There are blocks and blocks of 10 sat/vbyte transactions alone. Same for 5 sats/vbyte. But anyway, I am content with a 20 sat/vbyte fee for Bitcoin. As long as fees do not shoot up again, I think the conditions are going to be very good for making transactions for the next few weeks at least.

Although with the volatile nature of fees, you can't really predict anything.

So I found this interesting article on the internet about the practices of the UK bank Standard Chartered over 15 years ago: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richholmes/standard-chartered-bank-money-iran-fbi

"Two employees blew the whistle on Standard Chartered's accounts. The FBI wasn't interested. But the bank's own reports raised similar concerns."

The Government And The Whistleblowers

Confidential records from the FinCEN Files show that the bank was reporting its own suspicious transactions about customers with links to Iran until at least 2017.

On a summer morning in 2012, Anshuman Chandra read a news article about a Saudi Arabian financial institution suspected of facilitating the funding of al-Qaeda attacks, including 9/11. The bank was called Al Rajhi, and a US Senate committee cited allegations it had handled payments to suicide bombers in Somalia, Sri Lanka, India, and the Philippines.

Chandra was deeply troubled, he said, and not just because he knew people who had died in terrorist attacks. He was disturbed because Chandra worked for Standard Chartered bank, and he realized that his employer was doing business with Al Rajhi.

So Chandra warned a supervisor about what he had learned, he said, but he never heard back.

From Standard Chartered’s Dubai office, where Chandra was a client services manager, he dug deep into bank records. He later learned, examining a yearly profit report, that in 2009 alone, Standard Chartered earned $2 million from its relationship with Al Rajhi. (Al Rajhi did not respond to a request for comment.)

But that wasn’t all. Poring over Standard Chartered’s accounts, he found a number of customers in Iran, a country under US sanctions, and Chandra feared that they too had been indirectly supporting terrorist activities.

“I actually got goosebumps,” Chandra said.

This time, he decided to bypass his bosses. He turned to the US government.

By the fall of 2013, Chandra and another whistleblower, Julian Knight, had handed US authorities thousands of internal bank records that they claimed show Standard Chartered was giving safe harbor to a number of customers moving money to Iran.

The documents came at a significant time. A year earlier, the bank had acknowledged its role in concealing tens of thousands of transactions with businesses in Iran. Under threat of criminal prosecution, the bank had agreed to clean up its act.

Ultimately, the government walked away from the whistleblowers. But the two men had flagged real problems. The bank itself, confidential records show, later reported to the US Treasury that it had suspicions about at least 31 companies contained in the data the whistleblowers had handed over.

So as you can see, these banks can get away with not only money laundering but even terrorism financing. But then let's take the case of Samourai Wallet, which the prosecutors call a mixer (it wasn't). The Whirlpool coordinator was targeted for "allegedly" being used for money laundering despite a complete failure to identify who was using the service. However, in the case where the government has all the information about the banks' customers, transactions, accounts, and who is violating the law, they did not do anything. Actually, they didn't care.

What I'm seeing here in the regulations is less of a genuine concern to prevent AML and feels more like it's just a partisan jab in order to hurt non-democrat's standings in elections.

See also: https://stacker.news/items/532922

I don't like this because it shows that the crypto market is also influenced by politics. Binance should limit sanctions to individuals directly involved in this war instead of impacting all Russian users. The Russian people also opposed this war.

You see, that would require too much work and investment. So what do these companies do? They just put a blanket ban over everybody, because justice is too expensive to be served.

Meanwhile the actual puppet-masters behind the Ukraine war get to move their funds freely, with fiat, and be relatively unharmed. In fact, it's really only North Korea who is rampantly abusing crypto privacy.

Quote from: dkbit98 on April 18, 2024, 09:21:37 PM

Security is better for bitcoin and there is no founder that can be arrested and blackmailed.

I agree. This is a problem of Vitalik's blockchain.

He centralizes too much power over the network... he can be coerced by governments to make changes in the protocol

Well, in defense of Ethereum though, they do have different full nodes and reference implementations, and they can't all be coerced into implementing the same EIPs.

I'm not even sure if Vitalik is able to get an EIP approved all by himself, in the event that he was compromised by a government. Because the EIP would need to be published in order to start a change.

Let's take a look at the section of Congress who appears to be totally against Bitcoin privacy of any kind.

Late yesterday afternoon news broke of the House Financial Services Committee Democrats' new crypto legislation. First things first I want to acknowledge the monster in the room concerning this and don't worry this legislation is already dead on arrival. Moves like this are sadly to be expected in the coming months as these bills are introduced with the Members knowing it doesn't have the slightest chance to get a vote but instead is done as a messaging thing that they can point at.

Who is Behind This Legislation

Another HUGE thing to highlight is Rep. Sean Casten and his ties to the crypto industry. Guess whose brother was on his staff and served as a Legislative assistant?

None other than SBF's brother Gabe! While Rep. Casten says that Gabe played no role in his crypto views or did anything in that realm Gabe was able to use his relationship with Casten to help his brother out whether anyone wants to admit to it or not. I would bet that the contacts that Gabe had were a huge boost for his brother.

Looking at who else has already come out and been in support of this legislation we have the expected actors, Reps. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), and Bill Foster (D-Ill.). Having worked or currently work on the other side of the aisle of these people it's to be expected. In particular, Rep. Sherman is someone who truly I do not understand how he got his job and more importantly what technology did to him to hurt him. The guy is consistently against cutting-edge innovation and made what I find to be the funniest comment about crypto years ago.

> He asked a witness testifying before a Committee why we don't "just flip the switch and turn off crypto".

I wish I had made up that quote but sadly.... nope.

What Would This Do

While the full text has not been released as far as I can tell, I also cant even find a circulating draft so it is clear they left this on the Dem side exclusively, the bill is rather straightforward. The legislation would place a 2-year "prohibition" on financial services (CEXs) from dealing with crypto that has been funneled through mixer.

During the two year "prohibition" the SEC, CFTC, and Justice Department are required to study the use of mixers and what role they play in helping to facilitate illicit finance. Below is Casten's comment.

> "The presumption should be that these are money laundering channels," Casten said, unless sufficient audit work shows otherwise. "Let's go through and get that cleaned up and fixed."

Why This is a Stupid Waste of Time

Within the released text this bill is only going to affect entities that the US government is already monitoring/controlling. This legislation further fails to address what if some of your BTC had previously been through a mixer? Would Coinbase or whoever else was in possession of it have to divest it and then buy "new" BTC that wasn't touched by a mixer? We also already have the Justice Department working with numerous blockchain analysis companies that are able to track BTC that has passed through mixers. We literally have these answers yet this group of Congressman either A) are not being kept in the loop by their staff or B) just ignoring what we know to push an agenda that is knownly NOT POPULAR with people.

The executive summary here is three parts.

Number one: The bill they are trying to pass is dead in the water (at least as long as there is a republican-controlled House, although it goes on to show that if Democrats take control of it, they will use it to completely destroy crypto privacy).

Number two: This bill was co-authored by SBF's brother. Let that sink into you for a second. It underscores why SBF deserves to rot in jail for an eternity. He does not care about crypto, but he is for "Big Government".

The third and most important thing is that the lawmakers is just going to automatically assume that mixing == money laundering and not change their opinion about it, as if a bunch of stuborn 10-year olds are writing the laws! It doesn't matter what sort of explanation or analysis you give them, it's "guilty unless proven innocenent" and it fits into their sinister plan to strip every crypto user of financial privacy worldwide.

Crypto people - who probably don't know squat about this case - side instinctively with authorities and Main Stream Media
NotaTether
SamReomo

From these examples you see what the "crypto community" has become

Excuse me? Where did I say I side with authorities and main stream media on this?

It is a well-known fact that Roger Ver's US-based businesses fell afoul of the US tax laws, despite no longer being a US citizen. Those are the kind of things that can get you into trouble with them.

Roger was not arrested for running a Bitcoin business.

PS. If what you are saying is true, then why am I running a mixer directory during an era when the feds are cracking down on mixers?

Quote from: icopress on May 08, 2024, 03:21:20 AM

Quote from: NotATether on May 05, 2024, 11:18:15 AM

I will need to remove Tumbler and Unijoin later today or tomorrow.

It seems to me that in order to clarify (at least temporarily) they should simply be marked as non-working.

I agree. There are no scam accusations or opportunities for scams here because both sites are offline. Looking at their past reputation and reliability, they don't need to be removed. The information that they are offline is quite enough.

I am not sure about this. We have not heard from either representative and currently do not even know if they will even come back.

Quote from: hugeblack on May 08, 2024, 08:59:40 AM

I did not click on the links on your service, but I discovered that they are ref links, so it is better to provide an option by placing direct links and a box for ref links for those who want to support the service, as the list now works as a ref proxy, which I think is prohibited here.

I understood that here (as well as on Btt) it is not forbidden to leave a site that can have ref links. (It's OK to remove them if there are any)
What is forbidden is to fill the forum with direct ref links in the post. That would really increase the amount of spam on the forum.

This is becoming a bit of a non-issue as the sites with referral links happen to be the ones who are/have shut down. The Jambler family of mixers don't have direct affiliate programs.