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Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I find the community's pursuit of this individual's identity pretty interesting given the pro-privacy stance of crypto. Everyone ca

Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I find the community's pursuit of this individual's identity pretty interesting given the pro-privacy stance of crypto. Everyone cares about privacy until a crime is committed, and then we all want to know. And we leave it up to folks at companies like Kraken to tell us what they find.

labrador 4y ago
> Everyone cares about privacy until a crime is committed So can I assume that if you get mugged on the street you won't give police details for fear of identifying the criminal?
- maverwa 4y ago
  There is still an important difference between giving information to the police for an investigation and sharing information publicly. Not at all the same thing.
  - labrador 4y ago
    But you would expect a mugshot to go public (at least in some American states) and the preparatory ultimately known to the public through records as a felon. To rat someone out is to dox them.
rippercushions 4y ago
This has almost nothing to do with crypto. There's no "hurr durr code is law" clever hacking involved, the money was straight up stolen from a centralized exchange in the digital equivalent of a bank robbery and is now being laundered in plain sight.
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  > This has almost nothing to do with crypto Can we please not No True Scotsman this? Crypto “the future of money” is completely unregulated and nothing but full of scams hitherto unseen since the days before banking regulations. You’d be hard pressed find a bank that can execute a rug pull like this. While I’m no fan of Bank of America, I’ll keep my “dirty fiat” there and sleep soundly, just like I slept soundly in though the Great Recession.
  - sam345 4y ago
    agree but way better places to keep your money than BOA
  - rippercushions 4y ago
    Sure, we're on the same page, I'm just saying that the actual heist here could, from a technical point of view, been executed at Bank of America as well. (Although sneaking a backdoor in there and getting money out would be orders of magnitude harder.)
    - jonathankoren 4y ago
      If you rob a bank, the depositors don’t lose their money. Same as if the bank goes under.
- doliveira 4y ago
  Hasn't crypto exploded in popularity exactly because of these centralized exchanges?
gruez 4y ago
> Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I find the community's pursuit of this individual's identity pretty interesting given the pro-privacy stance of crypto. This seems like a strawman to me. Are there any privacy advocates out there who don't believe investigations should happen after a crime has been committed, because investigations are anti-privacy?
- coliveira 4y ago
  The stated goal of privacy in money exchange is that we should not know who makes a transaction. The assumption is that people should themselves policy their money matters, independent of banks or governments. However, when a scam occurs everybody is asking police to to figure out who made these transactions, effectively supporting the identification of the people behind the funds.
  - throwup 4y ago
    Privacy is not incompatible with good old-fashioned detective work or police work. I use encrypted messaging, but if I decide to commit a crime I'm under no delusion that encryption will save me. Why can't the same be true for money?
    - scoofy 4y ago
      Right, but the idea is that sensible people should want to willingly give up some of their privacy to participate in a transparent market. When you don't, and the crime is 10,000x harder (if not impossible by design) to solve (and more likely due to the moral hazard this brings), the sensibility of operating in a less private marketplace becomes apparent. Typically the markets can afford to compensate people on a day-to-day basis for small crime, but the entire reason bizarre concepts like clearing houses exist is that, from time to time, once every 10-30 years, an entire market can be destroyed overnight because of liquidity or counter-party risk or a combination, or some other situation like fraud. These things happen, and will continue to happen, which is why we should always look to the past when designing markets, and not fall for the folks telling about the wonders of their utopian future.
throw_m239339 4y ago
> given the pro-privacy stance of crypto. Crypto isn't about privacy, it's actually the opposite. All transactions on the blockchain are transparent as it's literally a distributed ledger. There is absolutely no secrecy or privacy when it comes to how Bitcoin works for instance. And it's by design. Bitcoin inventor(s) goal was for people not to have to trust the secrecy of banks but essentially be their own bank. Whether that goal was achieved or not is anybody's guess... So I'm not sure what pro-privacy stance you are talking about.
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  It’s all open sure, but to imply that privacy isn’t a selling point of crypto is absurd. The privacy comes from the fact that it’s all pseudonymous with no real world identity verification at all. To pretend that this isn’t a feature — nay, THE feature — of crypto is absurd. There’s a reason why Tornado cash exists, and why bitcoin is the choice of online criminals everywhere.
  - throwup 4y ago
    Pseudonymity is not privacy. If I publish your text messages online but omit the names, your conversations are no longer private, names or no names. And if you publish your transactions to a public ledger, even without names the transactions aren't private. Darknet markets use monero, not bitcoin. Monero is one of the few currencies that does offer privacy, but it makes up a very small part of the ecosystem, less than 1% by market cap.
    - jonathankoren 4y ago
      > Pseudonymity is not privacy Tell it to Satoshi Nakamoto
      - throwup 4y ago
        Satoshi's transactions are not private. They are recorded on the public ledger where anyone can see them. You are using words without understanding what they mean.
ssss11 4y ago
Strange take on privacy..
- dibt 4y ago
  They are confusing privacy with secrecy. Big difference.
scoofy 4y ago
This is not cynical. It's the reason I've been actively against cryptos like monero since the beginning. Everyone hates government regulations because politics is hard and people (reasonably) want to buy drugs, but in the end capital security is incredibly important, and a rising tide raises all frauds. It's a dower subject. When everyone was making money nobody will listen. When everyone is losing money it's uncouth to told-you-so to people in serious pain. You can't get through to most people, full stop. I was lucky enough to come of age during the dot-com bust, with family that clearly broke down the concepts of accounting and the history of market crashes. Nobody wants to hear it no matter what part of the mania you're in. Focus on your friends (many of which I was able to influence), and focus on fundamentals. Any public discussion of a mania during a mania will fail, and is literally the archetype/moral of the Cassandra myth.
tchaffee 4y ago
> given the pro-privacy stance of crypto Maybe I'm missing something, but what pro-privacy stance? Crypto is far easier to trace than cash. And US companies like Kraken follow KYC laws.
redox99 4y ago
That's basically a strawman. Privacy conscious people are against mass surveillance, where everybody privacy is invaded by default, even if they've done nothing wrong and aren't suspicious. Privacy as we had before technology that allowed such things is what such group desire. Is there someone suspected of a crime? Sure, tailgate them, follow them, etc. This manual surveillance has a cost and max throughput that makes it you cant mass surveil.
karaterobot 4y ago
It shouldn't matter how many people want to know who you are, the privacy part is the part that makes it harder for them to find out. You can be nosy and believe in privacy, and perhaps the awareness of your own tendencies to the former makes it easier to support the latter.
sam345 4y ago
privacy in crypto is a joke particularly if you use a reputable exchange. FBI will tell you that. they are happy for you to use crypto as easy to trace
babyshake 4y ago
There's often a confusion between privacy and anonymity. Everyone should be entitled to financial privacy. Per the laws of the land (at least most developed countries), you are not entitled to financial anonymity.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Unpopular opinion- privacy is overrated in a Western Democratic country. I can't think of any legitate reason to move hundreds of millions of $ anonymously.

labrador 4y ago

> Everyone cares about privacy until a crime is committed So can I assume that if you get mugged on the street you won't give police details for fear of identifying the criminal?

maverwa 4y ago
There is still an important difference between giving information to the police for an investigation and sharing information publicly. Not at all the same thing.
- labrador 4y ago
  But you would expect a mugshot to go public (at least in some American states) and the preparatory ultimately known to the public through records as a felon. To rat someone out is to dox them.

rippercushions 4y ago

This has almost nothing to do with crypto. There's no "hurr durr code is law" clever hacking involved, the money was straight up stolen from a centralized exchange in the digital equivalent of a bank robbery and is now being laundered in plain sight.

jonathankoren 4y ago
> This has almost nothing to do with crypto Can we please not No True Scotsman this? Crypto “the future of money” is completely unregulated and nothing but full of scams hitherto unseen since the days before banking regulations. You’d be hard pressed find a bank that can execute a rug pull like this. While I’m no fan of Bank of America, I’ll keep my “dirty fiat” there and sleep soundly, just like I slept soundly in though the Great Recession.
- sam345 4y ago
  agree but way better places to keep your money than BOA
- rippercushions 4y ago
  Sure, we're on the same page, I'm just saying that the actual heist here could, from a technical point of view, been executed at Bank of America as well. (Although sneaking a backdoor in there and getting money out would be orders of magnitude harder.)
  - jonathankoren 4y ago
    If you rob a bank, the depositors don’t lose their money. Same as if the bank goes under.
doliveira 4y ago
Hasn't crypto exploded in popularity exactly because of these centralized exchanges?

gruez 4y ago

> Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I find the community's pursuit of this individual's identity pretty interesting given the pro-privacy stance of crypto. This seems like a strawman to me. Are there any privacy advocates out there who don't believe investigations should happen after a crime has been committed, because investigations are anti-privacy?

coliveira 4y ago
The stated goal of privacy in money exchange is that we should not know who makes a transaction. The assumption is that people should themselves policy their money matters, independent of banks or governments. However, when a scam occurs everybody is asking police to to figure out who made these transactions, effectively supporting the identification of the people behind the funds.
- throwup 4y ago
  Privacy is not incompatible with good old-fashioned detective work or police work. I use encrypted messaging, but if I decide to commit a crime I'm under no delusion that encryption will save me. Why can't the same be true for money?
  - scoofy 4y ago
    Right, but the idea is that sensible people should want to willingly give up some of their privacy to participate in a transparent market. When you don't, and the crime is 10,000x harder (if not impossible by design) to solve (and more likely due to the moral hazard this brings), the sensibility of operating in a less private marketplace becomes apparent. Typically the markets can afford to compensate people on a day-to-day basis for small crime, but the entire reason bizarre concepts like clearing houses exist is that, from time to time, once every 10-30 years, an entire market can be destroyed overnight because of liquidity or counter-party risk or a combination, or some other situation like fraud. These things happen, and will continue to happen, which is why we should always look to the past when designing markets, and not fall for the folks telling about the wonders of their utopian future.

throw_m239339 4y ago

> given the pro-privacy stance of crypto. Crypto isn't about privacy, it's actually the opposite. All transactions on the blockchain are transparent as it's literally a distributed ledger. There is absolutely no secrecy or privacy when it comes to how Bitcoin works for instance. And it's by design. Bitcoin inventor(s) goal was for people not to have to trust the secrecy of banks but essentially be their own bank. Whether that goal was achieved or not is anybody's guess... So I'm not sure what pro-privacy stance you are talking about.

jonathankoren 4y ago
It’s all open sure, but to imply that privacy isn’t a selling point of crypto is absurd. The privacy comes from the fact that it’s all pseudonymous with no real world identity verification at all. To pretend that this isn’t a feature — nay, THE feature — of crypto is absurd. There’s a reason why Tornado cash exists, and why bitcoin is the choice of online criminals everywhere.
- throwup 4y ago
  Pseudonymity is not privacy. If I publish your text messages online but omit the names, your conversations are no longer private, names or no names. And if you publish your transactions to a public ledger, even without names the transactions aren't private. Darknet markets use monero, not bitcoin. Monero is one of the few currencies that does offer privacy, but it makes up a very small part of the ecosystem, less than 1% by market cap.
  - jonathankoren 4y ago
    > Pseudonymity is not privacy Tell it to Satoshi Nakamoto
    - throwup 4y ago
      Satoshi's transactions are not private. They are recorded on the public ledger where anyone can see them. You are using words without understanding what they mean.

ssss11 4y ago

Strange take on privacy..

dibt 4y ago
They are confusing privacy with secrecy. Big difference.

scoofy 4y ago

This is not cynical. It's the reason I've been actively against cryptos like monero since the beginning. Everyone hates government regulations because politics is hard and people (reasonably) want to buy drugs, but in the end capital security is incredibly important, and a rising tide raises all frauds. It's a dower subject. When everyone was making money nobody will listen. When everyone is losing money it's uncouth to told-you-so to people in serious pain. You can't get through to most people, full stop. I was lucky enough to come of age during the dot-com bust, with family that clearly broke down the concepts of accounting and the history of market crashes. Nobody wants to hear it no matter what part of the mania you're in. Focus on your friends (many of which I was able to influence), and focus on fundamentals. Any public discussion of a mania during a mania will fail, and is literally the archetype/moral of the Cassandra myth.

tchaffee 4y ago

> given the pro-privacy stance of crypto Maybe I'm missing something, but what pro-privacy stance? Crypto is far easier to trace than cash. And US companies like Kraken follow KYC laws.

redox99 4y ago

That's basically a strawman. Privacy conscious people are against mass surveillance, where everybody privacy is invaded by default, even if they've done nothing wrong and aren't suspicious. Privacy as we had before technology that allowed such things is what such group desire. Is there someone suspected of a crime? Sure, tailgate them, follow them, etc. This manual surveillance has a cost and max throughput that makes it you cant mass surveil.

karaterobot 4y ago

It shouldn't matter how many people want to know who you are, the privacy part is the part that makes it harder for them to find out. You can be nosy and believe in privacy, and perhaps the awareness of your own tendencies to the former makes it easier to support the latter.

sam345 4y ago

privacy in crypto is a joke particularly if you use a reputable exchange. FBI will tell you that. they are happy for you to use crypto as easy to trace

babyshake 4y ago

There's often a confusion between privacy and anonymity. Everyone should be entitled to financial privacy. Per the laws of the land (at least most developed countries), you are not entitled to financial anonymity.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

Unpopular opinion- privacy is overrated in a Western Democratic country. I can't think of any legitate reason to move hundreds of millions of $ anonymously.