The lead of Chainalysis is unable to deny that their tech is "junk science"

[odolvlobo]

The head of investigations at Chainalysis testified she was “unaware” of scientific evidence for the accuracy of Chainalysis’ Reactor software used by law enforcement.

We all know how the technology works -- inputs of a transaction, as well as other characteristics, are assumed to be able to associate the transaction with a specific wallet. However, nobody knows how accurate it is. That nobody includes Chainalysis, who whose whole business is based on it. Coming to a conclusion without being about to show that is correct is a hallmark of junk science.

This is all coming to a head in the case against Roman Sterlingov, who is accused of running Bitcoin Fog, because the evidence against him relies almost exclusively on the claims made by Chainalysis.

Relevant links:
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/tech-and-telecom-law/wall-street-backed-crypto-tracer-under-attack-ahead-of-trial-1
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chainalysis-investigations-lead-unaware-scientific-221931194.html
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/chainalysis-investigations-lead-is-unaware-of-scientific-evidence
https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/l0la-l33tz

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[Bitco55]

News says she doesn't know now how the software works internally and that she only uses it.
Anyways, the chainanalysis reactor software that is used to trace and investigate Bitcoin transactions was also challenged and criticized CipherTrace, an expert from another blockchain as he revealed its errors and said that it used a flawed method to trace funds on the blockchain.

[o_e_l_e_o]

We have been discussing some of this in another thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5464886.0;dt

In summary, Chainalysis is complete bullshit. They have admitted multiple times in court that they have absolutely zero evidence for anything that they do. Their reports make a plethora of very basic mistakes, such as not knowing what a segwit address is, mixing up bits and bytes, and apparently not understanding that multiple users can have the same IP address when using a VPN server. They are using every legal avenue possible to prevent anyone from reviewing their black box source code, because they know that it is complete bullshit. They are making claims such as long time bitcoin contributors are not qualified enough to assess their source code, or that other people are too qualified and will end up stealing their source code.

The whole of blockchain analysis basically boils down to "Trust us, bro", with absolute zero evidence that any of it is any more than complete guesswork. But this is apparently enough to put potentially innocent people in jail indefinitely.

This is absolutely not what bitcoin was designed to be - to have a bunch of untouchable third party companies ruining people's lives based on made up nonsense pulled from the blockchain. Any and all companies or services which support or fund blockchain analysis are anti-bitcoin and should be boycotted.

[franky1]

its a public ledger. i know many tin foil privacy guys hate the blockchain and want to remain private in a lazy way, hate that mixers can be found easily and funds used in mixers can be found easily and treated with suspicion.. but instead of crying about how public/suspicious your transactions can be treated. try to learn what investigators DO do so you can learn ways around their methods

currency has never been private, even the romans had currency controls 2000+ years ago

the issue is that bitcoin lost its 2009-2013 private property status when it became currency in 2014
so now currency rule apply, creating the business need of things like chain analysis

chain analysis gathers information from many sources, not just the blockchain. they dont have info on every btc. but when they do find ties that bundles funds together, they do
however the information they get is only as good as the data they get

so if tin foil hat nutjobs pretend to want privacy but are publicly posting addresses and examples of them using mixers.. the nutjobs are the ones providing the ties that bind them

easy lessons to learn:
if you ever use mixers, your on some investigation
if you use any service listed in the DCG portfolio, those details are 100% shared with chain analysis