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from the convert-it-to-libra-coin-if-course dept.
The bitcoin scam worked — almost too well. In 2012, back when almost no one had heard of the digital coin, he’d started modestly, asking people he found on the dark web for $200 or $300 worth of bitcoin as a way to test out his investment scheme. He told them he could exploit the then huge price differences between various bitcoin exchanges and promised huge rewards. But once they sent the funds, he vanished into the ether to find his next stooge.
There was a certain genius criminal irony to it: He would hype an untraceable anonymous digital currency, then get paid in it.
[...] But he had a problem. It was getting harder to turn the most overhyped currency since the tulip into actual cash.
[...] All of this means that people like our guy who are very rich on paper (or, more accurately, on the blockchain) must devise highly complex methods to convert their ill-gotten gains, or risk losing quite a bit of value, said Tom Robinson, co-founder of the blockchain analytics company Elliptic. “Funds from illicit activities are just lying dormant, and they are waiting to find effective means of cashing out,” he said.
Yet if we know anything about criminals, it’s that they’re resourceful. As financial institutions and regulators the world over grapple with bitcoin’s adaptation to mainstream use, some of these criminals have devised ingenious hacks for converting their money; still others are turning to alternative coins as they seek greater privacy for their transactions and to stay ahead of the law.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday August 20 2019, @06:37PM (3 children)
Well at 21:34 UTC this evening that story will go out. It had already been covered and is waiting to go out in today's story queue. In other words, by the time we received your story we had already processed someone else's submission on the same topic and yours became a dupe.
There was also a problem with the link which was changed by the quoted source - nothing that you could have done about that. If you look at the stories queue you will see it there. And as you are an AC, there is no point in adding your submission acknowledgement to it because you cannot receive karma even if we were to do so.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday August 20 2019, @06:40PM (2 children)
Whether you are the same AC as the story we have processed I cannot tell you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @10:39PM (1 child)
I am the same AC. And it looks like a popular story.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday August 21 2019, @04:51AM
Which is probably why an editor published it. Don't expect submissions to appear immediately, and don't underestimate the work going on in the background. When the original link was changed the submission became useless. We then had to search for alternative sources and wait for the link to be corrected again.