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Chainalysis CTO said blockchain is easier to trace than paper money

lancengym.medium.com

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

#211

Post by danuker »

crazygringo wrote: post #207
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…

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.

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

#213

Post by JasonFruit »

blantonl wrote: post #137
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…

Cash is definitely not untraceable. There are literally serial numbers on every bill printed in the United States.

They said said the blockchain is "easier", not that cash is untraceable. It would require the participation of innumerable businesses to properly track cash; as it is, they function as a huge network of crypto tumblers.

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

#215

Post by aliqot »

sodality2 wrote: post #38
t-3 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got examples? I can't see how an untraceable blockchain could still be considered a blockchain (or what use it would be). Isn't the whole point to be perfectly traceable?

Monero has public transactions but the recipients and senders' addresses are encrypted so you can't really trace it to wallets

Every UTXO is also randomized as far as input selection and distribution and also the way they're labeled as they travel through the system. For the simplest example, reference early monero code (at the time BMR, and MRO) where Borromean Ring Signatures were used, where the same operation is performed multiple times per-input effectively mixing inputs at the atomic level, rather than in later iterations (RingCT, Arcturus, etc) that extended this further to obscure also the amounts of these inputs and to trim some of the inefficiencies of Borosigs.

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

#216

Post by insanitybit »

prvit wrote: post #100
insanitybit wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The traditional banking model achieves a level of privacy by limiting access to information to the parties involved and the trusted third party. The necessity to announce all transactions publicly precludes this method, but privacy can still be maintained by breaking the flow of information in another place: by keeping public keys anonymous. The public can see that someone is sending an amount to someone else, but…

> The reality is that Satoshi envisioned bitcoin very differently from how things are currently implemented. They envisioned public keys being rotated, single use addresses, etc. That’s literally how all wallets work in 2022, no? Public keys are constantly rotated, addresses are single use.

> Public keys are constantly rotated

Not to my knowledge? I believe Coinbase lets you manage any number of public keys but there's nothing enforcing a "burn on use". Also, obviously, there's a central authority that has your name, government id, and keys.

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

#217

Post by TigeriusKirk »

dkersten wrote: post #190
TigeriusKirk wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not worth going point by point when there's so many fundamental misconceptions. Best to reject the entire comment. What HN needs is less engagement with useless, time consuming misinformation, and more outright rejection of it.

If you don’t go through it point by point and just reject the entire comment, then how is everyone else supposed to know that it’s misinformation? Right now it’s just your word that it’s incorrect. You have to back your claims up.

I usually don't comment at all on HN crypto threads, it's never been a productive use of time. I slipped on this one, totally on me.

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

#218

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

kumarski wrote: post #101

Nonsense. Go to GBTC ATM shops in Barcelona, they'll do KYC-less $100K transactions for 4% transaction fees. I was shocked and walked out of the shop. If you come to South Florida, you'll find that there was an era where cartels would pay high schoolers to roll up to ATM's and empty them of cash one by one. Crypto ATMs have 7%-15% fees with no KYC up to 1k USD and have grown about 5x-10x in the last 5 years in the US…

> Crypto ATMs have 7%-15% fees with no KYC up to 1k USD and have grown about 5x-10x in the last 5 years in the USA.

FWIW, "Crypto ATM" is sort of a misnomer.

AFAIK, no crypto ATM in the USA allows you to sell cryptocurrencies and pull out cash. You can only buy them, which as far as I'm concerned, is the easy part.

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

#219

Post by notch656a »

ericd wrote: post #204
DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about when it comes to paying taxes on those earnings?

Gains can be reported to the IRS without revealing their source.

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

#220

Post by cowtools »

prvit wrote: post #119
lupire wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi+in their writings) didn't understand the side channel attack of the Blockchain-meatspace bridge. Bitcoin only meets its design guarantees in a purely virtual world or with anonymous terminals. Bitcoin is already expensive enough to transact in, are you also going to move to a different location every time your transact?

> Bitcoin is already expensive enough to transact in Yesterday the average transaction cost was 0.7 USD. That’s pretty cheap as far as money transfers go, definitely beats most banks.

The fees increase with demand, but throughput does not. Bitcoin's current incarnation cannot scale. If it is cheap to transact now, it is only because the demand for its use as an actual currency has been reduced since the last fee explosion.

If everyone in the world tried to use bitcoin as a replacement for bank transfers, etc. then the fees would be astronomical

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