You see, no one actually wants a digital currency. There have been several (nano was my favorite) that functioned especially well as a currency, because it used very little compute power to perform or verify transactions.
But a currency is stable. Which means you don’t magically make money by holding or trading it. So it doesn’t get attention, and therefore doesn’t get widely adopted.
Everyone likes Bitcoin because it’s speculative digital gold.
I really enjoy reading about the investigations that follow any big crypto heist, where they track the stolen money through various exchanges etc. The Swindled podcast just did one about a pretty poor attempt to launder crypto (see Razzlekhan) and Darknet diaries did one on the much more competent (suspected North Korean) heist of eth from Axie Infinity and their various laundering efforts including through Tornado cash. It’s surprisingly transparent in a lot of ways. It seems like stealing the money is often the comparatively easy part, and getting their huge sums out of crypto and into something they can use (while thousands watch the money like hawks) is much harder.
Acquire dirty (criminally-obtained) cash or dirty crypto. You can convert dirty cash into crypto easily by buying peer-to-peer. Deposit this into Wallet A.
Using a different wallet, Wallet B, mint an NFT and put it up for auction. You might consider paying a small sum of money to have it “sponsored” by a B-tier celebrity to make it seem more legitimate.
Using the Wallet A, outbid everyone else and buy the NFT. Pay using the dirty crypto.
Dirty crypto is transferred to Wallet B.
Repeat this process as many times as desired.
In the end, sell the crypto legitimately on a cryptocurrency exchange. Declare the crypto as income and pay tax as appropriate.
If questioned by the authorities, you claim that you mint NFTs and that they were sold genuinely at public auction, purchased by an anonymous buyer.
I don’t think investors in crypto want it to lose volatility. But again, all currencies are subjected to volatility. No currency is perfectly stable. Hence, derivatives.
That was my point, in essence. Crypto fails as currency because the people in that market don’t want it to be less volatile, making it bad for typical currency uses.
While yes, the relative values of currency fluctuate over time and in relation to one another, it’s orders of magnitude less and driven by far more predictable and based on actual real world factors. Instead of Fomo, whims, market whales, and indecipherable white papers.
It’d be nice to have a singular system for payment around the world. I work on e-commerce sites that take payment in many different countries, and some of those payment providers are better designed than others.
You see, no one actually wants a digital currency. There have been several (nano was my favorite) that functioned especially well as a currency, because it used very little compute power to perform or verify transactions.
But a currency is stable. Which means you don’t magically make money by holding or trading it. So it doesn’t get attention, and therefore doesn’t get widely adopted.
Everyone likes Bitcoin because it’s speculative digital gold.
There are plenty of people who want a digital equivalent to cash from a privacy perspective.
Crypto is the exact opposite of private. You literally share all your transactions with everyone.
I really enjoy reading about the investigations that follow any big crypto heist, where they track the stolen money through various exchanges etc. The Swindled podcast just did one about a pretty poor attempt to launder crypto (see Razzlekhan) and Darknet diaries did one on the much more competent (suspected North Korean) heist of eth from Axie Infinity and their various laundering efforts including through Tornado cash. It’s surprisingly transparent in a lot of ways. It seems like stealing the money is often the comparatively easy part, and getting their huge sums out of crypto and into something they can use (while thousands watch the money like hawks) is much harder.
That, my friends, is what NFT are is perfect at.
“Oh, what, tax authority? No, I didn’t steal this money. I earned it legit by selling my newly-minted monkey NFT to some sucker for 100 ETH.”
That gets your money into crypto, not out of it.
The full scheme works like this—
Name one stable currency. All currency fluctuates (Forex trading). But yes, crypto is very volatile comparatively
How many more decades do you think until crypto stabilizes?
I don’t think investors in crypto want it to lose volatility. But again, all currencies are subjected to volatility. No currency is perfectly stable. Hence, derivatives.
That was my point, in essence. Crypto fails as currency because the people in that market don’t want it to be less volatile, making it bad for typical currency uses.
While yes, the relative values of currency fluctuate over time and in relation to one another, it’s orders of magnitude less and driven by far more predictable and based on actual real world factors. Instead of Fomo, whims, market whales, and indecipherable white papers.
It’d be nice to have a singular system for payment around the world. I work on e-commerce sites that take payment in many different countries, and some of those payment providers are better designed than others.