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42 sats \ 10 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic OP 5 Jul \ parent \ on: Privacy and Fungibility: The Forgotten Virtues of Sound Money econ
Let me supply some evidence that they may be able to track BTC due to the blockchain. Didn’t they track down all of Ross Ulbricht‘s BTC and confiscate it all in one fell swope? They also got a lot of other Silk Road BTC, as I understand it. They managed to do that years ago, too.
That was before lightning and who knows how many other advances in opsec.
The blockchain is visible only in that it shows which addresses were involved in on-chain transactions. Addresses with unknown owners provide relatively little information and people now generate new addresses frequently. Plus, transactions on lightning are very difficult to trace, enough so that @supertestnet has offered bounties for anyone who could trace lightning transactions created by him.
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Yes, but have there been coinciding advances in unraveling all of the opsec in the same period? Keeping privacy is getting more and more difficult every passing moment.
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Advances, yes, but not equivalent. Like I said, the people who understand this stuff best are on our team. At least that's my sense.
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Ok, but this sounds to me like any other weapons race with both sides going all out on research to overcome what the other side has done! THEY have a lot of money to do their research, don’t they?
I have also read that BTC may have come out of the DARPA research. If so, has anybody found backdoors, yet?
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Our side is going all out on privacy, but they are not because we aren't a big enough fish yet. It wouldn't make sense to invest a ton of effort in tracking down what is mostly a savings vehicle. Far more tax evasion and whatnot occur through other channels.
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Ah…. Yes, but they are notably harsh in the area of tax avoidance and evasion than on almost anything else but counterfeiting! THEY just don’t like competition!