mountainriver

Ok, that makes sense.

I was somehow under the impression that the main wild cat money to real money exchange was to USD, on account of the media about such exchanges. The rest followed.

Something I have been pondering is why when going after Bitcoin from crimes (ransom or stolen) they don't just declare the individual "coins" stemming from illegal proceedings and that when they show up the "coins" will be confiscated and the holders investigated for money laundering. They have a serial number of sorts, right?

It should decrease the trade value of the "coins", might even have the added benefit of scaring people of from the scam currencies. Ay, there might be the rub, for in this modern world of ours suppressing financial "innovations" is treated as worse than scams.

Economic Shock Doctrine works great for the oligarchs. Less well for everyone else. So it's not strange that Milei wants to scam his supporters and hand oligarchs a direct way to show their gratitude.

It's scamming the true believers and creates an obfuscated channel for the oligarchs to deliver the carrots / bribes. When Trump launched his memecoin and got a question he waved at the tech billionaires and said "it's peanuts for these guys". Unfortunately nobody followed up with asking if that meant those guys were the ones transferring money to Trump through the memecoin.

Regarding OFAC, making payment to any ransomware illegal, I have long pondered if participating in cryptocurrencies that is or has been used for ransomware payments shouldn't be considered under money laundering laws. That might make most cryptocurrencies illegal, or rather shine the light on the main useages already being illegal.