Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chainalysis CTO said blockchain is easier to trace than paper money

lancengym.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 328 posts

Re: Chainalysis CTO said blockchain is easier to trace than paper money

#121

Post by codyb »

alexb_ wrote: post #80

I have refused to shop at numerous stores because they make a point of not accepting cash. Cash is incredibly important for modern society due to actually being untraceable and allowing for private transactions. Plus, a society without cash is one where you are forced to use central banking. Blockchain is just trying to imitate cash digitally, which as it turns out is really hard to do. So it just ends up that people…

I think it's illegal in NYC to not accept cash and I fully support that. There are a lot of unbanked people here that have enough on their plates without further discrimination.

And also cash is king and coins and bills are very neat.

Re: Chainalysis CTO said blockchain is easier to trace than paper money

#122

Post by zaphar »

DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #113
zaphar wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't use crypto for anything useful without it. This advice means crypto is useless.

not entirely correct; if you both earn and spend all of your crypto directly as cryptocurrency, then you can fairly easily just remain entirely anonymous. This just doesn't apply to most people, at least most who do legal business.

For me and the vast majority of people that is a complete non-starter. And the primary value of a currenyc is that it gives you liquidity to participate in the economy. Until crypto can claim the same thing it only barely qualifies as a currency in my mind.

Re: Chainalysis CTO said blockchain is easier to trace than paper money

#123

Post by sph »

seanw444 wrote: post #118
sph wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That many things these days are called Blockchain, as if to appear secure, but they're no more sophisticated than centralised databases, while actual blockchains, like Bitcoin as exemplified in its whitepaper, is designed to be a secure and decentralised chain of transactions. "Blockchain" has stopped meaning anything when people decided to use it for anything remotely related to internet money. It's just become a fa…

Bitcoin is traceable due to its very implementation. Unless you know how to use it properly, it's very easy to deanonymize yourself on accident. And once that happens, all the transactions thereafter are easy to follow. Monero, on the other hand, is designed to intentionally be hard to trace history of transactions on.

Yes, I edited it out from my comment because I knew someone would point that out and I didn't really want to go on a tangent about it. I meant it's untraceable by some very narrow definitions of tracing.

You'd know that hex address X sent money to Y, but you wouldn't necessarily know that X is John Doe that lives at 1234 Main St., nor you'd be able to tell that, knowing address X, John Doe also owns address Z.

With KYC laws you have a lot more metadata to be able to do correlations like that, but I'm specifically talking about the protocol and the technology itself.

Re: Chainalysis CTO said blockchain is easier to trace than paper money

#124

Post by pclmulqdq »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #54
pclmulqdq wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of trust means that the only thing left to guarantee (to a normal person) that the system is working is transparency.

transparency Has anyone seen the financial records for Tether?

Tether is basically a bank with none of the regulations, not actually a blockchain. All transactions done in USDT are public, but the backing money isn't. But trust me, it's all there, and it's totally not in speculative Chinese bonds.

Re: Chainalysis CTO said blockchain is easier to trace than paper money

#125

Post by anonym29 »

For open blockchains, sure. Cash was the OG anonymous money.

There's a reason that neither CipherTrace, Chainalysis, nor Integra FEC got the IRS bounty for successfully tracing Monero transactions with all privacy features enabled. The latter two got a $500k grant to try, with $125k available for successfully tracing, but neither claimed that final $125k.

This also isn't an either/or where one crypto will win out. Different cryptos will continue to focus on different use cases. Bitcoin is one step removed from FIAT and just as traceable, but it's the first step you need to go from BTC to other cryptocurrencies - XMR for privacy, ETH for dApps and smart contracts, XRP to see what a CBDC will look like, LUNA for involuntarily donating your money to some south Korean guy, etc.

Re: Chainalysis CTO said blockchain is easier to trace than paper money

#126

Post by soupfordummies »

alexb_ wrote: post #80

I have refused to shop at numerous stores because they make a point of not accepting cash. Cash is incredibly important for modern society due to actually being untraceable and allowing for private transactions. Plus, a society without cash is one where you are forced to use central banking. Blockchain is just trying to imitate cash digitally, which as it turns out is really hard to do. So it just ends up that people…

I don't understand how it's legal for vendors to actually refuse cash.

I get it that there's multiple reasons they wouldn't want to and they can say it's their policy, etc but it's on the paper money itself "LEGAL tender for ALL debts public and PRIVATE".

It's like when you hear the stories about people paying debts with buckets of coins. Obviously a huge PitA but technically allowed.

Re: Chainalysis CTO said blockchain is easier to trace than paper money

#127

Post by photochemsyn »

LastTrain wrote: post #98
photochemsyn wrote: post #63

Here's an amusing exercise: count up how many top FBI executives over the neoliberal period (roughly beginning in the mid-1970s under Ford/Carter) have gone to work for various Wall Street-linked investment banks, hedge funds, law firms, etc. after 'retirement' (the number is comparable to that of generals and admirals who migrated to the corporate boards of defense contractors post-'retirement'). This reality suppor…

I stopped at "neoliberal"

Well, that's the point at which the USA really began migrating from a fundamentally industrial-centric economy to a fundamentally financial-centric economy, in terms of where the profits and power accumulated.

Re: Chainalysis CTO said blockchain is easier to trace than paper money

#128

Post by TigeriusKirk »

SevenNation wrote: post #41

That's because when most people use "blockchain" or "DeFi" they're using AML/KYC entities that post their transaction logs to public servers. Law enforcement eats this up because it saves them the trouble of getting warrants for investigations. Bad for customers to be sure. Most have no idea what they're doing and have fallen for a scam hook, line, and sinker. They (loudly, incessantly) proclaim to their friends the…

No post body was provided.

Re: Chainalysis CTO said blockchain is easier to trace than paper money

#129

Post by Test0129 »

codyb wrote: post #121
alexb_ wrote: post #80

I have refused to shop at numerous stores because they make a point of not accepting cash. Cash is incredibly important for modern society due to actually being untraceable and allowing for private transactions. Plus, a society without cash is one where you are forced to use central banking. Blockchain is just trying to imitate cash digitally, which as it turns out is really hard to do. So it just ends up that people…

I think it's illegal in NYC to not accept cash and I fully support that. There are a lot of unbanked people here that have enough on their plates without further discrimination. And also cash is king and coins and bills are very neat.

> There are a lot of unbanked people here

Would you support removing cash if everyone was given a bank account? Perhaps with the government?

OPs point was that cash not being accepted means you have no privacy in a place you might want it. Governments love credit cards, easy pay, etc. Especially in the case where your transactions are kept with you forever so that future governments can punish you.

Re: Chainalysis CTO said blockchain is easier to trace than paper money

#130

Post by matja »

soupfordummies wrote: post #126
alexb_ wrote: post #80

I have refused to shop at numerous stores because they make a point of not accepting cash. Cash is incredibly important for modern society due to actually being untraceable and allowing for private transactions. Plus, a society without cash is one where you are forced to use central banking. Blockchain is just trying to imitate cash digitally, which as it turns out is really hard to do. So it just ends up that people…

I don't understand how it's legal for vendors to actually refuse cash. I get it that there's multiple reasons they wouldn't want to and they can say it's their policy, etc but it's on the paper money itself "LEGAL tender for ALL debts public and PRIVATE". It's like when you hear the stories about people paying debts with buckets of coins. Obviously a huge PitA but technically allowed.

It's not a debt until the produce is sold. Any vendor can refuse to sell, which means there's no debt.
Post reply on HN