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It would work very well with Bitcoin, which uses a public ledger, but that wouldn't work with fully anonymous cryptocurrencies using zero-knowledge proofs to tr
by TacticalCoder 5y ago
It would work very well with Bitcoin, which uses a public ledger, but that wouldn't work with fully anonymous cryptocurrencies using zero-knowledge proofs to transmit messages and/or money.
Maths are funny like that.
- codetrotter 5y agoWhich makes me wonder why ransomware authors so often choose to demand payment in Bitcoin and not for example Monero.
- lxgr 5y agoI think it's fair to interpret this as a sign that even the theoretical non-anonymity of Bitcoin is not enough of a threat to disincentivize illegal uses (or alternatively it can be trivially circumvented).
- sabhiram 5y agoVery likely they will move to Monero and back with any such payment. Monero should have been a stablecoin, would have done a lot better for this type of semi-sinister use case.
- spyder 5y agoSome of them already doing it: https://www.techradar.com/news/acer-hacked-by-ransomware-gang-demanding-dollar50m-ransom https://www.techradar.com/news/acer-hacked-by-ransomware-gan...
- lxgr 5y agoAs long as there exists either an exchange willing to look the other way or a trustless bridge to another blockchain that does offer anonymity (inherently or via trustless on-chain mixers), it will be trivial to anonymize pseudonymous blockchains as well. Looking the other way in this context can be as simple as "enforce address/wallet embargos with a delay of ten minutes": That's enough to swap all dirty and trackable tokens for clean anonymous/anonymizable tokens.
- kzrdude 5y agoI bet that ZCash would grow for that reason, but it hasn't really happened. Bitcoin is not seen as flawed even though all transactions are analyzable.