TL; DR
Full story
Earlier this week, it was claimed that the Finnish Bureau of Investigation (KRP) had managed to crack the privacy of one cryptocurrency in particular.
At first this sounds quite interesting.
But when we dug a little further, we discovered that this explanation was a bit click-batey, and we’re going to peel back some layers to understand what’s really happening here.
The KRP’s claim was pointed out Money (a privacy coin).
Privacy coins are the crypto equivalent of paying in cash – just like a credit card, but untraceable. In the crypto world, if you pay with a privacy coin like Monero, your wallet address and transaction are all hidden from the public eye.
What’s cool but these coins get a lot of shade because criminals like to use them (just like cash) for transactions.
The next layer:
The KRP investigated these transactions because said criminals (☝️) tended to accept bribe payments via Monero.
(So figuring out how to track these payments would be a daunting task enormous in their research).
Last layer:
It’s a click-batey headline because the KRP didn’t do that Actually crack Monero’s privacy.
Instead, they looked at where/when Monero was exchanged for Bitcoin (a very publicly trackable coin) and connected the dots between known Bitcoin wallet addresses.
Et Voila, privacy coin ‘cracked’.