MythBusting2021WorldChallenge: Cryptocurrencies Are Used For Illegal Activities

It's a known fact that majority of the crime committed on this planet has their root cause as money. Crime is only really rampant because sadly it's quite well incentivized and the most common of incentive is money. Now, crime has been here for almost as long as there has been a medium of exchange around.

These crimes range from basic criminal stuff like theft, to more sinister affairs like kidnapping, money laundering, hacking, armed robbery, assassinations etc. As I've said before, crime is incentivized with money and before cryptocurrencies came about most of this money was paid through cash or electronic means.

Crime and illegal activities weren't less before the advent of cryptocurrencies and if at all it was, it isn't about cryptocurrencies, it's rather about the widening gap between the poor and the rich and the institutionalised and sadly legal ways in which money and things of value are taken from the poor and gifted to the rich. Let's leave that aside for the now.

The point is all the possible crimes and illegal activities that can be pointed to in support of this argument didn't start nor skyrocket in occurrence, scale or impact as a result of cryptocurrencies, but let's give these detractors the benefits of the doubt and see how their micro-arguments stand in test of logical reasoning at the very least.

Cryptocurrencies Are Used For Money Laundering

To start dissecting this argument, we have to first answer the question, what is money laundering? According to investopedia 'Money laundering is the illegal process of making large amounts of money generated by a criminal activity, such as drug trafficking or terrorist funding, appear to have come from a legitimate source'. It can be done in quite a number of ways such as the use of shell companies, money smugglers, discrete investments in luxury good, real estate as well as precious metals, smurfing etc.

Just like every other form of money, cryptocurrencies are being used today to facilitate illegal financial transactions and crimes and like I said this is even more true of established financial systems designed and approved by governments all over the world. That begs the question why emphasis on the use of crypto? Interestingly, while any money successfully cleaned out using the fiat currency system is forever gone, this can not be said for cryptocurrencies as the records of every single coin and token and it correspondent movement from wallet to wallet can always be traced and if one person in the chain is apprehended, the whole chain can be retraced until the crime is solved or dealt with. This can not be said for fiat currency system.

Cryptocurrencies Are Used To Sponsor Crimes

There are those who argue that cryptocurrencies is used to incentivize crime and maybe that's true, but so is the traditional fiat money system, still I don't see anyone say money is used for sponsoring crime, so let's ban the use of money!

Everything that has advantage definitely has disadvantages and cryptocurrency is no angel on this matter, it's not necessarily perfect. But criminals will always find a way to utilize anything to further their criminal objectives. As of today cryptocurrency just happens to be one of those things.

Cryptocurrencies Are Used By Hacking Groups

One arguments is that it has been responsible for the actions of hacker groups especially those suspected to be operating from Russia. But anyone with not so short memories knows that hackers had always been around since before cryptocurrencies and these hackers collected their ransom fee in cash and e-money format and that didn't really deter them.

For goodness sakes, we all know there are countries that are called safe havens, known for not asking nor disclosing banking details of their customers and these kinds of companies are mostly offshore and has served as a channel to move illegal finance as well as to finance illegal activities for years.

I'm not arguing that cryptocurrency is not a form of payment used in the dark world of criminals and men of questionable characters, but that was never the intent of it's creation and even though Nakatomo never said it, I'm sure it's one of the reason he made transactions details on the blockchain pseudo-anonymous; to discourage it's use by criminals, as they don't really get full anonymity and the threat of their money trail will always hang over their head.

Even before the advent of cryptocurrencies, there were already more than enough ways to illicitly move funds, as well to finance criminal enterprises. Every supposed innovation and improvement on the fiat currency system ends up been exploited by this bad actors and cryptocurrency is simply just another method of payment that is being exploited by those I will call amateurs, as most veteran criminals have come to know that cryptocurrencies do not fully offer the things they seek in terms of anonymity and leaving no trace. This we have seen in multiple cases whereby criminal organisation and hacker groups were brought down by tracking their cryptocurrency payments.

Author's epilogue

So, if you want to argue that cryptocurrencies aid or is being used to fund crime and illegal activities, you might as well argue for traditional money, cause traditional money is more guilty. I mean nobody goes about saying that traditional money is the chief cause behind kidnappings and thefts that cash was used as means of transaction or was collected, so why do same for crypto?

Since both were not made with that intent, and since what's good for the goose, is also good for the gander, it's invalid to say cryptocurrency is used for criminal activities. So no, cryptocurrencies do not favor, aid or encourage crime or illegal money movements.

This is my entry for MythBusting2021WorldChallenge by @SofiaCBCH

SLP address:

simpleledger:qpu2nsyy02g2xmrt76v4qr4azz73npnupvepx86cv9

BCH address:

bitcoincash:qpu2nsyy02g2xmrt76v4qr4azz73npnupv46du0cjm

smartBCH address:

0x17F67D5784AAE689f46BC28387C845c6f6d2FAfb

Thanks for reading, I love you guys

Mhizutty the voice of truth🎵🎶🎵