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The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

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Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#201

Post by pas »

dist1ll wrote: post #136
senectus1 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know right?!? The WHOLE PREMISE of it was that it is an OPEN LEDGER...! I'm not sure how this persistent myth of it being a way to secretly make payments got around and stuck so well... maybe the "crypto" in the name?

"Open" is a heavily overloaded term. One of the main premises of Bitcoin is tamperproofness and permissionless participation. That in itself does not equate to lack of anonymity. Just have a look at Zcash[0] or Monero[1]. In general, the idea that openness and anonymity are in conflict with each other has not been true for at least 40 years. There's entire field of mathematics dedicated to solving this problem known…

and in practice maintaining that theoretical anonymity is hard. if you use a distinct amount in a transaction, it'll be visible. if there's a low volume your transaction can be correlated with a high probability, etc.

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#202

Post by vertis »

jacquesm wrote: post #181
Xorakios wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most famous right now? Breonna Taylor (2020) - Louisville, Kentucky: Police officers entered the wrong apartment using a no-knock warrant, which led to the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor, an emergency medical technician. Eurie Stamps Sr. (2011) - Framingham, Massachusetts: Police raided the wrong apartment, and during the operation, an officer's gun "accidentally discharged," killing Eurie Stamps Sr., a 68-year-old…

That's not what was meant with 'crime adjacent'.

Heh, it's a literal meaning of crime adjacent (presuming that the person in the actual target apartment was actually guilty).

I suspect anyone that was an early adopter of crypto is somewhat considered crime adjacent because so much of the early usage was silk road.

For a while after MtGox was hacked I used BTC-e (yes, I lost money in MtGox). It was later discovered(alleged?) that the operators of BTC-e were involved in laundering money for the MtGox hack[0]. I guess my very presence in that case would be considered crime adjacent.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTC-e

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#203

Post by PeterisP »

from wrote: post #54
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he was caught by linking fraud wallet to exchange wallet How are you supposed to turn fraudulently obtained btc into dollars without doing that?

I assume people involved in this sort of activity would convert to Monero first (can be done without KYC in a 100 different places). Then they would go to localmonero or a site like it and select cash in the mail. They would round to the nearest XMR at a time when transacting on localmonero so that even if the exchangers they used were compromised the government wouldn't be able to link them to the initial BTC->XMR s…

Not at this scale. You can do many transactions in the way that you describe and perhaps withdraw a million dollars, but you can't launder a billion dollars this way.

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#204

Post by pas »

drsnow wrote: post #187
iudqnolq wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very broadly speaking if you're hiding and law enforcement is actively looking for you the statute of limitations pauses, because the delay is morally your fault. (And actively looking has a generous definition) That could be what happened here.

How are you/authorities defining hiding? Is it hiding if he wasn't trying to evade anything and LE were just too slow in identifying him?

18 USC 3290 ("No statute of limitations shall extend to any person fleeing from justice")

but it not clear, see this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35548508

that's where case law comes in, probably there's some test for it made up by a few judges (like was there an active warrant, or named as person of interest in an active case, etc..)

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#205

Post by ETH_start »

polygamous_bat wrote: post #170
ETH_start wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The First Amendment.

Indeed, which is why you can get the Tornado source code off of github: https://github.com/tornado-repositories However, actually running the code to facilitate North Korean hackers launder money and personally profiting off of it? That's not covered by the first amendment, and I sincerely urge you to not try to find that out in the hard way.

Using any encryption protocol increases the anonymity set of the protocol and therefore will inadvertently help criminals who are trying to stay anonymous. That is not an argument for doing away with constitutional rights and human rights.

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#206

Post by ETH_start »

acdha wrote: post #134
ETH_start wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The First Amendment.

That covers you publishing software. It doesn’t cover providing a service to criminals and personally profiting from it, and the constitution definitely gives the government authority to police that so it’s going to come down to how well they can prove that those guys were going more than just releasing code.

The tornado cash smart contracts simply encrypt your transaction. When you use it you are not profiting off of it. It would be akin to banning. The use of communication encryption protocol period this is completely unprecedented in the US.

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#207

Post by rightbyte »

pineaux wrote: post #179
acdha wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or using a business which is required to report transactions, using a site which gets hacked, etc. I don’t think people sufficiently weight the risk of having a ledger which can’t be redacted – for example, I’d imagine there were a lot of people in Weimar Germany who did not think twice about donating to a synagogue or other organization which you would not want have wanted linked to your bank account a decade later.

This can be true for basically anything: Maybe you own a car. In 10 years time a green authoritarian communist group starts to suspect anybody who owned a car, you are sent to a re-education facility. Maybe you are environmentally conscious and bought solar panels. In ten years time an anti environmental fascist group comes to power. You are disappeared. You make some negative comments about AI at a dinner party. The…

> You make some negative comments about AI at a dinner party. The host has an Alexa home automation system.

Honestly, I feel uneasy when I know there is any active microphone recording.

Surely they are atleast building some user profile from keywords.

As computations get cheaper, commercial mass surveillance will get really bad.

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#209

Post by rahen »

phyzome wrote: post #19

Say it with me: "Bitcoin is not, and never was, anonymous."

People should see Bitcoin, the L1 protocol, as a public ledger.

Anonymity is solved with a L2 protocol like Lightning, or an anonymous currency like Monero, although it has shortcomings that Bitcoin doesn't have.

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#210

Post by Daviey »

miracle2k wrote: post #191
polygamous_bat wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, which is why you can get the Tornado source code off of github: https://github.com/tornado-repositories However, actually running the code to facilitate North Korean hackers launder money and personally profiting off of it? That's not covered by the first amendment, and I sincerely urge you to not try to find that out in the hard way.

> However, actually running the code to facilitate North Korean hackers launder money and personally profiting off of it? Who is "running" the code? The US government, to this date, has not made an argument that the developers of Tornado Cash, who have deployed the code to the Network, have committed a crime; at least one of them seems to be living in the US. Nor has the government made an argument that operators of…

The validating nodes "run" the code. And the majority of the nodes now won't process a tx to or from Tornado[0].

[0] https://www.trustnodes.com/2022/12/14/70-of-the-ethereum-net...

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