar with.
Can't anyone basically sanction entire wallets, and mark them, and make some legislation that any transaction involving coins originating from those wallets be rejected by all payment processors and exchanges in regulated markets?
I mean, they obviously can, but probably they have elected not to do so. But if crypto becomes a tool in the hands of enemy nation states, such regulation can't be soo far off.
Though that would create a secondary market for these 'tainted' coins, and would probably have far-reaching consequences into the crypto ecosystem.
OFAC already sanctions crypto wallets. https://ofac.treasury.gov/faqs/594
You can't track individual coins, so you'd have to "taint" entire wallets. Using a mixer would taint the mixer and every wallet it sent to. I'd think this would end up tainting almost everything before too long.
Bitcoin also doesn't require the receiver to authorize a transaction, so if you had control of a tainted wallet, you could taint other wallets at will, wielding it like a weapon.
Doesn't seem feasible. Not that this always stops legislators.
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It seems to me that the people who want the unblockable currency out of government control are not the same people who want to block money transfers to countries like Iran.
you mean its not used for the Paul brothers latest meme coin rug pulls?
I'd argue the #1 use case is ransomware and scamming, but this has to be a close second. Honestly the journey from "The blockchain is the future, everyone must see that" to where we are now really feels like the one we're taking with 'AI'.
In the end it will still exist, but the use case is going to be so much less inspiring than people want to believe, outside of medical and fundamental research at least.
Not just the #1 use case, the only use case. Real money is better in every scenario other than crime.
Contrary to a lot of comments here, the only way to use bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency) without tracking is to mine it yourself, and even then...
Where did you get it? Purchased/transferred? Where did they get it? What else did the person with that wallet do?
If the answer is "mined", even then, you have to actually do something with it, right? Buy something? Where is that something shipped? At worst you'll have to pay customs on it, and have it actually get through customs. At best, your address is in a database now.
Have it shipped somewhere obscure? Video cameras are everywhere. Have it shipped to someone else's house and steal it off their porch? Again, cameras everywhere.
Not have a physical item? Just a service? That's pretty much the closest you'll get to anonymous money transfer and full usage (along with whatever VPN you prefer).
Cool that was a fun mental exercise. Now everyone tell me why I'm wrong!
Yeah, crypto as normally managed is one of the most traceable currencies. The block chain is in fact a complete log of transactions. Naturally that means there are no untraceable uses despite your sound-of-one-hand-clapping thought experiment.
I mean, I can meet you in an ally, transfer some satoshis from my wallet to yours, you hand me a wad of cash/jewels/MtG/collector funkos and you might not even know my name.
Hmm, doesn't this work equally well with a wad of $10 and $20 notes? I mean, yes, notes could be clandestinely marked. But aren't bitcoins also traceable after the first transaction?
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Sounds like a setup to get robbed tbqh.
True, but this does not happen for large transactions, due to being vulnerable to the $5 wrench attack (1)
For big transactions where something of actual value is exchanged, both parties will want an escrow, and this is where a public exchange comes in.
1 - https://xkcd.com/538/
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Is Iran supposed supposed to be banned on Binance?
Every US company/citizen is not allowed to do trade with Iran due to the ITSR laws except under highly specific situations.
It gets more complex if a company is multinational though.
A citizen can travel to Iran but even if they buy something there on holiday if they bring it back to the US they need to go through complex customs procedures to make sure its legally brought back in.
> Every US company/citizen [...] if they bring it back to the US
Is that relevant here?
> Binance Holdings Ltd., branded Binance, [...] was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao. Binance was initially based in China, then moved to Japan, subsequently left Japan for Malta, and currently has no official company headquarters.
The founder seems to have been born in China and is Canadian.
I still also don't understand if Iran is supposed to be banned on Binance or not.
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It's a US-sanctioned country so allied nations play along with the sanctions and Binance is located within that US sphere of influence so Iran is supposed to be currently banned, yes.
It's not like Western(-ish) nations have much of a choice here. As soon as your banks and financial system depend on the USD in any way, it comes with a mandatory dose of US imperialism and extraterritorial jurisdiction.
If one of two options can't be regulated or tracked, that is the option that will predominantly be used by actors who have outsized interest in being regulation or being tracked.
Remember that the CEO of Binance was pardoned by Trump after pleading guilty to financial fraud.
I wonder if the pardon bribe is less if your crime is something near and dear to the Orange King's heart.
It's more than just that.
> President Trump granted a pardon to Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, who had spent four months in federal prison in 2024 for his role in the firm’s crimes. The Trump family’s crypto start-up, World Liberty Financial, has forged close business ties with Binance, and Mr. Zhao was a guest this month at a conference at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla.
it's more than just that:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2026/02/09/trump-st...
> Binance holds about 87% of USD1, the stablecoin issued by a Trump family crypto venture—a greater concentration than any other major stablecoin has at a single exchange, roughly $4.7 billion of the $5.4 billion total supply.
Iran obviously missed the memo. All they have to do is setup a wealth fund and invest heavily in a Trump venture; then they can become a most favored nation and forego all this conflict.
Binance should be considered a US instrument now.
Isn't it the case for all big enough tech companies operating in the US ?
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Perhaps CZ's prosecution was generally regarded as political among the people you talk to regularly, but the contemporaneous media consensus (at least to my recollection) was that Binance had openly flouted US law for years and was finally being reined in. E.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/22/business/binance-crypto-c... was representative.
Regarded, by whom? Not by financial experts such as Matt Levine. It looks like the prosecution followed the books and the law and the long-held SEC position. If you’re honestly interested, Levines newsletters at the time carry a lot of detail, the given reasoning beyond politics, and historical comparison to non-crypto decisions.
It’s too easy of a spin to later declare events as all political; one should be careful to make that claim unless accompanied with good arguments.
Regarding plea deal/guilt: there is sufficient material publicly available to come to the conclusion that yes Binance willingly and knowingly invested effort into circumventing the law and SECs policies. Regardless of whether that law was set up for “political purposes“ or not, it was not some honest mistake or differences of interpretation. Don’t fall into the trap of rewriting history.
Citation needed.
Bear in mind that this guy pleaded guilty in a court case. Even if the prosecution is political, the facts don't lie.
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The article title doesn't say "Fired". The HN title is kind of misleading.
It not the original title but I'm not sure it's "misleading"
> Within weeks, Binance fired or suspended at least four employees involved in the investigation, according to the documents and three people with knowledge of the situation. The company cited issues such as “violations of company protocol” related to the handling of client data.
Wild that Binance's primary concern was that the privacy of the people committing crimes with their service was being violated.
Hear no evil, and let the money roll in.
I think NYT uses multiple titles for some articles. I had copy pasted it
This is correct. They will A/B test titles AND update the title w/o warning over time, often 3-6 times per article post publication.
They used to change the URL a bunch of times after publication! Seems crazy because it is but they did. Caused a whole problem on Wikipedia because “title + day + work + url” suddenly wasn’t stable.
They A/B test titles. You can see it in the URL, where the recessive title often lives on. They may also use different titles for print/digital.
You can see https://bsky.app/profile/nytdiff.bsky.social for some examples of how the NYT frequently revises titles and abstracts after publication. Most of them seem harmless at least.
>Within weeks, Binance fired or suspended at least four employees involved in the investigation, according to the documents and three people with knowledge of the situation. The company cited issues such as “violations of company protocol” related to the handling of client data.
https://archive.today/t2pG6
Stop using archive.today, they've been found to inject malicious code. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092006
Do you mean this? https://gyrovague.com/2026/02/01/archive-today-is-directing-... the malicious code wasn't injected, it was served with their captcha.
They shouldn't have used users to ddos someone's blog, but this seems like a one off attack against a perceived threat to the service's privacy. I don't condone that ddos attack, but it's been a very useful service over the years.
Here's a more functional alternative: https://pressreleased.alwaysdata.net/
Please understand that circumventing copyright makes it more difficult for journalists to make a living.
Is there a micropayment option or something? I wish I could friction-free, buy access to these sites al al carte without dealing with them directly or setting up a recurring subscription directly with them.
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Copyright isn't being circumvented - the content of the website is made available for the public and the website just grabs what is publicly available.
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They should learn to code.
I'm a subscriber, but not everyone is.
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I don't know why this is downvoted, it's the truth. NYT actually has a "gift article" functionality that makes it easy to share articles with non-subscribers.
You are 100% correct. I find the attitude that everything should be free a bit tedious. But then again, why does the truth have to be paywalled while lies are free. I believe it is a detriment to society that we cannot publicly find reporting. Yes I know now come the cynics who will argue bias. But that’s just a failure of reading comprehension, not fair reporting doctrine.
So yes. I’m with you 100%.
Probably a bribe from Trump to Iran