Blockchain Analytics is More of an Art Than Science

[LeGaulois]

Blockchain Analytics is More of an Art Than Science

I am not saying their software is so wrong, but knowing there are false positives, it can be very dangerous.
Even if the false positive rate is only about lets say 0.1%, considering the millions address/transactions being tracked, it can make a lot of dammages.
In example: ""led to unjustified account restrictions and – even worse – land unsuspecting individuals on the radar of law enforcement agencies without probable cause.""

- Hello Chainalysis,
Do you know if your software is accurate?

- I have no scientific evidence for the accuracy.

- Really?

- Really, but clients say so

- Clients, you mean governments lying depending on their agenda?

- Yes

Chainalysis' head of investigations doesn't seem to have a great understanding of whether her company's flagship software even works.

Ekeland said Chainalysis’ Reactor is “a black box algorithm” that “relies on junk science.”

Coindesk, the woke media, didn't like the article talking bad about Chainalysis and decided to remove it
Chainalysis>>>Coindesk>>>DigitalCurrencyGroup
so here it is
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/chainalysis-investigations-lead-is-unaware-of-scientific-evidence
You may be interested in Blockchain Analytics is More of an Art Than Science

[1715298872]

1715298872

[1715298872]

1715298872

[Accardo]

Such softwares used for tracing addresses only instigate stress on a victim that got scammed or lost their coin. A scam victim, who wants to track the address where he/she sent a transaction, needs to bring evidences; chats, photos and money to the agency that claim to trace blockchain transactions. Most victims end up losing more money added to the lost money. Its existence also gave birth to fraudulent agencies claiming to retrieve lost coins or tracking a scammer; with the slogan, a person that fell for scam can easily fall again. The results always appear differently based on the software used to track an address. If the software can't retrieve the lost coin, why depend on unrealistic results, in the name of tracing a person who may not be behind the crime or scam?

[LeGaulois]

You're wrong.

Such companies track more than what you may think and not only to help an individual ripped off.
It's called data mining. They collect millions stuff.
Big companies like Bitstamp , etoro, and other CEXs are using it. So what do you think they're doing. CEXs provide them a lot of information about their customers trading on their platform.

It's not so different than a data broker.

data mining is such a powerfull industry, people do not realize what can be done with it... against them...

[Adbitco]

Such softwares used for tracing addresses only instigate stress on a victim that got scammed or lost their coin. A scam victim, who wants to track the address where he/she sent a transaction, needs to bring evidences; chats, photos and money to the agency that claim to trace blockchain transactions. Most victims end up losing more money added to the lost money. Its existence also gave birth to fraudulent agencies claiming to retrieve lost coins or tracking a scammer; with the slogan, a person that fell for scam can easily fall again. The results always appear differently based on the software used to track an address. If the software can't retrieve the lost coin, why depend on unrealistic results, in the name of tracing a person who may not be behind the crime or scam?

Why then the software is implemented?
There's no usefulness of that software since it can't retrieve back also lost coin, as I believe that there are two things possible..
A lost coin may either go an active wallet or a dead wallet (inactive) whereby any transaction that occurs between these wallet address can be seen but can't be touched since those addresses doesn't bear bearer names on them and it could be only possible if they sent to exchange address. For Instance, if lost is mistakenly sent to exchange address at this point it's possible to contact the exchange about the funds that was mistakenly sent at this point their software is valuable but doesn't guaranteed a total dependency.

[hatshepsut93]

Has there been any cases of someone getting convicted with Chainanalysis being the only evidence? Because I think Chainanalysis mostly only helps law enforcement to reinforce the case and lead to stronger evidence, like the illegal goods, laundered money etc.

This is a big deal considering Chainalysis' surveillance tools are used widely across the industry for compliance, and have at times led to unjustified account restrictions and – even worse – land unsuspecting individuals on the radar of law enforcement agencies without probable cause.

Private entities have right to reject their customers for whatever reason they want, including Chainanalysis saying that the coins are dirty. That's how capitalism works. You can try to change their mind and tell them how its unscientific, but in the end it's their decision, and you have a freedom to be or not to be their customer.

[franky1]

data is only as good as the source

chain-analysis gathers data. but it can only go on the data it gathers. nothing is suggested that the data it gets is correct.
for instance someone could easily scam an exchange using false ID. meaning the exchange registers a withdrawal address as belonging to a false ID victim. so while the scammer is shuffling funds. the ID theft victim becomes the suspect when data is passed from an exchange to chain-analysis.

it is then for the victim/suspect to prove innocence in court. and not chain-analysis to appear in court to prove the victims innocence/exonerate the victim.

Private entities have right to reject their customers for whatever reason they want, including Chainanalysis saying that the coins are dirty. That's how capitalism works. You can try to change their mind and tell them how its unscientific, but in the end it's their decision, and you have a freedom to be or not to be their customer.

very true alot of people think using a service is a "right" when its not. businesses can ban users for any reason. but that business has to allow the customer to leave with their property(for the unwarranted reason). only a court order would allow a business to withhold a customers property. so only if a customer is deemed as doing something suspicious, where the service reports suspicion to the authorities and the authorities then investigate and deem it enough evidence to get a court order to then allow a service to seize funds.
without court order a business can just ban/suspend the customers use of service and offer a withdrawal/refund procedure to exit the service and not return, for even lame reasons like deeming funds are dirty but not evidentially dirty enough to suspect a crime by the customer themselves

[Don Pedro Dinero]

Blockchain Analytics is More of an Art Than Science

I am not saying their software is so wrong, but knowing there are false positives, it can be very dangerous.
Even if the false positive rate is only about lets say 0.1%, considering the millions address/transactions being tracked, it can make a lot of dammages.

This is interesting as I was not aware of this aspect. I thought that blockchain analytics gave results similar to mathematical certainty, not probabilistic certainty, even if it is 99.9% certainty, which leaves that margin of error down to the 0.1% point.

It seems that the error could be even higher, according to the first article.

Chainalysis' head of investigations doesn't seem to have a great understanding of whether her company's flagship software even works.

Elizabeth Bisbee, head of investigations at Chainalysis Government Solutions, testified she was “unaware” of scientific evidence for the accuracy of Chainalysis’ Reactor software used by law enforcement, an unreleased transcript of a June 23 hearing shows.

Has there been any cases of someone getting convicted with Chainanalysis being the only evidence? Because I think Chainanalysis mostly only helps law enforcement to reinforce the case and lead to stronger evidence, like the illegal goods, laundered money etc.

This is how I think it should be but we are not talking about condemning alone, we are talking about targeting and passing restrictions, like blacklisting a number of addresses accordingly.

[nutildah]

From the article:

For Chainalysis' part, the company noted in a July 18 court declaration there is no doubt about the Reactor software's findings. Although not "peer reviewed" in an academic sense, the company's clustering heuristic, the algorithm used to find relationships between blockchain addresses, comes to "deterministic" conclusions that can be independently verified and reproduced.

The difference between what Chainalysis does and what armchair blockchain analysts do is that the results they submit to clients are designed to hold up in court. They are constructed to withstand the scrutiny of any cross-examination.

The US government wouldn't go forward presenting a case if it relied upon analysis that had a chance of containing false positives, as any competent defense attorney could use this "shadow of a doubt" to get the case dismissed or ruled in their favor (meaning it would have been a waste of resources, which believe it or not, is still frowned upon by many departments of the federal government).

There is indeed an "art" to it but it lies in knowing what data or conclusions are relevant to the particular case in hand.

[Poker Player]

There is indeed an "art" to it but it lies in knowing what data or conclusions are relevant to the particular case in hand.

I take this as a very qualified opinion on the subject.

[NotATether]

I am not saying their software is so wrong, but knowing there are false positives, it can be very dangerous.
Even if the false positive rate is only about lets say 0.1%, considering the millions address/transactions being tracked, it can make a lot of dammages.

It's more similar to AI actually, which also has false positives and negatives because it's a large data-driven guessing game.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if machine learning is what is being used to power these blockchain analytics services.

This is interesting as I was not aware of this aspect. I thought that blockchain analytics gave results similar to mathematical certainty, not probabilistic certainty, even if it is 99.9% certainty, which leaves that margin of error down to the 0.1% point.

Nope not at all. The only way you can be certainly sure is if the address is posted on somebody's social media page as an "ownership" or if its attached to KYC documents.

[o_e_l_e_o]

As I've said before, blockchain analysis is based on guesswork.

Bitcoin, by design, is fungible. As soon as a transaction has more than one output, it is impossible to say which bitcoin ended up where. It cannot be done. Everyone who claims to be able to do it is guessing, lying, or both. All blockchain analysis companies, all centralized exchanges, and now Wasabi too (which is particularly hilarious considering they base their whole existence on coinjoins). They have made up a system based on guesswork, and have successfully marketed it for their own profit to large parts of this space as some infallible law. It is not, and the only way to get rid of it is for the community to agree to shun companies and entities which support and enforce this made up nonsense.

As soon as a transaction has been made, it is impossible to say that those coins haven't changed hands. As soon as a transaction has more than out output, it is impossible to say which bitcoin ended up where (and indeed, "which" bitcoin doesn't even exist at a protocol level). It is trivially easily to fool many of the heuristics blockchain analysis uses, such as script type matching to identify the change output, or inputs being spent together to identify co-ownership. And not just to fool them as in "they can't draw any conclusions", but to fool them as in "they actively draw the incorrect conclusion". And of course one incorrect conclusion leads them to build more and more incorrect conclusions on top, building an entire chain of nonsense which they then pass off as irrefutable fact.

I've said for a long time that blockchain analysis is provable nonsense with no scientific basis. It seems even the directors of blockchain analysis companies agree with that. But of course they will continue to peddle their nonsense to centralized exchanges and governments alike because it pays handsomely to do so.


I did a small experiment some time ago regarding blockchain analysis: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5395035.msg59905002#msg59905002

One particular piece of blockchain analysis software put a significant amount of coins in the wallet of various centralized exchanges in one of the categories of scams, hacks, or blacklists. Obviously the blockchain analysis software being used by these exchanges did not classify these coins in this manner, otherwise they wouldn't have accepted those coins. The fact that two different pieces of software can come to completely different conclusions about the exact same coins should be more than enough to tell you that blockchain analysis is made up trash.

One of the core principles of any piece of science is that its results are repeatable and independently verifiable. If I come up with a process to say, isolate gold from an alloy, then I publish my methods and other people perform the same steps, end up with the same results, and verify my process works. If I come up with a process to say some coins are tainted, and other people do the same thing and end up with completely different results, then my process is bullshit.

[ABCbits]

Instead, Chainalysis reportedly judges its software’s accuracy using customer feedback, she said.

This is ridiculous. Customer usually expect or assume analysis would be accurate enough. In addition, on some cases customer have no way to verify whether the analysis result is accurate or not. I hope more people switch to wallet with better privacy feature to make their analysis become even less useful than now.

Such softwares used for tracing addresses only instigate stress on a victim that got scammed or lost their coin.

It's not the only reason to use blockchain analytic service though. For example, many such service claim their service is useful to help comply with law.

[franky1]

the data which different transaction analysis sites produce is solely based on the credibility of the data provided to them..
for instance chain-analysis is sister companies of several dozen exchanges and services. so they share data about their customers.
this means if they have a customer on exchange A with email X and exchange B with the same email X. they can then try to find coin spend linkages

some crap analysis sites just do taint analysis without CEX/service customer data. so the results are subjective to the data they are given

[DaveF]

I'm just about 100% sure the 3 letter agencies of the US government have a lot better accuracy in determining what coins belong to who and where they go.
Companies like Chainalysis are guessing at best. BUT and this is the big BUT if the companies that USE their service are happy and pay on time that is all that Chainalysis (and the others like it) care about.

It gives them the ability to tell regulators that they did their job the best they could in making sure they did not take any funds in from people or places they should not have.

That's it, over and out. Do you really think that ANY company wants to spend money on a product or service that they did not have to? It's just checking off the box that says we did what we had to do.

-Dave

[Lucius]

I'm just about 100% sure the 3 letter agencies of the US government have a lot better accuracy in determining what coins belong to who and where they go.

We can be sure of that, given that they have been working on it for at least 10 years, and this was confirmed by someone who had an insight into all that. If we look at the actual volume of their work, which included time, money and specific knowledge, then it is clear how much of a priority this issue was for them.

Companies like Chainalysis are guessing at best. BUT and this is the big BUT if the companies that USE their service are happy and pay on time that is all that Chainalysis (and the others like it) care about.
~snip~

Guessing pays very well today, and that's why many people started to engage in this business. It is obvious that all the companies that pay for their services need some kind of justification for the purpose of disclaimer in order to fight against money laundering and of course the state's enemy number 1 - terrorism.

This is the situation when someone says "based on the collected data, we did not think that we should take any actions to prevent...", and I guess that's exactly what such companies are for.

[hatshepsut93]

very true alot of people think using a service is a "right" when its not. businesses can ban users for any reason. but that business has to allow the customer to leave with their property(for the unwarranted reason).

When a user opens an account, they enter a user agreement. If the user agreement says that the service can freeze the account and seize funds, then there's no violation of law. If the rules don't mention such cases, then the users should be able to take their money. But most of the time the rules are very detailed and cover all potential cases.

People need to read what they sign.

[Faisal2202]

Such companies track more than what you may think and not only to help an individual ripped off.
It's called data mining. They collect millions stuff.
Big companies like Bitstamp , etoro, and other CEXs are using it. So what do you think they're doing. CEXs provide them a lot of information about their customers trading on their platform.

It's not so different than a data broker.

data mining is such a powerfull industry, people do not realize what can be done with it... against them...

You are totally right; I might not be new to the cryptosphere, but I was new to the use of data and how valuable it is when I started to read about IOT. Because in IOT we value data and read how important it is to make decisions, increase sales, and send proposals to someone who is in need. It's like when your bank balance is low, and then you get to receive some messages from many lenders and other platforms that provide some type of insurance or loan that could help you out when you are broke.

The thing is, once they know you have no money or have money, they will start to advertise their services and products accordingly just to lure you into becoming their customer.

PS: Is it possible that the investigator who knows nothing is just a human error from her side while the system does have a lot of ongoing in that context? Just asking.

[franky1]

very true alot of people think using a service is a "right" when its not. businesses can ban users for any reason. but that business has to allow the customer to leave with their property(for the unwarranted reason).

When a user opens an account, they enter a user agreement. If the user agreement says that the service can freeze the account and seize funds, then there's no violation of law. If the rules don't mention such cases, then the users should be able to take their money. But most of the time the rules are very detailed and cover all potential cases.

People need to read what they sign.

business policy does not trump law.
a unregulated shady boiler room scam service could put bad terms into agreements to try to make scammed customers not chase their funds.. but a regulated exchange has to follow the regulations and cannot seize funds arbitrarily without a court order.

sometimes although no one likes regulations. its worth reading them. even if its to learn the limits of their powers and thresholds of authority

as for the unregulated scammy shady exchanges.. well the risk is on the customer obviously which is why its best in regulated and unregulated to never leave funds in an exchange eitherway for many reasons, but more so when it comes to unregulated exchanges as you have less legal protections and defenses and less methods to pursue recompense

my common rule is this: if you cant physically find someone your handing funds to, to slap them with a wet fish should they wrong you. dont hand funds to them in the first place

[Latviand]

When a user opens an account, they enter a user agreement. If the user agreement says that the service can freeze the account and seize funds, then there's no violation of law. If the rules don't mention such cases, then the users should be able to take their money. But most of the time the rules are very detailed and cover all potential cases.

People need to read what they sign.

If people start reading the terms and conditions before signing up on something, the faster we can point out terms that we all agree isn't agreeable towards the consumers. As much as I agree that the services aren't at fault when they do something to the account because it's in their "terms and conditions", we have to also call out those services that put unfair terms and conditions just to use their service, both sides should experience some change.

[satscraper]

Blockchain Analytics is More of an Art Than Science

I am not saying their software is so wrong, but knowing there are false positives, it can be very dangerous.

That is why when building transaction one should operate on the base they know  all his addresses. There is a nice guide ( divided into four sections ^{[1] , [2],[3] and[4]}. )which sheds light  on heuristic used by those software. Thus, knowing that heuristic one can develop his own strategy against chainanalysis' clustering technique.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::   ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::  ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
[1]. Understanding Bitcoin Privacy with OXT — Part 1/4
[2]. Understanding Bitcoin Privacy with OXT — Part 2/4
[3]. Understanding Bitcoin Privacy with OXT — Part 3/4
[4]. Understanding Bitcoin Privacy with OXT — Part 4/4

[LeGaulois]

Concretely, how the inacuracy is with Chainalysis:

An example with the old mixer Bitcoin Fog

CipherTrace has found a discrepancy in accuracy of about 64% for the behavioral clustering heuristic

Now let's compare:

As opposed to behavioral clustering, FindNext heuristics are able to produce false discovery rates of only 0.62% and 0.02%, respectively.

Hold on,

a non-exhaustive list of errors in Bisbee’s expert report, such as the use of bits instead of bytes leading to incorrect mathematical assumptions as well as multiple apparent incorrect identifications of change addresses. The report further highlights the missing of a number of script types, such as P2PK, P2MS, P2WSH, or P2TR and the incorrect statement that “a SegWit address begins with 3”, which also identifies P2SH addresses

Conclusion:

“The blockchain forensics and tracing tools used in this case were misused to erroneously conclude that Mr. Sterlingov was the operator of Bitcoin Fog when no such evidence exists on-chain.”

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/chainalysis-the-theranos-of-blockchain-forensics

So you could be thrown into court with false accusations against you. And they will say "the investigation says it's you"
Oh great finding
Imagine what a government can do if you are a target for them An example with Julian Assange

[o_e_l_e_o]

Absolutely unbelievable some of the revelations made in this document. (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.232431/gov.uscourts.dcd.232431.159.1.pdf)

First look at Bisbee's report. Bear in mind that this a report from the head of investigations at Chainalysis:

The table states that P2SH is “a SegWit address that begins with 3”. That is false.

The table uses the wrong unit of data when referring to compressed and uncompressed keys. The table uses bits instead of bytes.

The report states that “The first known Bitcoin Fog transaction where the change is a P2SH-WPKH Segwit address in block 534129: 9a7e1cdb9f68573eaf64ba4f8908ebf05aee932124 6188c1c746a297e8821ffb”. Reviewing this transaction, reveals there is no witness data and no addresses participating in this transaction that are SegWit enabled.

If RF means RBF, (Replace-by-Fee), then it is important to note that a majority of transactions in the report would never have been able to utilize RBF as it was not present in Bitcoin Core until Bitcoin Core v0.12 which was released November 1st, 2016.

This is a catalogue of incredibly basic errors. These are the kinds of questions which would be asked by newbies on this forum and would be followed by 10 replies within the hour correcting them. This is from the head of investigations, and there is no chance her report was not proof read by a handful of other people in Chainalysis too. How utterly embarrassing for Chainalysis. They have absolutely no idea about the very basics of the thing the claim to be able to track.

And then look at some of the other assumptions that they have made:

The Government uses this IP address to attribute ownership and control of the Mt. Gox accounts #2 and #3 to Mr. Sterlingov. However, this IP address appears to be a VPN, or a proxy server. That is, any number of entities or persons from anywhere in the world could be using this IP address at any one time.

VPNs/Tor, how they hell to they work?

The discovery produced by the Government contains a spreadsheet authored by IRS-CI Devon Beckett, last updated on August 8, 2016. In it, he appears to refer to Chainalysis manipulating the data in this case because it did not fit in to the Government’s preconceived notions.

How very fair and unbiased. Decide their conclusion, then manipulate the data to fit it.

Mr. Sterlingov’s withdrawal pattern from Bitcoin Fog is entirely consistent with user withdrawals; this is corroborated by the Search Warrant Affidavit signed by IRS-CI Special Agent Leo Rovensky “These withdrawals occurred sporadically and in the same manner as a regular user.” The affidavit goes on to make a leap of logic stating that the likely reason Mr. Sterlingov’s withdrawals match other user withdrawals is that he was trying to obfuscate his ownership.

If your pattern of use is completely average and similar to everyone else's pattern of use, the only explanation is that you are doing it deliberately to obfuscate things, and not, you know, that you are just an average user. What a wild assumption.

An incredible collection of incompetence and ignorance. What a tragedy that so much of this space revolves around the complete hogwash that these scam merchants peddle to governments and centralized exchanges.

[kryptqnick]

There are various things that sort of work somehow but aren't fully understood by people. One of them is GPT, as far as I know. Some things are understood by the developers, but a lot is like a black box situation, there's no deep understanding on how exactly something picks up patterns that it does, how it acts based on those patterns, etc. But that's kind of okay because linguistic models are known to be faulty, it's common knowledge they should be used with caution and should not be entrusted with decision-making. Blockchain analytics is a different thing if it can be used as evidence in court or affect major decisions on official policies.
I hope that some sort of research can be conducted to assess how often it makes mistakes and what kind of mistakes. For example, fingerprints are largely accurate but not 100%, and some people have been wrongfully convicted because of that. But there's research assessing the percentage of false positive cases, which is around 0.1%. Of course, if there's a chance of mistake, even a small one, I do think that it should mean that a person can't be convicted based on that evidence alone, but if Blockchain analysis actually have a much larger margin of error or if it's impossible to estimate it, it shouldn't be allowed to be used as evidence at all.

[Spaceman1000$]

Blockchain Analytics is More of an Art Than Science

I am not saying their software is so wrong, but knowing there are false positives, it can be very dangerous.
Even if the false positive rate is only about lets say 0.1%, considering the millions address/transactions being tracked, it can make a lot of dammages.
In example: ""led to unjustified account restrictions and – even worse – land unsuspecting individuals on the radar of law enforcement agencies without probable cause.""

- Hello Chainalysis,
Do you know if your software is accurate?

- I have no scientific evidence for the accuracy.

- Really?

- Really, but clients say so

- Clients, you mean governments lying depending on their agenda?

- Yes

Chainalysis' head of investigations doesn't seem to have a great understanding of whether her company's flagship software even works.

Ekeland said Chainalysis’ Reactor is “a black box algorithm” that “relies on junk science.”

Coindesk, the woke media, didn't like the article talking bad about Chainalysis and decided to remove it
Chainalysis>>>Coindesk>>>DigitalCurrencyGroup
so here it is
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/chainalysis-investigations-lead-is-unaware-of-scientific-evidence
You may be interested in Blockchain Analytics is More of an Art Than Science

Going by the article, there are something's I find even offensive, where is been quoted that Elizabeth Bisbee, the head of chainalysis investigations  doesn't seem to have a great understanding of whether her company's flagship software even works.
That's an indictment already on the company, especially considering the fact it is been said that people financial privacy are been violated.
This are serious red flags. Because user's are already given a negative feedback.

[FanEagle]

I think it is more about who the customer is. If we are talking about governments, they will not give you a problem to solve, they will give you what solution they want, and you to work your way back from that to find the problem they want to find. So that means it is not going to be that easy to do it, and there will be a lot of people who are not certain about it as well. I know that it is not that simple but it could be done and I think it would be a smart decision to not say no to a government.

What do you expect these companies to do, to go out there and end up saying no to government and risk their entire business? They would bankrupt in a moment as soon as government starts attacking them for not doing what they want them to do.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Blockchain analysis companies are the practice of "being guilty until proven innocent". Living under a state which can put me behind the bars because I might be involved with some activity, with absolutely no scientific evidence is totalitarian. Literally everyone in the blockchain is potentially involved in some illegal activity.

But it's just genius. They've convinced the world that it's needed. A weapon to intrude into people's liberty and having them voluntarily handing it over is just the ultimate weapon.

[panganib999]

Such softwares used for tracing addresses only instigate stress on a victim that got scammed or lost their coin. A scam victim, who wants to track the address where he/she sent a transaction, needs to bring evidences; chats, photos and money to the agency that claim to trace blockchain transactions. Most victims end up losing more money added to the lost money. Its existence also gave birth to fraudulent agencies claiming to retrieve lost coins or tracking a scammer; with the slogan, a person that fell for scam can easily fall again. The results always appear differently based on the software used to track an address. If the software can't retrieve the lost coin, why depend on unrealistic results, in the name of tracing a person who may not be behind the crime or scam?

So what are we proposing the victims do should they experience hackings and scammings? Scoff it off and just move on? What if it's massive amounts of money we're talking about, like money that could pay off a mortgage or something, do we still tell them to man up and move on since "they're more likely to spend more money looking for the hacker and the money that was stolen from them rather than just moving on and working to earn that money back? Isn't that a little defeatist and at best even promotive of the heinous acts these hackers do on the daily?

Just cause our current system's crap doesn't mean we can't have people who deserve it be given the access to it, sure there are false positives and all that, but at the end of the day the more we use it the more propensity for improvement. If we keep throwing crap at it without giving it a spin first, how will we get to the point that we're eager to achieve?

[o_e_l_e_o]

What do you expect these companies to do

Not exist in the first place!

They obviously aren't going to say no to governments because governments are their biggest customer. They exist precisely for governments, so they can present made up findings filled with inaccuracies as the "evidence" the government wants to prosecute individuals they've decided they want to prosecute, regardless of any actual guilt or wrongdoing.

What should really happen is that blockchain analysis companies go bust and disappear. If we all stopped using centralized exchanges and used bitcoin properly peer to peer as it was designed, that removes a big chunk of their cash flow. And now we need to fight back in courts and prove as we've seen above that their entire analyses are so flawed that no one should take them seriously for any purpose, certainly not for a criminal trial.

If we keep throwing crap at it without giving it a spin first, how will we get to the point that we're eager to achieve?

The point we want to achieve is for everyone to realize blockchain analysis is provably nonsense.

[Kakmakr]

It would be interesting to know how Chainalysis acquire accurate data that has gone through Mixer services? I can understand that data mining can be very accurate, if they were only dealing with unscrambled inputs and outputs from the Blockchain, but what happens after those tokens go through a Mixer service?

Yes, it is possible to mine through data that were recovered after a Mixer service were shutdown... and if they kept logs, but what happens if you push it through active Mixer services that does not keep any logs? 

[o_e_l_e_o]

It would be interesting to know how Chainalysis acquire accurate data that has gone through Mixer services?

As with everything else they do - they guess. Their guesses may or may not be accurate, depending on the service used to mix the coins. There are good mixers and bad mixers, Chainalysis have demixed Wasabi coinjoins in the past (which is how the DAO Ethereum hacker was identified), people can leak data via external methods such as browser fingerprints or IP addresses, and so on. Chainalysis are never going to willingly reveal their methods, because then they become easier to defend against.

But as we've seen in this thread the government don't seem to care about accuracy at all, and only care about being given "data" which fits their preconceived conclusions.

[LeGaulois]

Howdy people

The story continues. Let's have more fun about Chainalysis

CHAINALYSIS DENOUNCES BITCOIN CORE CONTRIBUTOR AS “UNQUALIFIED”

Chainalysis attempts to render Bitcoin Core contributor Bryan Bishop as “unqualified” to audit Chainalysis’ source code as the surveillance firm’s own experts stumble cluelessly around the blockchain.

With the justice case US vs. Sterlingov (the mixer Bitcoin Fog), since their software is not accurate, the defense requested the Chainalysis’ source code to be audited.
They don't like this idea! Guess why? It's going to put their business at risk.

So their point is to say Bishop is not qualified. Bishop, who
- is a Bitcoin Core contributor,
- has participated in discussions on
. elliptic curve cryptography,
. ECDSA signature schemes,
. Schnorr signature schemes,
. BLS signature schemes,
. signature aggregation schemes,
. post-quantum cryptography,
. quantum mining,
. scrypt password hashing""

it's like saying your dentist isn't qualified to treat your toothache.

Lol.

Yes LOL

Extreme bio hacker


https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59988850/185/united-states-v-sterlingov/

[o_e_l_e_o]

Lol.

They first refused to allow Laurent Salat to audit the code, simultaneously claiming that he was not a qualified expert, but then also claiming that he would steal their source code for OXT, which he runs. Amazing that he is both unqualified and too qualified at the same time.

Now they claim that a literal Bitcoin Core contributor is unqualified? The same people who as we saw earlier in this thread don't understand the different between legacy and segwit addresses and don't even understand the difference between bits and bytes are in no place to pass judgement on anyone, least of all a Bitcoin contributor. They are absolutely desperate that no one sees their code, and learns just how unscientific and deeply flawed it is.

Blockchain analysis is a scam.

[SamReomo]

You're wrong.

Such companies track more than what you may think and not only to help an individual ripped off.
It's called data mining. They collect millions stuff.
Big companies like Bitstamp , etoro, and other CEXs are using it. So what do you think they're doing. CEXs provide them a lot of information about their customers trading on their platform.

It's not so different than a data broker.

data mining is such a powerfull industry, people do not realize what can be done with it... against them...

I agree with you and truly those companies can track a lot of things that we can't even imagine. They have internal links with many of the centralized bodies and large companies also provide details to them because they may get incentivize later on when cases are solved. Most of the Centralized exchanges willingly share data of the customers with them when any of the hacked coins are transferred into the wallets of those exchanges. That's also a way for them to gather data about the criminals who have committed the crime.

But, I still believe that sometimes the innocent ones can be caught due to the fraud of someone else. The criminals can sell those coins privately to the victims and some less-knowledgeable victims can purchase those coins for cheaper and send them their exchange's hot wallet address to receive to coins. Although those victims are innocent but those companies don't really care much about their innocence and action against them to show off their tracing skills. They may

Those type of companies are known for link building with other companies and thus centralized exchanges and all those other companies willingly provide information about customers and users to the companies like Chainalysis. I may be wrong but I think that governmental agencies also help those companies privately because those type of tracing companies can help to find the criminals and later on those agencies may seize the stolen coins from the victims.

Well, we really don't know their methods in details and they will never share their research details in public, and that's why I also believe that their data gathering can go wrong sometimes and innocent people may face wrong allegations because of the wrong practices of the companies like that. Sometimes they are so concerned about data mining that they forget that innocent people can also face tough times because of the mastermind criminals. Some criminals take ID card and other details of the innocent people and may register face accounts on their name and complete the KYC verification of the sites. In that case they will consider the victim as responsible for the crime not the mastermind criminals who used those innocents victims details to save himself from the crime that he has done.

[nutildah]

What do you expect these companies to do

Not exist in the first place!

...

What should really happen is that blockchain analysis companies go bust and disappear. If we all stopped using centralized exchanges and used bitcoin properly peer to peer as it was designed, that removes a big chunk of their cash flow...

But these aren't very realistic outcomes in real life. If Chainalysis were to fold tomorrow, you can bet there'd be at least a handful of similar entities vying for their old contracts & market share.

With the justice case US vs. Sterlingov (the mixer Bitcoin Fog), since their software is not accurate, the defense requested the Chainalysis’ source code to be audited.
They don't like this idea! Guess why? It's going to put their business at risk.

The code should absolutely be auditable... I agree with the overall sentiment in this thread that its ridiculous to put someone behind bars for what is potentially a very long time without thorough "due process." If Sterlingov was indeed just a user of Bitcoin Fog then it would be an egregious miscarriage of justice to sentence him based on potentially faulty analysis.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Sometimes they are so concerned about data mining that they forget that innocent people can also face tough times

They don't forget - they simply don't care.

The government don't care in the slightest when banks launder literally trillions of dollars. They get a completely meaningless token fine and that's it. No arrests, no criminal charges, no seizures, no shutdowns, and allowed to continue to launder more money in the future. This is all fine because the banks bribe our politicians and freely hand over all your data to the government when they want it. But when a piece of open source code allows the average person to maintain some semblance of privacy against the government's various mass surveillance programs, then all hell breaks loose and they absolutely must prosecute someone. They don't actually care if the people they prosecute are actually guilty, as long as the set an example to the rest of us that you should be good little citizens and never step out of line. This is not about preventing money laundering in the slightest - if it was, they would clamp down on the banks which do it constantly. It's about surveilling and controlling the populace.

But these aren't very realistic outcomes in real life. If Chainalysis were to fold tomorrow, you can bet there'd be at least a handful of similar entities vying for their old contracts & market share.

Absolutely. We already have dozens of blockchain analysis companies out there. My point was that if everyone who used bitcoin stopped using things like centralized exchanges or wallets like Wasabi or Trezor which all directly fund these blockchain analysis companies, then that would cut off a large part of their funding and many would cease to exist (not to mention making general blockchain analysis much more difficult since you would no longer have KYC linked addresses and such).

The code should absolutely be auditable... I agree with the overall sentiment in this thread that its ridiculous to put someone behind bars for what is potentially a very long time without thorough "due process." If Sterlingov was indeed just a user of Bitcoin Fog then it would be an egregious miscarriage of justice to sentence him based on potentially faulty analysis.

It's pretty damning just how desperate Chainalysis are to not let anyone who even remotely understands bitcoin view their code.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Well, we really don't know their methods in details and they will never share their research details in public

This and the part where they won't endorse code auditing reminds somewhat of the open-source / closed-source debate around security (AKA, "Security through obscurity"). That certain developers choose to not reveal the source code for security reasons, which is completely debunked, as most of the times cyber attacks don't happen after thorough research on the code, but on techniques that are source-independent. On the other hand, open source code greatly improves security, as it sets no limit as to who can be a contributor.

My point was that if everyone who used bitcoin stopped using things like centralized exchanges or wallets like Wasabi or Trezor which all directly fund these blockchain analysis companies, then that would cut off a large part of their funding and many would cease to exist (not to mention making general blockchain analysis much more difficult since you would no longer have KYC linked addresses and such).

Chain analysis companies are getting funded with millions of dollars from the US government, so it isn't just Wasabi's and centralized exchanges' fault here. But, sure, if half of the Bitcoin userbase stopped using Binance and switched to self-custody, they'd start panicking.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Chain analysis companies are getting funded with millions of dollars from the US government, so it isn't just Wasabi's and centralized exchanges' fault here. But, sure, if half of the Bitcoin userbase stopped using Binance and switched to self-custody, they'd start panicking.

Sure. There will always be a government owned blockchain analysis company trying to spy on you. But if you cut off a huge amount of the data they get fed from the likes of centralized exchanges providing your KYC data and wallet addresses, payment processors like BitPay sharing details of your spending habits, closed source wallets which depend on their own servers sharing your wallet addresses, and so on, their bullshit "analyses" would be even more provably bullshit.

If some random account showed up to this forum and said "Hey, I've figured out a way to track bitcoin transactions, send me any address and 100,000 sats and I'll tell you who owns it!" while refusing to provide any technical details or let anyone see their code, they would rightly be called a scammer and rapidly be tagged with a newbie warning flag. But somehow if you show up to the US government and say the same thing they give you a multi-million dollar contract.

[spectre71]

As someone mentioned earlier they can bake the desired outcome what the client (GOVT) is looking for really. The govt literally has unlimited resources and can bury an innocent person.

What if someone hasn't a single nefarious intent  but just pumps 1-2 K through a mixer just natural geek curiosity and put it back in their wallet and the whole wallet get's seized or your coins marked? Many people just want to be anon with no criminal intent. If your hiding you must be doing something wrong right?

[SamReomo]

Sometimes they are so concerned about data mining that they forget that innocent people can also face tough times

They don't forget - they simply don't care.

The government don't care in the slightest when banks launder literally trillions of dollars. They get a completely meaningless token fine and that's it. No arrests, no criminal charges, no seizures, no shutdowns, and allowed to continue to launder more money in the future. This is all fine because the banks bribe our politicians and freely hand over all your data to the government when they want it. But when a piece of open source code allows the average person to maintain some semblance of privacy against the government's various mass surveillance programs, then all hell breaks loose and they absolutely must prosecute someone. They don't actually care if the people they prosecute are actually guilty, as long as the set an example to the rest of us that you should be good little citizens and never step out of line. This is not about preventing money laundering in the slightest - if it was, they would clamp down on the banks which do it constantly. It's about surveilling and controlling the populace.

Yes, you're right they simply don't care because they won't be affected if some innocent person's life get destroyed because of someone else's criminal mindset. They have become so cold that only money matters for them and if they get money then everything is okay for them. The governments give free hand to banks and the banks can do whatever they want to do with those trillions of dollars that they launder. The banks have been following those practices for centuries and the politicians have been supporting them. The real culprit in the system are those politicians who sell their souls for the money and they use malpractices to fix all of the written documentation and clear all of the records of the banks that laundered the money. When those records are cleared the banks get courage to do more money laundering activites.

The centralized system is full of corrupt people and when a corrupt person come in power then he/she does everything to fill his/her pockets. I also agree that the ones who go against surveillance activities of the government always face a worst ending. They really don't want that open source code which can fail their surveillance activities because such software can reduce their control over population and anyone who make it can be harmful for them. They will do everything to control the population and they are very successful in their wrong motives. That time isn't far when everyone's life will be controlled by the so called governmental bodies, and the worst thing is that if we even do something to help others to be released form that control then that could be a deadly step for our lives. A laymen isn't anything for them and if a person is not known in social media then they can do whatever they want with that person. I believe that's one of the reasons why Satoshi left the Bitcoin after giving it to public because he knew that if he continue to post on this forum or somewhere else then those governmental authorities will find a way to trace him and could make many charges against him because the created a financial system like Bitcoin.

Well, we really don't know their methods in details and they will never share their research details in public

This and the part where they won't endorse code auditing reminds somewhat of the open-source / closed-source debate around security (AKA, "Security through obscurity"). That certain developers choose to not reveal the source code for security reasons, which is completely debunked, as most of the times cyber attacks don't happen after thorough research on the code, but on techniques that are source-independent. On the other hand, open source code greatly improves security, as it sets no limit as to who can be a contributor.

Very true! The open source code is available to everyone and anyone can improve it if they find flaws in it. On the other hand the organizations that doesn't open their source code will limit it to few people who may not be able to find all flaws of the code and the hackers or the malicious entities may find those flaws in the code by using their techniques and as a result the users and their privacy get compromised. Most of the time the closed source applications are full of vulnerabilities and when a hacker finds those vulnerabilities then he/she can take advantage of it and steal data of millions of users. The open source code isn't much vulnerable by nature because almost everyone can fix the vulnerabilities in the code and they can also improve the security of it by contributing their share on it.

[BlackHatCoiner]

On the other hand the organizations that doesn't open their source code will limit it to few people who may not be able to find all flaws of the code and the hackers or the malicious entities may find those flaws in the code

Or, they themselves could attack their own software if there's a benefit. They won't reveal you the manner which they discriminate coins, so why wouldn't they? It can go completely unnoticed.

Most of the time the closed source applications are full of vulnerabilities and when a hacker finds those vulnerabilities then he/she can take advantage of it and steal data of millions of users.

This is so true. In fact, it's been noticed that many times developers who write closed-source software do follow the "security-through-obscurity" principle. People try obfuscation techniques believing that provides security, in stuff like web apps and steganography. Believing that closed-source is more secure than open-source, besides debunked, is a sign of utter arrogance; believing that no one can contribute to the security of your project as much as you've already done is excessive self-esteem. Windows is tangible evidence that this is bad practice.

Everything that includes cryptography should be developed transparently.

[HmmMAA]

Blockchain analysis is a scam.

If chain analysis is a scam how do you explain cases like https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/south-korean-national-and-hundreds-others-charged-worldwide-takedown-largest-darknet-child ? Those who got charged do you think were innocent and the deep bad state just decided to flip a coin and charge random people ?
I agree that someone can't be 100% certain all the time but there were cases that chain analysis led to child porn rings , especially in cases where the users were ignorant about how blockchains work .

As for the mixers , it's sad to see many people here claim that mixers is a tool to protect privacy , that kind of users that have nothing illegal to hide are just providing exit liquidity to criminals . As a proverb says "when you pee in the sea you will find it in the salt" .

[BlackHatCoiner]

I agree that someone can't be 100% certain all the time but there were cases that chain analysis led to child porn rings , especially in cases where the users were ignorant about how blockchains work .

If you treat everyone guilty until proven otherwise, then definitely, some of the times they won't be innocent. The question you need to answer yourself is if it's worth to live under a regime that is discriminating against everyone who is trying to have some privacy, for the sake of seizing criminals.

It's easy to pinpoint that chain analysis is good when the criminals are ignorant. However, how many documented cases exist in which criminals who mixed their coins were apprehended? What happens if a criminal mixes their coins? Are new owners criminals now? Of course not.

As for the mixers , it's sad to see many people here claim that mixers is a tool to protect privacy , that kind of users that have nothing illegal to hide are just providing exit liquidity to criminals

I'm neither hiding an illegal activity by encrypting messages, but I do have something to hide; the message. Freedom of using cryptography can be exploited by criminals as well, but it is nonetheless a crucial, respecting part of our Internet world now more.

Why are you finding it so difficult to accept the fact that I may not want to reveal my financial activity to literally the public?

[o_e_l_e_o]

If chain analysis is a scam how do you explain cases like https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/south-korean-national-and-hundreds-others-charged-worldwide-takedown-largest-darknet-child ?

From the article you linked:

Through the sophisticated tracing of bitcoin transactions, IRS-CI special agents were able to determine the location of the Darknet server, identify the administrator of the website and ultimately track down the website server’s physical location in South Korea

How do you propose blockchain analysis is able to "track down a server's physical location", given the blockchain does not store geolocations, IP addresses, or any other such identifiers? It is quite clear they were using data from other sources to identify the server in question.

And then:

The agencies have shared data from the seized server with law enforcement around the world to assist in identifying and prosecuting customers of the site.

Data from the server was what led to the arrest of individuals, not blockchain analysis.

Those who got charged do you think were innocent and the deep bad state just decided to flip a coin and charge random people ?

No, and I obviously have nothing against people committing non-victimless crimes going to prison. Especially not in cases such as this. These individuals can rot in hell. However, that still doesn't give the state the right to constantly surveil all its citizens.

As for the mixers , it's sad to see many people here claim that mixers is a tool to protect privacy , that kind of users that have nothing illegal to hide are just providing exit liquidity to criminals .

No offense meant, but "nothing to fear, nothing to hide" is a monumentally stupid argument. If you truly have nothing to hide, I'm sure you'll have no issue whatsoever sharing with me your real name, address, phone number, email address, bank statements, all your bitcoin addresses, all your WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal/etc. conversations, your internet browsing history, and the login details for all your social media accounts. I just want to have a good look around and publicly post anything I find interesting. After all, you've got nothing to hide, right!?

[BlackHatCoiner]

If you truly have nothing to hide, I'm sure you'll have no issue whatsoever sharing with me your real name, address, phone number, email address, bank statements, all your bitcoin addresses, all your WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal/etc. conversations, your internet browsing history, and the login details for all your social media accounts. I just want to have a good look around and publicly post anything I find interesting. After all, you've got nothing to hide, right!?

This is just the best response to this argument. Whenever someone asserts that they have nothing to hide, I politely request permission to access their phone. Surprisingly, this approach even works with my relatives. The temporary awkwardness that ensues clearly illustrates my point that we all have things to hide.

[LeGaulois]

(great discussion by the way, compared to what we're used to read here, thanks guys)

I'm coming with some stuff

The Department of Justice admits blockchain forensics to be “highly imperfect”, @ https://www.justice.gov/media/1169626/dl?inline
and precisely including Chainalysis in the report.

Bloomberg cites partial facts, dismissing concerns regarding Chainalysis accuracy in the ongoing Bitcoin Fog trial as a "smear campaign."
A smear campaign? I'm not a Bloomberg's reader but I wonder if they call this too smear propaganda when it's about Trump

And again
@ https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.232431/gov.uscourts.dcd.232431.164.0_1.pdf

[buwaytress]

Forensics (which is probably the more accurate term in this instance) is what practitioners might argue is anyway more of an art, grounded in science. I might say many others who use scientific bases to guide findings and discoveries think the same.

I've a partner working in (traditional) compliance and you can always teach the frontliners and KYC about the science, but the nuance and depth of analysis is really hard to land at -- blockchain or Bitcoin transaction behaviour actually simplifies some of that nuance (there us, for example, no possibility to fake, double spend, or retroactively change, unlike in traditional transaction trails).

Let's not forget that Chainalysis whistleblowing in the past certainly points to at least a degree of uncertainty in their own methods -- this was years ago. And they're at that basic frontline level banks have right now -- knowing some rules, some parameters, and not knowing enough how to recognise and exclude the (many) false positives that are easy to create.

Advanced forensics rely on matching digital fingerprints -- not merely dusting for fingerprints, which is what Chainalysis does.

[o_e_l_e_o]

-snip-

Those quotes from "Government Experts" are absolutely damning. This whole thing is a clown show. I'll pull another few quotes for interest:

The final version of the internal Chainalysis study cited by Hanna Curtis in the webinar “Cryptocurrency Typologies: What You Should Know About Who’s Who on the Blockchains” which concluded that roughly 90% of the funds sent through mixers were done so for legal personal privacy reasons.

So even Chainalysis admit that the vast majority of mixer user is entirely legitimate and from regular users who just want to protect their privacy.

Q. Is it your testimony here that you really don't understand the intelligence heuristic that's involved in Chainalysis Reactor?

A. I don't know the full extent of what Chainalysis is doing for that heuristic, no, sir.

Lmfao. "Here's my evidence." "Can you explain it to us?" "No, I have no idea what any of this means. But I'm certain it's enough to put people in jail, even though I don't understand it at all!"

In what other trial could one party say "We have evidence that the defendant is guilty, but none of you are actually allowed to see that evidence. We will however give you a document that confirms we have evidence that the defendant is guilty. Totally trust us, bro."

What a fucking sham.

[HmmMAA]

Are new owners criminals now?

 Criminals no , idiots for using a tumbler/mixer by providing exit liquidity to criminals yes .

Why are you finding it so difficult to accept the fact that I may not want to reveal my financial activity to literally the public?

Because first of all the public gives a shit about your financial activity , same as mine . Because it's difficult (not impossible) for the public to connect me with all my accounts and aliases as i respect my privacy . Because i am not a target for the public ( probably you too ) . And many many other things .

 It is quite clear they were using data from other sources to identify the server in question.

Data from the server was what led to the arrest of individuals, not blockchain analysis.

Were they customers of that "service" if they were paying ? Does blockchain provide a proof of economic activity ? Was that proof another nail in their coffin ?

These individuals can rot in hell. However, that still doesn't give the state the right to constantly surveil all its citizens.

I'm glad we're on the same side about those scumbags .
As for the constant surveillance , i'm on the side who believes that cameras should be anywhere . The problem is that there's still no framework for these data to be handled "only" by authorities just in cases that a crime is committed .
Imagine a world where you would know that if you commit a crime you are almost 100% busted . Would you commit that crime ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlT5SdLeXtM

No offense meant, but "nothing to fear, nothing to hide" is a monumentally stupid argument. If you truly have nothing to hide, I'm sure you'll have no issue whatsoever sharing with me your real name, address, phone number, email address, bank statements, all your bitcoin addresses, all your WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal/etc. conversations, your internet browsing history, and the login details for all your social media accounts. I just want to have a good look around and publicly post anything I find interesting. After all, you've got nothing to hide, right!?

Not a stupid argument , just an argument that doesn't fit your narratives . Believe me , there are people that know many / most / all of the things you mention about me . You are not in my circle that has the right to know detailed info .That's what privacy is . You share things that you want with those you want .  On the other hand anonymity tries to hide anything from anyone . I like privacy , i dislike anonymity .

[o_e_l_e_o]

As for the constant surveillance , i'm on the side who believes that cameras should be anywhere .

Then we fundamentally disagree. The state does not have the right to constantly monitor its entire population "just in case".

The problem is that there's still no framework for these data to be handled "only" by authorities just in cases that a crime is committed .

Because that is an impossible fantasy. Any and all data collected under already existing surveillance programs is used by the government for literally any purpose they want, including being sold to third parties and shared with foreign governments, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Imagine a world where you would know that if you commit a crime you are almost 100% busted . Would you commit that crime ?

Show me evidence that mass surveillance has prevented a single terrorist attack. There is none.

You share things that you want with those you want .

And I, and many others, don't want random blockchain analysis companies, centralized exchanges, governments, and so forth, spying on all our bitcoin transactions, holdings, addresses, and wallets. And so we use privacy enhancing tools.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Because first of all the public gives a shit about your financial activity , same as mine .

If all the people from the public don't care about your financial activity, it doesn't mean that a sub-group of people, which are specialized to analyzing financial activities, don't care either. They are caring more than anyone else.

Because it's difficult (not impossible) for the public to connect me with all my accounts and aliases as i respect my privacy .

It is evidently possible for the public to de-anonymize a large part of your Bitcoin financial activity. If you think that just by utilizing coin control you can protect yourself from firms which are funded by millions of dollars with the single scope of de-anonymizing as much blockchain activity as possible, then you're gravely mistaken. Even random people on this forum do it. You can't efficiently nor effectively gain privacy by coin control, you need at some point to enter a large pool of coins, which will make it hard for the observer to tell which is which afterwards (as in coinjoin).

You share things that you want with those you want .

So mixing is good, because it lets us define the limit of who's allowed to scrutinize our Bitcoin activity.

[SamReomo]

Or, they themselves could attack their own software if there's a benefit. They won't reveal you the manner which they discriminate coins, so why wouldn't they? It can go completely unnoticed.

Well, that's another possibility because they can sometimes attack their own software and may act as hackers to find the flaws that hackers could find with hacking tools. Sometimes they also might run bug bounty programs and pay hackers to find those bugs in their software.

This is so true. In fact, it's been noticed that many times developers who write closed-source software do follow the "security-through-obscurity" principle. People try obfuscation techniques believing that provides security, in stuff like web apps and steganography. Believing that closed-source is more secure than open-source, besides debunked, is a sign of utter arrogance; believing that no one can contribute to the security of your project as much as you've already done is excessive self-esteem. Windows is tangible evidence that this is bad practice.

Everything that includes cryptography should be developed transparently.

I agree with you and most of the closed-source software are packed with obfuscation techniques by keeping security in mind while sometimes they use those techniques to prevent open-source software developers from copying of the source-code. Those closed-source people aren't generous at all and they don't want open-source developers to view the code and make something similar and allow everyone to use it and contribute to it freely. Such software could contain many vulnerabilities and when a hacker finds those vulnerabilities then he/she may do anything with the systems of the users that are running those software on their systems. I strongly agree with you that the software which has cryptography should always be developed with complete transparency so that any developer could had improvements into it.

[HmmMAA]

Then we fundamentally disagree. The state does not have the right to constantly monitor its entire population "just in case".

The state should be able to to monitor everything . These data should be encrypted and only be viewable in crime cases . Courts and no one else should provide the keys to be able to decrypt the data . These are things that we will see in the future if blockchains stop being used only as a economic instrument . Bitcoin is a timestamp machine and has many more uses than we have ever imagined .

Because that is an impossible fantasy. Any and all data collected under already existing surveillance programs is used by the government for literally any purpose they want, including being sold to third parties and shared with foreign governments, and there is nothing you can do about it.

That's an impossible fantasy because we only tell people that bitcoin is the quick rich vehicle . And everyone that says that bitcoin is much more than that is considered a looney .

Show me evidence that mass surveillance has prevented a single terrorist attack. There is none.

I can point you to thousands of crimes that solved with surveillance cameras . Murders , abductions , burglaries and much more .
As for the terrorist attacks let's consider the Boston marathon bombers . These guys were caught by examination of the videos . Do you think they would continue to strike if weren't caught ? That's just an example , just to show that even in terrorist attacks surveillance is necessary and it might not prevent the first attack but gives a high chance there won't be another one by the same people . And there's a high chance that by recognizing them it's possible to find more persons that belong to that core and possibly prevent other attacks .

And I, and many others, don't want random blockchain analysis companies, centralized exchanges, governments, and so forth, spying on all our bitcoin transactions, holdings, addresses, and wallets. And so we use privacy enhancing tools.

That's your right , just don't act as a cry baby in case things go the bad way .

[BlackHatCoiner]

I agree with you and most of the closed-source software are packed with obfuscation techniques by keeping security in mind while sometimes they use those techniques to prevent open-source software developers from copying of the source-code.

Chain analysis companies not revealing the manners which they deem coins as "tainted", being to protect their source code and techniques from market competition is a cheap excuse. The real reason is that it removes their authority on labeling coins as "tainted". If CA company were to ever announce that after 20 transactions, coins coming from an illicit activity are now deemed "clean", then everyone sending 20 transactions to themselves would be enough to completely erase taint from Bitcoin.

The state should be able to to monitor everything . These data should be encrypted and only be viewable in crime cases . Courts and no one else should provide the keys to be able to decrypt the data . These are things that we will see in the future if blockchains stop being used only as a economic instrument . Bitcoin is a timestamp machine and has many more uses than we have ever imagined .

You do know that freedom to access standard cryptography is the definition of "the state cannot monitor everything", right? If you think the state should be able to monitor everything, then cryptography should be made illegal for public use by tomorrow morning.

[NotATether]

Then we fundamentally disagree. The state does not have the right to constantly monitor its entire population "just in case".

The state should be able to to monitor everything . These data should be encrypted and only be viewable in crime cases . Courts and no one else should provide the keys to be able to decrypt the data . These are things that we will see in the future if blockchains stop being used only as a economic instrument . Bitcoin is a timestamp machine and has many more uses than we have ever imagined .

They have a responsibility to monitor but they also have a responsibility to act on the data they receive to make arrests, lawsuits, and so on. We don't want NSA-types that don't take any action with info they receive about illegal stuff, except for continue to monitor. At least in the US, the agencies most actively involved in investigating crypto-crime are the FBI, IRS, and DEA.

Right now the only time you can get the feds to investigate surveillance is when millions of dollars worth of coins that are linked to illegal dark web operations are moving around.

If someone scams a bunch of people, or hacks a business and steals money, then usually, the victims are out of luck because these cases are not important enough to feds (usually because of a low budget)...

[o_e_l_e_o]

The state should be able to to monitor everything .

I can't disagree more. This is a crazy position. Imaging wanting to live in 1984!?

These data should be encrypted and only be viewable in crime cases .

Right, because there has never once been a single case of data being leaked, hacked, or used inappropriately? The fact is if this data is gathered, it will be used against you, regardless of whether you have committed any crimes.

As for the terrorist attacks let's consider the Boston marathon bombers . These guys were caught by examination of the videos .

Videos from businesses and individuals, not from government surveillance cameras.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/after-tragedy-boston-more-government-surveillance-not-answer

The old cliché is often mocked though basically true: there’s no reason to worry about surveillance if you have nothing to hide. That mindset creates the incentive to be as compliant and inconspicuous as possible: those who think that way decide it’s in their best interests to provide authorities with as little reason as possible to care about them. That’s accomplished by never stepping out of line. Those willing to live their lives that way will be indifferent to the loss of privacy because they feel that they lose nothing from it. Above all else, that’s what a Surveillance State does: it breeds fear of doing anything out of the ordinary by creating a class of meek citizens who know they are being constantly watched.

[franky1]

blackhat and o_e_l_e_o are on a drug induced paranoia plot.
funny thing is although there is alot of data unencrypted available from multiples sources of the internet.. the thing they dont realise is that the "government" are not watching them as much as they think

if they tried to do some sane research when sober they would realise the government are not actively surveilling everyone all the time. instead they are reactive to reports and then look into information they can find based on received reports.

from what i can easily tell from blackhat and oeleo is that they dont actually care about privacy. instead they care about scamming people into using services they are affiliated with for their own profit/gain.

there are actual ways to move value without taint. but these guys only adore advertising mixers without even understanding that regulators have already ruled that mixing is a subject of suspicion which WILL get people flagged if people use mixers.. thus defeating the point of using one

yep thats right by using a mixer, your coins trigger a suspicion flag that causes services to then monitor those coins and generates a report which would cause governments to look at available data.. thus as i just said defeats the point of mixers

if blackhat/oeleo cared about actual privacy instead of these sham services they promote, they would care more about other services, features, tools not listed as suspicious by regulators. thus avoid having flags thus avoid reports thus avoid active surveillance.. but they would have to be sober to think to be able to do that first

in short. governments are not watching everyone.. instead they get reports based on certain things being used which triggers active surveilance. and yep as i told them many many times mixers are on that list.. so advice to other people if you dont want to end up on a report that triggers active monitoring.. dont use a mixer.. find another tool

[cryptosize]

As for the constant surveillance , i'm on the side who believes that cameras should be anywhere .

The state should be able to to monitor everything .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_China
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/business/china-surveillance-technology.html

So you want the West to become like China... sounds awfully similar to Klaus Schwab's vision:

https://blog.independent.org/2022/12/01/klaus-schwab-china/

I guess you could have literally ZERO rape cases if the state installed cameras everywhere (including your own bedroom/bathroom). Would you agree with that? Cameras recording couples having consensual sex.

Just because I don't want cameras everywhere, doesn't mean I'm a potential rapist/criminal, nor do I condone rape.

I'd rather have a non-ideal society where a small percentage of rapists exist, rather than a sterilized society/dystopia where zero rapists exist, but I'm forced to accept cameras everywhere intruding my own privacy.

Wishing to have zero crimes is like wishing to have zero earthquakes. I'm sorry, but it's natural phenomenon, despite being unpleasant for anyone experiencing it.

Only fascists have these grand delusions of bringing "Paradise" to earth. I don't mind China, because they don't claim to be "democratic", but I do mind the "democratic" West becoming a China totalitarian regime copycat.

Imagine a world where you would know that if you commit a crime you are almost 100% busted . Would you commit that crime ?

That's just an example , just to show that even in terrorist attacks surveillance is necessary and it might not prevent the first attack but gives a high chance there won't be another one by the same people . And there's a high chance that by recognizing them it's possible to find more persons that belong to that core and possibly prevent other attacks .

Seems awfully familiar to "Precrime": https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/

Cameras everywhere + AI usage can definitely make this sci-fi dystopia a reality and you know it very well.

People should realize the repercussions before suggesting these things.

You think the state (legalized criminals) only cares about illegal criminals, but in reality they care about controlling everyone, including innocent citizens.

It seems the COVID lockdowns/vaccine mandates have taught you nothing... well, you should wait for CO2 mandates, because apparently climate change is caused by human beings eating red meat and driving their petrol cars.

I never understood why guys like you got into Bitcoin into the first place. You should embrace CBDC, because it's going to tackle "criminals" (i.e. people refusing to eat ze bugs).

Sorry, but I don't believe in good intentions from anyone. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Nobody (not even me) should have that much power over citizens.

This whole "the state cares about its citizens, just like your father/mom does" mantra has gone way too far IMHO. Dictators always claim to care, but their actions say otherwise.

There will never be an ideal state with zero hidden agendas.

[cryptosize]

Let's see one more example about why cameras shouldn't exist everywhere:

https://twitter.com/cosminDZS/status/1704544700710203739

Do you think the woke puppets/brainwashed fanatics (like Trudeau) won't exploit this technological infrastructure to impose fines (via CBDC + social credit score) on "homophobic" people (parents who want zero LGBT indoctrination in schools)?

You guys have zero idea of what's coming next... you're in for a RUDE awakening!

I lose faith in humanity when I see Bitcoiners (!!!) embracing state authoritarians.

The state is not your friend. NOBODY is your friend. Including pink-washed ESG corporations.

[HmmMAA]

For Bitcoin as timestamp machine, it's already possible with OpenTimestamps[1]. Some news also report Italian bank already use it[2].

[1] https://opentimestamps.org/
[2] https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2017/04/11/intesa-sanpaolo-trials-data-recordkeeping-on-the-blockchain/

That's a first step , but with blocksize of 1MB and such fees not much can be created on BTC in massive scale .

I can't disagree more. This is a crazy position. Imaging wanting to live in 1984!?

Is that what you got from reading the book? Seems that i got different things from it . In 1984 Orwell talks about the power of propaganda (something like what we see in bitcointalk that mixers are a tool to enhance privacy ) and the power to change history at will . He talks about the power a party gained by prohibiting books and writings and how the corruption of language takes away from society the right thinking. He talks about the destruction of the family institution . If you haven't read it, I would recommend it , so that you can escape from the fairy tale of surveillance promoted by the leftist's camp.
If you think of it he describes Stalin's state at that time perfectly .

Right, because there has never once been a single case of data being leaked, hacked, or used inappropriately? The fact is if this data is gathered, it will be used against you, regardless of whether you have committed any crimes.

Why am i not in jail right now ? Why aren't you in too ? Haven't they got much of our data for some years/decades ?

Videos from businesses and individuals, not from government surveillance cameras.

So , you are pro private surveillance and only against surveillance from gov's ? What's the difference , as authorities have access to that material ? I really don't understand your arguments . Do we agree that surveillance helps solving crimes or not ?

And something i din't notice earlier .

The final version of the internal Chainalysis study cited by Hanna Curtis in the webinar “Cryptocurrency Typologies: What You Should Know About Who’s Who on the Blockchains” which concluded that roughly 90% of the funds sent through mixers were done so for legal personal privacy reasons.

So even Chainalysis admit that the vast majority of mixer user is entirely legitimate and from regular users who just want to protect their privacy.

If chainanalysis is a scam service how do we know this is true ? Maybe they got the results totally wrong .

[o_e_l_e_o]

Is that what you got from reading the book?

...yes? Did you miss the slogan "Big Brother is watching you"? Did you miss the Thought Police? How do you propose The Party manages to prohibit specific books, specific speech, and specific thought, if it isn't conducting mass surveillance? Your assertion that "the state should be able to monitor everything" is the first step on the road to 1984.

Why am i not in jail right now ? Why aren't you in too ? Haven't they got much of our data for some years/decades ?

Because I've committed no crimes. Which is all the more reason the state has no right to surveil every aspect of my life.

Do we agree that surveillance helps solving crimes or not ?

People taking out their phones to film a specific event is completely different to blanket mass surveillance at all times. And no, as I've shared previously in this thread, there is zero evidence that mass surveillance prevents crimes, and even the NSA admit that.

If chainanalysis is a scam service how do we know this is true ? Maybe they got the results totally wrong .

We don't. But either you accept that blockchain analysis is bullshit and therefore all their claims should be completely dismissed and ignored, or you believe they are completely accurate in which case you must also accept that the vast majority of mixer use is perfectly legitimate, as they themselves claim.

[franky1]

Because I've committed no crimes. Which is all the more reason the state has no right to surveil every aspect of my life.

stop taking drugs, no one thinks your important enough to watch you 24/7

instead of letting your drug habit control your mind. let research control it. realise one important thing. there are not enough politicians with IT skills to watch everyone. your target and fear should be pointing towards private businesses that report suspect actions. and then look into what is considered a suspect action. and then look for ways to avoid the suspect actions list so that you are not highlighted as worthy of being watched 24/7

tip: mixers are on the suspect list.
tip: you idolising and using mixer will get you flagged
tip: there are other ways to obfuscate value transfer without the use of "mixers"/AEC(anonymity enhanced currency)

tip: finance has ALWAYS(even before you were born) had regulations that made currency non private data in regards to the financial industry. the downside of bitcoin being regarded as currency(2014+) instead of private property(2009-2013) has brought crypto into the remit of those same jurisdictions, so research those regulations and realise whats included and not included

[Synchronice]

Then we fundamentally disagree. The state does not have the right to constantly monitor its entire population "just in case".

The state should be able to to monitor everything . These data should be encrypted and only be viewable in crime cases . Courts and no one else should provide the keys to be able to decrypt the data . These are things that we will see in the future if blockchains stop being used only as a economic instrument . Bitcoin is a timestamp machine and has many more uses than we have ever imagined .

Are you dead serious? You say that state should control everything it keys should be provided only to courts when it's necessary but what gives you a confidence that absolutely everyone will follow that orders? Why and how are you so sure? You only see one side of medal and completely ignore the existence of the second side, plus, you absolutely speak from the perspective of perfect world and perfect people and completely ignore the evil nature of humanity and cruelty of this world.

When state monitors everything, you know what happens? Have you heard about North Korea? That's what happens when state controls everything. When you control everything, you have the power to do things the way you want, to manage life of millions the way you want and believe me, this power changes absolutely everyone, the power brings the chemical reactions in your brain that you can't stop from happening. Absolutely everyone abuses power, if one person doesn't abuse power, there are hundreds who want to and will abuse the power and the situation then becomes like, if you want to stay in the government, you have to abuse power to benefit higher ups and yourself, otherwise you will be changed by the one who is willing to abuse the power. Just ask yourself, why doesn't anarchy work? Because humans are social, they always form groups and power changes everything. Power is like a cocaine and you can't bring me a single person who doesn't get high on that.

the thing they dont realise is that the "government" are not watching them as much as they think

How do you want to live, only work and get salary? To be always employeed? Or do you wish to do more? Create business, become successful? When you try to step up in your life, then every data about you gets checked and then governments try to blackmail you and prevent you from entering into higher league.

from what i can easily tell from blackhat and oeleo is that they dont actually care about privacy. instead they care about scamming people into using services they are affiliated with for their own profit/gain.

I completely agree with o_e_l_e_o, now what about me? Am I promoting mixer?
Why do you think that when governments control everything, they also abuse everything? Do you really think that these politicians are cutest and warmest creatures on earth? Do you really believe that these politicians live on paycheck and aren't behind big businesses and corporations? Do you really think that rich people only run businesses and have zero influence on the politics of countries? Do you really think people who have control and influence are such an innocent that they want to control everything just only to get rid of criminals?
You know, in order for police to exist, crime is necessary. They want crime, they love crime and they are behind the crime (not actually employed people, I mean big guys).

[franky1]

the thing they dont realise is that the "government" are not watching them as much as they think

How do you want to live, only work and get salary? To be always employeed? Or do you wish to do more? Create business, become successful? When you try to step up in your life, then every data about you gets checked and then governments try to blackmail you and prevent you from entering into higher league.

a. thanks to bitcoin i retired young
b. i have run businesses, been and am successful, live a luxury life without fear/worry
c. if you actually research things like regulations and laws and rules. you learn the loopholes and exceptions to evade their crap.. its how i dont need to worry. because i actually do research. i dont just fear the unknown

from what i can easily tell from blackhat and oeleo is that they dont actually care about privacy. instead they care about scamming people into using services they are affiliated with for their own profit/gain.

I completely agree with o_e_l_e_o, now what about me? Am I promoting mixer?
Why do you think that when governments control everything, they also abuse everything? Do you really think that these politicians are cutest and warmest creatures on earth? Do you really believe that these politicians live on paycheck and aren't behind big businesses and corporations? Do you really think that rich people only run businesses and have zero influence on the politics of countries? Do you really think people who have control and influence are such an innocent that they want to control everything just only to get rid of criminals?
You know, in order for police to exist, crime is necessary. They want crime, they love crime and they are behind the crime (not actually employed people, I mean big guys).

im against government. but i dont just make up stories in my head. i research and look at what they are capable of and what they do.. most politicians care more about playing golf than what some pseudonymous bitcoin user is upto

politicians do have their own business dealing, where it does sway their votes. but you have to look 5 steps deeper and do your research to see what affects them and what regulations they create then affect others

research is key, not fantasy fear stories of the unknown induced by drug paranoia

[ABCbits]

For Bitcoin as timestamp machine, it's already possible with OpenTimestamps[1]. Some news also report Italian bank already use it[2].

[1] https://opentimestamps.org/
[2] https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2017/04/11/intesa-sanpaolo-trials-data-recordkeeping-on-the-blockchain/

That's a first step , but with blocksize of 1MB and such fees not much can be created on BTC in massive scale .

But depending on your needs, you could avoid small block size problem by utilizing merkle tree and only store top/parent hash. Peter Todd did that on Internet Archive data[1]. Otherwise if you don't mind altcoin which have bigger block size and have sufficient skill/time, you could fork opentimestamps[2] to support certain altcoin.

[1] https://petertodd.org/2017/carbon-dating-the-internet-archive-with-opentimestamps
[2] https://github.com/opentimestamps/opentimestamps-client

[BlackHatCoiner]

In 1984 Orwell talks about the power of propaganda (something like what we see in bitcointalk that mixers are a tool to enhance privacy )

Mixers are propaganda. We've heard that; this board never stops entertaining me. I'm genuinely curious how you interpreted mixing coins as exploiting anything at all. Do you mind providing a little more context?

Why am i not in jail right now ? Why aren't you in too ? Haven't they got much of our data for some years/decades ?

Pardon, but what the actual fuck? What the hell is your point? Do you actually think they don't have much data to put people behind the bars? And are you using my absence from jail as a basis to argue their lack of concern for me? What kind of twisted reasoning is this...

[franky1]

if blackhat was really that concerned. he would have learned by now(after being told many times) that mixers are in regulators list of suspicious activity that does generate investigation reports. and so to avoid being investigated, he would try to move away from such things

but instead he advertises, promotes and admits to using them..(facepalm)

with so many other transfer obfuscation methods that are possible AND not listed in relations for further investigation. i do find it strange how he does not spend as much time looking at those, as he does promoting things that will get people investigated

oh wait, its not strange. he doesnt care about privacy, he cares about profiting from his promotions, and these regulations are harming his profits due to smarter people not using the things he promotes, thus he gets less income from those services.. now it all makes sense. he is crying that regulations are impacting his income. its never been about privacy. but profit

tip: (as uber done it to evade taxi cab regulations): offer the same service as whats regulated. just dont use the word listed in regulation.
pro-tip: look for other features, tools and utility that give the same end result without being the thing listed in regulation


when there is a rule that is publicly available that a police officer will stand at mainstreet NY between 8am-11am on a tuesday
and then there is a so called "privacy guy" crying that he does not want police to see him, but then states publicly that he intends to purposefully go to that same mainstreet specifically and only on a tuesday between 8am-11am... he only has himself to blame for being spotted

[Synchronice]

c. if you actually research things like regulations and laws and rules. you learn the loopholes and exceptions to evade their crap.. its how i dont need to worry. because i actually do research. i dont just fear the unknown

Why do these loopholes exist? They are for rich people to don't pay taxes and earn as much as possible while your average worker joe will get fucked if doesn't pay it. Offshores, loopholes and so on were created for elites and you tell me that it's better to give these elites even more control on us?

im against government. but i dont just make up stories in my head. i research and look at what they are capable of and what they do.. most politicians care more about playing golf than what some pseudonymous bitcoin user is upto

Don't pay taxes and you'll see how they'll knock on your door soon. Or probably lose your job and when you'll be left without income, you'll see that government isn't interested in you. It's like, if you have income, you should pay me but if you don't have income, you shouldn't beg me for money, just fuck off.
So, when there is this kind of relationship between government and people, I think it's a good reason to protect your privacy as much as you can. If it's none of their business how I survive when I'm left without a job, then it's none of their business how I spend my money. And the main reason why I don't want others to know how I spend my money is simple: I don't support big chain businesses and I don't want to improve and expand their business by making them calculate what I buy, when I buy and so on.

if blackhat was really that concerned. he would have learned by now(after being told many times) that mixers are in regulators list of suspicious activity that does generate investigation reports. and so to avoid being investigated, he would try to move away from such things

As far as I understand, you are saying that if you want to stay anonymous, you have to hide that you are trying to be anonymous, right? That's where I agree with you but do transactions received from mixer look unnatural? If mixer does its job really well, then I think it's not a problem but I would lean on the side of manual coinjoin.

[nutildah]

But either you accept that blockchain analysis is bullshit and therefore all their claims should be completely dismissed and ignored, or you believe they are completely accurate in which case you must also accept that the vast majority of mixer use is perfectly legitimate, as they themselves claim.

There isn't room for a middle ground? Seems like its pretty easy to prove that at least some of it is correct. People perform blockchain analysis on this forum all the time, mainly for the sake of connecting alt accounts or exposing cheaters/liars. And they aren't government-funded professionals... Just people capable of pointing out that Address A is linked to Address B through Transaction C.

Having said that, I don't think that analysis being used to condemn individuals and potentially take away their freedoms should be so complicated that they can't be independently replicated to produce the same conclusions.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Seems like its pretty easy to prove that at least some of it is correct.

We cannot prove nor verify any of Chainalysis's claims because their code and methods are complete black box.

Imagine the reputation Chainalysis would get if this went in their favor here. Let experts review their code, have their code independently validated, and then have their results form a central piece of evidence in such a high profile court case. They would be the only blockchain analysis company out there who could claim these accolades, and as a result would increase their customer base as well as being able to increase their prices. It's a perfect situation for them. All they have to do is let a few experts audit their code.

So why won't they let anyone look at their code? The potential upside for them is tremendous. It's almost like they know that this won't happen and instead their code will be torn to shreds and shown up for the absolute nonsense it is. What more can you expect from a company whose head of investigations doesn't know what a segwit address is or know the difference between bits and bytes.

[franky1]

c. if you actually research things like regulations and laws and rules. you learn the loopholes and exceptions to evade their crap.. its how i dont need to worry. because i actually do research. i dont just fear the unknown

Why do these loopholes exist? They are for rich people to don't pay taxes and earn as much as possible while your average worker joe will get fucked if doesn't pay it. Offshores, loopholes and so on were created for elites and you tell me that it's better to give these elites even more control on us?

rules are not made just for elites.. its just words on paper. words do not care what age or income someone has.. its just that elites bother to educate themselves to learn the rules to find the loopholes.. you can too just by doing the research
for instance many people should know that loans are a tax free receipt of funds. so make your pseudonymous self give your certified self a personal loan. thus the income your certified self gets is tax free(write yourself a contract as proof of loan). other things like create a trust/corporate entity.. do as the elites do. its not rocket science. it just takes learning how they do it

im against government. but i dont just make up stories in my head. i research and look at what they are capable of and what they do.. most politicians care more about playing golf than what some pseudonymous bitcoin user is upto

Don't pay taxes and you'll see how they'll knock on your door soon. Or probably lose your job and when you'll be left without income, you'll see that government isn't interested in you. It's like, if you have income, you should pay me but if you don't have income, you shouldn't beg me for money, just fuck off.

first of all learn the difference between tax avoidance vs tax evasion.. it will change the results of who does or does not knock at your door

So, when there is this kind of relationship between government and people, I think it's a good reason to protect your privacy as much as you can. If it's none of their business how I survive when I'm left without a job, then it's none of their business how I spend my money. And the main reason why I don't want others to know how I spend my money is simple: I don't support big chain businesses and I don't want to improve and expand their business by making them calculate what I buy, when I buy and so on.

there is no default ongoing relationship.. again you assume you are being watched all the time.. reality is your not. however if someone makes a report against you.. then the monitoring relationship begins..
its the same with child social services. government dont watch kids all day.. but as soon as a report is made. then hell starts

also when it comes to money. for centuries money has been the control of banks/governments so laws have always been about banks/governments able to view/report/audit money.. money for centuries has never been private. auditors, taxmen, kings and government have always had rules that govern its use and seizures and control of circulation..

bitcoin is a new paradigm.. which from 2009-2013 escaped the draconian model of money as it was deemed private property.. however in 2014 it was declared by law as currency so joined the same jurisdiction of money rules.. i personally would prefer bitcoin to be privately tradable property rather than currency.. but those "mainstreamers" want it to be currency. so now you need to know the currency rules that predate bitcoin

if blackhat was really that concerned. he would have learned by now(after being told many times) that mixers are in regulators list of suspicious activity that does generate investigation reports. and so to avoid being investigated, he would try to move away from such things

As far as I understand, you are saying that if you want to stay anonymous, you have to hide that you are trying to be anonymous, right? That's where I agree with you but do transactions received from mixer look unnatural? If mixer does its job really well, then I think it's not a problem but I would lean on the side of manual coinjoin.

silly thing is.. people like blackhat not only advertise using mixers but he also shows guides of how mixers work, where it reveals the amounts the coins are split into and gives examples.. thus making it very easy for any analyst to then use his guides to then see other examples of others using it to then find the pattern.

most mixers are too obvious. and thats what oeleo and blackhat cry about.. they dont like that mixers are not just obvious. but also suspicious behavior listed and that their lax attempts of mixing get spotted so obviously. they cry that the law should not forbid suspicious activity rather then realise they should not use something so obviously lame/lazy. if something is so easily spotted as suspicious.. then your not doing your job right of being private

its like walking down a street but not wanting to be seen. but doing so by obviously and acutely jumping behind bushes and cars.. which makes people notice you more as being weird, out of place.. you know.. stupid tactics.. there are other ways to not get noticed. especially not promote that you want to hide

[Synchronice]

rules are not made just for elites.. its just words on paper. words do not care what age or income someone has.. its just that elites bother to educate themselves to learn the rules to find the loopholes.. you can too just by doing the research
for instance many people should know that loans are a tax free receipt of funds. so make your pseudonymous self give your certified self a personal loan. thus the income your certified self gets is tax free(write yourself a contract as proof of loan). other things like create a trust/corporate entity.. do as the elites do. its not rocket science. it just takes learning how they do it

Debt is tax free, that's a good point. Overall, when I say rules are written for elites I mean, the fine is still $50 (for example) for poor guy and for a billionaire. When you are employed you can't avoid taxes while it's easier for your employee to avoid it by moving business in offshores or Ireland is a good example. Why do these offshores exist? For rich people to not pay high taxes. Definitely you can open your business in offshores but here we talk about average citizen who depends on paycheck.

first of all learn the difference between tax avoidance vs tax evasion.. it will change the results of who does or does not knock at your door

I know the difference but my point is, let's say Bitcoin is my only source of income, I have a bitcoin business. The government only cares when I receive money in my bank account and sends me a letter to pay taxes but when I am left without source of money, they don't knock on my door and ask: Hey Mister, you have no income, how do you manage to feed yourself and your family, how can we help you? So, if they don't care about me and my family, then I think it's none of their business how I earn money. It's also ridiculous when self-employeed person has to pay taxes.

there is no default ongoing relationship.. again you assume you are being watched all the time.. reality is your not. however if someone makes a report against you.. then the monitoring relationship begins..
its the same with child social services. government dont watch kids all day.. but as soon as a report is made. then hell starts

I get your point and I agree with you on that and from my previous post you would probably understand that if you intend to become more than average Joe, you have to worry about that. If you are an average Joe who lives on paycheck or simply, doesn't have big dreams, then definitely this Joe won't be watched but it's not like you are completely out of their radar, I am genuinely 100% sure that absolutely everyone is watched randomly. I genuinely believe that algorithms of Google, Facebook and popular platforms save your certain messages when you mention this or that word. The fact is, if you do nothing wrong, no one will catch you.
I get your point and not 100% but somewhere 80%, I agree with you. I hope you got my point too

if blackhat was really that concerned. he would have learned by now(after being told many times) that mixers are in regulators list of suspicious activity that does generate investigation reports. and so to avoid being investigated, he would try to move away from such things

As far as I understand, you are saying that if you want to stay anonymous, you have to hide that you are trying to be anonymous, right? That's where I agree with you but do transactions received from mixer look unnatural? If mixer does its job really well, then I think it's not a problem but I would lean on the side of manual coinjoin.

silly thing is.. people like blackhat not only advertise using mixers but he also shows guides of how mixers work, where it reveals the amounts the coins are split into and gives examples.. thus making it very easy for any analyst to then use his guides to then see other examples of others using it to then find the pattern.

most mixers are too obvious. and thats what oeleo and blackhat cry about.. they dont like that mixers are not just obvious. but also suspicious behavior listed and that their lax attempts of mixing get spotted so obviously. they cry that the law should not forbid suspicious activity rather then realise they should not use something so obviously lame/lazy. if something is so easily spotted as suspicious.. then your not doing your job right of being private

its like walking down a street but not wanting to be seen. but doing so by obviously and acutely jumping behind bushes and cars.. which makes people notice you more as being weird, out of place.. you know.. stupid tactics.. there are other ways to not get noticed. especially not promote that you want to hide

I can't talk about blackhat (I don't know him and I rarely notice his posts) and o_e_l_e_o but one thing that I can say for sure is that o_e_l_e_o is a treasure of this forum, this man is very educated, helpful and I believe his intend is to really increase the awareness of the importance of privacy. If you check his posts, you'll understand that he doesn't promote mixers but privacy overall.

its like walking down a street but not wanting to be seen. but doing so by obviously and acutely jumping behind bushes and cars.. which makes people notice you more as being weird, out of place.. you know.. stupid tactics.. there are other ways to not get noticed. especially not promote that you want to hide

That's right! I agree with you but virtual world gives you slightly different reality, sometimes you can hide without saying that you are going to hide.

Overall, I like your logic here and I appreciate your different opinion! Thanks!

[franky1]

I get your point and I agree with you on that and from my previous post you would probably understand that if you intend to become more than average Joe, you have to worry about that. If you are an average Joe who lives on paycheck or simply, doesn't have big dreams, then definitely this Joe won't be watched but it's not like you are completely out of their radar, I am genuinely 100% sure that absolutely everyone is watched randomly. I genuinely believe that algorithms of Google, Facebook and popular platforms save your certain messages when you mention this or that word. The fact is, if you do nothing wrong, no one will catch you.
I get your point and not 100% but somewhere 80%, I agree with you. I hope you got my point too

i do get your points. but using context of available rules, policy and just common sense.. GOVERNMENT are not pro-active in monitoring. politicians dont sit at computers watching their constituents/voters..
yes PRIVATE BUSINESSES monitor their customers and report on their customers when certain suspicions are raised. but its only then that you will get investigated by "government".. this is the governments 'if you got nothing to hide you got nothing to fear' because their policy is if your not doing anything suspicious you wont become a file that sits on their desk, and they only care abut the files that land on their desk that have met some standard of suspicion to even arrive on their desk

even in china the government is not watching everyone. they too set policy for private business to react to their customers and then if certain thresholds are met report that to the government. i laugh at people that scream that china is more of a surveillance state than say UK/US

heres a fun fact for you about your normal real life social privacy. if you are falsely claiming social security/disability/unemployment funds whilst able to work.. you are more likely to get spotted and reported by a disgruntled neighbour, than by government staking out your house randomly.
yep if you are driving a nice car and a large screen TV is seen through your window and you are walking around your front yard doing gardening, without signs of medical aids. but tell your neighbour you dont work because you claim disability. it would be your neighbour you should fear more than the government

privacy fear is not about the government.. but about people and businesses you interact with

if you look at how many employees the UK HMRC and US IRS employ you would learn quick, due to maths they do not have the time to live monitor everyone 24/7

the US IRS have under 100k employees meaning 1 employee per 2500 working age citizens. meaning (excluding weekends and vacation time) they are if every employee was doing the same job would be processing 10 citizens a day per employee or one citizen per year in 50 minutes per employee

yet these under 100k are not doing the same job. there is actually under 3k 'criminal investigators' meaning beyond the majority automatic rubber stamping claims. they are only looking in detail to well under 1% of citizens (the reported citizens)

a majority of the 100k staff are just call centre staff and admin/management. the amount of investigators and time to actually watch citizens is super small

so all im saying is if you do not want to become one of those special suspicious files that land on the desk of a government investigator. learn the policies they use to weed out certain people. such as the FACT that mixers and AEC WILL get you flagged by private businesses receiving such funds.
thus find a different tool utility not listed as 'mixer' 'aec' to avoid getting reported

[HmmMAA]

...yes? Did you miss the slogan "Big Brother is watching you"? Did you miss the Thought Police? How do you propose The Party manages to prohibit specific books, specific speech, and specific thought, if it isn't conducting mass surveillance? Your assertion that "the state should be able to monitor everything" is the first step on the road to 1984.

What you fail to understand is that big brother is loved by the masses . Did you wonder why ?
The biggest weapon is not that there are cameras everywhere but that each one betrays each other . Your narratives don't let you see the most important slogan of the book which is "who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." ( have you thought that bitcoin as a timestamp machine solves this ? ) . What about "ignorance is strength" ? We see that today in the bitcoin community , which was one of the brightest communities years back but it has become a pack of laser eyed maxis with no understanding of the philosophy behind the technology that they only interested to pump their bags and buy lambos .
  

Because I've committed no crimes. Which is all the more reason the state has no right to surveil every aspect of my life.

But you said some posts above

The fact is if this data is gathered, it will be used against you, regardless of whether you have committed any crimes.

You contradict yourself , seems that you do not have a settled opinion .
So , with all the data they have so far about you and the assertion that the state is bad why are you not in jail ? Or me ? Is it because we have committed no crimes or they forgot us ?

People taking out their phones to film a specific event is completely different to blanket mass surveillance at all times. And no, as I've shared previously in this thread, there is zero evidence that mass surveillance prevents crimes, and even the NSA admit that.

For once more , crimes are not only terrorist attacks (you still didn't answer if you think that boston marathon bombers would continue if they weren't identified ) . Rapes , burglaries , killings , traffic accidents and much much more have been solved due to camera surveillance , private or not .
So i'll ask : Is camera surveillance ( without a label like private or state ) needed ?

We don't. But either you accept that blockchain analysis is bullshit and therefore all their claims should be completely dismissed and ignored, or you believe they are completely accurate in which case you must also accept that the vast majority of mixer use is perfectly legitimate, as they themselves claim.

You propose Black&White but i prefer Jack Daniels

Mixers are propaganda. We've heard that; this board never stops entertaining me. I'm genuinely curious how you interpreted mixing coins as exploiting anything at all. Do you mind providing a little more context?

Mixers are propaganda ? Huh ? Are you on drugs dude ? Do you want to read again what i wrote ?
Propaganda definition :  information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view .
You are promoting mixer services , which are not legal . If they were legal none of the mixers owners would be behind bars , right ? Do you explain somewhere that these services are based solely on trust and are targets of financial crime services and any use of those could potentially lead to loss of funds or even legal problems in the future ? I can't find any . So , you are using propaganda ( look at the definition again ) , as you are biased and have personal gain . Is it so hard to get it ?  

Pardon, but what the actual fuck? What the hell is your point? Do you actually think they don't have much data to put people behind the bars? And are you using my absence from jail as a basis to argue their lack of concern for me? What kind of twisted reasoning is this...

My reasoning is twisted , you are so funny . Didn't expect something different from you to be honest . Do you know what Occam's razor is ? Better start using it from time to time .

But depending on your needs, you could avoid small block size problem by utilizing merkle tree and only store top/parent hash. Peter Todd did that on Internet Archive data[1]. Otherwise if you don't mind altcoin which have bigger block size and have sufficient skill/time, you could fork opentimestamps[2] to support certain altcoin.

[1] https://petertodd.org/2017/carbon-dating-the-internet-archive-with-opentimestamps
[2] https://github.com/opentimestamps/opentimestamps-client

That still won't work in massive scale with blocks of max 12k transactions ( if all of them are segwit ) per 10 minutes . I agree that other chains can and will create such services in the future . But for sure btc won't/can't do it .


 

[BlackHatCoiner]

You are promoting mixer services , which are not legal

It varies based on the jurisdiction and the specific regulatory framework. They are not illegal everywhere.

Do you explain somewhere that these services are based solely on trust

I very much do. I'm right as well recommending coinjoins and XMR swaps if trusting some stranger is enough of a concern, both of which are not illegal and might provide even better levels of privacy and anonymity. I guess you have a problem with that either.

and any use of those could potentially lead to loss of funds or even legal problems in the future ?

As I said, I do point out that mixers require to forfeit custody, so loss of funds is a potential scenario. As for legal problems, using a mixer isn't illegal anywhere that Bitcoin is legal last time I checked, so no I don't believe there are legal problems with owning mixed coins.

So , you are using propaganda ( look at the definition again ) , as you are biased and have personal gain . Is it so hard to get it ? 

Isn't it much of a cheap excuse for all of you who aren't wearing a signature to blame the personal gain when arguing about mixers? We can eliminate mixers entirely and opt for XMR swaps (which, by the way, I'm not being paid to promote!), but you would still need to explain to me why desiring these levels of privacy is inherently wrong.

[o_e_l_e_o]

We see that today in the bitcoin community , which was one of the brightest communities years back but it has become a pack of laser eyed maxis with no understanding of the philosophy behind the technology that they only interested to pump their bags and buy lambos .

I fail to see the link between this and your assertion that the state should be allowed to monitor everything. Even if bitcoin didn't exist, my stance on privacy would be the same. Indeed, my stance on privacy was the same before bitcoin.

You contradict yourself , seems that you do not have a settled opinion .

My quote that you shared was referring specifically to this case, where potentially innocent people are being convicted of laundering money based on unreliable and probably downright false "evidence", which is being shielded from any independent verification. The government know this, but they don't care.

For once more , crimes are not only terrorist attacks (you still didn't answer if you think that boston marathon bombers would continue if they weren't identified ) . Rapes , burglaries , killings , traffic accidents and much much more have been solved due to camera surveillance , private or not .

And I'll point out again that the Boston marathon bombers were not identified due to mass surveillance, but due to private citizens. If individuals or businesses want to use cameras on their private property, that is their right. The government does not have the right to record all people in all public places. And as I linked to above, the evidence shows that mass surveillance does not prevent any crimes.

So i'll ask : Is camera surveillance ( without a label like private or state ) needed ?

No. They do not prevent crimes, and the downside far outweighs any theoretical security benefit.

[JayJuanGee]

For once more , crimes are not only terrorist attacks (you still didn't answer if you think that boston marathon bombers would continue if they weren't identified ) . Rapes , burglaries , killings , traffic accidents and much much more have been solved due to camera surveillance , private or not .

And I'll point out again that the Boston marathon bombers were not identified due to mass surveillance, but due to private citizens. If individuals or businesses want to use cameras on their private property, that is their right. The government does not have the right to record all people in all public places. And as I linked to above, the evidence shows that mass surveillance does not prevent any crimes.

For sure, these issues are getting worse and even more murky in regards to the government's cooptation of private systems and even people with private systems are getting the rug pulled from under them without even knowing that their data is getting used by governments without a warrant and it may well even be questionable if they have probable cause in some cases that they get access to private security cameras that are using third parties for their data storage.

It seems that in some cases, the courts (or maybe even the people need to rebel) need to rule that state action is involved when governments are purchasing and/or otherwise getting data from third parties without warrants or with shoddy procedures that allow them too much access to too much private information (cameras and other kinds of data being held by supposed third parties).

[cryptosize]

What you fail to understand is that big brother is loved by the masses . Did you wonder why ?
The biggest weapon is not that there are cameras everywhere but that each one betrays each other . Your narratives don't let you see the most important slogan of the book which is "who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." ( have you thought that bitcoin as a timestamp machine solves this ? ) . What about "ignorance is strength" ? We see that today in the bitcoin community , which was one of the brightest communities years back but it has become a pack of laser eyed maxis with no understanding of the philosophy behind the technology that they only interested to pump their bags and buy lambos .

Who the fuck told you that Satoshi Nakomoto (Craig Wright according to you ) had a "big brother philosophy"? Do you have any source to back that claim up?

I still cannot fathom that people like you want to turn the BTC blockchain into a big brother tool! This explains your incessant love with jumbo size 4GB BSV blocks.

I guess it's a good thing BTC's block size won't be increased and the PoW consensus won't change to PoS either (according to ESG demands). Other chains will fill that despicable, totalitarian role that some people seem to be so fond of.

I mean, let's assume for a second that BTC became a big brother tool (with huge blocks and whatnot).

Don't you think that would vindicate conspiracy theorists who claim that Bitcoin is a covert NSA Psy-Op to enslave the masses (that apparently "love" Big Brother )? What would be the difference compared to CBDC (which is also blockchain-based)? Why the hell do we need Bitcoin then? Let's cut to the chase and adopt CBDC!

Get the fuck outta here with this NWO bullshit!

It's sad to realize that even this forum (which should be considered a bastion of freedom) is full of systemic/globalist trojan horses trying to hijack Bitcoin's blockchain for nefarious purposes.

Totally flabbergasted...

[HmmMAA]

It varies based on the jurisdiction and the specific regulatory framework. They are not illegal everywhere.

No need to be illegal everywhere . You might get extradited in a foreign country .
You don't understand that things are getting more rough , forget the far west mentality and prepare . You might don't get it but i say this for your own good .
https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/66147

[o_e_l_e_o]

It's sad to realize that even this forum (which should be considered a bastion of freedom) is full of systemic/globalist trojan horses trying to hijack Bitcoin's blockchain for nefarious purposes.

This is unfortunately nothing new. Here's a post I made two years ago:

Even on here, a bitcoin forum which is supposed to be built on the principles of not trusting third parties, we frequently see people more than happy to send their private information to complete strangers to claim some scam airdrop, and we frequently see people (even some senior members) state something along the lines of anyone that is trying to mix or otherwise obfuscate their transaction history is obviously trying to hide something illegal and should instead just let the government stick their noses in and monitor their entire bitcoin history.

These kinds of opinions aren't just attacks on privacy, but they are attacks on bitcoin itself. Bitcoin was not designed to become another mass surveillance tool for the government to wield against us, and anyone proposing as much should be viewed as a malicious actor. It makes plenty of sense now that the same guy who thinks "the state should be able to monitor everything" is also a BSV shill and CSW cult member. BSV is already completely centralized and CSW and his buddies can seize any coins they want out of any wallet in existence.

[ABCbits]

But depending on your needs, you could avoid small block size problem by utilizing merkle tree and only store top/parent hash. Peter Todd did that on Internet Archive data[1]. Otherwise if you don't mind altcoin which have bigger block size and have sufficient skill/time, you could fork opentimestamps[2] to support certain altcoin.

[1] https://petertodd.org/2017/carbon-dating-the-internet-archive-with-opentimestamps
[2] https://github.com/opentimestamps/opentimestamps-client

That still won't work in massive scale with blocks of max 12k transactions ( if all of them are segwit ) per 10 minutes . I agree that other chains can and will create such services in the future . But for sure btc won't/can't do it .

FWIW, Bitcoin sidechain also exist where you can store such data. And by using SegWit/Taproot witness data (similar with what Ordinal does), you can store hash of multiple file into single transaction which have far higher efficiency.

[HmmMAA]

It's sad to realize that even this forum (which should be considered a bastion of freedom) is full of systemic/globalist trojan horses trying to hijack Bitcoin's blockchain for nefarious purposes.

This is unfortunately nothing new. Here's a post I made two years ago:

Even on here, a bitcoin forum which is supposed to be built on the principles of not trusting third parties, we frequently see people more than happy to send their private information to complete strangers to claim some scam airdrop, and we frequently see people (even some senior members) state something along the lines of anyone that is trying to mix or otherwise obfuscate their transaction history is obviously trying to hide something illegal and should instead just let the government stick their noses in and monitor their entire bitcoin history.

These kinds of opinions aren't just attacks on privacy, but they are attacks on bitcoin itself. Bitcoin was not designed to become another mass surveillance tool for the government to wield against us, and anyone proposing as much should be viewed as a malicious actor. It makes plenty of sense now that the same guy who thinks "the state should be able to monitor everything" is also a BSV shill and CSW cult member. BSV is already completely centralized and CSW and his buddies can seize any coins they want out of any wallet in existence.

Oh , so cryptosize writes about me ? He's ignored , i guess he's not saying the nicest things . I think he is a descendant of Gauloises and he thinks that the sky is falling on his head . He is a fan of every conspiracy theory and thinks that he is a prophet that has come to earth to save the ignorants . It's common for half brain monkeys ( too many in our days ) .


As for you o-e-l-e-o , i have face many times from maxis ad hominem's , while they just try to avoid reality .  You tried to not answer my questions many times , so i'll give the answers myself . You claim that surveillance doesn't help while many crimes have been solved thanks to it ( private surveillance or not ) . You say that it doesn't prevent them . If these criminals aren't arrested will they commit new crimes ? So , if a criminal is arrested after a crime aren't his not yet executed crimes prevented ? Of course to understand such things you have to leave your personal beliefs on the side and it's obvious you don't do that .
You aren't interested about privacy , you want a society without rules ( especially if this benefits you ) . You can't understand the most important part about bitcoin which is a ledger that shows every transaction , auditable by anyone . It's the first electronic cash system that does that , isn't that strange for a creation of a cypherpunk ?
You don't understand that when everything is build on bitcoin you will be able to audit governments and authorities . You don't understand that ( most ) crime exists because it's profitable . If you make it non profitable it will almost disappear . Bitcoin is here to help you in more ways than you can imagine .
If you want to learn stuff about bsv you better start reading yourself and stop learning things from influencers . As what you say about coins seized is total nonsense . Courts can do that , not anyone . It's a more improved version of what satoshi said " Imagine if gold turned to lead when stolen. If the thief gives it back, it turns to gold again." . And i'm pro bsv because i'm a man that lives in my time . I don't use my pentium and my 56kbps modem . Times move on . I guess you too have at least some Mbps line and some TB pc . 1 MB blocks are just an excuse so bitcoin never becomes adopted . Keep supporting that and lightning , after 7 years still doesn't work properly ( and it won't ) . And PLEASE , don't ever let core or the community increase the blocksize and start rejecting blocks with your rapspi's if they do . Other chains will welcome your miners ( which will happen eventually either way ) .

FWIW, Bitcoin sidechain also exist where you can store such data. And by using SegWit/Taproot witness data (similar with what Ordinal does), you can store hash of multiple file into single transaction which have far higher efficiency.

Totally agree , that's what i said , sidechains aren't btc . RSK is a nice try from Sergio based on satoshi's vision about sidechains  but unfortunately didn't gain the traction it deserved . 

[BlackHatCoiner]

It's funny how you talk about cryptosize being a fan of conspiracy theories, when you're under the impression of much more exaggerated stuff.

Πoια είναι τα σχέδια τoυ Core;

Nα καθυστερησoυν oσo γινεται περισσoτερo τo adoption , μιας και ενα δικτυo με ακριβoτερo κoστoς συναλλαγων απo τα υπαρχoντα δικτυα πληρωμων δεν υπαρχει λoγoς να υιoθετηθει μαζικα .

For non-Greek readers, that translates to:

What are Core's plans?

To delay the adoption as much as possible, since there is no reason for a network with more expensive transaction costs than the existing payment networks to be adopted en masse.

The Bitcoin Core developers want to delay adoption as much as possible, ruining Bitcoin's reputation, because... <enter conspiracy theory>  

As for you o-e-l-e-o , i have face many times from maxis ad hominem's , while they just try to avoid reality

Do maxis avoid reality as much as you avoid replying to my counter-arguments?

You can't understand the most important part about bitcoin which is a ledger that shows every transaction

I know you're having troubles comprehending the technical aspect, but please give it a try.

A ledger showing every transaction doesn't make it a ledger which contains beyond basic information regarding the transaction that takes place. We don't announce if we're buying a product, to whom we transact with, our real name etc. That means you can't tell if the money really changes hands, or if money is laundered, or used illegally. Hereby, electronic cash. These levels of pseudonymity come by default, and it's technically possible to improve them further, with techniques like coinjoin.

If you've grasped that part, and you're still of the opinion that the public shouldn't have freedom to enjoy these privacy levels, then maybe you should create a Stalin fork and see who follows? I'm sure lots of politicians will support it.

And i'm pro bsv because i'm a man that lives in my time . I don't use my pentium and my 56kbps modem

Lol. Have you tried downloading the BSV-pirate-movie-chain, or are you still syncing?

[HmmMAA]

The Bitcoin Core developers want to delay adoption as much as possible, ruining Bitcoin's reputation, because... <enter conspiracy theory>  

You are the one that have said many times in this forum that the 1 MB limit isn't sane . I understand that you have to argue just to increase your post count , earn some moneyz and also please cryptosize . Don't deny it , seems that your "friend" got you by the balls

Angelo, come the fuck on, you have confessed to me personally that you visit this board (even making worthless shitposting just to raise your post count!) to advertise shady centralized mixer services and you call me biased?

I don't remember shit of what I've talked with you about, we were exchanging messages for like a dozen of times a day once. The fact that you want to doxx me (by publishing my private messages) to prove a point says a lot.

To be honest i was expecting from you greater things , it's sad to see a young person falling to that low level just for profit .
I think community should give you neg trust , that's a serious accusation from cryptosize , so you could lose that income and maybe make you a better person ( small chances about both ) .

Do maxis avoid reality as much as you avoid replying to my counter-arguments?

I have spend many hour arguing with you , but it seems that i was wasting my time just to increase your post count . I thought i had something to offer to you ( my time ) but you were taking advantage of me . I should have refute your bullshit from the start https://effectiviology.com/brandolinis-law/

I know you're having troubles comprehending the technical aspect, but please give it a try.
A ledger showing every transaction doesn't make it a ledger which contains beyond basic information regarding the transaction that takes place. We don't announce if we're buying a product, to whom we transact with, our real name etc. That means you can't tell if the money really changes hands, or if money is laundered, or used illegally. Hereby, electronic cash. These levels of pseudonymity come by default, and it's technically possible to improve them further, with techniques like coinjoin.
If you've grasped that part, and you're still of the opinion that the public shouldn't have freedom to enjoy these privacy levels, then maybe you should create a Stalin fork and see who follows? I'm sure lots of politicians will support it.

What if you know the government's accounts ? Could you track how your/my/ours money are spent ? That's your problem , you only look at what benefits you . You fail to see the bigger picture . I won't waste any more time with you .

Lol. Have you tried downloading the BSV-pirate-movie-chain, or are you still syncing?

No need to do it yet , if i ever create a business on bsv i will certainly do . I'm not affraid to spend pennies like you by looking when fees are down to transact  

[BlackHatCoiner]

You are the one that have said many times in this forum that the 1 MB limit isn't sane

I'm still arguing that it isn't a long-term solution, even though it's completely irrelevant to your theory that the Core developers want to "destroy bitcoin".

I think community should give you neg trust

Listen. If you have something personal with me, you can address it in the Reputation board. Negative trust is not given if someone's randomly accused of admitting he's made a couple of shitposts, comparably to the rest of his. I'll be glad if you created a new topic, gathering all of my "shitposts" there, and perhaps reaching out my campaign manager for their input. In my experience, though, professional managers don't just randomly hire shitposters, but you're free to question their decision-making.

Unfortunately for you, discussions in this space are predominantly paid.

What if you know the government's accounts ?

Government spending is publicly available, and politicians have funds-source declaration. Corruption in politics won't be resolved by reporting Bitcoin addresses, because illicit activity like bravery happens with unreported funds in the first place.

The notion that with the absence of privacy, there will be absence of criminal activity and human corruption has long been debunked.

[cryptosize]

Oh , so cryptosize writes about me ? He's ignored , i guess he's not saying the nicest things .

I prefer to be truthful, even if that makes me unpleasant sometimes.

Are you equally truthful when you claim that you "ignore" my posts (even posts I made days ago)?

I bet not (come on, even BlackHatCoiner can see through your lies/bullshit ):

The Bitcoin Core developers want to delay adoption as much as possible, ruining Bitcoin's reputation, because... <enter conspiracy theory>  

You are the one that have said many times in this forum that the 1 MB limit isn't sane . I understand that you have to argue just to increase your post count , earn some moneyz and also please cryptosize . Don't deny it , seems that your "friend" got you by the balls

Angelo, come the fuck on, you have confessed to me personally that you visit this board (even making worthless shitposting just to raise your post count!) to advertise shady centralized mixer services and you call me biased?

I don't remember shit of what I've talked with you about, we were exchanging messages for like a dozen of times a day once. The fact that you want to doxx me (by publishing my private messages) to prove a point says a lot.

To be honest i was expecting from you greater things , it's sad to see a young person falling to that low level just for profit .
I think community should give you neg trust , that's a serious accusation from cryptosize , so you could lose that income and maybe make you a better person ( small chances about both ) .

Call me unpleasant if you like, I don't mind, but you will never be able to call me a liar. You tend to lie excessively on bitcointalk and you know it.

I think he is a descendant of Gauloises

I don't know who Gauloises is. Just because you're a smoker, doesn't mean I smoke too. I don't like burning my money, unlike you.

I'd rather stack more sats and protect my health from bad and addicting habits. Wanna try it too? Or do you lack self-discipline?

He is a fan of every conspiracy theory

Well, I certainly don't believe a narcissist like CSW could be Satoshi (which you do), along with his pedophile buddy (which you also seem to admire), that's even crazier than believing in flat earth (which I don't)... Len Sassaman would be a better candidate IMHO, but obviously I'm not going to insist, unlike you fawning over CSW's "high intelligence/philosophical ability" (as you've said many, many times before).

and thinks that he is a prophet that has come to earth to save the ignorants .

My posts are here (and there) for everyone to read and evaluate.

When I said back in late 2018 (3k bottom) that we would experience a new bull run in 2021, I was right, even though some people got angry with me.

When I said back in March 2020 that it was the new BTC bottom (4k USD) and FED's QE would fuel the new bull run, I was also right, despite some people not believing me once again.

Regarding my other predictions (climate QE etc.), you'll just have to wait until 2025. Less than 2 years left...

I'm sorry if you feel inadequate when someone else makes better predictions than you do. It seems your ego is bigger than your IQ.

And no, I don't believe that everyone deserves to be saved from the fiat Ponzi scheme. Definitely not useless eaters (and there are many of them).

Anyway, you can keep attacking BTC maxis just because you feel butthurt about losing the block size wars and betting on the wrong horse:

Crypto entrepreneur Calvin Ayre predicts that the flagship cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, will plunge to zero in 2019 because it’s worthless. But never fear, he said, because Bitcoin Cash Satoshi Vision (BSV) will be there to save the day.

This aged like fine wine...

Feel free to insist you "never" read this post.

What if you know the government's accounts ?

Government spending is publicly available, and politicians have funds-source declaration. Corruption in politics won't be resolved by reporting Bitcoin addresses, because illicit activity like bravery happens with unreported funds in the first place.

The notion that with the absence of privacy, there will be absence of criminal activity and human corruption has long been debunked.

Judging by Bob Menendez, it's possible to bribe politicians in many ways: USD cash, gold and maybe even Monero. Bribery won't go away with CBDC (cashless society), only fools believe that.

HmmMAA (also known as Geo Gou) envisions a utopia (more like a dystopia) of total transparency and "zero" crime. Sounds familiar? Many sci-fi movies have predicted this dystopian theme.

He wouldn't mind surveillance cameras even in his own WC, just because he has nothing to hide.

[mikeywith]

You claim that surveillance doesn't help while many crimes have been solved thanks to it ( private surveillance or not ) . You say that it doesn't prevent them . If these criminals aren't arrested will they commit new crimes ? So , if a criminal is arrested after a crime aren't his not yet executed crimes prevented ? Of course to understand such things you have to leave your personal beliefs on the side and it's obvious you don't do that .
You aren't interested about privacy , you want a society without rules ( especially if this benefits you )

In my country, many decades ago it was illegal for the police force to search your car without a warrant from the office of the attorney general or court, the lawmakers didn't seem to like that so they started changing it slightly one step at a time.

The first change was that the search was legal without a warrant, but unless they found a firearm in your car -- there was nothing much they could do about anything else they found, so there were many cases of police force searching a car that was being used in transporting a serious sum of drugs, they arrest the driver alongside the drugs, send them to court and the case will be dismissed right way as soon as the driver says " the drugs are not mine".

The next change they made was to include the "drugs" next to the firearms, so now you could be randomly checked at any checkpoint or even while getting pulled over for no reason, and if you got any drugs in the car it would be treated as if the search happened based on a court warrant, this lead to an increase of the number of drug dealers in prison by a few orders of magnitude, and then all the naive people were happy about the law change.

The next thing you know is that any police officer can stop you at any place, arrest you, take you to the general attorney's office, and say "We found this MDMA pill in his car" and just like that -- you get a few years in jail.

Years have passed since the change of the law, and now what? the drug dealers figured out many ways of moving the drugs around, no more fancy news headlines of "arrested 5 large drug dealers today" but every now and then we hear a story of an innocent person who was arrested and sentenced to a few months/years over something the law enforcement put in his car, the people are now fighting hard to change these laws because we don't care if you now catch 500 drug dealers instead of a 100 when we don't feel safe at checkpoints, I rather see the drug dealers in every corner of the country and not be sent to jail just because some police officer doesn't like the way I talk to him.

You can reflect the same drugs related law to the money laundry b.s, while these chain analyses do certainly help in catching hackers and bad actors in general, they could also be used as a weapon against innocent people, let's imagine a scenario where the law enforcement put their hands on an address that is proven to be owned by a human trafficker based on (chain analysis b.s), they use that address to send you some BTC and then take you to court with that evidence, that would be pretty terrible for you isn't it?  

It's funny because in your signature you put this great wisdom.

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." Thomas Sowell

These chain analysis companies pay no price for being wrong, they just make what we can call an "educated guess" at best, and they don't have to pay the price for being wrong, this is indeed a fundamental disagreement not just related to crypto, some people think it's okay to bomb a whole building just to kill one criminal even if the collateral damage is 10 innocent people -- while others like me believe that even bombing a building with 10 criminal and 1 innocent soul is unacceptable.

[HmmMAA]

.... and then we hear a story of an innocent person who was arrested and sentenced to a few months/years over something the law enforcement put in his car

Honest question before i proceed to a full reply , how do we know that guy is innocent ?

[mikeywith]

.... and then we hear a story of an innocent person who was arrested and sentenced to a few months/years over something the law enforcement put in his car

Honest question before i proceed to a full reply , how do we know that guy is innocent ?

We know for sure because in some cases some other evidence were revealed, an example of that would be one of law enforcement officers telling the truth about thier partners either because they feel guilty or for some other personal reasons, but ya it happens all the time.

I am literally telling you that any random policeman can frame you pretty easily, just one pill of drug and you do a year in prison, you have to count on the integrity and honesty of everyone who has the power to frame you, you have no idea how scared people are when a police officer pull them over, you could end up doing a full a year in prison for "consuming drugs" and 5+ for selling it, if said officer has access to a large quantity of drugs they can put that in your car and you spend 5 good years in jail.

"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", since this is someone's life and freedom, if the evidences are even remotely questionable -- they mean exactly nothing.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Honest question before i proceed to a full reply , how do we know that guy is innocent ?

How do you know he is guilty? Whatever happened to presumption of innocence?

The onus is not on the accused to prove innocence - the onus is on the prosecution to prove guilt. And the onus is not on me to to open myself up to complete scrutiny by blockchain analysis and other government funded mass surveillance tools and prove that I have "nothing to hide".

Innocence is the default position. Privacy is the default position.

[cryptosize]

Honest question before i proceed to a full reply , how do we know that guy is innocent ?

How do you know he is guilty? Whatever happened to presumption of innocence?

The onus is not on the accused to prove innocence - the onus is on the prosecution to prove guilt. And the onus is not on me to to open myself up to complete scrutiny by blockchain analysis and other government funded mass surveillance tools and prove that I have "nothing to hide".

Innocence is the default position. Privacy is the default position.

HmmMAA loves totalitarian regimes, because apparently they can offer "zero crime".

Innocence as the default position has been lost since March 2020. We're all "guilty" by default and then we have to "prove" we're innocent.

[HmmMAA]

We know for sure because in some cases some other evidence were revealed, an example of that would be one of law enforcement officers telling the truth about thier partners either because they feel guilty or for some other personal reasons, but ya it happens all the time.

I am literally telling you that any random policeman can frame you pretty easily, just one pill of drug and you do a year in prison, you have to count on the integrity and honesty of everyone who has the power to frame you, you have no idea how scared people are when a police officer pull them over, you could end up doing a full a year in prison for "consuming drugs" and 5+ for selling it, if said officer has access to a large quantity of drugs they can put that in your car and you spend 5 good years in jail.

"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", since this is someone's life and freedom, if the evidences are even remotely questionable -- they mean exactly nothing.

I'm glad that you understand the importance of evidence . What happens in your country is that you can't prove you are innocent . That's exactly what these cops are taking advantage of . It's your word against them .
Now imagine if these cops were wearing cameras . Imagine if there was a standard procedure that 2 cops had to search a car on opposite sides and film each other any moment so that no one of them could "plant" anything . Imagine if surveillance cameras existed in the place where traffic stops taking place so cops would know that their body camera videos are timestamped with the surveillance cameras that exist at the spot . Imagine if there were cameras in your car . Most of people will say that the bad state has cameras on policemen and cameras on road to invade their privacy , but these cameras can provide the evidence to prove that you are innocent .
So the problem is not that police is searching your car , but that the system is set up in such a way that it can be easily manipulated . Cops don't have accountability as no one can be certain if they act dishonestly , and by "default" a cop is serving the law so that makes him honest and you a criminal if they say so .
I think that in the cases you mention of cops telling the truth about their partners they would probably had some kind of evidence ( video , photo , recording etc ) . Usually when it's your word against 3 or 4 other guys , majority rules . So , that proves for another time what i say if you think of it .
Stop thinking that a society can work without rules both for public servants and citizens . Anarchy can't work , it will only lead to feudalism as human beings are mostly selfish . We need rules so there's accountability for our actions .  

How do you know he is guilty? Whatever happened to presumption of innocence?

The onus is not on the accused to prove innocence - the onus is on the prosecution to prove guilt. And the onus is not on me to to open myself up to complete scrutiny by blockchain analysis and other government funded mass surveillance tools and prove that I have "nothing to hide".

Innocence is the default position. Privacy is the default position.

I guess i have pointed about the presumption of innocence above . It's gone when drugs are found in the car ( even if it's planted ) . If cops word is the only evidence then suspect is screwed .
These cops proved guilt even if it's fake , and the funny part is that we don't know who's right or wrong .

In blockchain you can prove if you're innocent or not . Your transactions are the evidence . If you decide to take the route of anonymity you deprive yourself from the evidence you have . Bitcoin ( as it was supposed to work ) provides you with a high level of privacy , but not anonymity . If you are looking to be an anon you should better move to other chains . Bitcoin by default will not provide that .

[o_e_l_e_o]

Just lol. So your solution for corrupt police or a court system which assumes people are guilty on no evidence, is not to, you know, weed out the corruption or even enforce one of the oldest and most basic human rights of presumption of innocence? Your solution is more surveillance. So we all need to be surveilled at all times to protect us from the malicious state. That's the most insane logic I've heard yet.

Bitcoin by default will not provide that .

That's the first thing we agree on. Good thing that mixers and coinjoins exist.

[HmmMAA]

Just lol. So your solution for corrupt police or a court system which assumes people are guilty on no evidence, is not to, you know, weed out the corruption or even enforce one of the oldest and most basic human rights of presumption of innocence? Your solution is more surveillance. So we all need to be surveilled at all times to protect us from the malicious state. That's the most insane logic I've heard yet.

Youu got it wrong , they have evidence , the problem is that evidence is faked .
What's your solution to solve the problems you mention ? I'm really interested . Maybe i'm wrong after all .

[apogio]

In blockchain you can prove if you're innocent or not . Your transactions are the evidence . If you decide to take the route of anonymity you deprive yourself from the evidence you have . Bitcoin ( as it was supposed to work ) provides you with a high level of privacy , but not anonymity . If you are looking to be an anon you should better move to other chains . Bitcoin by default will not provide that .

I will leave the rest of the conversation aside, because I want to talk about it Bitcoin in this board.

Bitcoin provides pseudonimity, not anonymity.

To be honest though, there are too many implementations that will help you make tracing difficult (or even infeasible):

Bitcoin mixers, coinjoins, coin swapping, lightning swapping, selling for cash, buying with cash

Even though transaction history is available to everyone, if you just coinjoin properly, then there is absolutely no way for anyone to know for sure which path your original UTXO has taken.

I think being pseudonymous is a feature, not a flaw. In fact, there is no real anonymity on the internet. At the end of the day it is only a question of how well you can hide.

[mikeywith]

Now imagine if these cops were wearing cameras . Imagine if there was a standard procedure that 2 cops had to search a car on opposite sides and film each other any moment so that no one of them could "plant" anything . Imagine if surveillance cameras existed in the place where traffic stops taking place so cops would know that their body camera videos are timestamped with the surveillance cameras that exist at the spot .

So all this money is spent to achieve what exactly? body-worn cameras provide an overview of the overall incident and that's it, I can still manage to slide a tiny Ecstasy pill under my car seat while being watched by 10 cameras, in fact, in of the cases the went public after another officer confessed what his co-worker told him was that he held a drug pill between his fingers, reached to the victim's pocket to search and and "found the pill".

This would only work effectively if the procedure states that policemen have to approach the vehicle naked, with their legs and fingers spread, mouth open (probably add a mount-camera too), but as long as there is the slightest possibility that the policeman can slide a tiny little object in your pocket/car/house then the whole process is flawed.

This is the very reason why the previous legislators wrote the rules in such a way that at least a few different organizations/departments need to coordinate in order to frame you, you need to have a bad cop and a bad prosecutor working together to frame you which is pretty much unlikely to happen compared to when a single person can arrange everything by themselves.

So the problem is not that police is searching your car , but that the system is set up in such a way that it can be easily manipulated .

No, the problem is the police searching my car without a warrant, as explained above, cameras won't cut it, it would only make things a little bit more difficult but sure thing is -- it won't stop them.

In blockchain you can prove if you're innocent or not . Your transactions are the evidence .

You can't, anyone can frame you just like the drug example, say that I have a blacklisted address which the Chain analysis assumes that it belongs to me as an international terrorist who caused the death of 10000 people, what happens when I send a few sats to an address which you owned and confirmed ownership to it by KYCing yourself to the government, how are you going to prove that you were not in contact with me and that I sent you the coins to frame you?

Furthermore, if your funds sit on a CEX, not only they can partially frame you like that, but they could fully frame you by sending you "Tainted Bitcoin" and then withdrawing the same "tainted coins" to another address owned by you, this will be a perfect evidence that you and I are partners if we were to go with the assumption that those coins were indeed owned by me.

It's even worse if you think about it, there doesn't need to be an actual terrorist involved, the chain analysis company can just link those coins to anyone, they can just send you some random coins and they could just assume that you received them in exchange for trafficking a 10-year old boy, how are you going defend yourself against that when we don't know how they got to the conclusion and they won't share the "how" with anyone?

If you initiate a transaction that has two outputs one is 0.005655 and another has 0.001 all these chain analysis software will assume that the first output is the change address just because they believe it's impossible to end up with a change that is a round number, you could always fool these fools by ending up with a round change, everything else they build on it, later on, will be false, it is all but guesswork, greater for research purposes but terrible for court evidence.

So you want a safe community which is great, but you think all criminals are in the street you need to remember that many criminals are in government offices waiting to exploit anything against you, they would protect you from the street criminals but nothing will protect you from them, the more power you give them they more they will use it against you, not just against the criminals.

A safe world is achieved by increasing the standard of living not by spying on every aspect of the citizens' lives, there is no link between the cities with the most CCTV systems and low crime levels, and the opposite is correct, many cities are hardly watched and yet they have little no crimes.

[LoyceV]

I wouldn't call it an art. It's just business. Just like "taint", it's a "solution" looking for a problem. Once they convince people there is a problem, they have buyers for their "solution".

[apogio]

I wouldn't call it an art. It's just business. Just like "taint", it's a "solution" looking for a problem. Once they convince people there is a problem, they have buyers for their "solution".

I don't think "taint" is an actual problem, but I believe it is our right to try to erase traces of previously owned bitcoin. That said, I am not afraid whether my coins will be accepted or not, I just want to "confuse" anyone trying to identify how I got my coins and from whom, because I don't think it's anyone's business to know.

[cryptosize]

LOL @ people who claim multiple cameras can "save" innocent citizens. They're either useful idiots (claiming to have above average IQ ), or systemic trojan horses/government agents pretending to be laymen citizens.

Let me tell you one thing: the most ancient/advanced camera in the world are your own eyes. Infinite resolution, high frame rate, large color depth...

Have you ever seen magicians performing tricks right in front of your eyes? Were you ever able to figure out how they do it? NO!

So, who the hell tells you that policemen cannot receive magician training to plant you some kind of pill/drug in your car?

Only dystopia lovers will tell you that... the same kind of people who loved COVID lockdowns (and are going to love cameras in the future to enforce climate lockdowns, because we need "rules" in a society).

[BlackHatCoiner]

I think being pseudonymous is a feature, not a flaw.

I think it's rather a tradeoff. I mean, the founder was pretty much in favor of anonymity judging by his posts[1][2]. The reason the network doesn't operate in "complete anonymity", as in Monero, might be because he wasn't aware of how to implement it at that time, or because it'd be a burden in terms of transaction scaling. If you didn't know it, Monero full nodes need to keep all the outputs and be able to efficiently index them, whereas in Bitcoin, you only need to keep UTXOs.

He surely wasn't against anonymity, as it's possible to achieve it using coinjoin.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=770.msg9074#msg9074
[2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8.msg34#msg34

[apogio]

Don't you think the conversation has gone out of the general board's theme? I suggest we keep talking about the analytics and avoid posts regarding society in general.

If you didn't know it, Monero full nodes need to keep all the outputs and be able to efficiently index them, whereas in Bitcoin, you only need to keep UTXOs.

No I didn't, thanks for clarifying that. I don't think satoshi wanted to create a fully anonymous chain, even though your posts are accurate and he seems to be in favor of total anonymity.

[cryptosize]

Don't you think the conversation has gone out of the general board's theme? I suggest we keep talking about the analytics and avoid posts regarding society in general.

If you didn't know it, Monero full nodes need to keep all the outputs and be able to efficiently index them, whereas in Bitcoin, you only need to keep UTXOs.

No I didn't, thanks for clarifying that. I don't think satoshi wanted to create a fully anonymous chain, even though your posts are accurate and he seems to be in favor of total anonymity.

But HmmMAA insists Bitcoin was created to take away anonymity.

[mikeywith]

Don't you think the conversation has gone out of the general board's theme? I suggest we keep talking about the analytics and avoid posts regarding society in general.

I think we are right on topic, the exact part that matters the most, anything that doesn't affect society at all might as well be ignored and not discussed, blockchain analytics are fine if people want to use them for educational purposes, fun or whatever other purpose they see fit, it's completely fine if someone wants to randomly point to a bitcoin address and say this is owned by that person, nobody would care about it -- but when such guessing becomes a tool in court on its own then that is a catastrophe that will affect people's lives directly.

[apogio]

But HmmMAA insists Bitcoin was created to take away anonymity.

If you think about it, nothing is really anonymous on the web.

As o_e_l_e_o said above, monero has a bounty of $625,000 if it gets cracked. If it gets hacked indeed, can you imagine how bad it will be for its reputation? Essentially the chain will be worthless.

So, creating a fully anonymous blockchain is also risky for this reason. Imagine Bitcoin, claiming to be anonymous, but getting hacked.

Satoshi didn't want to take away anonymity. He seemed to love anonymity. I suspect he was unable to fully guarrantee anonimity and therefore, he chose pseudonimity. Personal opinion, of course.

[o_e_l_e_o]

So, who the hell tells you that policemen cannot receive magician training to plant you some kind of pill/drug in your car?

It is of course trivially easy to plant something with or without bodycams. And even if it were impossible, police could simply charge you for running a stop sign, running a red light, using your phone while driving, dangerous driving, or a hundred other things where bodycams are useless. More surveillance is never the answer, which is why even the NSA have admitted that mass surveillance has never prevented a single terrorist attack.

As o_e_l_e_o said above, monero has a bounty of $625,000 if it gets cracked.

Note the bounty no longer exists.

The bounty eventually evolved to cover either Monero or Lightning transactions. It was awarded to Chainalysis in September of 2021, just before they publicly announced their "transaction monitoring solution" for Lightning (https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/lightning-network-support/).

So in other words the Monero bounty was unclaimed, and Chainalysis were awarded the money for instead offering the US government Lightning monitoring services.

[Medusah]

As o_e_l_e_o said above, monero has a bounty of $625,000 if it gets cracked. If it gets hacked indeed, can you imagine how bad it will be for its reputation?

It has been broken in the past:  https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/03/breaking_the_an.html.  There have been hard forks since then that enhance privacy further.  Its reputation is fine.

[BlackHatCoiner]

So in other words the Monero bounty was unclaimed, and Chainalysis were awarded the money for instead offering the US government Lightning monitoring services.

It's the perfect topic to comment out that part.

Monero is the best cryptocurrency in terms of anonymity, and second-best in terms of research, as per my experience goes. If Chainalysis could break it, I'm pretty confident they could tell the difference between a segwit and non-segwit address or the difference between bits and bytes.  

I can imagine how inaccurate their lightning network monitoring reports will be.  

[o_e_l_e_o]

I can imagine how inaccurate their lightning network monitoring reports will be.

Oh, absolutely. As we have seen in this thread, they fail to understand the most basic concepts about bitcoin (such as segwit v non-segwit), or indeed the most basic concepts about computers in general (such as bits v bytes). They fail to understand how easily their simply heuristics are fooled, such as with change being sent to different script types. They have absolutely zero evidence that their on-chain analysis is anything other than complete guesswork, and cannot say how many false positives they identify with their random guesswork. I am certain their Lightning analysis will be similar flawed, at best.

However, apparently none of that stops the government relying on this made up bullshit in court and using it as evidence to prosecute potentially innocent individuals. If Chainalysis are offering it, the government will be buying it and using it against anyone they like.

[cryptosize]

How do they analyze Lightning?

There is no ledger/blockchain to begin with...

ps1: Monero has not been broken (highly unlikely IMHO), but they will delist it from various CEX (which proves it's an actual danger, since the bounty hasn't been claimed so far). It's still listed in Binance, Kraken, KuCoin to name a few.

ps2: KYC is debateable and highly overrated.

Let's say that I buy 1 BTC from Binance (with my own identity) and I gift it/sell it to someone else (either hand the private key or send it to another address).

Chain analysis companies will still claim it's my own property, even though it no longer is.

Don't sweat it too much, as long as it's stored in your own personal wallet and not on a CEX (even if it's the "trustworthy" BlackRock with their ESG shenanigans -> could easily steal your BTC IOU if you don't comply to climate change demands for example).

[franky1]

I can imagine how inaccurate their lightning network monitoring reports will be.

Oh, absolutely.

funny. you two always make me laugh at your ignorance
look at the DCG portfolio.. notice the main LN devs are in the same portfolio as chainanalysis. notice all the other portflios of services that share information

it only takes a few nodes in certain network positions to intercept paths of data. especially now those teams in DCG portfolio are also offering monitoring LN software
when "greenlight" manages the channels and payments. guess where that data goes

[BlackHatCoiner]

How do they analyze Lightning?

The only way is to run several lightning nodes with large liquidity, trying to make a conclusion out of the routed transactions. For instance, if I only own a channel, which to my unawareness is owned by Chainalysis, and I want to send a payment to a lightning node which also shares channels only with Chainalysis nodes, then Chainalysis can de-anonymize the payment.

Chainalysis will quickly notice that it isn't practical to own half the network, so we should expect the same guesswork with now, squared...

[franky1]

LN has a flaw of only 20 hop distance.. so they create "trampolines" where you send a message to a service that is distanced somewhere else on the network where they create the onion to the destination on your behalf.. meaning you tell them teh amount and destination you want..

LN has a flaw of only channel imblance and bottlenecks.. so they create "hubs" where you let them have your value, let them set up a channel and you just have some msat balalnce where you tell their software what destination you want and they read the gossit to create the path

LN has flaw of complicated integration of LN node and bitcoin node and scripts inbetween.. so they create "greenlight" that manages the node and communication process and onion routing paths and you just do the signing of value to the channel partner

[i can go on, and on]

and yet people think that LN is a decentralised system of user full control of funds..

when you look at all the big services that are all sister companies of DCG or other institutions that have to follow MSB regulations. it should awaken you to how many nodes are sharing data to chainanalysis

[mikeywith]

However, apparently none of that stops the government relying on this made up bullshit in court and using it as evidence to prosecute potentially innocent individuals. If Chainalysis are offering it, the government will be buying it and using it against anyone they like.

It's always the "money" that creates problems and fixes them, these companies have the motive and the means to convenience or even force it on the government to buy and use their terrible tools, on the other hand, going against that doesn't earn you any money, who would spend millions of dollars to convince the government that this Chainalysis is nothing but horseshit? the a few people who have the perfect understanding of how the system works have no means of imposing their opinion.

We still have fools in our government who are highly influenced/controlled by the banking mafia who claim that Bitcoin was created by some sort of origination with the intent to collect as much money as they can before changing the password and deleting the Bitcoin website  , no matter how hard we try to explain the truth to them -- our voices are hardly heard because we don't have the tools our enemy has.