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Chainalysis CTO said blockchain is easier to trace than paper money

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

#221

Post by insanitybit »

saurik wrote: post #85
insanitybit wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they're confused, I think the vast majority of people involved in crypto or who are spectators of crypto are confused. I have repeatedly heard that crypto enables "anonymous" transactions for years. Also he literally links the original paper, quoting the part where it talks about transactions being harder to trace. "without telling who the parties are".

Well, "crypto" does allow that--and has for years!--using zero-knowledge proofs (as in Zcash), at least within some bounds (that I would say are quite reasonable for conversational purposes... hell: someone in the government seems to think this stuff works, hence the sanctions on Tornado Cash); Bitcoin , one very specific technology from crypto, however, does not.

Of course, all of that is true. I'm only saying that people seem to believe it is inherent to crypto.

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

#222

Post by sneed-oil »

cowtools wrote: post #138
nimbius wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole article is a plug for Chainalysis, a company that sells its ability to trace crypto transactions to the US government who ironically gave them KYC, the most fundamental and lazy ability to start a business that traces stuff like this. What I'd like to see Grigg admit to with a straight face is his companies ability to trace monero. his company got the US Government bid for a $625,000 bounty to trace it, and…

I suspect chainalysis is describing some "poisoned output attack" with respect to monero. See: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iABIcsDJKyM The problem is a well-understood but innate limitation to all sender-obfuscating cryptocurrencies.

Sorry, I didn't watch the video, but couldn't that be avoided by churning a few times?

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

#223

Post by jdeibele »

adjkant wrote: post #153
codyb wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually not sure of the law here myself but FWIW as a NYC resident I regularly encounter places that don't accept cash.

https://www.littler.com/publication-press/publication/new-yo...

"The New York City Council has approved, by a vote of 43-3, a bill that would make it unlawful for most businesses to refuse to accept payments in cash, with limited exceptions."

It was supposed to go into effect November, 2020. I don't know if COVID concerns about handling cash meant that businesses were formally or tacitly allowed to require cards since they could be touchless (tap) or close to it (wipe down the hard plastic keys).

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

#224

Post by acdha »

yellowapple wrote: post #147
AlexandrB wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most sensible thing to do with blockchain is to track produce from when it's picked to when it's sold for QC. I don't understand why even this is sensible. Why not just use a database? The only miners/validators on a produce blockchain are likely to be agri-companies anyway.

> I don't understand why even this is sensible. Why not just use a database? Who's gonna run it? Any individual company in the chain has a vested interest in fudging the data, and the technical means to do so. A private third-party lacks oversight (and thus could also be given a vested interest in fudging data). A government agency could do it (assuming one's government is trustworthy, which is often a poor assumptio…

The problem is that blockchains cost more and add significant performance reliability problems without adding trust. You could solve this problem using PKI with orders of magnitude lower computational and storage cost, and that'd remove the requirement to have an always-on network service.

However, that's still missing the point that this is fundamentally a problem about humans in the real world and the technology can't magically change that. The problems with supply chain authenticity aren't a question of record keeping but whether those records are accurate. If my inspector is being paid off, he'll do the same thing for the blockchain record that he was doing with paper. If things are being tampered with in shipping, the same people will do the same things and you'll have the same dodgy goods arriving at their destination except they'd now have valid but inaccurate blockchain records.

As usual, the blockchain solution isn't adding anything except creating a market for the people selling it. It doesn't solve the real problems and if you spend time tackling those, you won't derive any benefit from diverting more your revenue to some VC's yacht fund.

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

#225

Post by jqpabc123 »

bavell wrote: post #96
jqpabc123 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

transparency Has anyone seen the financial records for Tether?

I'm pro-crytpo but Tether is a scam imo.

As Tether goes, so goes the entire crypto eco-system.

Tether underwrites the entire crypto marketplace. It is involved in more than half of all crypto trades. And it's unlimited supply is totally controlled by crypto market makers with every incentive to use it to manipulate the crypto market.

It's like giving NASDAQ and the NYSE control over the Federal Reserve. No possible conflict of interest there, right?

https://www.theverge.com/22620464/tether-backing-cryptocurre...

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

#227

Post by sophacles »

mywittyname wrote: post #150
soupfordummies wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, paper cash isn't the only way to pay for goods. The spirit of the "legal tender" statement is that that it applies to U.S. Dollars broadly, not necessarily the paper. After all, a Treasury Bond is exactly as good as paper cash. If you look at the edge cases, it becomes more clear why the federal government doesn't require businesses to accept paper cash. Imagine someone attempting to purchase a sky scraper in M…

It would be entirely reasonable to limit such a requirement with "for all transactions under $X". Similarly it would be reasonable to put in a clause about using banknotes for whole dollar parts of the total due.

As for the burden: if taking money is a burden, why are you in business to begin with?

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

#228

Post by crazygringo »

danuker wrote: post #211
crazygringo wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I'm the opposite. I'm a tech guy and by this point I refuse to deal with grimy dirty worn pieces of paper in order to pay for anything. If a place is cash only, they simply lose out on my business. I'm done using their shitty ATM in the back with its $5 fee, never again. And I'm done helping these cash-only businesses evade their taxes. My communications are digital. My calendar is digital. My concert tickets…

Good luck during bank holidays.

I don't know what that means...?

Edit in response to comments: thanks, but it's never been a problem. I have multiple credit cards and I can call 24/7 to resolve an issue with one and use another as backup.

And then there's also my debit card, Venmo, and PayPal to be able to fall back on.

And if the internet is down for days across my whole city then there might be even bigger problems to be worrying about...

So just never had a bank holiday as any problem, not even remotely.

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

#229

Post by niom »

throwup wrote: post #103
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Well, except for the important detail that KYC requirements don't preclude the need for warrants... > They (loudly, incessantly) proclaim to their friends the benefits of a…

> Well, except for the important detail that KYC requirements don't preclude the need for warrants... Banks and law enforcement frequently share data without caring about warrants. One example: if you send a $10K wire (in the US), your bank may voluntarily submit a Suspicious Activity Report. And since they may be liable if they choose not to report, but are not liable if they do report, guess which option they typic…

Warrants are not a high a hurdle in practice when they are needed. The US has the third-party doctrine, so all information you've communicated to someone does not need a warrant unless otherwise protected. In the US you need to establish real probable cause (otherwise the fruit may be poisoned), but PC is a low legal standard. Non-US jurisdictions don't use the fruit of the poisoned tree doctrine and so the actual legal standard is more like "arguing probable cause for the warrant shouldn't look like an outright perversion of justice". The world's best limbo performer can't dance under that bar.

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

#230

Post by baby »

This is why I don’t understand why governments seem to be against cryptocurrencies in general. And as for consumers and privacy: check the work being done with zero-knowledge proofs and stablecoins, where everything is encrypted except to the IRS or whoever should have be able to view transactions. To my knowledge this work is also attempting to replicate cash by not divulging anything under a certain threshold per day.
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