<story><title>Bitcoin is a ‘boon for surveillance’, says former CIA director</title><url>https://decrypt.co/66411/cia-bitcoin-surveillance</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arcticbull</author><text>&amp;gt;  But if I was a local drug kingpin in Baltimore, or a corrupt mid-level CCP official, or a Cypriot corporate money launderer, then Bitcoin deanonymization is probably a small risk in the scheme of things. Certainly orders of magnitude less risk than using the traditional banking system.&lt;p&gt;... for now.&lt;p&gt;The thing is, 2-3 tx&amp;#x2F;sec is basically snail mail. That&amp;#x27;s such a small number of transactions that there&amp;#x27;s not even a forest to hide within.&lt;p&gt;As the analytics tools improve the de-anonymization will be faster and more automatic, and that &amp;quot;tens of millions&amp;quot; figure will dwindle down to pennies. State actors can easily combine that data with actual fiat, and you&amp;#x27;ll be in court before you know it.&lt;p&gt;The problem is you&amp;#x27;re committing a ledger of your criminal activity to the cloud forever, and CCing your attorney general, smirking that they&amp;#x27;ll never figure it out. Of course they will. Either they&amp;#x27;ll figure it out or ban it. Or both.</text></item><item><author>dcolkitt</author><text>As far as I can tell, hundreds of millions in drugs and contraband are regularly transacted using Bitcoin. Billions in global capital controls and taxes are evaded every day with Bitcoin. The fraction of black market participants who are revealed on the basis of &amp;quot;chain analysis&amp;quot; is still a rounding error.&lt;p&gt;It all depends what your threat model is. Bitcoin can be traced by sophisticated nation state actors at the cost of tens of millions per intercepted target. If I was Osama bin Laden or El Chapo or a guy who personally pissed off Putin, I probably wouldn&amp;#x27;t rely on it. But if I was a local drug kingpin in Baltimore, or a corrupt mid-level CCP official, or a Cypriot corporate money launderer, then Bitcoin deanonymization is probably a small risk in the scheme of things. Certainly orders of magnitude less risk than using the traditional banking system.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>oldkn</author><text>&amp;gt; ... for now&lt;p&gt;It bears repeating explicitly I think: you&amp;#x27;re not working against today&amp;#x27;s analysis tools, you&amp;#x27;re working against whatever analysis tools exist far into the future, since everything is recorded for eternity.</text></comment>
<story><title>Bitcoin is a ‘boon for surveillance’, says former CIA director</title><url>https://decrypt.co/66411/cia-bitcoin-surveillance</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arcticbull</author><text>&amp;gt;  But if I was a local drug kingpin in Baltimore, or a corrupt mid-level CCP official, or a Cypriot corporate money launderer, then Bitcoin deanonymization is probably a small risk in the scheme of things. Certainly orders of magnitude less risk than using the traditional banking system.&lt;p&gt;... for now.&lt;p&gt;The thing is, 2-3 tx&amp;#x2F;sec is basically snail mail. That&amp;#x27;s such a small number of transactions that there&amp;#x27;s not even a forest to hide within.&lt;p&gt;As the analytics tools improve the de-anonymization will be faster and more automatic, and that &amp;quot;tens of millions&amp;quot; figure will dwindle down to pennies. State actors can easily combine that data with actual fiat, and you&amp;#x27;ll be in court before you know it.&lt;p&gt;The problem is you&amp;#x27;re committing a ledger of your criminal activity to the cloud forever, and CCing your attorney general, smirking that they&amp;#x27;ll never figure it out. Of course they will. Either they&amp;#x27;ll figure it out or ban it. Or both.</text></item><item><author>dcolkitt</author><text>As far as I can tell, hundreds of millions in drugs and contraband are regularly transacted using Bitcoin. Billions in global capital controls and taxes are evaded every day with Bitcoin. The fraction of black market participants who are revealed on the basis of &amp;quot;chain analysis&amp;quot; is still a rounding error.&lt;p&gt;It all depends what your threat model is. Bitcoin can be traced by sophisticated nation state actors at the cost of tens of millions per intercepted target. If I was Osama bin Laden or El Chapo or a guy who personally pissed off Putin, I probably wouldn&amp;#x27;t rely on it. But if I was a local drug kingpin in Baltimore, or a corrupt mid-level CCP official, or a Cypriot corporate money launderer, then Bitcoin deanonymization is probably a small risk in the scheme of things. Certainly orders of magnitude less risk than using the traditional banking system.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spurdoman77</author><text>Even in the ancient Silk Road you could sell contraband effectively using internal, offchain transactions only. The customers pay using offchain transactions using the market, and the vendor can cash out via some trader in the same market.</text></comment>