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Security Bitcoin

US Treasury Says It Tied $5.2 Billion in BTC Transactions To Ransomware Payments (therecord.media) 36

The financial crimes investigation unit of the US Treasury Department, also known as FinCEN, said last week it identified approximately $5.2 billion in outgoing Bitcoin transactions potentially tied to ransomware payments. From a report: FinCEN officials said the figure was compiled by analyzing 2,184 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) filed by US financial institutions over the last decade, between January 1, 2011, and June 30, 2021. While the initial SAR reports highlighted $1.56 billion in suspicious activity, a subsequent FinCEN investigation of the Top 10 most common ransomware variants exposed additional transactions, amounting to around $5.2 billion just from these groups alone.
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US Treasury Says It Tied $5.2 Billion in BTC Transactions To Ransomware Payments

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  • Bitcoin Is Anonymous!!
  • There is literally absolutely no value to bitcoin what-so-ever, other than easy and difficult to track ways for criminals to transfer money.
    Bitcoin is only useful for crime. That's it.

    • Oh it has other uses.

      Illegal financing of "loyal" opposition abroad.

      Illegal campaign financing

      Illegal political party financing.

      All of these are presently in use and they are used mostly with USA being the source and various "brave opposition leaders" being the destination. That, by the way is one of the main reasons why it is not banned and why it is not going to be banned any time soon.

      • To a corrupt political campaign or politician in the United States. Our Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that money is speech despite decades if not hundreds of years of precedence to the contrary. The last couple of rulings basically opened up the floodgates to unlimited dark money by striking down any attempts to identify who made a donation to a political campaign.

        Cryptocurrency is used primarily to buy drugs, pay for prostitutes (and facilitate human trafficking), as a general money laundering tac
        • You can give unlimited money to a campaign, but there are restrictions on how the campaign can use that money.

          For real corruption, you want to give the money directly to the politician. That is illegal, so bitcoin can help cover the tracks.

    • ... it's also useful as a tool to attempt to prop up your economically failed dictatorship. Won't work, but it will buy a little bit of time.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Morally, that is certainly true. Legally, running a complexly disguised advanced Ponzi-scheme variant like Bitcoin is currently legal as is running a money laundering operation for it. But the law will catch up and quite a few people involved may go to jail.

  • Sex, drugs, money laundering and piracy being some of the larger items they could watch easily.

Swap read error. You lose your mind.

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