Re: Ransom demands in BitCoin again
"How long before the authorities decide that BitCoin's main use is in laundering the proceeds of crime and that anyone accepting BitCoin payments is an accessory?"
It would set a very dangerous precedent. If $thing is used for illegal laundering of money, then accepting payments for $thing is an accesory to a crime, then a whole range of things would be in danger of being banned. Real estate, cash, gold, trusts, off shore companies, etc etc.
The amount that crooks use BTC for is peanuts compared to almost any other system. Have a look at estimates of the illegal drugs, arms and people smuggling economies, there isn't enough BTC around to transact a fraction of them. By far the most common currency of crime is the greenback, then the euro, and so on. Cocaine is probably used more as an illegal currency than BTC, and it turns out that it's already pretty illegal. Property and real estate development is used for more money laundering than you can imagine, and even the Chinese are having trouble stopping that.
The authorities can also use existing legislation on proceeds of crime. If you appear to have a bunch of assets with no record of acquiring them and no visible income, then you can get investigated and charged, without needing to ban the ownership of any of the assets you acquired. Explaining away a million bucks buried in a backyard or a million in BTC/Monero is trickier. You can't even go "oh, I mined it back in the day" since a quick squiz at the blockchain will pretty quickly show you didn't.
So we don't ban cash because criminals use it, thus we don't ban BTC for the same reasons. However, if you have a bunch of cash without a legitimate reason, then that can be considered suspicious, ditto for BTC et al.