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A comment on Former FBI Director Said Blockchain Is Easier to Trace Than Paper Money. Parent comment

Re:Former FBI Director Said Blockchain Is Easier to Trace Th... by nimbius on Monday October 17, 2022 @10:14AM (#33233767)
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 its been two years...so i suspect Grigg's releasing this presser to take some of the heat off the inevitable "no, we cant" he's going to need to admit sooner or later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monero#Efforts_to_trace_transa...

Updated to reflect the thousands, not mil. bounty.

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Re:Former FBI Director Said Blockchain Is Easier to Trace Th... by woodruffw on Monday October 17, 2022 @10:15AM (#33233779)
$625,000, not million.
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Re:Former FBI Director Said Blockchain Is Easier to Trace Th... by cowtools on Monday October 17, 2022 @10:47AM (#33234219)
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.

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Re:Former FBI Director Said Blockchain Is Easier to Trace Th... by tromp on Monday October 17, 2022 @11:10AM (#33234562)
> limitation to all sender-obfuscating cryptocurrencies

Only those that allow sending coins to recipients without their explicit approval. On pure Mimblewimble blockchains, the recipient must sign for receipt and is much less likely to accept poisoned funds.

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Re:Former FBI Director Said Blockchain Is Easier to Trace Th... by cowtools on Monday October 17, 2022 @11:27AM (#33234873)
It's irrelevant
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Re:Former FBI Director Said Blockchain Is Easier to Trace Th... by sneed-oil on Monday October 17, 2022 @12:17PM (#33235717)
Sorry, I didn't watch the video, but couldn't that be avoided by churning a few times?
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Re:Former FBI Director Said Blockchain Is Easier to Trace Th... by cowtools on Monday October 17, 2022 @12:45PM (#33236161)
Sort of, but not really. It is a very nuanced probabalistic attack. The problem is fundamentally that you need others to use your outputs as decoys in order to have plausible deniability.
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Re:Former FBI Director Said Blockchain Is Easier to Trace Th... by dimitrios1 on Monday October 17, 2022 @10:59AM (#33234414)
Call me skeptical of any assumed ill intentions as $625,000 is not a big enough chunk of change to convince me that there is some form of grift going on here, as there's millions to be made elsewhere grifting crypto.
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Re:Former FBI Director Said Blockchain Is Easier to Trace Th... by sidlls on Monday October 17, 2022 @11:19AM (#33234719)
$625k seems like a lot but in the world of government contracting it’s often not. It may be motivating this, but I’m kinda skeptical.
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Re:Former FBI Director Said Blockchain Is Easier to Trace Th... by krferriter on Monday October 17, 2022 @12:41PM (#33236101)
Yeah $625K across two years is just like 3 developers in NYC. It's not a lot of money.
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Re:Former FBI Director Said Blockchain Is Easier to Trace Th... by LanceH on Monday October 17, 2022 @12:44PM (#33236138)
In government contracting, $625k is more like one whitepaper.
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