I haven't heard that one for a while, thanks, you made me LOL.

BTW nobody ever said that BTC was anonymous other than the media until they woke up and realized that it's not "as anonymous" as they tried to make it look.

However, look up "off-chain transacting / transactions".

@ThinkingOutLoud as with pretty much all other means to "transact money", where there is a will there is a way. Let's assume you have a Bitcoin ATM in your area. (In theory) what is holding you to create a "fresh" bitcoin address, receive a payment from "whomever", go to the ATM and withdraw that money. After that you could simply "burn" that address and never use it again.

I'd like to see nsa/cia/fbi/mi5/kgb track that transaction back to you. Of course, as with everything there is limitations to such a theory in terms of amount(s), blockchain movements of large sums which would ring a bell. Then again, I doubt you're looking to "launder billions of dollars" in a $7 billion market cap.

So yeah, bitcoin is (to a certain extent) quite anonymous despite the fact that it's very convenient to know that you're holding your own money.

@GutPunch the speed in which transactions are being confirmed depends on how many transactions (overall) are jamming up the "mempool" of the network. Basically when there is a flood of transactions is coming in the network (mining pools) will prioritize which transactions they include in the next block based on the senders fee.

In general the networks default fee is 0.0001 BTC/kb. Adding anything less than that is being cheap and one shouldn't complain if those TX take a while to get included in a block. However, when the mempool shoots up to +30-40k pending transactions things can get a little crazy. More experienced bitcoiners will pump up their fees to push their transactions through which then impacts the lower fee ones. However those peaks usually don't last long and over time and with a bit of experience you'll learn to adjust accordingly.

There is also another reason why a TX with a standard fee of 0.0001 could be rejected for a while by the miners. Technically Bitcoin is all just inputs and outputs and everything lives on the blockchain, including your coins.

Now, every time you receive a payment to an address an input is added to your address originating from the senders output (bear with me)

Let's say you've received 5 payments to your address and you now have 0.25 BTC balance which you also see in your wallet. In reality you have 5 inputs "linked" to your address. You now decide to send 0.2499 BTC (+0.0001 network fee) to another address. Your wallet will therefore combine the 5 inputs into 1 output, your "transaction hash" broadcasted to the network. (almost there)

Depending on the number of transactions and their size it's possible that you're transaction is larger than 1kb and thus you should UP your fee to ensure that the miners will pick it up with one of the next blocks.

I know this sounds complicated but it really isn't. Not if you're using a local or mobile wallet´anyway since you can enable "coin control" in your wallet which will show all inputs linked to an address and a good wallet should adjust the transaction fee automatically if your inputs exceed 1kb or, if it's really good, suggest a fee based on mempool status.

(Edit: forgot to add, we need bigger blocks! Block size is a real issue atm, you can google it)

Speaking of BTC spike. For those who don't know, the "block halving" is coming around in a good 6 weeks. At the moment of the halving the bitcoin network will "reduce" the supply of new coins by halving the block reward miners receive from 25 coins to 12.5 coins for the next 4 years. At the same time China is dumping $ into BTC due to strict financial controls to prevent a market collapse so NOW would be a good time to keep some BTC for the next two months, if you have some that is.

Think of it in this context. The govt is following you. They know you launder money but don't know how. Then they see you withdraw a large sum from a bitcoin atm. The atm has a transaction ledger. Probably a camera too. So they see you deposited say 100 btc and withdrew it. (we'll assume an atm with unlimited cash supply)

They can then trace back where the 100 btc came from. If any of the addresses used previously are known addresses or able to be discovered they can make some linkages to the source of funds. There is a recorded history of all those funds.

Now look at it with fiat. You get a note telling you to go to the airport locker 58c and punch in code 6547. You open it up and there's a bag of cash. The govt has no idea where this cash is from and no way of tracking it's history.

They are not regulated at all fwiw.

The key assumption that you keep repeating is that the government knows this is "you" though. You keep conveniently leaving that part out, how does anyone know who is actually doing all this?

The leap to "The govt is following you. They know you launder money but don't know how. Then they see you withdraw a large sum from a bitcoin atm.", lol, wtf? Not sure how you made the leap from this: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=319
,to this known money launder being tracked and under surveillance by the government.

It shows that transactions are more easily traceable. Of course if the govt knows nothing then it doesn't matter it you're laundering money in fiat, bitcoin, or conch shells.

But once they catch you laundering, they can trace the bitcoin to a much greater extent than they can trace the usd or conch shells.

I'm still confused as to what your point is, two separate scenarios:

1) Someone does all their illegal business only through BTC and converts that to cash through p2p exchanges as necessary, which can be done with in person transactions, cash successfully laundered.

2) Someone does their illegal business in USD, is already being watched by the government or not, why would they want to then convert that USD to BTC to attempt to launder it?

If they catch someone money laundering with BTC, that's likely because that someone was utilizing it wrong, not because BTC transactions are public.

My point is btc is easier to track than usd and other currencies, hence why it is more helpful to government agencies than a hindrance.

It's not easier to track or way more helpful to those agencies than those other currencies when they are electronically transferred though. That's the whole point of BTC for anonymity, is the ability to use electronic transfers while keeping one's identity and purpose private, unlike with traditional currencies.

so anyone been checking out Cyberdeck Poker? seems to have a lot of potential IMO

very bold example by wanting to draw $45,000 from an ATM but yes of course this would be possible. The same would probable happen if you try to walk into a Western Union branch to collect a $45,000 wire and/or if you move that amount through bank accounts.

I'm also not in the money laundering business but in the poker business and the topic is if bitcoin suited for online poker, it absolutely is. Everything else is just discussing whatever the mainstream media reports on BTC, used to fun terrorism, by drug cartels, dark web user and co, like the USD or any other currency.

Assuming that person in need of laundering money is an idiot, yes. There is plenty of ways to mask the origin of "blockchain inputs" if one has the desire to do so. Coin-mixers, running funds through different crypto-exchanges while changing between altcoins and so on.

Then again, "how-to best launder money" isn't the topic, using bitcoin in online poker. Bitcoin is certainly more anonymous than Western Union, MoneyGram or any other payment processor will ever be and that at a fraction of the processing fees charged by those.

"Bitcoin Q&A: How do we protect privacy when bitcoin is traceable?"
https://youtu.be/PaNDHsix8cs

* Coin-mixers
* Stealth Addresses (Dark Wallet)
* Off-chain transactions
* ...

You'll find me at the tables every evening after 20:00 UTC. Most action at the NL and OFC tables Thursday through Sunday.

cyberdeck poker... currently 28 players online

I am also curious about Cyberdeck poker. Has anyone actually played on it for real money?

I have... traffic is still building, but games do run. Cash outs seem to happen within 15 minutes or so. They have a really good tourney schedule, and are on the Enterra Poker Network

How high rakeback can you get there?

I am playing cashgame on cyberdeckpoker. Maybe a good option for the future. The Support Team is very nice and the Website is user-friendly too.

Bitcoin is racing towards the block halving. Another 6.88% gain over the last 24 hours puts BTC at $572 / coin. For those who care, hedges your variance a little and for those who are already playing BTC poker, congrats us, 24% capital gain in a month without playing a single hand

Contact support and ask.

I have made deposits with Circle, Blockchain, Coinbase and probably others. Until now I haven't heard of or thought of these banks not allowing gaming transactions. So I see people saying they go from point a to point b to bank. Why is there risk in sending straight to coinbase verse sending to circle then coinbase? Do they all have the same rules? I want to go from Merge to coinbase to bank, is this safe? Thanks

Thanks to the mod who moved this, I couldn't find a btc thread and my search feature isn't working.

The general idea is this: if the place where you are sending bitcoins to or from allows you to exchange bitcoins for USD, it probably means that it falls under the purview of the same regulations restricting transactions to online gaming sites that any other payment processor would fall under. A service like Circle or Coinbase cannot send USD payments to thousands of US bank accounts without complying with these regulations and thus, they are more likely to monitor transactions to see if you are sending or receiving from places known to be gambool-sites.

So how do you work around this? You use an intermediary wallet service--one that doesn't also operate as a USD/BTC exchange--because they aren't under any pressure to enforce any gaming regulations. A wallet from blockchain.info doesn't really care who you send money to, so you can use that as a buffer. Circle/Coinbase won't flag transactions coming in or going out to a random blockchain.info wallet. Blockchain.info could not care less where you are sending money. Voila! Now you can bypass those pesky US regulations and embrace your full degenerate potential.

FYI, blockchain.info wallets aren't the only ones capable of acting as buffers, there are plenty of other ways; it's just the easiest since they host soooooo many random wallets and is generally thought to be a trustworthy, competent company.

Hope that helped

TL,DR:
COINBASE/CIRCLE <--->RIGGED POKER WEBSITE (NO NO NO!!!!!)
COINBASE/CIRCLE<--->Blockchain.info wallet <--->RIGGED POKER WEBSITE (YESSSS)

Thanks a lot for explaining that for me. That only leaves me with one last question and that is why did I see some talk on here regarding this same theory only these guys were using multiple intermediary wallets, in some cases they are sending it betwenn 4 or 5 places. Thanks again.

Probably being a little overzealous. I mean, it probably doesn't really hurt, except for a few wasted cents on transaction fees. Once you have it on a blockchain.info or other non-exchange wallet service, sending it across 4 or 5 different addresses shouldn't take you more than a minute, so it doesn't require much effort on your part either.

If you wanted to, I suppose you could do the same, but it is probably unnecessary. Logically, there is no way for Coinbase/Circle to actually verify that you own the intermediary address. It is plausible that you are just regularly sending money to your Russian mail-order bride who, unbeknownst to you, happens to be a degenerate gambler. It's not really Coinbase/Circle's legal burden to make sure that the an address that you send bitcoins to doesn't in turn send bitcoins somewhere shady. Businesses aren't generally going to restrict something that they are not going to be legally responsible for.

TLDR:
COINBASE/CIRCLE<----->RIGGED POKER SITE BTC ADDRESS (knows that YOU are sending money to gambool site because they know you control at least one of the two transacting addresses)

COINBASE/CIRCLE<---->(Blockchain.info wallet)<---->RIGGED POKER SITE BTC ADDRESS (who controls the wallet in the middle? Is it you? Your Russian mail-order bride? Doesn't matter to them since the address that they know for a fact you control isn't sending or receiving from gambool site.) You can add as many intermediary addresses as you want but 1 is all it takes to sever the direct link.

Ok, perfect. Thanks for taking the time to elaborate more on that for me! I will go from Merge>blockchain>coinbase>bank

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Guys, I just registered with blockchain and learned that every time I receive money I get a new address (wallet ID?), but do I get to send money from different addresses as well?

Turned on 2FA, working on security phrase, thinking about installing android app (is it safe?!), blocked TOR IP's. Is there anything else I should consider for additional security?