Book Review: Rinsed: From Cartels to Crypto

Review

Title: Rinsed: From Cartels to Crypto: How the Tech Industry Washes Money for the World's Deadliest Crooks

Author(s): Geoff White

I listened to a podcast excerpt of this title, and it sounded like an interesting (and unknown to me) topic. After finishing reading the full book, it indeed is an enlightening experience, but also a shocking learning. Some criminal activities depicted are terrible, specially when you consider that they are not movie scenes, but very real events.

With that out of the way, on to the review itself. First, the book explains the basics of how cartels, mafias and, in general, all kinds of criminals come to face a common problem once they are successful: how you handle having a lot of illicit money. And the answer is always, by laundering it. We're taught some history lessons of how this was done in the past, then recently, and up to the present, where cryptocurrencies and their derived "tools" (like mixers to obfuscate the blockchain trail) maybe inadvertently, perhaps not always so, have helped to move huge amounts of money. And also to make easy to steal big amounts of digital currencies.

Everything is nicely explained, although during my reading I felt a bit lacking more technical details, while the gruesome physical criminal actions are instead quite detailed. Full chapters dedicated to cults-converted-into-mafias vs almost a single paragraph to describe how the Ethereum cryptocurrency works looks unbalanced to me.

Recommended, but mentally prepare for some thought and sad examples of how terrible human beings can be.