Bitcoin is how drug cartels operating in Vancouver move and launder money. The crime and safety issues in our city are a direct result of this. We need to make it harder for criminals to move money with Bitcoin–not heating pools with it. pic.twitter.com/PQaOe9tfWW
— Kareem Allam (@42kareemallam) September 8, 2025
Cryptocurrency promised a democratized financial future.
In practice, it functions like a casino wrapped in techno-mystique — ideal for laundering money and enriching insiders.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the world’s Anti-Money Laundering standard-setter, warns that without strong rules, “virtual assets … risk becoming a safe haven for the financial transactions of criminals and terrorists.”
FATF Chainanalysis traces tens of billions in tainted money each year — its 2025 report estimates illicit crypto addresses received about $40.9 billion in 2024 (likely nearer $51 billion once all is identified). FATF Chainalysis has issued red-flag indicators and repeated calls for tougher global action precisely because criminals employ crypto to launder funds.
Crypto’s core economic claim — “value” — is equally shaky, fraudulent even.
The Bank for International Settlements writes bluntly that crypto assets “have no intrinsic value and lack a backing authority,” making prices prone to sudden swings. Bank for International Settlements reviewers have long argued they are “akin to a commodity money (although without any intrinsic value in use).” That hollowness fuels boom-and-bust cycles in which sophisticated players harvest gains while latecomers eat losses, the ultimate Ponzi scheme.
Who actually wins?
Not the many, but the whales (the very very wealthy, the 1%). Academic work and regulators document extreme concentration: the top 10,000 Bitcoin holders controlled a massive share of supply, revealing “participation … still very skewed toward a few top players, which is to say, the wealthy one per cent.” Such concentration means market moves are often dictated by a tiny cohort of the very wealthy, who can move liquidity and sentiment at will — hardly a people’s money.
Against this backdrop, Vancouver’s Mayor Ken Sim has championed making the city “Bitcoin-friendly,” even floating paying municipal property taxes and holding reserves in Bitcoin — “a hill I am willing to die on,” he told Business in Vancouver’s Mike Howell this spring while awaiting a staff report.
BIV reporting in December 2024 detailed his motion to explore accepting Bitcoin for taxes / fees and investing a portion of city reserves. Tying essential public revenues to an asset class that lacks any intrinsic value is fiscal brinkmanship, not innovation. (Bank for International Settlements)
Crypto currency certainly doesn’t serve the interests of the citizens of Vancouver.
The pattern is clear: a system tailor-made for obfuscation — bafflement, bewilderment, mystification, puzzlement — celebrated by a wealthy minority that profits from volatility, and promoted as “the future” despite watchdogs’ alarms.
When the smoke clears, crypto looks less like finance for the many and more like a high-risk conduit for the few — plus a convenient money laundering tool for the criminal underworld.
And this is the fraudulent “currency” Mayor Ken Sim champions?