Transactions and storage of money. You could also argue that artists who sell their artworks for huge sums of money are associating themselves to money laundering.
Transactions and storage of money are already decentralized, through the traditional finance system that connects at least thousands of banks and payment processors and other financial institutions. So it can't be that.
>You could also argue that artists who sell their artworks for huge sums of money are associating themselves to money laundering.
Yes, that's why transactions for those huge sums are subject to AML laws.
>That's not the case for every country on the planet
It's not helping there either. Countries where the economy is strictly controlled by the government, like North Korea, are mainly using crypto and defi to centralize even more. Their government can use defi to steal from other countries with impunity, evading international laws while continuing to oppress their own citizens and disallowing them from using the internet.
>And how do those prevent rich person A from paying rich person B (by buying a painting owned by B for an inflated price) for some illegal service?
If it were done through a bank (or a law-abiding crypto exchange) they would be required to keep a log of the transaction and the legal identities of the participants, as well as a log of where the money came from and where it's going. The idea is, if buying the painting is just one of the steps to "clean" the money, they'll be able to trace it back to when the money was dirty.
People in Lebanon are not being allowed to withdraw their money from banks, something similar happened in Greece a few years ago. With crypto if you have your own keys that's not an issue.
I don't see how the North Korea thing is an issue. I'm not sure what hacks you're referring to but when it comes to smart contracts code is law and the people who use them know that, if you can't get back the tokens you sent to a smart contract it's only your fault for not understanding how the software works. I don't think North Korea should exist in the first place but I don't think the act of getting money from a smart contract is immoral.
As for using works of art to launder money, I meant something like rich person A offers child prostitutes (or any other illegal service or item) to rich person B, who pays A by buying one of their paintings for a higher price than what A paid for it.
