Tracers in the Dark

I loved the excerpts that were published in Wired magazine, and I knew I had to read the book. It is such a fascinating story, and it is beautifully told.

Tracers in the Dark was a good overview of the history of some bitcoin-related crime investigations. If Greenberg’s goal was to write about how bitcoin’s not private, he did fairly well. But if it’s about a general history of cryptocurrency investigations, it has some serious shortcoming. My understanding going into this was it was going to be the latter, and here are some areas I find Greenberg falls short in: *With an exception of a few pages at the end, almost as an afterthought, he focused solely on bitcoin. While the largest, bitcoin’s not the only cryptocurrency. Leaving out meaningful discussions of other cryptocurrencies significantly limits this work. *Effectively comes across as a history of Chainalysis. While the prominent crypto-analysis company, there are others, and including them would’ve made this analysis/history more complete. *Relatedly, his use of essentially four-ish people to narrate the story made the book’s scope and viewpoints limited. I would’ve liked to hear other voices, more often. For example, other researches, investigators and companies from other places than the US and Chainalysis. *There were times when someone offers their incorrect opinion on an obvious truth, and he doesn’t reject it for what it is (this is a problem in general with today’s journalists in the US). Instead, he both sides it. For example, at the end of the book he says Vinnik’s claims that Vinnik didn’t know there was illicit trading in BTC-e as “hard to swallow.” He then asks Gambaryan for his opinion of that. Instead, he should’ve firmly stated the truth, instead of implicitly viewing truth as subjective to people’s opinions or statements from known untrustworthy people (again, a systemic problem in today’s journalism in the US). I would’ve preferred to see him say something like “The evidence, however, is clear: Vinnik knowingly facilitated illicit trades on BTC-e.” While there are for sure nuances, it’s frustrating and undercuts the workings value when media persons esteem statements from known liars as having at least some validity. *Didn’t really discuss other ways cryptocurrencies may be laundered. For example, what of transactions where parties never cash out their funds for traditional currency (so just trading bitcoins)? Or where an account’s private key is traded for cash - that trade would never show up on the blockchain but would accomplish the purpose of laundering funds. Idk if these examples actually happen, but an exploration of these risks (at least an acknowledgment), and how they limit investigations, would’ve been really good. *More time spent discussing the ramifications of what firms like Chainalysis do. Given this book’s topics, what do we want society to look like? Do we want government or private firms to utilize blockchains, and be able to monitor every transaction? (IMO, no, not that easily). What of other ramifications and trade offs between privacy and other rights in this area? *Digging deeper into who Chainalysis’ clients are - he didn’t push back at all in his relayed conversation with Chainalysis. For example, is Chainalysis working with the UAE govt? That’s a really important question where his attitude was “Chainalysis’ CEO wants to tell me, but his PR employee won’t let him. Oh well.” That happened a few times in the book, and that’s weak journalism. *There was a brief mention that the greatest risks (related to the previous two points) are private corporations’ use of Chainalysis-like tools. Beyond on acknowledgement, no time was spent on this. This really needed to be discussed far more - for example, how does it compare to what current banks and credit card companies do? What are the ramifications and trade offs of these things?

Thorough and fascinating read