> DoJ investigation found.. [banking] business had been used to launder more than $650m between 2016 and 2021 from US fentanyl sales for Chinese crime groups and drug traffickers.
According to the official CIA "world factbook" or whatever that is called: an estimated 3% to 5% of the world's fucking entire GDP is linked to criminal activities.
Blockchains are cool in that they allow to follow the laundering (so it allows for nice blog entries with good looking graphs, which I do appreciate), as opposed to traditional banks where it's all opaque.
But the amount of money laundered using cryptocurrencies is a drop in the bucket compared to size of criminal activities ongoing in the world (btw criminal activities predates blockchain by centuries or millenia).
And don't get me started on the missing billions when "aid" is sent to this and that country. Be it Ukraine or Haiti or whatever: there are corrupt officials and individuals at every single step of the ladder.
My favorite is the US loading a 747 with 12 billions in bills of $100 USD to "help the reconstruction of Iraq" and officially 9 billions of those 12 billions have been "lost".
Yup. Lost. That's official stuff.
So the $200m of the Lazarus group, compared to $9 billion in $100 USD bills: cry me a river.
Do you have a source for 'My favorite is the US loading a 747 with 12 billions in bills of $100 USD to "help the reconstruction of Iraq" and officially 9 billions of those 12 billions have been "lost".'
Your numbers seem a bit off, but it is definitely an outrageous incident.
"This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash — enough to run the Los Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools for a year, among many other things."
I always assumed that bitcoin was propped up by purchases from money laundering - so that the total value of bitcoins more or less equalled the 3-5% of global GDP that is illegal / laundered etc.
Once upon a time when I looked at it the numbers seemed to stack up - everyone and their dog just used crypto as one stage in the laundering cycle is the assumption
Why would you do that? Unless your I'll gotten gains are natively already crypto (bitcoin ransomware) adding crypto to the process just makes it way more difficult and traceable. Massive financial machines well integrated into the world banking and political structures already launders money just fine on its own in truely massive quantities.
> So the $200m of the Lazarus group, compared to $9 billion in $100 USD bills: cry me a river.
I don't think the US cares about a $200m, whatever that $200m belong to. Their issue is that this money is enabling a regime they want to see inert (since the nuclear shield means that the DPRK is not going anywhere anytime soon).
According to the official CIA "world factbook" or whatever that is called: an estimated 3% to 5% of the world's fucking entire GDP is linked to criminal activities.
Blockchains are cool in that they allow to follow the laundering (so it allows for nice blog entries with good looking graphs, which I do appreciate), as opposed to traditional banks where it's all opaque.
But the amount of money laundered using cryptocurrencies is a drop in the bucket compared to size of criminal activities ongoing in the world (btw criminal activities predates blockchain by centuries or millenia).
And don't get me started on the missing billions when "aid" is sent to this and that country. Be it Ukraine or Haiti or whatever: there are corrupt officials and individuals at every single step of the ladder.
My favorite is the US loading a 747 with 12 billions in bills of $100 USD to "help the reconstruction of Iraq" and officially 9 billions of those 12 billions have been "lost".
Yup. Lost. That's official stuff.
So the $200m of the Lazarus group, compared to $9 billion in $100 USD bills: cry me a river.