Behind Twitch's Money Laundering Problem

When Twitch’s revenue data leaked in early October, the internet lost its mind over how much top streamers like NickMercs, Ludwig, and Pokimane were making. Twitch, obviously, wasn’t bothered by those numbers- but they did get suspicious about some Turkish streamers. The streamers who caught Twitch’s eye weren’t Smash pros or Vtubers, and they averaged a (relatively) modest 40-50 viewers per stream … but they were absolutely raking in cash.

Twitch viewers can give money to their favorite streamers by cheering with Bits. Each Bit is worth one cent USD to a streamer. Bits are usually bought in $5 packs- a good day’s wage for 8 hours of mashing buttons and meme-ing. Cheering usually lets viewers display a message on stream or pop up some fun picture that the community loves. 

Or, if you’re a Turkish scammer, they let you clean dirty money. Using stolen credit cards, scammers would cheer a lot of Bits to a streamer. The streamer would then refund the Bits to the scammer’s account, now connected to a different bank account. In exchange, the streamer would keep 20-30% of the donated Bits.

Except for the awkward truth that, apparently, this was already an open secret among Turkish streamers. Grimnax, a popular Turkish variety streamer, said, “This is something that many of us have been aware of for a long time, but we couldn’t Twitch and the owner Amazon nor the audience for year…. We waited for the prominent names on the platform to talk about this issue, as I and mid-level influencers like me weren’t loud enough.”

Behind Twitch's Money Laundering Problem
Source: Pinoy Daily News