
Blockchain Surveillance Is Accelerating Privacy Tool Development - posternut
https://news.bitcoin.com/blockchain-surveillance-privacy-tool/
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exo762
This turns Bitcoin back into cash. Original money system. Any comparisons with
money laundering are misguided because it gives users back their privacy -
privacy they didn't had because of the fact that blockchain is public. Today
they have some privacy while using banking system - average criminals don't
have access to their financial information. With new privacy tools for Bitcoin
no-one will have access to that information. Just a side effect of "no
privileged third parties" system.

If this is money laundering - than cash is money laundering. Plain and simple.

~~~
auganov
Cash can be and is tracked. This takes it a step further. I won't be surprised
if governments outlaw the use of tumblers or go after everyone with tainted
bitcoin (which given a possible high percentage of dirty bitcoin would make
them unfeasible). Otherwise, you've given for-profit cybercriminals the last
piece to routinely execute perfect crimes.

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ryanlol
The usage of tumblers is "money laundering" in mostly every country.

> go after everyone with tainted bitcoin

How? What for? owning tainted bitcoin isn't illegal and given the amount of
"tainted" coins it's probably not even enough for probable cause.

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auganov
Well, effectively outlawing tumblers involves investigating people that pay
with tumbler-tainted coins. I mean it more in a Patriot Act type legislation
sense rather than probable cause [0]. Obviously, if you've got non-tumbled
coins with a direct criminal taint then I'm pretty sure that's probable cause
already. Just to be clear - coins are not forever tainted in such context.
i.e. someone extorts 1 BTC, the victim reports it - it's now tainted. The
criminal pays the 1 BTC for pizza, police arrests him. The coin owned by the
pizza place is a clean coin again now.

[0] tho I guess in some cases it could very well fulfill it (>50% probability
of a crime having been committed)

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kzrdude
At some point there must be migration from Bitcoin onto a technology that's
actually designed for privacy.

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nextstep
Monero. The darknet markets are starting to accept this as a form of payment.

~~~
trendia
Most of the volume on exchanges seems to be Bitcoin <\--> Monero. According to
24 hour volume rankings [1], volume is:

1\. XMR / BTC .. $11,500,000

2\. XMR / USD .. $ 65,000

[1]
[http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/volume/24-hour/](http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/volume/24-hour/)

~~~
jerguismi
That tells more like that speculators are flocking to it... There is always
some altcoin that is currently speculators favourite.

To measure actual usage, one could watch how many transactions are done per
hour or something like that:
[http://moneroblocks.info/](http://moneroblocks.info/)

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lmeyerov
Conversely, if you're interested in making some btc analysis apps, we've done
some cool internal visual (graph) analytics experiments at Graphistry.

Would be happy to share a dev key to our viz API: leo@gr...stry.com . Some
examples of what's possible:
[https://github.com/graphistry/pygraphistry](https://github.com/graphistry/pygraphistry)
. Gets fun when you combine it with a Spark cluster and the full blockchain :)

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Animats
By "privacy tool development" they mean money laundering. This will not end
well.

~~~
daxorid
So? By what _moral_ reasoning is money laundering actually wrong?

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JumpCrisscross
We live in a society built on the rule of law. Money laundering is illegal
because it subverts society's ability to enforce its rules.

~~~
petertodd
So what do you think of Tor then? Or VPN's? Or SSL? They all subvert society's
ability to enforce its rules.

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StavrosK
Or locked doors and sealed envelopes.

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S_Daedalus
I think that locked doors and sealed envelopes are symbolic, and have been for
far longer than we've been alive.

