SEC Files Fraud Charges in Bitcoin and Office Space Investment Schemes
This is unrelated to the article, but I&#x27;m interested to hear thoughts on this:<p>As bitcoin becomes more valuable and ransomware &#x2F; money laundering becomes more prevalent, why not blacklist coins that have been through a mixer? If you can&#x27;t mix the coins, you can&#x27;t launder them. It won&#x27;t be possible to use Bitcoin for these activities anymore.<p>Here&#x27;s what I mean by &quot;blacklist&quot;: If an exchange detects that your account has received more than N bitcoins that have been through a mixer, your account is closed and your coins are refunded. It&#x27;s easy to check whether a coin has been through e.g. bitcoinfog, for example, so this is easy to implement.<p>I think a lot of the resistance to this idea comes from people who use Silk Road clones, most of which force you to use a mixer. And while there&#x27;s a strong ethical argument to be made that Silk Road ought to exist and that it&#x27;s made the world safer, there are other types of activities that have been growing with concerning frequency in the Bitcoin world.<p>The sole reason that Bitcoin is untraceable is because of mixers. Is it time to eliminate them? What are some consequences of pursuing this strategy?<p>There&#x27;s nothing stopping it from happening. As soon as a few exchanges become so large that they&#x27;re the &quot;gatekeepers&quot; for BTC -&gt; USD conversion, it will be difficult to get dollars out. And if other countries follow suit for euros and yen, then mixed Bitcoins won&#x27;t be worth much.<p>As far as I can tell, this is a very real possibility for the future, so if it has consequences then we should discuss them now. The era of &quot;pay for everything in bitcoin&quot; is sufficiently far away that we should probably talk about the implications of banning mixed coins.<p>EDIT: Ok, I&#x27;ve exhausted my self-control for complaining about downvotes. This is a genuine, good-faith question that I spent time crafting. If you don&#x27;t come to HN to have your preconceptions challenged, then what are we doing here?<p>And no, people can&#x27;t troll others by sending them mixed coins. It&#x27;s no different than the fraud detection that exists today. You&#x27;d need tens of thousands of USD to even put a dent in a business account, for example, and exchanges will just forgive it.<p>I think people don&#x27;t like the future I&#x27;ve painted, and hence the downvotes. It doesn&#x27;t bother me much, but it&#x27;s an interesting phenomenon to see unfold.