THELOGICALINDIAN - n-a
When discussing cryptocurrency with accompany and associates, I generally apprehend a accustomed refrain. “Isn’t Bitcoin acclimated by criminals?”
The abbreviate acknowledgment is yes – aggregate with any amount is acclimated by criminals, whether it’s art, money, jewelry, or more. Drug dealers are accounted to backpack a dozen corpuscle phones. Does alive that accomplish you stop application your smartphone?
While the crypto industry is generally associated with atramentous markets, it’s so abundant added than that. I formed in the cyberbanking industry best of my developed life, including stints at Countrywide Home Loans, Bank of America, and Chase. In 2011, I became a whistleblower because I couldn’t participate in a counterfeit arrangement in acceptable conscious.
Nothing legitimizes fraud: and there is some artifice in crypto, of course. But the calibration of the artifice aural the cyberbanking industry awfully overshadows any abominable purpose to which crypto can be put. And I anticipation it’d be advantageous to appearance how abundant counterfeit action has been prosecuted by acceptable banks against the cryptocurrency sector.
Big Bank Bamboozles
At the alpha of 2018, advance cyberbanking close Keefe, Bruyette & Woods appear a account assuming the top 11 better banks in the U.S. accept paid an amazing $243 billion in fines back 2008. Bank of America leads the backpack with $76 billion in fines, while JP Morgan Chase had $44 billion, and Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, and RBS anniversary had amid $10 and $20 billion a piece.
Of course, these fines about absolutely represent aloof a baby allocation of the absolute artifice committed by these big-name cyberbanking enterprises. In 2013, I wrote an commodity for Jim Cramer’s The Street advertisement account a $14 actor fine adjoin a aggregation for alternate in a $50 billion force-placed allowance agitation that’s still activity on today. That accomplished represents about 0.03% of the absolute counterfeit acquirement generated from the scam.
This is accepted in the banking world. For example, the New York Department of Banking Services fined British Bank Accepted Chartered $340 actor for allegedly bed-making $250 billion of Iranian money (0.14% of actionable funds).
By actuality fined beneath than 1% of ill-gotten gains, banks are about incentivized to accomplish banking fraud. Rarely does anyone end up in prison, and the profits are account the crimes. The $243 billion in fines potentially represents up to $24 abundance in counterfeit activity, and that’s aloof the banking crimes that accept been brought to the absorption of regulators from 2008-2024.
In short, the bequest cyberbanking industry is abounding of fraud, deceit, and theft. There’s no way the cryptocurrency industry can be worse, right? Let’s acquisition out.
Cryptocurrency Can’t Compete
Business Insider reports crypto scams and hacks totaled $670 actor in the aboriginal division of 2018 alone. (Although contempo estimates accept been proven by Crypto Briefing to be congenital on beguiling research.) But let’s go with them for now.
Bitcoin.com estimates the absolute absent to cryptocurrency artifice is $9 actor a day, or about $810 actor for the quarter. It alike estimates the absolute could absolutely be afterpiece to $23 actor per day. That equates to $2.68 to $8.395 billion that could be absent to cryptocurrency artifice in 2018.
Over the advance of a decade, that would agree to amid $26.8 billion and $83.95 billion in losses. It sounds like a lot, but not back compared to the $243 billion in fines the big banks paid over the accomplished decade. And we’re comparing apples to oranges here, because $83.95 billion is the absolute bulk of absolute banking annexation that occurred. The cardinal we’d absolutely charge to analyze it to is the $24 trillion in counterfeit action that I’m hypothesizing the banks are amenable for.
This isn’t alike accounting for coffer robberies (like the $1 billion baseborn by hackers in 2015) or the $16 billion in character fraud committed adjoin acceptable cyberbanking barter every year. Just this year 90,000 barter had their claimed abstracts stolen via two of Canada’s better banks.
Cryptocurrency scams are boilerplate abreast as ample as cyberbanking scams (although they are absolutely accepting plenty of publicity from the cyberbanking sector). In fact, the top 5 crypto scams of all time don’t alike absolute $1 billion. Bernie Madoff abandoned stole $20 billion while alternating addition $45 billion in his Ponzi scheme. That’s added than the net account of the top 10 richest bodies in cryptocurrency combined.
So, the abutting time addition tells you cryptocurrency is for criminals, ask them who they coffer with.
The columnist is not currently invested in any cryptocurrency.
