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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

#31

Post by Lukas_Skywalker »

gonzo41 wrote: post #21
pclmulqdq wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people still have no idea that a blockchain is 100% traceable. People get freaked out when you tell them the contents of their wallets.

The most sensible thing to do with blockchain is to track produce from when it's picked to when it's sold for QC. Every other use suggested, like voting, is just stupid trouble.

I always ask myself how the blockchain would work with physical products. Isn‘t there always a human who needs to either

- enter the data somewhere

- put a tag on the product

- scan a tag

and where they could, knowingly or not, produce false data?

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

#32

Post by AlexandrB »

gonzo41 wrote: post #21
pclmulqdq wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people still have no idea that a blockchain is 100% traceable. People get freaked out when you tell them the contents of their wallets.

The most sensible thing to do with blockchain is to track produce from when it's picked to when it's sold for QC. Every other use suggested, like voting, is just stupid trouble.

> 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.

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

#33

Post by tromp »

> Unfortunately, this aspect of his brilliant design was one of the first things to be undermined by subsequent blockchain operators. Many cryptocurrencies that have been created since are unlimited in supply, including some of the most heavily speculated ones like Solana, Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.

> This is worse than what the central banks have done.

No, it's not. Even a coin that is emitted one per second forever is disinflationary. Not only is the yearly supply inflation rate perfectly predictable (unlike fiat), it also steadily converges toward zero (again, unlike fiat). In the long term, the difference between finite and infinite supply is negligible as long as the yearly supply never increases [1].

[1] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...

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

#34

Post by z3c0 »

I found this article to be poorly-written and deliberately inflammatory. I'll gloss over the regular criticism of "stop conflating cryptocurrencies with blockchains".

It makes continual leaps from Satoshi Nakamoto's intentions to short-comings of non-BTC cryptocurrencies, and then snowballs this into the tremendously non-sequitur subheading Bitcoin has failed. Cryptocurrencies and DeFi platforms are now more vulnerable to privacy breaches and hacking than traditional banking.

Personally, all I see are a string of obvious scams collapsing. These scams were perpetrated by imposters pretending to be a part of a movement so that they could better tug on their victims' heartstrings. But I fail to see how the goals of these imposters should be conflated with the intentions of Satoshi Nakamoto, purely because the imposters bastardized Nakamoto's tech.

Also - the title is barely the subject of the article, but even if it were, I don't think that it, in any way, stands contrary to the goals of Bitcoin. I could see it being an issue for a blockchain meant for privacy, like Monero, but I didn't see any such reference in the article.

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

#35

Post by beauHD »

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 boots.

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

#36

Post by insanitybit »

AlexandrB wrote: post #32
gonzo41 wrote: post #21

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. Every other use suggested, like voting, is just stupid trouble.

> 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 also find it to be a confusing use case. The point of blockchain is that it's useful if you assume that some parties are malicious. Who are we protecting against in the produce supply chain?

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

#37

Post by rtkwe »

Lukas_Skywalker wrote: post #31
gonzo41 wrote: post #21

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. Every other use suggested, like voting, is just stupid trouble.

I always ask myself how the blockchain would work with physical products. Isn‘t there always a human who needs to either - enter the data somewhere - put a tag on the product - scan a tag and where they could, knowingly or not, produce false data?

Yeah this is the fundamental problem, the only benefit you get with a blockchain is you know the data hasn't been altered from the original but there's no guarantee the data originally entered was correct. All the pitches about tracking shipments have the same issue, shipping companies already do most of that without blockchain and the main issue of people lying to the computers isn't solved by adding a chain to the mix.

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

#38

Post by sodality2 »

t-3 wrote: post #29
aliqot wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some blockchains are 100% traceable.

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

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

#39

Post by lawn »

simonh wrote: post #17
RektBoy wrote: post #9

Water is wet, whoaaaa Cpt.Obvious

Well yes, but we still get people regularly claiming here that anonymity is one of the great benefits of crypto, so there are a lot of people out there that still need to find this out.

There's crypto and then there's crypto. Monero and Bitcoin both use a blockchain, but with entirely different traceability and anonymity properties.

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

#40

Post by convery »

insanitybit wrote: post #11
superkuh wrote: post #8

Yeah, it's entirely built on the idea that every transaction is known by everyone. I think Lance is a bit confused. Maybe he should look into Monero. The point of Bitcoin is to enable anyone to exchange value with anyone. And it does that very well. When the US justice department declared that credit card companies had to stop processing donations to wikileaks I could still donate through bitcoin.

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".

The "without telling who the parties are" is more about non-personal identifiers. Similar to how knowing your IP address doesn't really identify you by itself, you need to go through (often several levels of) other parties to get that info. Which in addition is ephemeral, others will be assigned your IP and tracing which requests were made by you vs. someone else is a lot harder than tracing a credit-card.
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