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Comment by carterklein13 | Hacker News Reader

Say what you will about crypto/blockchain in general, but Chainalysis has to have one of the coolest missions out there right now. As someone who's worked in AML before, it's truly fascinating to me. If blockchain / DeFi is the "wild west" of finance right now, Chainalysis are the vigilantes.

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The vigilantes? They are literally trying to destroy privacy and fungibility on the network. Thank god for CoinJoins.

If that's even possible that is the network's fault.

Depends on the goals and tradeoffs of the network

vigilantes are people that go out and impose their version of justice on the world. Just because your vision of justice includes privacy & fungibility doesn't mean everyone's does.

Vigilantes spawn in place of formal enforcement of justice. Given that Bitcoin is designed with that void in mind it was inevitable.

Or where they feel like their vision of justice is not being enforced.

Agreed. I'm not a fan of chainalysis.

Monero ftw.

I think there's room to be both a fan of Chainalysis _and_ privacy coins. The former will hopefully expedite the general adoption of the latter.

Exactly, people freak out when companies look at public data on an open, permissionless network. What did you expect?

> destroy privacy and fungibility on the network

Do people expect privacy from the bitcoin network?

The 'Noobs' and low hanging fruit do. Fortunately the internet can be used to educate, guide and inform.

I can assure you that's not true, a lot of good developers like Chris Belcher are actively working towards it and even receive grants. New BIPs also propose privacy improvements. Anyone can care about privacy. It's a pseudo-anonymous network, but it can be used anonymously.

CoinJoin isn't a serious solution. If you want privacy, you need Monero.

Privacy is a continuum. CoinJoin offers a trade-off between privacy and convenience. It is good enough for some cases.

Is it? From last week: https://medium.com/oxt-research/a-statement-on-two-discovere...

Is having your coins flagged by an exchange for using privacy features convenient?

CoinJoins exist exactly to fix the problem of fungibility.

I see Chainalysis as free marketing for Monero.

It certainly has drawn attention to some of the merits of Monero.

only if you believe your money should be controlled by authoritarian governments instead of you.

The word Vigilantes might (or might not) have historic nuances that you (or them) may find unfortunate.

From [1] Vigilante: a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate) broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vigilante [2] https://www.forbes.com/companies/chainalysis/ [3] https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-forensics-firm-chainalysis-a...

Alright, I can't edit my post anymore but I just want to add - I see now that perhaps vigilante wasn't the right word. I was trying to fit it into a Wild West metaphor and hadn't had my coffee yet, the phrasing clearly struck a cord.

I was more just trying to phrase that the blockchain world can feel lawless at times, and Chainalysis is trying to bring some order and justice to it. Maybe that's the antithesis of why Bitcoin and other blockchain technologies took off, but I personally think it's pretty sweet as someone with previous AML experience.

They would be the cops actually. Or the police's goons.

Vigilantism is not cool.

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