Except you can easily launder bitcoin, if I trade bitcoin for cash and then bitcoin again and then some other crypto and blah blah blah, it's not hard to do as long as the bitcoin you start with arent stolen or something.
What's to stop me from going on craigslist or local bitcoins and trading bitcoin and cash? How are you going to track that?
The open ledger prevents widescale criminal activity and fraud, not so much a problem for regular people.
Well assuming they can't track your account on those sites (ip, email), or a phone connection connecting the theoretical buyer to the seller "burner" that's truly unlinked to car/store), you still have the crypto owner got it from somewhere and then would likely be able to describe you to authorities if you made a face to face transaction. And the more shifty you are, the more likely the person would be suspicious and attentive.
And then wherever you spend the crypto could be tracked and potentially glean information back to you from that side because a retailer would have cameras or people they interacted with, etc.
But yes, I'm sure it's possible, just a lot less likely now than say 10 years ago.
Except you can easily launder bitcoin, if I trade bitcoin for cash and then bitcoin again and then some other crypto and blah blah blah, it's not hard to do as long as the bitcoin you start with arent stolen or something.
What's to stop me from going on craigslist or local bitcoins and trading bitcoin and cash? How are you going to track that?
The open ledger prevents widescale criminal activity and fraud, not so much a problem for regular people.
Well assuming they can't track your account on those sites (ip, email), or a phone connection connecting the theoretical buyer to the seller "burner" that's truly unlinked to car/store), you still have the crypto owner got it from somewhere and then would likely be able to describe you to authorities if you made a face to face transaction. And the more shifty you are, the more likely the person would be suspicious and attentive.
And then wherever you spend the crypto could be tracked and potentially glean information back to you from that side because a retailer would have cameras or people they interacted with, etc.
But yes, I'm sure it's possible, just a lot less likely now than say 10 years ago.
How is that different from cash?
When did I assert that Cash was untraceable?