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Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

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Re: Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

#71

Post by jl2718 »

hamiltonians wrote: post #28
zeroclip wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems 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…

how would funds be locked

USDC has a block list in the smart contract. Other possibilities include validator block lists, and of course exchanges.

Re: Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

#72

Post by MerelyMortal »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #36
mccorrinall wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain the entry/exit thing of monero? I always thought i’m fine when using monero, but never looked into what ring signatures imply.

If you do BTC-XMR-BTC in a specific amount, you can get traced through that. Tornado cash is the same. All the exit points from Monero are non-anonymous, so you need to be careful that you don't enter and exit in ways that can be correlated.

A relatable, simplified, example: If you withdraw $3858.28 from a bank under the name Alice, and then deposit $3858.28 in a different bank under the name Bob, and those two banks share data, then someone could reasonably say Alice and Bob are connected.

Re: Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

#73

Post by triyambakam »

hanklazard wrote: post #46
pclmulqdq wrote: post #18

As 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 equivalentl…

A couple of other projects for privacy on ethereum: zk.money and railgun.ch Also dark.fi is a project that aims to produce easy-to-use developer tools for private transactions.

A doctor that is also interested in privacy and crypto - so interesting. Do you have a blog?

Re: Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

#74

Post by cowtools »

beauHD wrote: post #69
houstonn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi's largest error was not making Bitcoin private by default and it strikes me as out of character given his/her level of commitment to being anonymous.

So is it safe to say Monero is a sort of Bitcoin 2.0? I mean if Bitcoin had 'versions' that would be great. Then we wouldn't have to invent entirely new cryptocurrencies, we could just iterate on existing ones, and have our userbase intact without having to 'gain traction' for an entirely new alt-coin.

I suppose the monero userbase has similar attitudes as the early bitcoin userbase, but monero/cryptonote is not a bitcoin fork in the same sense that zcash/zerocoin is.

>we could just iterate on existing ones, and have our userbase intact without having to 'gain traction' for an entirely new alt-coin.

I think there are some fundamental limits to the throughput of a single cryptocurrency due to network latency and bandwidth. Perhaps the solution to scalability is simply to have multiple cryptocurrencies and to facilitate atomic swaps between them. So in this sense, the creation of new cryptocurrencies with minor feature changes (litecoin, bitcoin cash, wownero, cheapeth, etc.) is actually good for network diversity.

That being said, the owners of existing "big" cryptocurrencies will usually want to make changes that increase its usability to compete with these "trivial forks"

Bitcoiners have been soured by the idea of a hard fork since the XT dispute, while the monero userbase has commited itself to regular hard forks every 6 months to upgrade the network.

Re: Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

#75

Post by rorrim »

cowtools wrote: post #55
SkyMarshal wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t recall why that decision was made, but there could be a couple reasons. First, it isn’t easy technically. Especially back when you’re designing the very first decentralized cryptocurrency and have no prior experience informing your design. ZCash, Monero, MimbleWimble and others came later after learning from Bitcoin, and there’s zero chance they could have come first. Second, shielded transactions risk undete…

Let's not speculate: https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/quotes/privacy/ https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=770 It seems like satoshi thought pseudo-anonyminity was sufficient. The integration of zero-knowlege proofs into cryptocurrencies was not really well understood at the time.

Quit it with this revisionist history nonsense, your second link contains where Satoshi specifically mentioned that a ZK-based version of bitcoin would be better, he just didn't know how to do it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=770.msg8637#msg8637

Re: Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

#76

Post by rorrim »

WHATDOESIT wrote: post #48
houstonn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi's largest error was not making Bitcoin private by default and it strikes me as out of character given his/her level of commitment to being anonymous.

Perhaps it was a tradeoff they knowingly made to not have it become illegal immediately.

Nope: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=770.msg8637#msg8637

Re: Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

#77

Post by cowtools »

imdsm wrote: post #66
houstonn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi's largest error was not making Bitcoin private by default and it strikes me as out of character given his/her level of commitment to being anonymous.

Bitcoin may not be private but it's pseudonymous, multiple public keys per private key. I think if it had have been private though, it never would have taken off. The transparency and exploitability of blockchains is key to their success. Without Bitcoin & other prominent open source blockchain-based crypto-currencies and crypto-assets, private crypto-currencies and crypto-assets wouldn't stand up.

I couldn't disagree more. Without the silk road, bitcoin would have never taken off. monero has seemingly displaced bitcoin here.

The transparency of the ledger is key to the censorship, control, and abuse of the network.

>open source

Are you implying that the cryptonote/zerocoin projects like monero aren't open source?

Re: Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

#78

Post by notch656a »

pjc50 wrote: post #59
zeroclip wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems 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…

> More users would use Tornado Cash if regulation was clear and allowed it This is simply not going to happen in the current anti-money-laundering environment. The US made Switzerland give up hiding money, they're not going to let some random geeks make trillions of dollars vanish.

Didn't US and FATF pressure other nations into giving up 'hiding money' through threats to cut them off from the US or partner financial systems? What happens if some coin and its developers have no interest in being connected to the US financial system -- it seems like then there would be limited ability to influence them and off/on ramps would still exist through criminal networks (and the mere presence of an on/off ramp lends USD/"X" pair value, even if the person using "X" doesn't use the ramp).

Re: Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

#79

Post by pcthrowaway »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #18

As 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 equivalentl…

Secret Network has private transactions as well

Re: Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

#80

Post by SkyMarshal »

rorrim wrote: post #75
cowtools wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not speculate: https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/quotes/privacy/ https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=770 It seems like satoshi thought pseudo-anonyminity was sufficient. The integration of zero-knowlege proofs into cryptocurrencies was not really well understood at the time.

Quit it with this revisionist history nonsense, your second link contains where Satoshi specifically mentioned that a ZK-based version of bitcoin would be better, he just didn't know how to do it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=770.msg8637#msg8637

I wouldn't call it revisionist, he's referencing the source.
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