The IRS offers reward to anyone able to break Monero and the LN

[nutildah]

Reward is $625,000? Wouldn't you make lot's of more money if you shorted monero with all the possible leverage right before giving the info? I mean it wouldn't be ethical but one could argue that breaking monero and giving the info to IRS is not ethical either. Or would that be considered insider trading?

Certainly you do both! Its not considered insider trading if its not a registered security.



Well, the reward collecting is going to be a public ceremony I would imagine -- news of your newly-discovered Monero vulnerability will break before you have the chance to plunge your reward money into a highly-leveraged short. So you'll have to borrow funds, which wouldn't be as easy. But you can still use your reward money to capitalize on the fallout -- it would likely take a long time for the price of XMR to completely unwind.

It would honestly be more practical to build something that monitors all Lightning Network transactions to trace where funds are going. But I have some drinking to do, so you guys have at it.

[leea-1334]

Well, the reward collecting is going to be a public ceremony I would imagine -- news of your newly-discovered Monero vulnerability will break before you have the chance to plunge your reward money into a highly-leveraged short. So you'll have to borrow funds, which wouldn't be as easy. But you can still use your reward money to capitalize on the fallout -- it would likely take a long time for the price of XMR to completely unwind.

It would honestly be more practical to build something that monitors all Lightning Network transactions to trace where funds are going. But I have some drinking to do, so you guys have at it.

I highly doubt that programmers and coders capable of breaking the code would even be interested in such a move,,, these types of people have a very different motivation and the fame is going to earn them millions down the road with a great job and advisory role;)

But if they did, they would of course involve a friend and third party to do that market manipulation.

Great for us XMR holders because we know it will not be broken. Free advertising;)

[20kevin20]

~

If they're able to "crack the code", even with a fork or a quick fix, they'd already have enough information from the past to link addresses to identities and intrude our privacy. Quite ironic how the agencies we pay intrude our own private life and come up with silly excuses for it.

The future regulations coming to Europe will probably include at least a partial crypto ban - or restrictive use - for privacy coins. I really expect them to take some kind of action against the stuff they fear.

[SquallLeonhart]

It is a bit of insider trading but also it is not regulated so I am not sure if you could do it without any problems at all, if you are stealing from the wrong people you will be in trouble, lets say you manage to crack IRS's Monero wallet and get all their money (not that they have one, just an example) you would be prosecuted and probably found guilty, or maybe you cracked the code on some drug dealer and took all his money, what is he going to do, sue you? So, it probably depends on whose money you stole (much like dollars too).

However the fact that if you could hack into any wallet or anything you would probably make more money with that over letting IRS know how you did it, why notify them when you could make money directly from the source, plus if you do it big enough IRS would know about it and not pay you anymore since its already hacked.

[chikator]

All the government really wants is to control all things evident of all the surveillance theyve been doing on everyone on the internet. The thought of something going under tge radar scares them and rightfully so. The power of the government is to control its people, without that itll fall apart.

[cryptomaniac_xxx]

Actually the reward is offered to two companies,



https://beta.sam.gov/opp/5ab94eae1a8d422e88945b64181c6018/view

Now it's a waiting game, let's see if they are true to their promise that it can be delivered in less than a year.

[Abiky]

Actually the reward is offered to two companies,



https://beta.sam.gov/opp/5ab94eae1a8d422e88945b64181c6018/view

Now it's a waiting game, let's see if they are true to their promise that it can be delivered in less than a year.

This is very bad news. Monero's privacy is now put at risk as a result of the contract between the aforementioned analytics companies and the government. Developers must strengthen privacy techniques on the XMR blockchain if they want to maintain Monero as a privacy coin. As far as the Lightning Network goes, I wouldn't worry much about it since the network is not heavily used in the mainstream world yet. But if developers are planning to make people use Bitcoin's Layer-Two scalable solution for micropayments, they'd need to improve privacy on the LN as soon as possible. Right now, it's survival of the fittest. I doubt these companies will expose Monero and the LN's flaws/vulnerabilities to the community. If they did, the community will render its efforts in vain.

If Monero and The Lightning Network continues to be compromised by companies like Chainalysis and Integra FEC, then we're going to have to migrate to other privacy coins like Grin and Beam. Zcash is not an option as it's said the same has a backdoor implemented by the cryptocurrency's own developing company (Electric Coin Company). Besides this, Zcash's requirement of trusted setup is not ideal for full-fledged privacy. If the IRS successfully manages to hire these same companies to crackdown other privacy coins as well, then the whole crypto industry will be doomed. I hope I'm wrong and crypto emerges victorious in the long run. Just my opinion