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The atomic swap works both ways. Also with the lightning network you can mix and change different crypto currencies, and it can be really hard to trace the pro

The atomic swap works both ways. Also with the lightning network you can mix and change different crypto currencies, and it can be really hard to trace the provenance of the coins. Not something an exchange can do automatically. > the exchange maintains a known list of wallets used by those conversion websites Remember that new wallet can be created for each transactions. So even if they'd try to do that, it wouldn't work.

sillysaurusx 6y ago
You can certainly map clusters of BTC wallets. It doesn’t matter if you create a new wallet for that purpose, since those new wallets are contaminated by the transaction history. Basically, from the exchange’s view, they’d bucket the wallets into either “looks like mixing; hold the account” or “seems legit.” Most wallets aren’t used for any high volume transactions; most account holders at Coinbase have no need for that. So it’s certainly possible to map out the network and partition it into known good / known bad categories, and handle the middle ground manually. In other words, yes, XRP is very clever. That’s not the problem. The problem is, you’ll someday find it very hard to convert large quantities of XMR to USD without risking jail time.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  > So it’s certainly possible to map out the network and partition it into known good / known bad categories You can't do this sort of analysis on the XMR blockchain. Can't see who's actually sending or receiving money. Can't see the transaction amounts. Can't see how much money any given wallet contains. Can't taint coins by association with criminal activities. Without exchange metadata it's impossible to correlate transactions with any certainty. There's essentially nothing that can be done about it. Will governments become oppressive enough to jail people for the crime of using a medium of exchange they can't control? I'm not even sure that'd be enough to stop it.
  - sillysaurusx 6y ago
    Ya'll aren't thinking this through. Suppose I want to map an XMR->BTC converter. I sign up for the converter, and say "Here's some XMR. Give me BTC." At that point, some BTC wallet gives me BTC. I now know which wallet is being used by the XMR converter. And I know all the other metadata as a result.

sillysaurusx 6y ago

You can certainly map clusters of BTC wallets. It doesn’t matter if you create a new wallet for that purpose, since those new wallets are contaminated by the transaction history. Basically, from the exchange’s view, they’d bucket the wallets into either “looks like mixing; hold the account” or “seems legit.” Most wallets aren’t used for any high volume transactions; most account holders at Coinbase have no need for that. So it’s certainly possible to map out the network and partition it into known good / known bad categories, and handle the middle ground manually. In other words, yes, XRP is very clever. That’s not the problem. The problem is, you’ll someday find it very hard to convert large quantities of XMR to USD without risking jail time.

matheusmoreira 6y ago
> So it’s certainly possible to map out the network and partition it into known good / known bad categories You can't do this sort of analysis on the XMR blockchain. Can't see who's actually sending or receiving money. Can't see the transaction amounts. Can't see how much money any given wallet contains. Can't taint coins by association with criminal activities. Without exchange metadata it's impossible to correlate transactions with any certainty. There's essentially nothing that can be done about it. Will governments become oppressive enough to jail people for the crime of using a medium of exchange they can't control? I'm not even sure that'd be enough to stop it.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  Ya'll aren't thinking this through. Suppose I want to map an XMR->BTC converter. I sign up for the converter, and say "Here's some XMR. Give me BTC." At that point, some BTC wallet gives me BTC. I now know which wallet is being used by the XMR converter. And I know all the other metadata as a result.