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Notes -
The obscene quantities of hard and soft geopolitical power spent to build international coalitions to rein in the problem. Whether or not you're a small d democrat, this effort has been led by small d democratic nations, because the vast majority of those populations oppose corruption, criminal activities, and money laundering. So I guess you have two options: 1) Convince enough folks to just knock it off with the whole anti-ML thing, or 2) Build the power of your authoritarian country enough that you can flaunt the international anti-ML order. No wiz-bang required.
We've pretty much known the carrying capacity of gift cards, prepaid cards, etc., because these things have been used in money laundering efforts for decades. That large international coalition I mentioned went to a lot of work to massively restrict the carrying capacity of these methods. Let's put a number estimate on it again. Suppose all of crypto died tomorrow. By what factor do you think these other methods would increase in scope? 2X? 10X?
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