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Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto
- yieldcrv 4y ago> people have the right to financial privacy, but technology shouldn’t be “warrant-proof.” people aren’t warrant proof, the government is just used to a brief period of time where they could go to intermediaries instead of doing an actual investigation. this is just a reversion to the mean.
- kache_ 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_signature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_signature sorry, federal government. Keep up
- cowtools 4y agoAs much as I appreciate the sentiment, ring signatures are not a perfect solution for sender privacy at the moment given current ringsizes. Almost every cryptocurrency with sender-obfuscation features bumps up against "poisoned output" attacks for low enough anonymity sets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iABIcsDJKyM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iABIcsDJKyM But it is good enough for many purposes. The goal is to provide a high level of plausible deniability for the sender.
- gillesjacobs 4y agoYou'll be glad to hear Monero increased its ring-size from 11 to 16 last month making such attacks less feasible. I sure was.
- jqpabc123 4y agoImagine the outcry if government announced that every transaction you ever do will be recorded in a publicly available database. Bitcoin as it currently exists will never be a replacement for fiat --- not even close --- for a multitude of reasons.
- jcbrand 4y agoTransactions are moving to layer 2 solutions like the lightning network. Individual lightning transactions are not recorded on the blockchain and are not subject to chain analysis.
- cowtools 4y agoThey are not subject to chain analysis, but they are still subject to analysis.
- helsinkiandrew 4y agoBut aren't lightning transactions limited to 0.5 BTC?
- thinkmassive 4y agoNo, there was a limit in the early days (0.16777215 BTC for channels, 0.04294967 BTC payments) but it’s been optimal for about two years. Direct peers are only limited by channel capacity, and the biggest nodes (exchanges like Bitfinex) keep 5+ BTC public channels (could be much larger unannounced channels). As far as routing larger payments across the network, the Loop service handles 1.2 BTC swaps today: https://twitter.com/alexbosworth/status/1570189188091514880 https://twitter.com/alexbosworth/status/1570189188091514880
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
- pclmulqdq 4y agoAs far as I know, the state of crypto privacy is that everything is directly traceable except: * Bitcoin lightning transactions when the lightning nodes involved are trusted to not keep logs * Transactions through mixers with a lot of users * Monero transactions * Zcash private transactions And everything is de-facto traceable except: * Tornado cash users who use standard-size amounts (or users of another equivalently large smart-contract-based mixer) * Monero users who are careful about their entry/exit Zcash privacy doesn't have enough users for anonymity, most mixers are too small, and lightning users generally use nodes from exchanges which do log a lot of information that isn't kept on chain. Am I missing anything? This seems kind of bad for cryptocurrencies in general if everything is basically traceable.
- zeroclip 4y agoSeems about right. More users would use Tornado Cash if regulation was clear and allowed it. Zcash and Monero lack smart contracts which limits their use cases. ZK based privacy was possible and working fine for many users through TC before the sanctions. Now it is risky as you may end up with locked funds or in jail for seeking privacy. Edit: Should also mention Aztec and Aleo. These are working currently but in the same position that TC was before its sanctions. Hard to know what regulators will do as these tools allow for absolute privacy which is antithetical to the US government’s goals.
- hamiltonians 4y agohow would funds be locked
- zeroclip 4y agoMany who had USDC on TC pools have had their assets frozen. Others might have a hard time sending or receiving these assets to typical US-based services because they will be hesitant to touch anything that has been through TC.
- jl2718 4y agoUSDC has a block list in the smart contract. Other possibilities include validator block lists, and of course exchanges.
- manholio 4y agoThis is mostly snake oil, perhaps efficient against the dumbest of criminals. The newer generation coin laundry service, for example Chipmixer, will have pre-funded addresses already waiting in the blockchain before the "client" even makes an account. In exchange for a deposit in a wallet controlled by Chipmixer, the client will receive a set of corresponding private keys that add up to the total value being laundered. You might trace that the coins went into a laundry, but you will never associate with the previously laundered coins that the client got.
- can16358p 4y agoAnd aren't there any open source tools to do roughly similar analyses? I'd be surprised if there aren't any. Any large-scale criminal action can be strategically simulated and analyzed on those to make these guys' job harder up to the point that it's no longer feasible for many situations. (clarification: while I do not support any criminal action, I equally hate government survelliance)
- interleave 4y agoI built a tool for myself for Algorand that's (maybe?) somewhat similar to their Reactor offer. It's called Ballet and it's open source, too! - Quick demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hnNzSf2-Ak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hnNzSf2-Ak - Live application: https://alexisrondeau.me/algorand-ballet/ https://alexisrondeau.me/algorand-ballet/ - Github repo: https://github.com/akaalias/algorand-ballet https://github.com/akaalias/algorand-ballet
- bannedbybros 4y ago
- unstatusthequo 4y agoNot just governments. I have it and use it.
- guywithahat 4y agoYeah considering in the article he says half of his clients are private sector this seems like a bad title. Maybe they meant because most revenue comes from government? Hard to say
- GeorgeJIrwin 4y agoHow come they don't add a real time layer based on a simple ML analysis of the transactions? There are many, relatively simple, models to do that in real time. Wouldn't the market appreciate this?
- tb_technical 4y agoWe will never be free.
- timcavel 4y ago
- wikitopian 4y agoI hope the feds hunt down and arrest everybody who used multiple slurp juices on a single ape. There's XMR, some interesting little projects like DERO, and a vast sea of tokenomic pyramid scheme garbage that governments can and should stop.
- Stamp01 4y ago> I hope the feds hunt down and arrest everybody who used multiple slurp juices on a single ape. Can I get this on a t-shirt? I have no idea what it means, but it sounds amazing.
- easrng 4y agoa lotta yall still dont get it. ape holders can use multiple slurp juices on a single ape. so if you have 1 astro ape and 3 slurp juices you can create 3 new apes. tonight's slurp juice mint event is essentially a minting event for both Lab Monkes and Special Forces.
- mmastrac 4y agoContext for the joke: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/you-can-use-multiple-slurp-juices-on-an-ape https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/you-can...
- drummer 4y agoGood luck tracking monero and pirate chain boyzzz
- Canada 4y agoThey help anyone who wants to pay trace crypto. Their product is well implemented, and they have skilled and motivated people. There are competitors who offer similar, and in my opinion not as well done, but for considerably money. I don't like the way any of these companies encourage authorities to impose requirements for KYT, but it's unsurprising.
- frozencell 4y ago> Governments Specifically U.S. and protectorates right?
- Elizabeth0147 4y ago
- helsinkiandrew 4y agohttps://archive.ph/fxWwT https://archive.ph/fxWwT
- m00dy 4y agoLet's see what they can do for Zero-Knowledge proofs.
- zeroclip 4y agoThey can’t do anything except create harsh regulations for anybody using this kind of math. This is what US is doing and it does work at stripping away user privacy.
- xrd 4y agoRecent ZK Knowledge podcast recently discussed a lot of this, how you can determine IP addresses inside blockchain transactions, and DDoS, and Chainanalysis usage of IP for KYC. https://zeroknowledge.fm/246-2/ https://zeroknowledge.fm/246-2/ I'm not clear if the conversation concluded with zk is impervious, or whether it is an active question of research.
- atian 4y agoIs not a panacea.
- m00dy 4y agothat's the foundation of our society 3.0
- dang 4y agoRelated: Chainalysis in Action: Justice Dept Demands Forfeiture of 280 Crypto Addresses - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24306511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24306511 - Aug 2020 (54 comments)
- TobyTheDog123 4y ago>Chainalysis software puts the lie to the idea that Bitcoin guarantees anonymity. I, for one, am shocked that moving decentralized currency to a centralized service that knows your identity de-anonymizes said currency.