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Binance reportedly handed Russian investigators data on IT specialist Yuri Belenky, who donated around $700 in crypto to Ukraine’s military while living in the EU.
The information was later used as evidence in a Russian “terrorism financing” case against him.
Why people ever thought crypto is anonymous when it has an accurate transaction ledger that is verified by multiple nodes, is beyond me.
A decade ago, when I was Talking About Cryptocurrency (approving), in presentations etc., this was indeed a very frequent assumption of my audience. They would be confused and/or shocked when I referred to earlier in the presentation to show that no, every transaction on the blockchain is visible to everyone, forever, otherwise it can’t even work.
I suspect a lot of the shocked response was due to the (unspoken) follow up question “then what the heck is the point of this, why would I use this?”
But I can see why the assumption comes along. Cryptography is all about secret, obscured communication; why wouldn’t cryptocurrency be about secret money transactions?
At least now we can Talk About Cryptocurrency (derogatory) and dispel that assumption, where we can.
Cryptography is all about secret, obscured communication
Cryptography can be about those things, but people who know about the field also know it can do a lot more like for example help with non-repudiation.
(Sorry having higher edu flashbacks about the wonders of cryptography)
Isn’t it more of an “obfuscation” thing? Maybe not anonymous but if you don’t know who the owner of a certain wallet is that has a transaction visible, then what use is that information for you? Or do you have to register wallets somewhere, I haven’t looked into this for like a decade or longer and I faintly remember not having to provide anything for a wallet.
You don’t have to provide anything to make a wallet, but you do have to give banking details to whomever you buy the tokens from, and as of the boom a few years ago, any exchanges that don’t want to be cut off from the global banking system will be as thorough about verifying and retaining data about your identity as any other regulated bank. Proper obfuscation would require something like buying Bitcoin for cash on the street and doing some prosecutable money laundering for good measure.
that was the standard retort to “BTC isn’t anonymous” back in the day - just find someone on “Local Bitcoins” and pay a 20% surcharge to get coins from a dude on a street corner
