#first what was essentially tax evasion and now money laundering

[winter-wilds]

This season, on Hermitcraft: ZombieCleo commits every financial crime she can think of

[jamesginortonblog]

What are you thinking about James? TV domination in 2018?

Psycho, crime-fighting vicar, Russian prince and now mobster with James Bond pretensions. But all James Norton wants to speak about is Britain in crisis. Interview: Adrian Lobb

The Big Issue, December 27, 2017

James Norton is grinning widely as he welcomes The Big Issue into his dressing room at London’s Donmar Warehouse theatre, where he’s starring in a new play, Belleville. A copy of our Christmas issue is propped up against his mirror. “I have so much respect and love for it. The fact that you have put little Martin Wellstead’s drawing on the cover? It is just joyous, a wonderful thing,” he beams. “This epitomises what London should be, a city of inclusivism and openness.” 

The 32-year-old made his name playing psychopathic Tommy in Happy Valley, a crime-fighting vicar in Grantchester and a troubled romantic lead in War and Peace, the next step to propel him to international attention is new BBC One thriller, McMafia. A truly international production, filming took place around the world: in Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Zagreb, Moscow, Prague, Mumbai, Split, London and Qatar, putting to good use co-funding from America’s AMC network. The story, told over eight parts, could scarcely be more timely - a tale of global corruption highlighting the way organised crime has moved into the boardroom. “I want the show to be a catalyst for a conversation that really needs to happen,” says Norton. “When you do a show that is feeding off the zeitgeist, you usually feel like you are chasing it. You are trying to create a piece of art that somehow explores, investigates or interrogates the current story. “But we were on set and had Russian actors improvising scenes about corruption at the state level with the FSB and Putin-at the same time, stories about Trump and Putin and collusion between the White House and the Kremlin were breaking. “It was weird, it felt like the zeitgeist was chasing us, that our show was becoming more topical as we went. And it became, as a result, more and more important. Since we finished filming, we had the Panama Papers, corrupt Icelandprime ministers, the money-laundering trail leading to Putin. Now there is Paradise Papers and the huge scale of tax evasion they reveal. It’s insane, it’s in the news every day if you want to find it.” Norton plays the expensively educated son of Russian mafia parents who has grown up in London and rejected the corruption that paid for his schooling and his family’s lavish lifestyle. Instead, he works in the city and is a darling of the ethical finance community. His first appearance, dashing and debonair in an immaculate suit, sets the mind wandering towards another famous James. And that’s before he’s seen emerging from the sea in a swimsuit... So, can we ask the Bond question? "The Bond question? Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says, with boyish glee. “I knew McMafia was going to fuel that fire for sure. I did tell them when I was doing it that there is no way you are going to film me in a tuxedo and not going to get that question flying around. “It is such an iconic role and it is so important in this country. There are not many people you will find who don’t care about Bond. So to even be mentioned in the same conversation is kind of mad and kind of magical. It really is very cool and very flattering and a bit bizarre and surreal.” That’s not a no, then. Although he says any speculation is just that. And he wants Daniel Craig to do a few more, as he’s a fan. For now, his latest alter ego’s gradual, initially reluctant slide into dodgy dealings is the spark at the centre of this fiery series. “Walter White [from Breaking Bad] is a good comparison. Michael Corleone in The Godfather is another example. His story is one where he goes deeper and darker.” Where most mob films and television shows have been highly localised, McMafia inhabits a bigger world than Sopranos, Gomorrah or Narcos. “The whole idea of McMafia is a reference to McDonald’s, the ultimate archetype of globalisation - what we want to do is show that the mafia no longer fight and do business on the street, they do it in the boardroom. “Since all of the globalisation, and in the multicommunicative age we live in, the cartels talk to the Russian mob, which talk to corrupt hedge-fund managers in London, which talk to Washington.” According to Misha Glenny - whose book investigating global corruption and gangs gives the show its title - all roads on this journey through global underworld lead to London. “It can’t help make your blood boil,” Norton says. “We are told this is an inclusive city. And we pride ourselves on openness and multiculturalism. And I do see that. A lot. I love London for that reason. I love its inclusivity, it is a wonderful place to live whether you are a man or woman, gay, straight, from any country in the world. “But there is this deep hypocrisy. London has very few assets in terms of resources, but we have incredible service-provider acumen. So all money and deals, most of it comes through this city. And we have very, very lax rules. People in the City are able to take the piss because the government are not putting the safeguards in place to prevent corruption. As a country we are on the verge of potentially becoming a tax haven if we are not careful with what is going on with Brexit.” The B-word is causing the star sleepless nights and sorrowful mornings. “My heart breaks every morning,” he says, dramatically. “I get a Brexit update and like alot of people I am slightly addicted, in a perverse way, to following this story. I digest everything. “I feel like, as an actor, if you have a little bit of a voice you have a responsibility to use that voice. To a point. But every time I tweet about that, I get people who are really angry, ‘just stick to your fucking job, you are not a politician.’ I disagree. “But I also think the point is always going to be more valuable if it is made through the work. Right now I am really pleased and keen to use McMafia to talk about corruption and the need for transparency. It is important to try to work in a politically, socially conscious way. So maybe I need to do a job about Brexit - because my heart is broken, if I’m honest, about what is happening in this country. It feels like we are spiralling out of control and no one is willing to put the brakes on.” In the past, Norton’s politicking has been strictly local, supporting a campaign to rebuild Peckham Lido, 30 years after it fell into disrepair. But, he says, McMafia has broadened his political horizons. “I have been talking to the NGO Global Witness, who are responsible for investigating big mining companies and governments. We have been talking about how we can use this show to start conversations about corruption. It is quite an unsexy thing to talk about. But that’s how they get away with it. It is a world and language that so few people speak, the language that the bankers and the City and hedge fund managers speak - you and I don’t know what the fuck most bonds are. So I think it is important to attach personal accounts to these things.” This is where, Norton feels, drama can trump investigative reporting. “I feel like it is very important right now. This sense of injustice is being fuelled, and people want to see what it looks like. What McMafia tells us is that there is a cost,” he continues. “So you have the minority with the yacht and the fast cars and the parties, but at the same time you have women being trafficked, drug addicts in Mumbai fecilitating the one up the food chain... we were very keen to make sure we didn’t just tell the story of corruption” Norton must get back into his New York accent for Belleville. There is just time to explain exactly why global corruption should enrage everyone. “If you are a normal person working and paying taxes, the fact is that there a tiny, tiny number of people making an absurd amount of money at your expense. They are finding loopholes and essentially engaging in a huge level of corruption,” he says. “Homelessness has gone up 134 per cent, and I would love to know how many properties are empty or unused. The fact that there isn’t enough money in this country to pull that person off the street is because people at the top aren’t paying their tax. It can’t help but make your blood boil at the deep, deep injustice and sadness. It is such a warped and sad situation to find ourselves in, and such a stain on what should be a really wonderful place to live.”

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

One of the hallmarks of this scandal-ridden time in our national life, one

of the hallmarks of this unprecedentedly scandal-ridden presidency is

unfortunately that very serious things, very shocking things even, tend to

just pass by. Even the most serious things, they just pass by.

I mean, the president`s campaign chairman was sent to prison. The

president`s deputy campaign chairman was also sent to prison. The

president`s self-named charity was shut down as an ongoing criminal

enterprise and his children are hence forth restricted by law from even

being associated with charities.

The president`s self-name university was shut down as a scam as well, and

he to pay $25 million to settle fraud claims against it. And you know, it`s

easy to forget, but the president was impeached and yes, then the president

retaliated against all of the witnesses who testified in his impeachment

hearings. The president personally intervened to change the FBI`s plans for

its new headquarters building in a way that would benefit his own downtown

Washington, D.C. hotel.

The president`s sister had to resign as a federal judge to avoid an ethics

inquiry into alleged fraud and tax evasions schemes that she and the

president benefitted from, in terms of the family fortune they both

inherited. She gave up her lifetime appointment as a judge so that would

not be looked at.

The president`s cabinet secretaries and high level appointees, national

security advisers, defense secretaries, White House chiefs of staff, White

House communications directors, handpicked senior advisers. They have all

basically run screaming from the White House warning publicly about how

dangerous he is to be anywhere near the office of the presidency, all his

own handpicked people.

Even now he is still randomly promoting a supposed miracle cure for

coronavirus, literally telling Americans they should take the drug and he

is too. The drug is both disproven as a cure or a preventative for

coronavirus and, oh, by the way, it killed some people. Those endorsements

of his miracle cure were both before and after he suggested that maybe

Americans should ingest disinfectants to clean out the virus from inside

our bodies.

I mean, this is the president who put the guy who gave Jeffrey Epstein his

get out of jail free card in the cabinet. Remember Alex Acosta? Remember

what he had to resign over? Yeah.

This is the president who put his son`s wedding planner in charge of

federal housing in the northeastern United States.

I mean just in the past couple of weeks, we learned this president was told

that Russia was paying cash bounties for the killing of American soldiers.

He was told that and did nothing about it at all. He was offered a menu of

possible acts of retaliation against Russia for them doing that. He chose,

on this menu, I`ll take nothing. I will do nothing.

I mean these things just – they just pass by. I mean it`s quite literally

hard to keep track of them. It`s my job to keep track of them. It`s hard to

keep track of them.

I mean, this is the president who pressured the post office to go after

Amazon because he doesn`t like the way the newspaper owned by the Amazon

guy covers him and his presidency. This is the president who fired an

inspector general, among he fired – he fired one inspector general who was

investigating the secretary of state and his wife, and he fired that

inspector general because the secretary of state asked him to.

Sure, of course. That`s kosher.

This is the president who tried to get the G7 meeting held at his own golf

club in Florida. This is the president who advertised his wife`s jewelry

line on the White House website, complete with a trademark note. This

president apparently believes that Frederick Douglass is still alive and

that the statue of a random bronco rider in his office is Teddy Roosevelt.

This is the president who randomly took a surprise urgent emergency trip to

Walter Reed military hospital and won`t say what for. This president

changed a hurricane forecast into one he liked better than the real one and

then made the National Weather Service say they agreed with his made-up

version. I mean, where do you begin?

These things – like just pick a week. Pick a week that he`s been in office

or running for office. Throw a dart, you can name something like this,

right, along these lines. Any individual one of these things would be among

the biggest scandals, if not the biggest scandal to ever afflict any other

presidency.

But by virtue of the sheer number of scandals that surround him like flies

around pig-pen, these have just become part of what we expect, right? We

have a little momentary shock and a short period of interest with each new

low blow, but then we just wait for the next one. And they all just pass

by.

And the most common reason they get pushed off the front page is because

another newer scandal comes along to squeeze them out. It`s exhausting and

enervating and bizarre and occasionally hilarious and terrifying in terms

of what remains of the norms and mores of our country and what we`re going

to rely on to prosecute corruption in the future when he`s gotten away with

this much.

But we have been doing this long enough now in this bizarre presidency that

one of the things we are now learning is that even when these scandals pass

by, they do often come back around. A lot of these sort of have tails, and

here`s one where the tail wraps around from all the way back to the way

Trump was elected in the first place. It wraps all the way from then right

here to now at the end of this presidential term, right up through the

election in which the American people are either going to re-elect him or

elect Joe Biden instead.

Because part of the way we got this president, part of the way he was

elected was itself not just a scandal but a crime. And I`m not speaking

hyperbolically. Federal prosecutors in New York say that he directed the

commission of a felony scheme by which illegal contributions were made to

his campaign in the form of hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments

that were made to two women to stop those women from speaking publicly

before the election about them allegedly having affairs with the president.

The president was identified as individual 1 in this scheme, the person who

prosecutors say directed the commission of these felonies and obviously he

was the person who benefited from these felonies.

When his personal lawyer, who made the payments on behalf of the president,

was pleading guilty to multiple felonies in conjunction with this case, the

president`s lawyer made it even more explicit. In open court, singling out

the president by name as the person who directed and organized the

commission of those crimes.

Since all that went down, we have since learned that Trump Attorney General

William Barr, as soon as he was sworn in as attorney general, he inserted

himself into that case. He went to New York and tried basically to derail

the prosecution of the hush money case. He badgered that prosecutor`s

office about every element of it. We know that prosecutors there, for

example, had requested interviews and information from the president`s

business in conjunction with that case.

But around the time that Attorney General William Barr started inserting

himself into what those prosecutors were doing, those prosecutors let those

requests to the president`s business drop. They just never followed up on

them. They let the case languish other than what was happening to Michael

Cohen.

And when federal prosecutors in that office announced months later that

they wouldn`t be doing any more investigating around the hush money thing,

they wouldn`t be charging anybody else with any crimes related to that hush

money thing, it would be Michael Cohen alone who got in trouble for that

even though prosecutors admitted in open court, he didn`t benefit from the

crime. He did the crime for the benefit of the president, at the

president`s direction, even though the crime involved the president`s

business being used as a false front to move the money, even though it

involved a lot of other people as part of the scheme, federal prosecutors

said it was only Michael Cohen who was going to have to do any time or even

be charged for it.

When federal prosecutors made that announcement about a year ago now, this

time last summer, it caused a lot of worry and consternation about whether

or not Attorney General William Barr had successfully leaned on that

prosecution in order to protect the president and his interests. But when

SDNY announced they had dropped everything other than the Michael Cohen

prosecution, the hush money thing was dead, not only did it sort of spark

consternation and worry about whether Barr had intervened there somehow –

we would later learn that he did – and also interestingly and now very

importantly led to a sort of eruption, led to some expressions of anger

from a whole different prosecutor`s office because apparently there were

not just federal but state prosecutors in New York state who really wanted

to investigate those crimes as potential violations of state law as well,

right?

These illegal payments to these two women to benefit a candidate for

office, a secret scheme involving a whole bunch of different people and a

New York business, the president`s business essentially laundering the

payments and disguising them as legitimate business and legal expenses,

which they were not. Federal prosecutors pursued that to the point of

pursuing Michael Cohen and then dropping everything else. But state

prosecutors were also interested in pursuing potential criminal charges

there as a state matter.

When both federal and state prosecutors were interested in those

circumstances as potential federal and state crimes, the federal

prosecutors in SDNY essentially pulled rank, and they told the state

prosecutors to back off, which they did. Then the way SDNY handled it,

though, is they only prosecuted Michael Cohen. Then for months after they

prosecuted Michael Cohen, they sat on the case and did nothing.

And then a long time later, they announced in a footnote in a filing with

the court that they were dropping the entire matter with no further action.

And when that happened this time last year, there was this eruption. The

state prosecutors were furious.

You know, we think we have our own case to make here. You know our statute

of limitations on these potential crimes is ticking. Why have you just been

sitting on it all this time?

You told us to back off. We did. But then you just sat on it and dropped it

and did nothing?

Why didn`t you let us go? If you were going to drop this, why didn`t you

tell us? We`ve got work to do here.

Well, within two weeks of the federal prosecutors saying, we`re not going

to do anything else here, those furious state prosecutors in New York had

filed their own subpoenas and were firing away in their own investigation,

making up for all that lost time. They subpoenaed the Trump Organization,

the president`s business. They subpoenaed the accounting firm that did the

finances of the Trump Organization.

 The Rachel Maddow Show   7/9/20,

[preciousmetals0]

Presumed Guilty: Financial Watchdogs See Crypto as Illicit by Default

Presumed Guilty: Financial Watchdogs See Crypto as Illicit by Default:

Recently, financial regulators around the world have been growing concerned about the role of cryptocurrency in money laundering and financing of various illicit activities. The first two months of 2020 saw many governments acting on these concerns and introducing a variety of legal measures designed to bolster their defenses against financial cybercrime allegedly facilitated by the use of digital money.

Russia has become the latest of the major jurisdictions to make a move in this direction, as the Central Bank of Russia unveiled last week a revised set of indicators by which financial institutions are advised to recognize suspicious transactions potentially related to money laundering. In what appears to be an unprecedentedly stringent approach to the exchange of digital assets, one of the new rules prescribes flagging any and all transactions involving cryptocurrency as suspicious.

Is making such blanket presumptions of guilt now guiding the new wave of restrictive measures that financial authorities are readying to put up?

The signal and the noise

Upon closer inspection, the Central Bank of Russia’s new directive seems less intimidating than it originally sounds. The document is no more than a set of prompts for commercial banks to heed when monitoring customers’ operations for suspicious activity. The list of around 100 items is not exhaustive, as there is room for financial institutions to include new ones specific to their particular circumstances.

Essentially, the list enumerates risk factors that banks could rely upon when determining whether to suspend the accounts exhibiting odd behavior, or — in especially grave cases — to terminate service. There is no implication that any operation involving digital money would lead to account suspension or bringing in law enforcement to investigate.

Related: Crypto Remains Unregulated in Russia — Lots of Talk but No Action

What the measure does show is Russian central bankers’ admission that cryptocurrency transactions are increasingly becoming part of retail banks’ day-to-day operations. Taken together with the news of the central bank completing its blockchain tokenization pilot project and coming forward with resulting proposals to amend the digital assets law, the development suggests that Russia’s monetary authority is not squarely opposed to blockchain-based innovations, but seeks to devise policies addressing multiple digital asset classes.

While the new Anti-Money Laundering directive is evidently motivated by widespread suspicion of decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the tokenization project points to the central bank’s interest in supervising the creation of new types of digital assets and their legal integration.

The FATF tide

While Russian authorities’ newly codified suspicion of all crypto transactions does not necessarily translate into increased oversight by financial watchdogs, many similar measures recently enacted or announced by other governments do.

The impetus for nations, from Ukraine to Japan, to concurrently enact new crypto-focused AML rules comes from the Financial Action Task Force guidance issued in the summer of 2019. It calls for the intergovernmental organization’s 39 members to update their domestic laws so that “virtual asset service providers” are brought to information disclosure standards similar to those imposed on traditional financial institutions within 12 months.

FATF directives provide some general guidance on how to incorporate digital money into AML legislation, but leave enough room for nation states to shape particular measures as needed. A popular approach is to apply increased scrutiny to crypto transactions whose value exceeds a set threshold.

A bill signed into law by the president of Ukraine in late 2019 stipulates that payment service providers should request detailed information on the origin and destination of the funds when processing crypto payments upwards of $1,300. Those deemed suspicious must be reported to the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine.

Related: Governments Begin to Roll Out FATF’s Travel Rule Around the Globe

Other jurisdictions make monitoring flows of digital money a prerogative for their fiscal authorities. Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria, the arm of the Spanish government responsible for collecting taxes, announced in a late January press release that policing the cryptocurrency space is one of its top priorities for the year. In addition to calling digital currencies a source of fiscal risk, the document mentioned money laundering as a substantial threat associated with crypto. The authority seems to be particularly concerned about the darknet as a hotbed of crime facilitated by cryptocurrency.

Some instances of the FATF guidelines’ implementation, however, demonstrate that it is possible to honor digital currencies while designing a rather benign regulatory framework that does not automatically discriminate against users and service providers. A prime example would be Singapore. Despite its new Payment Services Act being developed on the usual premise that crypto-related transactions inherently carry higher money laundering risks, the resulting product has been characterized by many in the crypto industry as flexible and forward-looking.

Hawkish signals from across the Atlantic

Beyond the enforcement of FATF standards, the sheer attitudes of influential global players toward policing the cryptocurrency space can have a significant effect on policy, by both setting precedent domestically and shaping the mainstream opinions within international financial organizations.

In this context, signals that have been recently emanating from the United States Department of the Treasury hint to the government’s intention to get serious about AML crypto regulation and enforcement. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s deputy director Jamal El-Hindi, speaking at the SIFMA 20th Anti-Money Laundering and Financial Crimes Conference a few weeks ago, said:

“We will judge emerging financial institutions on whether and how they make their systems resilient to, and report on, money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, human and narco-trafficking, and other illicit activity.”

Additionally, Sigal Mandelker, U.S. Department of the Treasury Under Secretary, who, during a speech at the same conference, lamented the lack of global AML regulation of cryptocurrencies and called for intensifying international cooperation:

“The lack of AML/CFT regulation of virtual currency providers worldwide greatly exacerbates virtual currency’s illicit financing risks. Currently, we are one of the only major countries in the world, along with Japan and Australia, that regulate these activities for AML/CFT purposes.”

It appears that the United States’ financial authorities are determined to not only invest additional resources in fighting financial cybercrime, but promote similar measures internationally. Cryptocurrency, as it happens, is the usual suspect.

Of course, it will be a welcome development for everyone if increased scrutiny of the digital asset sector leads to the prosecution of actual criminals and recovery of stolen funds. However, it is also possible that disproportionate measures could place an unnecessary burden on legitimate crypto businesses and regular users without providing corresponding gains in efficient crime-fighting.

Some estimates suggest that the share of illegal cryptocurrency transactions is extremely low, while crypto itself is technically not the most convenient vehicle for money laundering due to limited liquidity. The much-feared darknet markets, according to the latest report by the analytics firm Chainalysis, are still responsible for less than one-tenth of a percent of all crypto activity.

[goldira01]

Recently, financial regulators around the world have been growing concerned about the role of cryptocurrency in money laundering and financing of various illicit activities. The first two months of 2020 saw many governments acting on these concerns and introducing a variety of legal measures designed to bolster their defenses against financial cybercrime allegedly facilitated by the use of digital money.

Russia has become the latest of the major jurisdictions to make a move in this direction, as the Central Bank of Russia unveiled last week a revised set of indicators by which financial institutions are advised to recognize suspicious transactions potentially related to money laundering. In what appears to be an unprecedentedly stringent approach to the exchange of digital assets, one of the new rules prescribes flagging any and all transactions involving cryptocurrency as suspicious.

Is making such blanket presumptions of guilt now guiding the new wave of restrictive measures that financial authorities are readying to put up?

The signal and the noise

Upon closer inspection, the Central Bank of Russia’s new directive seems less intimidating than it originally sounds. The document is no more than a set of prompts for commercial banks to heed when monitoring customers’ operations for suspicious activity. The list of around 100 items is not exhaustive, as there is room for financial institutions to include new ones specific to their particular circumstances.

Essentially, the list enumerates risk factors that banks could rely upon when determining whether to suspend the accounts exhibiting odd behavior, or — in especially grave cases — to terminate service. There is no implication that any operation involving digital money would lead to account suspension or bringing in law enforcement to investigate.

Related: Crypto Remains Unregulated in Russia — Lots of Talk but No Action

What the measure does show is Russian central bankers’ admission that cryptocurrency transactions are increasingly becoming part of retail banks’ day-to-day operations. Taken together with the news of the central bank completing its blockchain tokenization pilot project and coming forward with resulting proposals to amend the digital assets law, the development suggests that Russia’s monetary authority is not squarely opposed to blockchain-based innovations, but seeks to devise policies addressing multiple digital asset classes.

While the new Anti-Money Laundering directive is evidently motivated by widespread suspicion of decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the tokenization project points to the central bank’s interest in supervising the creation of new types of digital assets and their legal integration.

The FATF tide

While Russian authorities’ newly codified suspicion of all crypto transactions does not necessarily translate into increased oversight by financial watchdogs, many similar measures recently enacted or announced by other governments do.

The impetus for nations, from Ukraine to Japan, to concurrently enact new crypto-focused AML rules comes from the Financial Action Task Force guidance issued in the summer of 2019. It calls for the intergovernmental organization’s 39 members to update their domestic laws so that “virtual asset service providers” are brought to information disclosure standards similar to those imposed on traditional financial institutions within 12 months.

FATF directives provide some general guidance on how to incorporate digital money into AML legislation, but leave enough room for nation states to shape particular measures as needed. A popular approach is to apply increased scrutiny to crypto transactions whose value exceeds a set threshold.

A bill signed into law by the president of Ukraine in late 2019 stipulates that payment service providers should request detailed information on the origin and destination of the funds when processing crypto payments upwards of $1,300. Those deemed suspicious must be reported to the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine.

Related: Governments Begin to Roll Out FATF’s Travel Rule Around the Globe

Other jurisdictions make monitoring flows of digital money a prerogative for their fiscal authorities. Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria, the arm of the Spanish government responsible for collecting taxes, announced in a late January press release that policing the cryptocurrency space is one of its top priorities for the year. In addition to calling digital currencies a source of fiscal risk, the document mentioned money laundering as a substantial threat associated with crypto. The authority seems to be particularly concerned about the darknet as a hotbed of crime facilitated by cryptocurrency.

Some instances of the FATF guidelines’ implementation, however, demonstrate that it is possible to honor digital currencies while designing a rather benign regulatory framework that does not automatically discriminate against users and service providers. A prime example would be Singapore. Despite its new Payment Services Act being developed on the usual premise that crypto-related transactions inherently carry higher money laundering risks, the resulting product has been characterized by many in the crypto industry as flexible and forward-looking.

Hawkish signals from across the Atlantic

Beyond the enforcement of FATF standards, the sheer attitudes of influential global players toward policing the cryptocurrency space can have a significant effect on policy, by both setting precedent domestically and shaping the mainstream opinions within international financial organizations.

In this context, signals that have been recently emanating from the United States Department of the Treasury hint to the government’s intention to get serious about AML crypto regulation and enforcement. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s deputy director Jamal El-Hindi, speaking at the SIFMA 20th Anti-Money Laundering and Financial Crimes Conference a few weeks ago, said:

“We will judge emerging financial institutions on whether and how they make their systems resilient to, and report on, money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, human and narco-trafficking, and other illicit activity.”

Additionally, Sigal Mandelker, U.S. Department of the Treasury Under Secretary, who, during a speech at the same conference, lamented the lack of global AML regulation of cryptocurrencies and called for intensifying international cooperation:

“The lack of AML/CFT regulation of virtual currency providers worldwide greatly exacerbates virtual currency’s illicit financing risks. Currently, we are one of the only major countries in the world, along with Japan and Australia, that regulate these activities for AML/CFT purposes.”

It appears that the United States’ financial authorities are determined to not only invest additional resources in fighting financial cybercrime, but promote similar measures internationally. Cryptocurrency, as it happens, is the usual suspect.

Of course, it will be a welcome development for everyone if increased scrutiny of the digital asset sector leads to the prosecution of actual criminals and recovery of stolen funds. However, it is also possible that disproportionate measures could place an unnecessary burden on legitimate crypto businesses and regular users without providing corresponding gains in efficient crime-fighting.

Some estimates suggest that the share of illegal cryptocurrency transactions is extremely low, while crypto itself is technically not the most convenient vehicle for money laundering due to limited liquidity. The much-feared darknet markets, according to the latest report by the analytics firm Chainalysis, are still responsible for less than one-tenth of a percent of all crypto activity.

[click2watch]

Free Software Messiah Richard Stallman: We Can Do Better Than Bitcoin

Richard Stallman, the fervently committed founder of the free software movement, is discussing the term “libertarian,” when he stops talking abruptly and says, “Hello?”

I tell him I’m still listening, but he explains that the confused greeting wasn’t intended for me. Instead, he says a man’s voice – neither mine nor an echo of his – had just cut in with one word: “liberty.”

“Does that sort of thing happen a lot?” I ask. I hadn’t heard anything.

“Yes,” he says. “It wasn’t a voice I recognize.” He added, “It could be … ”

Then a quick burst of static made his next words inaudible.

It was a strange incident, but apparently not a new experience for Stallman, whose emails urge any NSA or FBI agents reading to “follow Snowden’s example” and blow the whistle.

Stallman seems to check all of the old school cypherpunk boxes: in addition to being an Edward Snowden admirer, he’s a hacker of the original ’70s and ’80s generation, a privacy activist, and a frequent invoker of liberty. As a result, cryptocurrency enthusiasts could be forgiven for thinking Stallman was also head-over-heels for bitcoin.

He’s not.

Before his oration on libertarianism was interrupted, he said that the right-wingers who made up a significant portion of bitcoin’s early adopters don’t really deserve the label. His own pro-freedom views are more “libertarian” than bitcoiners’ “anti-socialism,” he argued.

As we spoke, it became clear that Stallman doesn’t find the decade-old technology all that appealing, for more reasons than just politics.

“I have never used it myself,” he told CoinDesk.

If that’s surprising, keep in mind that fine distinctions matter a great deal to Stallman. For example, he wrote a 9,000-word explainer on the difference between the terms GNU and Linux.

In 40-ish words: GNU, which Stallman proposed in 1983, is an operating system using exclusively free software. Linux, created years later by Linus Torvalds, is a kernel. Many refer to packages combining the two as “Linux,” but Stallman insists that the proper term is GNU/Linux or just GNU.

He also wrote 3,000 words on the differences between free software and open source software. Advocates of both push for the freedom to use, study, change and redistribute software, but Stallman said that those similarities conceal “a deeply important moral disagreement” centered on freedom and human rights, which the free software movement stresses.

The GNU Project, which Stallman founded, is working on an alternative digital payments system called Taler, which is based on cryptography but is not – forgive the hair-splitting – a cryptocurrency.

The Taler project’s maintainer Christian Grothoff told CoinDesk that the system is, rather, designed for a “post-blockchain” world.

Concerned with privacy…

It doesn’t even seem like the technology has been around long enough to already be thinking of a world after it, but to Stallman, bitcoin isn’t suitable as a digital payment system.

His biggest complaint: bitcoin’s poor privacy protections.

He told CoinDesk, “What I’d really like is a way to make purchases anonymously from various kinds of stores, and unfortunately it wouldn’t be feasible for me with bitcoin.”

Using a crypto exchange would allow that company and ultimately the government to identify him, he said. And as for mining the bitcoin himself, it’s a big investment and besides, he continued, “I’ve got other things I’d rather do.”

Asked what he thought about so-called privacy coins, Stallman said he’d gotten an expert to assess their potential, and “for each one he would point out some serious problems, perhaps in its security or its scalability.”

And speaking broadly, Stallman continued:

“If bitcoin protected privacy, I’d probably have found a way to use it by now.”

To be sure, Stallman is deeply concerned with surveillance by governments and corporations. His emails include a header urging “any NSA and FBI agents reading” to “follow Snowden’s example” – meaning, presumably, to blow the whistle on domestic spying by U.S. intelligence agencies.

…But not ‘perfect’ privacy

That pessimism aside, the GNU Project’s Taler does share some aspects with cryptocurrency projects – most notably it aims to fill the same niche.

Start with Taler’s intellectual lineage. It’s based on blind signatures, a cryptographic technique invented by David Chaum, whose DigiCash was among the first attempts at creating secure electronic money. Plus, Taler’s attempt to create a digital money that resists surveillance by governments and payments companies aligns it with many cryptocurrency projects.

Yet, Taler does not attempt to bypass centralized authority.

Payments are processed by openly centralized “exchanges” rather than peer-to-peer networks of miners because, Grothoff said, such a system “would again enable dangerous, money laundering kind of practice.”

Indeed, in a break with the anti-government ethos that has tended to characterize bitcoin and some of its peers, Taler’s design explicitly tries to block opportunities for tax evasion.

Speaking to this, Stallman told CoinDesk, “We need a state to do many vital jobs, including fund research, fund education, provide people with medical care – provide everyone with medical care – build roads, maintain order, provide justice, including to those who are not rich and powerful, and so the state’s got to bring in a lot of money.”

What a break from the political leanings of many of bitcoin’s first adherents.

Stallman continued:

“I wouldn’t want perfect privacy because that would mean it would be impossible to investigate crimes at all. And that’s one of the jobs we need the state to do.”

Privacy in the Taler system, then, is limited to users spending their digital cash. They are shielded from surveillance because, Grothoff said, “the exchange, when coins are being redeemed, cannot tell if it was customer A or customer B or customer C who received the coin, because they all look identical from the exchange.”

“Nobody,” he added, “exactly knows who has how many tokens.”

Merchants (or anyone) receiving payments, on the other hand, do so visibly and in the open, making it possible for governments to assess taxes on their income – not to mention harder for the recipients to participate in money laundering.

A place for crypto?

While Taler is not a cryptocurrency and doesn’t have a native asset (there are no talers or TalerCoins), as a new payment rail for existing assets, the system could support cryptocurrency at some point.

Just as euros (the first currency that will be supported by the system), dollars and yen could all be sent using Taler, so could bitcoin.

Similarly, while Taler is not a blockchain, a blockchain-based system could take the place of a bank within the system.

For users to be able to move euros into the Taler wallet, though, Taler exchanges will need to interact with the traditional banking system to withdraw that money. In this same way, a blockchain-based system could work with Taler exchanges to allow users to get access to their cryptocurrency.

Grothoff compared the act of moving bank deposits to a Taler digital wallet to taking cash out of an ATM. Coins in the wallet are stored locally on a user’s device, and if a user loses the key to their wallet, there’s nothing that can be done to recover it, much like the crypto space’s use of private/public key pairs.

Currently, Taler is in talks with European banks to allow withdrawal into the Taler wallet and also re-deposit from the Taler system back into the traditional banking system.

While the launch date on the project’s website still lists 2018, Grothoff said, it’s dependent of how quickly discussions with banks can be wrapped up. And he said, “The banks are not necessarily easy or cheap to deal with.”

Although, nothing about the traditional banking system per se is essential to Taler’s functioning (except perhaps for regulatory compliance). In principle, the “register-based system” that Taler plugs into could be a bank account or, in theory, a blockchain, said Grothoff.

If Taler gains traction, developers can experiment with different implementations and integrations – using banks or blockchains or whatever other register system they prefer. After all, Grothoff said:

“It’s free software.”

Stallman image via Wikimedia Commons/NicoBZH

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[cryptoquicknews-blog]

New Post has been published here https://is.gd/1HiewU

Free Software Messiah Richard Stallman: We Can Do Better Than Bitcoin

This post was originally published here

Richard Stallman, the fervently committed founder of the free software movement, is discussing the term “libertarian,” when he stops talking abruptly and says, “Hello?”

I tell him I’m still listening, but he explains that the confused greeting wasn’t intended for me. Instead, he says a man’s voice – neither mine nor an echo of his – had just cut in with one word: “liberty.”

“Does that sort of thing happen a lot?” I ask. I hadn’t heard anything.

“Yes,” he says. “It wasn’t a voice I recognize.” He added, “It could be … ”

Then a quick burst of static made his next words inaudible.

It was a strange incident, but apparently not a new experience for Stallman, whose emails urge any NSA or FBI agents reading to “follow Snowden’s example” and blow the whistle.

Stallman seems to check all of the old school cypherpunk boxes: in addition to being an Edward Snowden admirer, he’s a hacker of the original ’70s and ’80s generation, a privacy activist, and a frequent invoker of liberty. As a result, cryptocurrency enthusiasts could be forgiven for thinking Stallman was also head-over-heels for bitcoin.

He’s not.

Before his oration on libertarianism was interrupted, he said that the right-wingers who made up a significant portion of bitcoin’s early adopters don’t really deserve the label. His own pro-freedom views are more “libertarian” than bitcoiners’ “anti-socialism,” he argued.

As we spoke, it became clear that Stallman doesn’t find the decade-old technology all that appealing, for more reasons than just politics.

“I have never used it myself,” he told CoinDesk.

If that’s surprising, keep in mind that fine distinctions matter a great deal to Stallman. For example, he wrote a 9,000-word explainer on the difference between the terms GNU and Linux.

In 40-ish words: GNU, which Stallman proposed in 1983, is an operating system using exclusively free software. Linux, created years later by Linus Torvalds, is a kernel. Many refer to packages combining the two as “Linux,” but Stallman insists that the proper term is GNU/Linux or just GNU.

He also wrote 3,000 words on the differences between free software and open source software. Advocates of both push for the freedom to use, study, change and redistribute software, but Stallman said that those similarities conceal “a deeply important moral disagreement” centered on freedom and human rights, which the free software movement stresses.

The GNU Project, which Stallman founded, is working on an alternative digital payments system called Taler, which is based on cryptography but is not – forgive the hair-splitting – a cryptocurrency.

The Taler project’s maintainer Christian Grothoff told CoinDesk that the system is, rather, designed for a “post-blockchain” world.

Concerned with privacy…

It doesn’t even seem like the technology has been around long enough to already be thinking of a world after it, but to Stallman, bitcoin isn’t suitable as a digital payment system.

His biggest complaint: bitcoin’s poor privacy protections.

He told CoinDesk, “What I’d really like is a way to make purchases anonymously from various kinds of stores, and unfortunately it wouldn’t be feasible for me with bitcoin.”

Using a crypto exchange would allow that company and ultimately the government to identify him, he said. And as for mining the bitcoin himself, it’s a big investment and besides, he continued, “I’ve got other things I’d rather do.”

Asked what he thought about so-called privacy coins, Stallman said he’d gotten an expert to assess their potential, and “for each one he would point out some serious problems, perhaps in its security or its scalability.”

And speaking broadly, Stallman continued:

“If bitcoin protected privacy, I’d probably have found a way to use it by now.”

…But not ‘perfect’ privacy

That pessimism aside, the GNU Project’s Taler does share some aspects with cryptocurrency projects – most notably it aims to fill the same niche.

Start with Taler’s intellectual lineage. It’s based on blind signatures, a cryptographic technique invented by David Chaum, whose DigiCash was among the first attempts at creating secure electronic money. Plus, Taler’s attempt to create a digital money that resists surveillance by governments and payments companies aligns it with many cryptocurrency projects.

Yet, Taler does not attempt to bypass centralized authority.

Payments are processed by openly centralized “exchanges” rather than peer-to-peer networks of miners because, Grothoff said, such a system “would again enable dangerous, money laundering kind of practice.”

Indeed, in a break with the anti-government ethos that has tended to characterize bitcoin and some of its peers, Taler’s design explicitly tries to block opportunities for tax evasion.

Speaking to this, Stallman told CoinDesk, “We need a state to do many vital jobs, including fund research, fund education, provide people with medical care – provide everyone with medical care – build roads, maintain order, provide justice, including to those who are not rich and powerful, and so the state’s got to bring in a lot of money.”

What a break from the political leanings of many of bitcoin’s first adherents.

Stallman continued:

“I wouldn’t want perfect privacy because that would mean it would be impossible to investigate crimes at all. And that’s one of the jobs we need the state to do.”

Privacy in the Taler system, then, is limited to users spending their digital cash. They are shielded from surveillance because, Grothoff said, “the exchange, when coins are being redeemed, cannot tell if it was customer A or customer B or customer C who received the coin, because they all look identical from the exchange.”

“Nobody,” he added, “exactly knows who has how many tokens.”

Merchants (or anyone) receiving payments, on the other hand, do so visibly and in the open, making it possible for governments to assess taxes on their income – not to mention harder for the recipients to participate in money laundering.

A place for crypto?

While Taler is not a cryptocurrency and doesn’t have a native asset (there are no talers or TalerCoins), as a new payment rail for existing assets, the system could support cryptocurrency at some point.

Just as euros (the first currency that will be supported by the system), dollars and yen could all be sent using Taler, so could bitcoin.

Similarly, while Taler is not a blockchain, a blockchain-based system could take the place of a bank within the system.

For users to be able to move euros into the Taler wallet, though, Taler exchanges will need to interact with the traditional banking system to withdraw that money. In this same way, a blockchain-based system could work with Taler exchanges to allow users to get access to their cryptocurrency.

Grothoff compared the act of moving bank deposits to a Taler digital wallet to taking cash out of an ATM. Coins in the wallet are stored locally on a user’s device, and if a user loses the key to their wallet, there’s nothing that can be done to recover it, much like the crypto space’s use of private/public key pairs.

Currently, Taler is in talks with European banks to allow withdrawal into the Taler wallet and also re-deposit from the Taler system back into the traditional banking system.

While the launch date on the project’s website still lists 2018, Grothoff said, it’s dependent of how quickly discussions with banks can be wrapped up. And he said, “The banks are not necessarily easy or cheap to deal with.”

Although, nothing about the traditional banking system per se is essential to Taler’s functioning (except perhaps for regulatory compliance). In principle, the “register-based system” that Taler plugs into could be a bank account or, in theory, a blockchain, said Grothoff.

If Taler gains traction, developers can experiment with different implementations and integrations – using banks or blockchains or whatever other register system they prefer. After all, Grothoff said:

“It’s free software.”

Stallman image via Wikimedia Commons/NicoBZH

#crypto #cryptocurrency #btc #xrp #litecoin #altcoin #money #currency #finance #news #alts #hodl #coindesk #cointelegraph #dollar #bitcoin View the website

New Post has been published here https://is.gd/1HiewU

[kingmindint]

Why Decentralized Exchanges Are A Perfect Solution

Why Decentralized Exchanges Are A Perfect Solution

So we have already poured tons of information over you about the speed with which the crypto market is increasing. In fact, we are sure that the ongoing Bitcoin fall is to do with the fact that the world isn’t really capable of processing this much stuff this fast.

The blockchain tech may be just too much for the existing network, and what we have seen in December with a few exchanges having massive problems processing new requests is representative of what the whole world is experiencing right now.

The new exchanges and ICOs turning up every day make things even vaguer and difficult to regulate. The US is still trying to come up with a unified system of regulation, and the same goes for G20:

“We acknowledge that technological innovation, including that underlying crypto-assets, has the potential to improve the efficiency and inclusiveness of the financial system and the economy more broadly”  – The G20 bankers have said – “Crypto-assets do, however, raise issues with respect to consumer and investor protection, market integrity, tax evasion, money laundering and terrorist financing. Crypto-assets lack the key attributes of sovereign currencies. At some point, they could have financial stability implications.”

Mark Carney, the Governor of The Bank of England, is also calling for a unified legislation that will make the niche more see-through:

“The time has come to hold the crypto-asset ecosystem to the same standards as the rest of the financial system”  – Carney says, although his approach is more focused – “I would have a greater expectation for a series of national steps rather than some big coordinated approach.”

The advantages of decentralized exchanges that use blockchain

The move from “some big coordinated approach” is a move that was on many people’s minds, some all the way from the very beginning.

Bitcoin’s ability to deliver empowerment and freedom to individuals rather than the state was what made it so in-demand, to begin with. There is also a reason or two why decentralized exchanges are viewed by many users as more suited to the current state of things.

The current financial system, which has been in operation for a while, has many flaws, among which are the fact that someone has access to pretty much all of your private information, high transfer fees, and slow speed of transaction. And we know just who can help here.

99% of exchanged are centralized. Among the best features of decentralized exchanges are their improved security, accessibility, and lesser payments. But besides from the obvious, that’s far from all.

With centralized exchanges not only do you fall prey to high commission fees, also you run a risk of being manipulated bye exchanges themselves who control the process to make investors take steps that are profitable to them.

The truth is that trusting a third party with your money doesn’t mean it’s more secure. It’s pretty much the same as being trusted with a task and then delegating it to someone else. As we have found out through history, trusting a centralized regulator with your funds doesn’t mean they’re safe.

Long story short, people have a database of your money, which makes things really no different from the governmental control. The only difference is that if someone hacks an exchange, the CIA won’t be investigating them. Probably no-one will.

Delegating responsibility

The centralized exchange in a sense not only act as a bank but also as a broker and a clearinghouse all at the same time. Check out this awesome interview for more information. Ultimately, a centralized exchange has all the disadvantages of the old systems but none of the advantages of the next-gen systems that use smart contracts and don’t expose their clients’ details to anyone.

Even if you trust the people behind the exchange (which is pretty difficult because really you have no idea who they are), these databases themselves are easy to hack.

There have been multiple demonstrations of the fact that hacking someone is as easy as finding one hole in the code and then accessing the list with all the details. You’re essentially handing the control over to someone else who promises they will take care of things for you, but how does that old saying go? If you want things done right, do them yourself.

Decentralized exchanges offer much better security, which you will be sure of if you have been using EtherDelta or AirSwap. The information isn’t stored on servers which can be hacked at any time.

When large orders come in on centralized exchanges, also, a match is hard to find, which means that liquidity is a problem. Centralized exchanges are also often badly run by badly educated people and often there are manipulations by the platforms themselves aimed at raising costs.

Michael Oved, the founder of AIrSwap, speaks of the benefits of decentralized changes:

“What we are building is a peer-to-peer exchange that promises two of the key advantages of a decentralized exchange: users are always in control of their own assets, and liquidity is accessible by anyone globally. We chose the Swap design because it promises scalability, privacy, and fairness.”

As you can see, the issues of liquidity and safety are addressed here, and also the subject of price manipulation if open for conversation:

“I believe the manipulation you describe IS very damaging in the case where pricing information is being manipulated in the order book itself. That has direct implications for pricing, whereas manipulation of counterparty discovery is less clear.”

We are certain that in many sense decentralized exchanges are better suited to a contemporary crypto user, which is why it is important to pay attention to them. They will highly likely replace centralized exchanges in the same way Wifi replaced dial-up modems (and then you’ll be really glad you listened to us).

Image courtesy of The Merkle, Bitcoin.com.

The post Why Decentralized Exchanges Are A Perfect Solution appeared first on CoinStaker | Bitcoin News.

Source

The post Why Decentralized Exchanges Are A Perfect Solution appeared first on Bitcoin Geek.

via Kingmind Why Decentralized Exchanges Are A Perfect Solution

[opedguy]

Mueller Indicts Manafort in Over-Reach

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Oct. 30, 2017.--Indicting former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates for “conspiracy” against the U.S., 73-year-old former FBI Director now Special Counsel Robert Mueller highlights what’s wrong with the Special Counsel Law.  Mueller was named Special Counsel May 17 by Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, given the broad mandate to investigate Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election.  Mueller was also told to investigate alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.  Indicting Manafort and Gates for essentially money laundering and income tax evasion for consulting work from 2006 to 2016 with former pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich goes beyond Mueller’s  mandate.  While Manafort may have acted improperly, it has nothing to do with his brief stint as Trump campaign chairman from March 1 to August 19, 2016.

            Mueller’s indictment of Manafort and Gates doesn’t come close to a year-and-half-old investigation started by former FBI Director James Comey into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Alleged by former Democratic nominee Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Oct. 19, 2016 debate in Las Vegas, the Democratic Party has tried, in three Congressional committees, to tie Trump’s campaign to Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Hillary flat-out called Trump a “Putin puppet” in the last debate, starting the narrative that Russian hackers won Trump the Nov. 8, 2016 election.  Mueller knows that former Obama administration officials together with Comey unmasked and wiretapped Trump campaign officials since July 2016. Comey never confessed his “probable cause” for going to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] Court to obtain warrants against Trump officials.

            Indicting Manafort and Gates, Mueller shows egregious prosecutorial over-reach, whether or not Manafort deserves the charges. Mueller’s mandate involved investigating Russian influence in the 2016 election and any alleged ties to the Trump campaign.  Charging Manafort and Gates shows, beyond any doubt, he hasn’t been able to establish any criminal ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow.  Alleging that Manafort laundered $18 million for consulting work overseas or ran $75 million through offshore accounts, says zero about Trump’s alleged ties to the Kremlin.  Mueller’s prosecutors showed what they really think of Manafort in the indictment, “hidden overseas wealth to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the United States.” Putting that statement in an indictment is outrageous, as if Mueller’s office should not be commenting about how any American citizen spends his money.

            Itemizing how Manafort spent cash on vendors or personal items [$12 million], Mueller’s indictment talks about his home improvements in the Hamptons [4.5 million], payments to a rug merchant in Virginia [$934,000], clothing store in Beverly Hills [$520,000] or landscaping his Bridgehamption N.Y. home [$655,000]. Soho condo [$1.5 million], Brooklyn brownstone [$3 million] and Virginia house [$1.9 million].  How any of the these purchases relates to Kremlin’s influence peddling in the 2016 election is anyone’s guess   Given Mueller’s mandate, he should have referred Manfort’s case to a another federal prosector.  Giving the mainstream media something to jump up-and-down about, Mueller’s done zero to advance his mandate of investigating the 2016 election or alleged Trump ties to Russia.  Manafort’s spending habits shouldn’t be part any federal indictment.

            Talking about the plea deal with once Trump foreign policy advisor George Papandopoulos for lying to the FBI on when he first heard “dirt” about Hillary from a Russian “professor” also says nothing about alleged Trump ties to Moscow.  Whether Papandopoulos got the information before or after joining the Trump campaign is extraneous nitpicking.  Splitting hairs in FBI interviews hardly constitutes perjury. What Mueller should be looking at is Comey’s reliance on Hillary’s phony paid “Russian” dossier on Trump.  If there’s any collusion with the Russians, Mueller knows that Hillary paid Fusion-GPS investigator former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to dredge up all the dirt from Ruissian contacts.  Mueller should be investigating whether Comey used Hillary’s dossier as probable cause to get warrants in FISA court to spy and wiretap Trump campaign officials.

            Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) were the first to warn Trump not to fire Mueller.  “The president must not, under any circumstances, interfere with the special counsel’s work in any way . . “ said Schumer, raising more nonsense in the press. There’s been zero indication that Trump seeks to fire Mueller, creating more bogus headlines in the mainstream press. Neither Schumer nor Pelosi want Mueller to investigate Hillary’s dossier that sought Russian help to dredge up dirt on Trump during the 2016 campaign. Both don’t fault Comey for using the dossier as “probable cause” to seek warrants in FISA court to spy on Trump campaign officials.  Indicting Manafort and for financial crimes long before he joined the Trump campaign speaks volumes about how little Mueller has found of Russian influence and alleged Trump campaign collusion.

About the Author  

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

[preciousmetals0]

Tax Agencies Step Up Efforts to Hone in on Crypto Tax Evasion

Tax Agencies Step Up Efforts to Hone in on Crypto Tax Evasion:

The year 2019, for a short while, raised expectations that stablecoins would bring about mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. 2020, however, seems to be dousing those hopes with ever-tightening regulation that is putting pressure on investors and companies alike.

The first complication came only 10 days into the year. In early January, the European Union’s landmark Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, or 5AMLD, was signed into law. The law is the latest evolution of the EU’s response to the Panama Papers scandal, in which a leak of over 11 million documents uncovered the opaque financial networks used by the world’s richest and most prominent individuals to divert wealth overseas.

The era-defining financial scandal shone a light on a controversial characteristic of international finance that would soon spell trouble for cryptocurrency investors and businesses the world over: anonymity.

Lawmakers are constantly striving to tighten the legal loopholes that allow the world’s richest companies and individuals to avoid paying their dues. Try as they might, there are still states, often small island nations in the Caribbean, that willingly provide less legally restrictive environments.

Choosing to divert financial flows offshore is often not illegal at all, but the emphasis that companies such as the now-disgraced Mossack Fonseca place on privacy means that it is difficult for law authorities to bring individuals using such networks for criminal activities, such as money laundering, tax evasion or terrorist financing, to justice.

From the 5AMLD to central bank digital currencies, governments and regulators are acting on their belief that the identities of individuals behind anonymous transactions should be made available to authorities upon request.

Additionally, even though the United Kingdom is set to leave the EU in roughly one week’s time, its anti-money laundering regulations closely match the 5AMLD, and recent events indicate that measures are being increased even further to prevent cryptocurrency from being used to flout the law.

The taxman cometh

One of the criticisms of post-Brexit Britain is that it will relax financial regulation in order to form lucrative trade deals in the wake of its departure from the EU single market. Although the U.K. has seen numerous financial scandals, its tax agency is looking to minimize the blind spots in the defenses against crime involving cryptocurrency.

Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs announced that it had posted a $130,000 open contract call to develop a tool to help the tax agency gather intelligence through cluster analysis. The announcement is the latest step on behalf of European lawmakers to break through the anonymous qualities of cryptocurrencies, taking aim at both the biggest coins and privacy tokens, such as Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC) and Dash (DASH).

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, although most users of such coins use them for entirely honest purposes, both law authorities and regulators are concerned by the potential for privacy coins to be used for nefarious activities, such as the sale of illicit drugs on the darknet, as well as terrorist financing and money laundering.

The regulatory changes and mounting compliance demands did not surprise Dash Core Group Chief Marketing Officer Fernando Guitierrez. In an email conversation with Cointelegraph, Gutierrez put forward his view that the changes will not only be a hindrance to companies but also to the average consumer. He believes that: “This was all bound to happen.” He added that there was little chance that a growing industry would escape unnoticed:

“All these changes will make anonymity more difficult for the average consumer, as more exchanges comply and implement KYC. Those exchanges who don’t will be forced to jump from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, which will impose extra costs that only those committed to anonymity will be willing to pay. For criminals, this will change nothing because they are in that group, among many others who are not criminals, who are willing to pay more.”

The offering of the open contract from the HMRC is a signal that it is committed to effectively ramping up its blockchain forensics capabilities. Rich Sanders, principal and lead investigator at the Cipherblade Ltd blockchain analytics firm, told Cointelegraph that such a small contract is unlikely to shake up the system to any great extent:

“As for this particular initiative, a £100,000 software contract for a year says something but not very much in the grand scheme of things.”

How effective are blockchain forensics tools?

While data about transactions using cryptocurrency is stored on the blockchain, it is not possible to identify individuals from this information alone. Prior to the recent changes in legislation, blockchain analytics companies cooperated with intelligence agencies to link suspicious account activity to the individuals behind them.

Although the powers given to law authorities and compliance organizations under the 5AMLD are likely to radically change the way in which such procedures are carried out, Sanders believes that analytics tools are not a one-time fix for all anonymous crypto activity since: “Blockchain analytics tools do not inherently and directly crack the anonymity,” or, more accurately, the pseudonymity, which is an attribute of blockchains. Therefore, forensic tools are only one element of a comprehensive investigative toolkit. He went on to add:

“The way, in which a blockchain analytics tool can help in linking the pseudonymous blockchain identity to an individual is by tracing cryptocurrency from/to initial/terminal destinations such as exchanges and other services, from which data can then be requested — which will often require a subpoena to be served or, at a minimum, another legally constrained form of data request.”

Sanders explained that, when examining the powers of blockchain analytics tools in bringing tax evaders to justice, it is important to note that there must first be pre-existing suspicion of wrongdoing:

“Blockchain analytics tools are likely to be brought to bear only in cases of existing and substantiated suspicion and are not themselves suited to finding potential tax evaders in the sea of cryptocurrency users. If that’s what you want to do, you’ll have a better time — as I once semi-seriously advised IRS employees — browsing through Reddit and looking at the chest-beating about tax evasion there (by accounts with poor OPSEC).”

Many in the sector welcome the regulatory changes. This chummy approach to cooperation with state organizations is not, however, shared by all. Dash Core Group’s Gutierrez told Cointelegraph that, in spite of their duty to protect, not all governments and intelligence agencies honor this:

“This has happened even in democratic countries, so we can’t assume that everything they do is fair or well-intentioned. Only where there is a real separation of powers, and the judicial one has consented, on a case by case basis, they should have such a right, if technically possible. If that can’t be guaranteed — and it can’t — it is better if they stay away.”

How will regulation affect crypto?

Cryptocurrency is still a young industry and faces many challenges on the road to becoming a mature sector that can compete with wider mainstream finance, should that ever happen. The steady increase in regulatory and compliance demands are only to be expected as the nascent crypto industry inches closer to being used by a greater customer base.

Regardless of the titans of the tech industry toying with the idea of starting cryptocurrencies of their own, even some of the larger financial companies simply cannot take on the high level of risk associated with crypto at its current stage.

Some industry leaders recognize this turn as a welcome sign that digital currencies are being taken more seriously by regulators and lawmakers around the world. For others of a more anarchistic philosophical standing, the loss of anonymity is a loss of one of the core precepts behind the entire reason for cryptocurrency’s being.

Gutierrez says that, while regulation is bound to happen to any growing financial industry, the costs associated with being regulated to an extreme level could well choke out smaller players and lead to an eventual stagnation:

“The constant introduction of new regulations is already changing the industry. Compliance costs have grown so much that only big players can afford them. This is only going to get worse. We will have fewer new projects and that will hinder innovation. I foresee a future, in which the blockchain industry resembles more and more the financial industry it proclaimed it would replace: well-funded players, slow change and lawyers everywhere.”

While Gutierrez foresees a slowdown in the near future, Andrew Adcock, CEO of the London-based crowdfunding platform Crowd for Angels, told Cointelegraph that the firm has not picked up on any discernible change in investor behavior in the wake of the regulatory changes:

“We haven’t seen a large change in investor and consumer attitudes, however, there has been a notable increase from companies seeking to implement changes and abide by the new regulation. I believe this is positive and will provide great protection for investors.”

Although any kind of attempt to hinder the supposedly essential core characteristics of cryptocurrency will create intense debate among investors, industry leaders and regulatory bodies, not all people are so fussed about the changes.

Adcock said that many of the clients at Crowd for Angels are not overly interested in the topic. Despite the doomsayers of the crypto industry, Adcock maintained his view that regulation is something to be encouraged and does not believe that this will alienate investors: “There will always be those who seek anonymity, and this might be challenged by regulation, but harmony between both positions can co-exist.”

[goldira01]

The year 2019, for a short while, raised expectations that stablecoins would bring about mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. 2020, however, seems to be dousing those hopes with ever-tightening regulation that is putting pressure on investors and companies alike.

The first complication came only 10 days into the year. In early January, the European Union’s landmark Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, or 5AMLD, was signed into law. The law is the latest evolution of the EU’s response to the Panama Papers scandal, in which a leak of over 11 million documents uncovered the opaque financial networks used by the world’s richest and most prominent individuals to divert wealth overseas.

The era-defining financial scandal shone a light on a controversial characteristic of international finance that would soon spell trouble for cryptocurrency investors and businesses the world over: anonymity.

Lawmakers are constantly striving to tighten the legal loopholes that allow the world’s richest companies and individuals to avoid paying their dues. Try as they might, there are still states, often small island nations in the Caribbean, that willingly provide less legally restrictive environments.

Choosing to divert financial flows offshore is often not illegal at all, but the emphasis that companies such as the now-disgraced Mossack Fonseca place on privacy means that it is difficult for law authorities to bring individuals using such networks for criminal activities, such as money laundering, tax evasion or terrorist financing, to justice.

From the 5AMLD to central bank digital currencies, governments and regulators are acting on their belief that the identities of individuals behind anonymous transactions should be made available to authorities upon request.

Additionally, even though the United Kingdom is set to leave the EU in roughly one week’s time, its anti-money laundering regulations closely match the 5AMLD, and recent events indicate that measures are being increased even further to prevent cryptocurrency from being used to flout the law.

The taxman cometh

One of the criticisms of post-Brexit Britain is that it will relax financial regulation in order to form lucrative trade deals in the wake of its departure from the EU single market. Although the U.K. has seen numerous financial scandals, its tax agency is looking to minimize the blind spots in the defenses against crime involving cryptocurrency.

Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs announced that it had posted a $130,000 open contract call to develop a tool to help the tax agency gather intelligence through cluster analysis. The announcement is the latest step on behalf of European lawmakers to break through the anonymous qualities of cryptocurrencies, taking aim at both the biggest coins and privacy tokens, such as Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC) and Dash (DASH).

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, although most users of such coins use them for entirely honest purposes, both law authorities and regulators are concerned by the potential for privacy coins to be used for nefarious activities, such as the sale of illicit drugs on the darknet, as well as terrorist financing and money laundering.

The regulatory changes and mounting compliance demands did not surprise Dash Core Group Chief Marketing Officer Fernando Guitierrez. In an email conversation with Cointelegraph, Gutierrez put forward his view that the changes will not only be a hindrance to companies but also to the average consumer. He believes that: “This was all bound to happen.” He added that there was little chance that a growing industry would escape unnoticed:

“All these changes will make anonymity more difficult for the average consumer, as more exchanges comply and implement KYC. Those exchanges who don’t will be forced to jump from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, which will impose extra costs that only those committed to anonymity will be willing to pay. For criminals, this will change nothing because they are in that group, among many others who are not criminals, who are willing to pay more.”

The offering of the open contract from the HMRC is a signal that it is committed to effectively ramping up its blockchain forensics capabilities. Rich Sanders, principal and lead investigator at the Cipherblade Ltd blockchain analytics firm, told Cointelegraph that such a small contract is unlikely to shake up the system to any great extent:

“As for this particular initiative, a £100,000 software contract for a year says something but not very much in the grand scheme of things.”

How effective are blockchain forensics tools?

While data about transactions using cryptocurrency is stored on the blockchain, it is not possible to identify individuals from this information alone. Prior to the recent changes in legislation, blockchain analytics companies cooperated with intelligence agencies to link suspicious account activity to the individuals behind them.

Although the powers given to law authorities and compliance organizations under the 5AMLD are likely to radically change the way in which such procedures are carried out, Sanders believes that analytics tools are not a one-time fix for all anonymous crypto activity since: “Blockchain analytics tools do not inherently and directly crack the anonymity,” or, more accurately, the pseudonymity, which is an attribute of blockchains. Therefore, forensic tools are only one element of a comprehensive investigative toolkit. He went on to add:

“The way, in which a blockchain analytics tool can help in linking the pseudonymous blockchain identity to an individual is by tracing cryptocurrency from/to initial/terminal destinations such as exchanges and other services, from which data can then be requested — which will often require a subpoena to be served or, at a minimum, another legally constrained form of data request.”

Sanders explained that, when examining the powers of blockchain analytics tools in bringing tax evaders to justice, it is important to note that there must first be pre-existing suspicion of wrongdoing:

“Blockchain analytics tools are likely to be brought to bear only in cases of existing and substantiated suspicion and are not themselves suited to finding potential tax evaders in the sea of cryptocurrency users. If that’s what you want to do, you’ll have a better time — as I once semi-seriously advised IRS employees — browsing through Reddit and looking at the chest-beating about tax evasion there (by accounts with poor OPSEC).”

Many in the sector welcome the regulatory changes. This chummy approach to cooperation with state organizations is not, however, shared by all. Dash Core Group’s Gutierrez told Cointelegraph that, in spite of their duty to protect, not all governments and intelligence agencies honor this:

“This has happened even in democratic countries, so we can’t assume that everything they do is fair or well-intentioned. Only where there is a real separation of powers, and the judicial one has consented, on a case by case basis, they should have such a right, if technically possible. If that can’t be guaranteed — and it can’t — it is better if they stay away.”

How will regulation affect crypto?

Cryptocurrency is still a young industry and faces many challenges on the road to becoming a mature sector that can compete with wider mainstream finance, should that ever happen. The steady increase in regulatory and compliance demands are only to be expected as the nascent crypto industry inches closer to being used by a greater customer base.

Regardless of the titans of the tech industry toying with the idea of starting cryptocurrencies of their own, even some of the larger financial companies simply cannot take on the high level of risk associated with crypto at its current stage.

Some industry leaders recognize this turn as a welcome sign that digital currencies are being taken more seriously by regulators and lawmakers around the world. For others of a more anarchistic philosophical standing, the loss of anonymity is a loss of one of the core precepts behind the entire reason for cryptocurrency’s being.

Gutierrez says that, while regulation is bound to happen to any growing financial industry, the costs associated with being regulated to an extreme level could well choke out smaller players and lead to an eventual stagnation:

“The constant introduction of new regulations is already changing the industry. Compliance costs have grown so much that only big players can afford them. This is only going to get worse. We will have fewer new projects and that will hinder innovation. I foresee a future, in which the blockchain industry resembles more and more the financial industry it proclaimed it would replace: well-funded players, slow change and lawyers everywhere.”

While Gutierrez foresees a slowdown in the near future, Andrew Adcock, CEO of the London-based crowdfunding platform Crowd for Angels, told Cointelegraph that the firm has not picked up on any discernible change in investor behavior in the wake of the regulatory changes:

“We haven’t seen a large change in investor and consumer attitudes, however, there has been a notable increase from companies seeking to implement changes and abide by the new regulation. I believe this is positive and will provide great protection for investors.”

Although any kind of attempt to hinder the supposedly essential core characteristics of cryptocurrency will create intense debate among investors, industry leaders and regulatory bodies, not all people are so fussed about the changes.

Adcock said that many of the clients at Crowd for Angels are not overly interested in the topic. Despite the doomsayers of the crypto industry, Adcock maintained his view that regulation is something to be encouraged and does not believe that this will alienate investors: “There will always be those who seek anonymity, and this might be challenged by regulation, but harmony between both positions can co-exist.”