Shadowy Figures: Tracking Illicit Financial Transactions in the Murky world of Digital Currencies, Peer-to-Peer Networks, and Mobile Device Payments
John Villasenor, Cody Monk, Christopher Bronk
Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings and James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy Rice University, August 29. 2011
EXTRACT:
Scale enables vanishing low transaction costs, which are an essential element in the ability to hide larger movements of money by conducting many smaller transactions. A movement of $900,000 using 100 different electronic transfers might be easy to spot. If, however, the power of a large, distributed online networks were used to move this money using 100,000 transactions with randomized amounts generally in the $6 to $15 range, detection would be much more difficult.
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Tip of the Hat to David Eisenberg at LinkedIn.
Phi Beta Iota: As considerable as the illicit transactions are, we cannot help but observe that it is the licit transactions, the legalized crime by the financial industry, that have destroyed the global economy. It would be helpful if the authors of this reference were to turn their attention to the obserse.
