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!"

Sending money to Iran is just a minor edge case.

Shitcoins and Shitstocks(some SPACs) do allow of a legal way to "give" others money through the transfer of value in a way that is technically legal. This again is not crypto specific though.

2. Fully live the concept of buying something physical from a virtual money I got by mining some now defunct coins.

If you say something the Chinese government does not agree with they can choose to take all your money and control of your company instantly. Not just oligarchs although those are the bigger targets due to the high value.

Even a small business owner could THEORETICALLY have their assets and equity seized for saying something which goes against the current ruling party, and this is not specific to China it could happen in any modern country.

Crypto allow someone to distribute their wealth in a way where they can be free to speak their mind and still protected even if the country which their business is based out of decides to take action against them.

The original theory of Bitcoin was, as described in the paper, decentralized digital cash. But in practice it was never optimized for what normal people use cash for. As system like that would be something like M-PESA.

Even at the time, cash was declining in usage. In the 18 years since, it has declined a lot more. And for good reason, because what most people want for most things isn't digital cash, but digital money. E.g., debit cards and Venmo.

So pretty naturally Bitcoin has value only for a few niche use cases that are not well served by more effective systems. Various sorts of crime, mostly. Digital cash, sure, but the kind that's transferred in unmarked envelopes slid quietly across the table. The kind that is delivered in a briefcase.

As a side note, it also failed in its goal of being decentralized. The mining power is very concentrated. Much more so than the banking industry, for example. And most users keep their Bitcoin on deposit in centralized services. So it's again basically banking but worse.

Look at china where if you have a large company and take a stand against the government all your equity will be wiped out and you will be either imprisoned or banished to another country.

Cash in a government bank account is the same way, you can wake up one day and all your assets will be seized, your credit cards will stop working.

Bitcoin works because you can technically have your wealth memorized. You can memorize a string of charcters that allow you to bring money with you no matter where you go. NO government or other human can steal it from you (except through torture) but you can also easily not memorize it and instead distribute the keys throughout the world in opposing countries meaning even if you are attacked by one country you still have some wealth kept in another.

A store of wealth is what bitcion allows. True freedom from governments stealing your money because you have ideas which they do not agree with.

This in my mind is the main usage of bitcoin.

Other coins like stablecoins, or the btc lightning network have high value because they make transactions much cheaper as traditional banking systems are complex, error prone, and costly.

This applies to a great deal, not just bitcoin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality

"We must take the world as it is and not as we would like it to be." - Maurice Allais

So it's cheaper to use Paypal ?

So now it's back to being cheaper than Paypal, but yeah, there was a time when there were $100+ transaction fees. And it may hit that again if transaction numbers go up enough to fill up blocks with the new implementation.

US $100 bills are the currency of choice for small-time crooks 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 criminals 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...

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.

If you have dirty money to hide, it's much better to hide it in a bank in Panama, or fill a sports bag with gold bars and fly it out on your private jet than use crypto.

Anything you can do from your bedroom, police can track from theirs.

So either your friends are genius saucers or they have effective government intelligence that would be highly appreciated. I’d be interested.

You are spot on regarding the bedroom though. Exporting physical USD is far more lucrative, by the shipload, often by Chinese Money Laundering Organisations, for free.

This is why I have tape covering my webcam and music blaring. Oh, wait, that's not what you meant.

There is a reason why Monero exists.

Yeah you can look up bitcoin wallet IDs on the ledger, but you can also generate an unlimited number of wallets, and pass coins in any combination through any number of mixers and tumblers, and exchange it between multiple currencies (some of them truly untrackable). If people or organizations want to stay anonymous in the crypto ecosystem they can very easily do so.

People do and did transfer drug money before and they will keep transferring drug money. I don’t see what blockchain has to do with that.

On the other hand, I use blockchain personally for completely legal purposes and find it very useful.

Easy to do international transfers, easy to buy different currencies even if local government is trying to make it hard. Also I have more trust in it compared to countries that I live in or travel to.

Another big aspect of it is no hidden costs and borderline scamming behavior I get from credit card companies or banks when doing international spending or transfers. This is not even about the insane prices, the feeling of getting scammed is even worse.

Also it is literally governments reason of existence to preserve order and catch criminals. Banning everything used by criminals is insanely stupid.

Same idea with cryptography, same with internet, same with cash.

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.

Storing a record of every single transaction on a publicly accessible blockchain sounds trackable by design

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...

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 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 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.

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.

What is even the point of crypto if you can't commit crimes with it?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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/

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

Bear in mind that this guy pleaded guilty in a court case. Even if the prosecution is political, the facts don't lie.

In my mind that doesn't mean shit. Prosecution said, "if this goes to trial, we'll try to get life in prison. Or you could take our plea deal." That is why 90-some percent of prosecutions (EDIT: in the U. S.) go plea deal instead of trial.

> 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.

This link was posted with intent to facilitate the distribution of copyrighted material. The person who posted it justified posting the link by saying some people don't have a subscription.

I understand that some people think copyright shouldn't exist, but it clearly is being circumvented here.

If someone wants to post gift links in every thread, just let me know who to pay to enable that, I am happy to.

So yes. I’m with you 100%.