Cryptocurrency Turns to Cash in Russian Banks (2024)
58 comments
·January 22, 2025evilsaloon
cwiz
They started to appear after Finnish localbitcoins.com went out of business, most are vendors from there.
kspacewalk2
Original title is "How Cryptocurrency Turns to Cash in Russian Banks".
diggan
HN titler strikes again, it automatically removes a bunch of words like "How". If submitters just take a look at their submission after hitting "Submit", they'd notice the issue and add it back. But oh well
wil421
> The analysis also showed nearly all 56 exchanges used services from Cloudflare, a global content delivery network based in San Francisco.
r29vzg2
Interesting conversations happening in the comment sections on that site.
xracy
I will mark this as reason number 521 that Cryptocurrencies are 'bad', and we shouldn't be using them for anything real.
blibble
are there any uses for crypto other that sanctions busting and drug dealing?
oh and pump and dump scams
piltdownman
Affords a traceable and immutable prevention to corrupt financial institutions like HSBC further funding the Cartels via laundering of the petro-dollar
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/hsbc-became-bank-to...
FabHK
Yes, HSBC laundered money for Mexican drug cartels. Surprise: the business of handling money flows attracts criminals. That's why it is heavily regulated.
When the HSBC money laundering was revealed, what was TradFi's answer? Let's stop it, and crack down on it further.
What is the crypto answer? Oh, rules are still occasionally broken, so let's just scrap all the rules and launder all the money we can (and break sanctions, and so on).
diggan
> What is the crypto answer? Oh, rules are still occasionally broken, so let's just scrap all the rules and launder all the money we can (and break sanctions, and so on).
I feel like you're (hopefully) talking about a specific case here where some exchange was exposed as actively ignoring activity they knew to be illegal. Could you share what story you're talking about here?
notavalleyman
Your link says that the bank had lax controls in 2008 which allowed bad actors to move money through HSBC.
Your link did not say anything about crypto, it didnt imply that HSBC was corrupt, it didn't indicate the cartels were funded by HSBC. All of those additional points were added by your conspiracy imagination
piltdownman
HSBC admitted to U.S. prosecutors in 2012 that it had helped launder money, including at least $881 million controlled by the Sinaloa cartel and other Mexican drug gangs.
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/legacy/2012/...
The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that HSBC actively circumvented rules designed to “block transactions involving terrorists, drug lords, and rogue regimes.” In one case, “two HSBC affiliates sent nearly 25,000 transactions involving $19.4 billion through their HBUS [HSBC’s U.S. affiliate] accounts over seven years without disclosing the transactions’ links to Iran.”
US prosecutors said that deposits at Mexican branches were so frequent that drug traffickers used boxes that were designed to fit perfectly through the teller windows
http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/hea...
This has then led to the families of victims of the Cartel directly suing HSBC for allowing the gangs to launder billions, providing ‘systematic material support to the cartels’.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/11/families-of...
If HSBC were a country, it would be the fifth world economic power. At the time $1.9bn equated to just five weeks of the bank’s profits.
parineum
The HSBC-Cartel laundering thing was a huge deal. It was much more than "lax controls". Op's link might not have the details but you can read more about it here, it's actually pretty nuts.
https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-n...
>One memorable detail U.S. law enforcement noted was that Mexican drug cartel members employed boxes customized to fit the dimensions of an HSBC Mexico teller window for their daily cash deposits.
ASalazarMX
> the bank had lax controls in 2008 which allowed bad actors to move money through HSBC
Oh no! If only HSBC had the power to implement tighter controls that wouldn't allow it to receive boatloads of money. Oh well, it's not like they know a lot about money laundering, tax evasion, or handling large sums of money generally.
P.D. other comment mentioned that money flow attracts criminals, and I interpret it as criminals working on HSBC, not cartels using their services.
freefaler
Indeed they are... As is the case with any anonymous currency (like USD bills) any transaction that 2 parties find agreeable would be performed. This might be swapping cash for tomatoes from the farm, paying your doctor, a blowjob from a prostitute, a gun from a criminal or drugs from Medelin cartel. When there is a system of transact after approval of the counterparty (like in the banks) you'd find less criminals using it, because of the risk of losing the money and tipping the law enforcement.
However, when the rules/law enforcement are bad permissionless transactions are a godsend as cryto usage in Venizuela shows: https://www.americaeconomia.com/en/node/288189
Also, when the governments print money and debase the purchasing power crypto is indeed a better store of value than something like argentinian peso.
Freedom is messy, because the bad guys are also free to do bad stuff. But when the game is crooked, permissionless transactions are very important.
nyc_data_geek1
Guess what happens when fascist regimes target those they deem undesireables? Often, they confiscate their property.
Many cryptocurrencies are inalienable, so long as you preserve private access to your seed phrase.
Also, how about when your local currency undergoes hyperinflation? Would non-sovereign currency with global consensus based value be of potential use then?
dartos
> Often, they confiscate their property.
In the real world, you need to exit crypto to realize the value of your holdings.
That’s the weak link in the anti-regulation argument. You can’t pay for food or housing in most places with crypto.
> Also, how about when your local currency undergoes hyperinflation? Would non-sovereign currency with global consensus based value be of potential use then?
How would crypto be immune to this? Most of the extreme large holders of crypto (financial institutions) are also exposed to fiat risk and would likely liquidate their crypto assets in order to keep staff paid and buy the dips in fiat.
nyc_data_geek1
Yes, you can exit your crypto when you are deported from your local fascist regime.
Crypto is immune to this because it's not tied to the value of one sovereign currency, or any particular polity or another.
I am not talking about the utility of cryptocurrency to large financial institutions. I am talking about the utility to individuals as their nations gradually become insolvent and austerity fails to placate the robber barons, ultimately leading to currency collapse.
Look at the localbitcoins volume data for Argentina, for instance.
_aavaa_
> Many cryptocurrencies are inalienable, so long as you preserve private access to your seed phrase.
Your local fascist regime has a very simple and low tech answer: https://xkcd.com/538/
nyc_data_geek1
Deportations are a thing, and ethnic cleansing is not a new idea. It's not always so easy to know what people hold in those situations.
Still, fair point. All the more reason to care about privacy.
__MatrixMan__
Crypto is for when you have an enemy that is powerful enough tamper with your communications. It's useful in those circumstances, e.g. Chinese journalists posted covid coverage on Ethereum to prevent the CCP from removing it. In the case described in the article, Russia is using it to keep their economy running despite western sanctions.
You're not going to find a good use case for it which does not include an adversary as part of the story. But that doesn't mean it's just for criminals. Or maybe it does because this is the sort of adversary that writes laws, but sometimes the criminals are the good guys.
For instance, if I wanted to set up a shadow government so that we had something to fall back on when we all stop paying our taxes in protest of the awful things our government is using that money for, it would involve a protcol where amending its constitution means getting the right set of cryptographic signatures together to publish an additional block on the chain that defined the constitution. Locking this sort of thing into a protocol prevents the kind of interference that we saw on Jan 6 2021 because if certification of change is distributed there's nowhere to attack.
dartos
The use is and always has been an extremely unregulated marketplace to exchange value. (Whatever value means is up to the buyer)
I think the entire idea behind cryptocurrencies from the beginning was to have unregulatable currency.
That comes with good and bad, but for most people in most situations it’s not as useful as regular currency.
tzs
> I think the entire idea behind cryptocurrencies from the beginning was to have unregulatable currency.
The problem with that is with sufficient surveillance and tracking a government could ban the use of non-approved currencies for tangible items, and enforce that ban by random audits where if you can't show that you used approved currencies that you can prove you acquired legally to pay for the tangible things you have you get tossed into jail.
As Jean de La Fontaine said in the 17th century, "A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it".
FabHK
Indeed. From Satoshi's emails:
++++++++++++
>> You will not find a solution to political problems in cryptography.
> Yes, but we can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years.
> Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own.
> Satoshi
++++++++++++
> It's very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint if we can explain it properly. I'm better with code than with words though.
> Satoshi Nakamoto
latchkey
My favorite response to this question that comes up all the time is...
diggan
> are there any uses for crypto other that sanctions busting and drug dealing?
Have you lost your creative muscle completely, or does the hate for cryptocurrency blind you to even be able to evaluate if this bad thing might come with benefits too?
Personally, sending money (legal money, no sanctions nor involving drugs) between South America and Europe got a lot better as people started to learn how to receive/send USDC for example. I think that's the biggest change in my own life between before and after cryptocurrency became more commonplace. So much money spent on fees with Western Union and all those shitty platforms, before you could send USDC in half a minute with minimal fees.
sfblah
The thing is, most of the reason for the fees you’re complaining about is things like government regulation and insurance. Now, you may not like the government regulation, since in many cases the governments are corrupt (South America is a good example). And, you may not like paying insurance, since you’re probably ok with the risk of getting scammed, but there it is.
Crypto is like buying a product online for cheaper, but instead of using Amazon or Walmart, you buy it from some random guy on Craigslist whose brother delivers it. Sure, it’s cheaper and lower fees, but if the product doesn’t show up you’re SOL.
diggan
> Now, you may not like the government regulation
I do like government regulation, and I think we (Spain/Europe) need more of it, especially around everything digital and also cryptocurrencies.
> And, you may not like paying insurance, since you’re probably ok with the risk of getting scammed, but there it is.
I don't mind paying/not paying for insurance. The transaction I do are between two well known parties that trust each other. If I could just get an IBAN and do a normal bank transfer, I'd do that instead. But alas, I cannot, so alternatives get used instead.
> Crypto is like buying a product online for cheaper, but instead of using Amazon or Walmart, you buy it from some random guy on Craigslist whose brother delivers it. Sure, it’s cheaper and lower fees, but if the product doesn’t show up you’re SOL.
Sure, if you're purchasing goods from strangers on the internet, I understand your example and agree. But all use cases are not like that, particularly not the one you're currently responding to.
The reasons I use USDC/cryptocurrency for doing these transactions is because it's easier, cheaper and faster. If banks could get international transfers (for everyone, not just select countries) in order, and I could as easily, fast and cheap do a normal bank transfer, I'd prefer that.
dartos
There are still fees everywhere.
fees for each trade. Fees for selling usdc for usd. Fees for just interacting with the chain in the first place.
What’s more is your transaction is in competition with other similar transactions based on how much fee you’re willing to pay, so the fees are extremely volatile.
But it is much much faster and imo less nerve wracking than waiting for western union.
diggan
> There are still fees everywhere.
Yes, technically that's true. But there is still (at least personally) a big difference between paying 5 EUR for sending a transfer of 100 EUR and then the receiving having to pay 5 EUR to withdraw it on the other side, and having to pay ~1 EUR in network costs when sending USDC, and then the receiver can use it without having to pay more.
> What’s more is your transaction is in competition with other similar transactions based on how much fee you’re willing to pay
This is a non-problem for basic transfers really, not even once during ~3 or more years have my transactions failed to execute or take longer than a minute or two.
Zanfa
> But it is much much faster and imo less nerve wracking than waiting for western union.
I have a feeling you don’t do international transactions. It’s not a binary decision between Western Union and crypto.
dataflow
Just to clarify: are you actually currently sending funds with cruptocurrency, or are you saying the use case for crypto currency was that it served as a forcing function for institutions to make it more convenient to send money without cruptocurrency?
diggan
> are you actually currently sending funds with cruptocurrency
Yes, actively using it as a cheaper, faster and smoother means to send money to family back in South America for the last few years. Before that we were using Western Union, MoneyGram and all those other services that like to tack on fee after fee after fee.
InitialLastName
> sending money (legal money, no sanctions nor involving drugs) between South America and Europe
If the encumbrances were really just from middlemen, you don't need a cryptocurrency to solve that; you just need a cheaper middleman.
diggan
As mentioned elsewhere, I don't really mind using a bank or a different middleman, I'm simply using what I found to be the fastest, simplest and cheapest. It just happened to be cryptocurrency in this case.
If we had cheap and fast international bank transfers with all countries, I'd just use my normal bank account.
flakeoil
Why did you use Western Union instead of Wise or some other lower cost alternative?
diggan
Seems Wise isn't at all a lower cost alternative, nor does it seem very fast. I pay a flat fee of ~1 EUR per transfer with USDC on Arbitrum which arrives after a couple of seconds, while Wise is giving me a quote of 3.39 EUR for a 100 EUR transfer, 20EUR fee for a 1000 EUR transfer, and says it would arrive tomorrow.
redmattred
Remittances without fees
kspacewalk2
There are typically plenty of fees associated with converting real money to crypto, then back to real money in another country. I think the real draw for (semi-)legitimate use is for transfers in/out of countries that have unwanted surveillance and/or currency controls.
fermigier
Who could have guessed?
null
As someone who lived in Russia for a while, I have personal experience with these mini-exchanges. They're the Internet equivalent of those currency exchange stands at airports, I wouldn't call them full crypto exchanges like Binance.
They're a pretty interesting phenomenon. Some do KYC, some don't. Some are fully automatic and just need to be "topped up" occasionally, some are fully manual. They usually provide an easy on/offramp to/from crypto, but they usually have high fees and minimum transaction requirements on top of an unfavorable exchange rate. Sites like bestchange exist to aggregate all the different rates and slice a cut from the affiliate revenue.
It's nice to see how they work (or don't) from the legal side. In my mind they've always existed in a grey legal area, since some mini-exchanges openly proclaim their registration in e.g. the UK and some just don't say where they're headquartered.
They do work, but they've always felt a bit shady, and I've felt anxious using their services. Centralized exchanges are way better in regards to support and have a better exchange rate to boot.