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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

#271
post #35

Putting on my conspiracy robe, I would posit Bitcoin was created by an intelligence agency. You need cryptography smarts and the ability to glue all the various components together aswell as keep it all hush, something an intel agency can do with ease. How else do you uncover vast criminal networks? It was purposefully made to ensnare cyber-criminals. Now as for Monero, I would imagine it has them shaking in their bo…

agree, because bitcoin / silk road and tor all popped up at the more or less the same time. and they all need each other as a boot strap.

Also - Satoshi - who? no one knows, really? Dread Pirate Roberts, name insinuates that the role (of site administrator) was handed over to him. There has been speculation that he was not the creator of the site. Tor - created by the Navy.

Why? - Black money / create an "open source", super duper encrypted method of communicating that cannot be broken (unless you control 70% of the exit nodes, whoopsies), get people invested in using it. How many of the dealers that supplied on silkroad where "free-lance" and scooped up later (along with their product and cash)

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

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Holidays, basically. The branch is closed and nobody really cares if your card cannot be processed for whatever obscure reason. No chat or phone support, obviously, you have to go to your own personal banker, who is on holiday. Happened at least once with a major country-wide bank in EU this year with some of my friends, and I doubt it's either the first or the last occurrence.

In the states it's typical for credit/debit card support lines to still be open on bank holidays. They want to be able to nip fraud in the bud. Additionally bank holidays typically being heavily commercialized here means that large consumer transactions tend to cluster on them.

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

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin advocates have generally been exceedingly clear about these kinds of things. To the point of begging people to listen. From "not your keys, not your coins" to "KYC/AML bought coins are easy to trace" Such advocates are the fringe. Most bitcoin advocates are saying "If you're not buying bitcoin you're an idiot! It's easy money! My critics are no-coiners who didn't listen to me!"

Such advocates are the ones with the credentials to actually bother listening to, like core devs or the people who literally wrote the book on understanding the technical nature of the system. They're not the fringe, they're the core that the fringe pump monkeys looking for a quick buck latch onto and promptly ignore. The majority of people who talk about literally anything aren't worth listening to, and if you can't…

> like core devs or the people who literally wrote the book on understanding the technical nature of the system.

These are fringe. The cynical and predatory advocates are the ones who are actually heard by the naive marks.

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

#274
post #52

“No shit”. Wait, you mean something that literally tracks any and all actions in a literal chain of history that is immutable is easy to track?!? You mean that pattern recognition can be applied to even “randomized” in both size, time, and destination of transactions can be done to track like how they can track burner phones? I’m shocked! Shocked I say!

You uncover a single entity in a public ledger and it's like pulling a thread that opens up a gold mine. The ledger as a permanent history available to the world, in real time, of every single transaction.

> The ledger as a permanent history available to the world, in real time, of every single transaction.

arguably a selling point. just not for selling large quantities of online drugs.

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

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is, cash is hard to trace. When I see a business that doesn't take credit, I think... tax evasion.

Exactly. The number of people who NEED to keep their transactions private for non-criminal purposes is miniscule compared to the number of tax evaders. It pains me every time I go to Costco and I see contractors dressed in their work clothes pull out a wad of cash to pay for their groceries. They are effectively getting a 30% discount on the price I pay by not processing their income through the banking system and no…

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

#276
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…

> The point is, cash is hard to trace. When I see a business that doesn't take credit, I think... tax evasion.

It's very easy to say that "cash can be used outside of the law" is a strictly bad thing when you agree with most of the laws. But assuming that we will always be in a happy democracy is a grave mistake. We've lived in mostly peaceful times (at least domestically) for a long time, so I think people forget that.

Cash can be used outside of the law. That's exactly WHY it's important to have in a free society. To say otherwise would be saying that morality and legality are one and the same.

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

#277
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…

> The point is, cash is hard to trace. When I see a business that doesn't take credit, I think... tax evasion.

Or something similar. There was a brewery in town that only took cash that everyone knew was acting as a bank for the marijuana dispensaries since they couldn't access traditional banking services and had to deal with large amounts of cash.

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

#278
Wish more people knew about Monero. It pretty much replaced Bitcoin on the dark web and other markets where private, anonymous transfers of money is essential. Every crypto on most KYC exchanges exposes every transaction on its public ledger. Monero and minuscule amount of other coins use cryptographic techniques to hide wallets and their history. Most other coins won't add this as they will be blacklisted like Monero. Monero has an added bonus of having good tokenomics (cough cough PirateChain). It is pretty much what most people think Bitcoin is without being a scam.

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You uncover a single entity in a public ledger and it's like pulling a thread that opens up a gold mine. The ledger as a permanent history available to the world, in real time, of every single transaction.

> The ledger as a permanent history available to the world, in real time, of every single transaction. arguably a selling point. just not for selling large quantities of online drugs.

Or for people buying or selling anything that's currently legal but that could then become illegal during their lifetime.

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

#280

Wish more people knew about Monero. It pretty much replaced Bitcoin on the dark web and other markets where private, anonymous transfers of money is essential. Every crypto on most KYC exchanges exposes every transaction on its public ledger. Monero and minuscule amount of other coins use cryptographic techniques to hide wallets and their history. Most other coins won't add this as they will be blacklisted like Moner…

So a coin deliberately designed to evade all government regulation - what the rest of us call "laws".

This seems highly negative for society. We already lose hundreds billions of dollars a year to tax evasion.

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