In essence, he got caught because he traded a certain amount of bitcoin for Monero and then traded a similar amount back? Wouldn't converting to Monero stop the trail right there? Would converting from Monero to Bitcoin in smaller quantities have helped him evade the authorities? How did using bitcoin let them track him?

What would people do if they want to pay in crypto but the service only accepts bitcoin?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Finnish investigators from the National Bureau of Investigation (KRP), with the help of Binance, followed the trail of payments to Kivimäki, who exchanged the funds for Monero and then exchanged them back to Bitcoin.

What probably happened is that he extorted Bitcoin from a known entity, then he went to Binance and traded that Bitcoin for Monero, then sent a similar amount of XMR to Binance to exchange again for BTC thinking he was covering his tracks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Essentially what I said. If one were to exchange a similar amount amongst cryptocurrenies from brokers like Binance (who definitely run analytics on transactions), even XMR won't be able to save them. With that said, I'd like a more comprehensive explanation, however my posts regarding such experiments have largely been ignored on the Monero forum on Lemmy. Would you know whom I could approach?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

@Hestia @MigratingtoLemmy No crypto is a good tool for the problems involved in money laundering.

Once you connect back to the public system of commercial payments, you have to explain where the funds came from. And nobody’s dumb enough to buy NFTs anymore.