To me that process highlighted looks more to do with how to convert fake e-bucks back into real dollars via liberty reserve and less to do with any type of criminal structuring but I'm not IRS agent trying to hang a case on someone.
What purpose do you see served by opening three Mt. Gox accounts under three different names and sending bitcoin from the first, to the second, to the third before sending it out to Liberty Reserve?
I read it a few times but for me to pretend I understand why this person made three separate transactions to pay an $86 hosting bill speaks more to me of a lack of consistent revenue or source of funds.
Ocamm’s Razor doesn’t point me to malice. It’s just as easily a kid trading gift cards $20/time until he has the funds. This looks like an idea that starts small, and frankly when it was invented it wasn’t illegal at the moment of creation.
It’s the story laid out in the court case and the changing of regulations and laws that created the crime. Inception of an idea alone doesn’t lead me to believe the intent was malice; privacy, obfuscation, the lack of funds maybe.
Obfuscation can be as simple as protecting privacy.
As an example I can say the first day I stepped foot in a cryptocurrency community was on IRC about 13 years ago. I didn’t realize Freenode showed your hostmask by default and random people had IPwhois’d my netmask, asking about where I work, pulling up the address on street view…
I’ve exclusively used rented servers bouncers cloaks etc ever since. That’s the community I realized I was dealing with.
What ISPs provide this level of detail to people other than law enforcement? (And I'm pretty sure law enforcement need to follow an actual process too) Is it a US thing? Looking up my IP tells you... A different city, where presumably my ISP owns some infrastructure or office space
