'Nearly All' CounterStrike Microtransactions Are Being Used for Money Laundering

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xw7nx/nearly-all-counter-strike-microtransactions-are-being-used-for-money-laundering

by nic_wilson • 7 years ago

27 8 7 years ago

vice.com

CryptoPunk2• 7 years ago

You can't stop money laundering without subjecting every private interaction to warrantless surveillance. In an age of purely digital, peer-to-peer currencies, nothing short than banning the public from using strong encryption will stop money laundering.

diminoten2• 7 years ago

Seems like preventing the trade of digital goods stops money laundering fairly effectively...

marcos123• 7 years ago

So money laundering never happened before digital goods existed?

CryptoPunk2• 7 years ago

You can't stop the trade of digital goods when people can encrypt their electronic communication.

As value becomes storable as purely digital information, the choice is either the status quo, where encryption makes money laundering trivial, or prohibiting public access to strong encryption, and instituting a Big Brother surveillance state without privacy.

Deimorz• 7 years ago

The title is useless for recognizing it, but this is a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21392007

dredmorbius• 7 years ago

I'd classify these as related but not dupes.

The game platform's own statement and a journalistic treatment are not identical.

moftz• 7 years ago

I remember the CSGO skin betting sites. You'd transfer skins to bot accounts to bet on streams of esports matches. The skins were valued at market price from the Steam marketplace. After the match, other bots would then transfer back to you a collection of skins equivalent in dollars to whatever the odds were. The system would give you whatever skins it could to fill the equivalent dollar amount so there would be a lot of common skins that you'd flip for pennies. Larger bets meant you got back some skins actually worth keeping. Obviously this marketplace only gives you Steam store credit but it wasn't that hard to find third party markets that would let you "gift" game codes you bought with Steam store credit or trade CSGO skins again.

It was immediately apparent the whole thing could be used to launder money easily across borders, you don't even need the third party market buyer to be in on the laundering. The products being sold were legit and had real value to everyday people unlike bitcoin or expensive art.

'Nearly All' CounterStrike Microtransactions Are Being Used for Money Laundering

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