Top 25 Cryptocurrencies By Market Cap (Archive)

[ubercake]

Money laundering is bigger than ever. The imposing threat crypto-currencies pose to banks is the banks lose control of the money laundering and large amounts of money obtained through illegal means don't sit in their banks.
HSBC is a giant in this area.

The reason you even know that is because they got busted.

I'm guessing most of the money laundering that occurs doesn't go though banks with major legal or financial exposure in the US or EU. You can't even use Swiss banks for this, any more.

Major banking institutions get most of their money from investing and services, including legal (if ethically questionable) tax avoidance schemes.

The HSBC case was dropped by the US government. Nothing to see here.

Big banks wouldn't even take the risk of dealing with money laundering if they couldn't profit from it. Why would a bank as large as HSBC even bother??? Because money laundering is larger than most people even know. It probably accounts for enough bank cash/profit that it's worth the risk for a bank to continue to do it. Most of the fines any banks have paid to date aren't even proportional to the crimes they commit by laundering. They will continue to do it.

On the side of the criminal... If they don't even have to take the risk of dealing with the banks who may use them as an example to show governments they are in fact doing their due diligence... wink wink..., the criminal will avoid using the bank to launder monies....

Enter the cryptocurrencies...

 

[bit_user]

Money laundering is bigger than ever. The imposing threat crypto-currencies pose to banks is the banks lose control of the money laundering and large amounts of money obtained through illegal means don't sit in their banks.
HSBC is a giant in this area.

The reason you even know that is because they got busted.

The HSBC case was dropped by the US government. Nothing to see here.

In December 2012, HSBC was penalised $1.9 billion (US), the largest fine under the Bank Secrecy Act, for violating four U.S. laws designed to protect the U.S. financial system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC#Money_laundering