US Department of Justice Creates Cryptocurrency Enforcement Unit (theverge.com) 65
The US Department of Justice has created a team to investigate cryptocurrency-related crime. The Verge reports: The National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) will handle investigations of "crimes committed by virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and money laundering infrastructure actors," the agency said in a news release. Mixing and tumbling services can obscure the source of a cryptocurrency transaction, by mixing it with other funds. Cryptocurrency is "used in a wide variety of criminal activity," including ransomware demand payments, money laundering, and for the illegal sales of drugs, weapons, and malware, the agency noted. Several high-profile ransomware cases have involved demands in cryptocurrency, including the Colonial Pipeline attack in May, where the company reportedly paid a $5 million ransom to DarkSide.
The DOJ says the NCET, which will provide expertise in blockchain and cryptocurrency transactions for the Justice Department and other US government agencies, will draw team members from the DOJ's money laundering, intellectual property, and computer crimes divisions, as well as from US attorneys' offices across the country. The team will be under the supervision of Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr. to start, but the Justice Department is seeking to hire someone who has "experience with complex criminal investigations and prosecutions, as well as the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies and the blockchain," on a more permanent basis.
The DOJ says the NCET, which will provide expertise in blockchain and cryptocurrency transactions for the Justice Department and other US government agencies, will draw team members from the DOJ's money laundering, intellectual property, and computer crimes divisions, as well as from US attorneys' offices across the country. The team will be under the supervision of Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr. to start, but the Justice Department is seeking to hire someone who has "experience with complex criminal investigations and prosecutions, as well as the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies and the blockchain," on a more permanent basis.
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Maybe because heating your home with electrical energy is about the most wasteful way to heat your place?
Realize that the transformation of whatever primary energy source you have to electrical energy is not 100%, by definition (or law, and since the law was not made in Washington, no, you can't just ignore it). Unless it was water power, it almost invariably was generated by using heat from either burning something or splitting atoms to power a turbine. Then you take that power and transform it back into h
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The power plant is maybe 70% efficient, you lose less than 5% in transmission, the efficiency is not great as you say. But then you consider that many forced air furnaces have a design efficiency of 75%... but a heat pump can have an effective efficiency over 100%. So if you are using a heat pump in a temperate climate you are probably getting better efficiency than any other option available to you. If you're just using a space heater or something, however, you're certainly wasting power.
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This should be good (Score:2)
Let's see just how "anonymous" all those transactions really are.
Pass the popcorn.
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They're not supposed to be anonymous; blockchain is all about transparency, and every transaction can be followed on the blockchain. Tying a wallet address to a person is not that hard for law enforcement unless the person manages to avoid ever using an exchange. That's why criminals have to use the aforementioned tumblers etc to try and anonymize their transactions.
Re: This should be good (Score:2)
Complete lack of privacy, even the most basic. Did you just buy a bible? Or Das Capital? Do you have a new mistress?
Unfortunately, bad guys always find a way. Be it arms or financial opacity. After all, they specialize in illegal business.
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It's anonymous in the sense that your real name and addresa are usually unknown. Have blatant open transactions then collect the actual cash from a tiny rural market in Pakistan, and the FBI is not going to be catching you very easily. There's a reason many criminals prefer bitcoin over cash, credit cards, money orders, and other forms of money transfer from their victims, and it's not because they're armchair economic enthusiasts.
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Uh... they are not? Actually, you can backtrace every single transaction to its source, unless went through a money laundering, sorry, crypto tumbler, service.
Outlaw that money laundering and you're done with the anonymity of bitcoins.
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In theory, yes, in practice, as soon as someone wants to transform bitcoins into legal tender, there's usually a way to pin it onto someone.
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That's my real nose, you insensitive clod!
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Law enforcement in monetary transactions? What could go wrong? LOL.
I bet they can't wait to claim civil asset forfeiture. We can show this Bitcoin is dirty. It was used for drugs. Then it was used for ransom. Then it was used in a "racist" manner somehow. Then like at airports and cash - just give us your pile of money. Cops that do that are no better than pirates and should be hung. So should the people above them telling them to seize people's money with absolutely no evidence whatsoever any crime was eve
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Experts are people who know more and more about less and less. The absolute perfection of an expert is someone who knows everything about nothing.
Re: Pyrite Pete (Score:2)
It's an interesting conclusion but requires the presupposition that nothing is not an abstract. Observations show us the opposite. No matter where you look or how deeply, we always find something.
Speaking of Pyrite Pete... (Score:1)
We haven't heard from Pyrite Pete [imgflip.com] in a while - is Pyrite Pete Okay?
(No, I don't actually care - I'm posting this just so if/when Pyrite Pete is (hopefully) found face down in a pond, investigators won't come around bothering anyone at slashdot or its readers about why no one asked about Pyrite Pete's [urbandictionary.com] whereabouts; this post should avoid that altogether)
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We haven't heard from Pyrite Pete [imgflip.com] in a while - is Pyrite Pete Okay?
Pyrite Pete is still around - just toned down their shitposts since getting spanked a couple [slashdot.org] of times. [slashdot.org]
Hasn't stopped them using their sockpuppet accounts to mod down others' posts perceived as negative about bitcoin (or perceived as positive about anything else).
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But you have to admit, those communist countries have one thing in their favor, the average literacy level of the population is much higher than in ... whatever your country you're in.
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Nothing to see here folks (Score:4, Interesting)
Not like banks are the biggest offenders when it comes to laundering money or anything
https://fortune.com/2020/03/11... [fortune.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
Don't worry citizen, Uncle Sam is on the case of Joe Blow buying some acid with bitcoin.
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Banks routinely poof money into existence.
Re:Nothing to see here folks (Score:4, Interesting)
"[...]And you know, in this country, now there are alot of people who want to expand the death penalty to include drug dealers. This is really stupid. Drug dealers aren't afraid to die. They're already killing each other every day on the streets by the hundreds. Drive-bys, gang shootings, they're not afraid to die. Death penalty doesn't mean anything unless you use it on people who are afraid to die. Like... the bankers who launder the drug money. The bankers, who launder, the drug money. Forget the dealers, you want to slow down that drug traffic, you got to start executing a few of these fucking bankers. White, middle class Republican bankers."
--George Carlin
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I'm not sure what the point of your post is, apart from indulging in whataboutism.
Crypto is a vehicle for billions of dollars of money laundering, and this unit is to investigate that, not 'Joe Blow buying acid'.
The vast majority of a bank's business is legitimate, and when they facilitate laundering, they get heavily fined as the articles you cited state. Are you against this happening to crypto too?
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I'm sure the people they go after will receive similar punishment as the banks /s
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why just single out crypto (Score:4, Insightful)
XXX is "used in a wide variety of criminal activity," including ransomware demand payments, money laundering, and for the illegal sales of drugs, weapons, and malware,
it's not just crypto you can throw in just about any other currency here, including the US Dollar and that statement would be true.
to me, this all just seems like it's one of two things
1. All for show to look tough on financial crime
2. a play to undermine crypto and eventually try to outlaw it or limit its use.
Re:why just single out crypto (Score:4, Insightful)
Low hanging fruit. Crypto doesn't offer the government interest free loans along with favors and lobbyists. After all, banks are Too Big To Fail. Organized crime launders millions of dollars? Jail time for decades or even life. Banks get a fine and told not to do that again *wink wink*.
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The US dollar has significant noncriminal uses. It's also legal tender, so you can't just outlaw it without wrecking civilization. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the other hand are a shitshow: a failed experiment with barely any legal use and a host of societal problems. Both their use for criminal activity and governmental reaction to that were wholly predictable to everyone.
Too bad they don't have a insider trading unit. (Score:4, Insightful)
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They are seeking scientists (Score:2)
Wrong Target (Score:2)
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What do they do? (Score:2)
Give a call to Elon Musk to tweet something stupid about a currency or his dog?
It's about time.... (Score:1)
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