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Most headlines are fake, so I default to it being neutral. Nobody actually knows.
Also, who defines what a black market is?
That said, it's entirely rational for a number of reasons.
- Criminals need access to dollars to buy stuff obviously, so even if they did use Bitcoin along the way, they still end up with at least a portion of their illicit proceeds in dollars.
- Even if Bitcoin has a larger market cap vs. stables, it's float is still smaller. Stables have a much higher trading volume = bigger anonset = more "DeFi" exchanges for tumbling, etc.
- The use-case for criminals has always been a dumb argument for Bitcoin, it's literally a transparent ledger so governments can track flows extra-judicially across borders to keep an eye on each other. Why Bitcoiners would wear that use-case as a badge of honor, instead of mocking the idiots that make such claim in an effort to FUD, is beyond me. The sooner people realize what Bitcoin is and what it isn't, the better. The fact most Bitcoiners don't even know is why it feels like Bitcoin is in purgatory right now.
The important question is where are criminals storing their wealth? It ain't in dollars.
Why Bitcoiners would wear that use-case as a badge of honor, instead of mocking the idiots that make such claim in an effort to FUD, is beyond me. The sooner people realize what Bitcoin is and what it isn't, the better. The fact most Bitcoiners don't know isn't promising.
I'm confused... What are you talking about exactly?
If it were true that the black market prefers stables over Bitcoin, how could Bitcoiners consider that a bad thing?
To consider it a bad thing, you'd have to view the counter-factual of Bitcoin being used by "criminals" as a good thing.
If the black market prefers stables over bitcoin... Then we IMO are not educating people well enough.
That is the problem and the lack of education is IMO the most likely shortcoming.
Stables can be and are turned off at any time - sure they are 'a dollar' but they aren't even crypto they are a glorified spreadsheet maintained by one company.
If the black market prefers bitcoin over stables, then we are not educating people well enough.
Bitcoin is a transparent NSA ledger where flows can be tracked extrajudicially across borders, wtf would criminals use it other than to store their wealth?
The state can turn YOU off at any time, stables being turned off while they're being tumbled through "DeFi" exchanges is the least of their problems.
Also, we know that banks love to be partners in crime, stables are the perfect tool for banks to keep laundering funds for foreign adversaries while maintaining deniability. DEniability FInance.
Which begs the question: why don’t criminals skip the middleman by using any of the supposedly anonymous shitcoins?
Maybe they do, fake article is fake, nobody really knows. If you can tumble across chains without before hitting a KYC off-ramp it doesn't matter what chain you use.
Let them use XMR to buy ETH to buy stables to buy bread.
They'll still buy a little Bitcoin for their nestegg when they're done washing.
"They'll still buy a little Bitcoin for their nestegg when they're done washing."
At this point for "the nestegg" they would have been better buying the S&P or the mag 7 or the QQQ. You know, for 'nestegg'.
The problem with those is that they offer no actual real ownership or censorship resistance or public-private keys nothing at all.
If its purely nestegg then they could just buy nvidia shares
Bitcoin is a transparent NSA ledger
I don't believe this
You just don't want to believe it, but it's right there in front of you.
So you open a lightning channel, meet a random stranger on the street, he/she gives you 5$ and you send them 5$ in sats to their channel/wallet/whatever...
And the government is monitoring "extrajudicial flows?"
I don’t understand it either. Maybe the way this dataset is sourced is biased against smart criminals who don’t get caught? I have no idea.
Bitcoin is said to have lost market share in the black market for stablecoins.
Now is that a good or bad thing?