3 ms·
> nothing prevents anyone from "donating" some crypto to, say, the address where Coinbase keeps customers' funds, thus "tainting" every withdrawal from that exc
by tromp 5y ago
> nothing prevents anyone from "donating" some crypto to, say, the address where Coinbase keeps customers' funds, thus "tainting" every withdrawal from that exchange.
Coinbase keeps customer's funds in a set of utxo's with many different addresses, and know which of those are tainted and untainted. Withdrawals can be expected to come from spending untainted ones. Your proposed donation will just add a tainted utxo to the set which won't be credited to anyone's balance and won't be spent for withdrawals.
- nybble41 5y agoYou assume Coinbase keeps track of which addresses are considered "tainted" in every jurisdiction world-wide, in real-time. It's not as if there is a single list, and if you're doing something risky you could transfer a portion to Coinbase, or perhaps another service which isn't so rigorous about tracking specific UTxOs, in hopes that they mix it with their other funds before it ends up on any blacklist. Coinbase naturally has a custom system but most wallets do not show UTxOs at all—just totals. If the funds are available they have a chance of being used.
- tromp 5y agoI assume they have enough buffers that just-received outputs don't have to be spent on withdrawals for quite awhile, giving them time to subject it to taint analysis.
- nybble41 5y agoCoinbase might, but there are plenty of other high-profile targets who are unlikely to perform any "taint analysis" on the contents of their wallet. Like I said, most wallet software doesn't even present UTxOs as distinct entities in the UI. Anything sent to that address is considered fair game to be used as an input for the next transaction.