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Comment by xvxvx | Hacker News Reader

He’s not one person but a front for a US law enforcement task force dedicated to tracking down cyber criminals and anyone who would need anonymity online. It started, alongside TOR, as a way for drug dealers, weapons dealers, and pedophiles to do business. Neither cryptocurrency nor TOR are actually anonymous. They’re part of a pretty impressive honeypot ecosystem.

What I’m interested in is the pivot when crypto tried to go legit. Some spook or suit decided that it would be used for other reasons also. Now it has some semblance of legitimacy.

Before anyone asks: social media is another part of the same ecosystem. Nurtured and protected by the government and law enforcement, despite any number of practices that would bankrupt most companies and sent people to jail.

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It also locks us all down to just the computers that are in our possession and the big tech silos, because now nobody can offer any computer resources free to the public without crypto miners immediately getting dropped on them. Even GitHub Actions got used this way, for example. Now every-goddamn-thing is sign up, log in, Know Your Customer, show us your ID, move your head like the arrows on screen, enter the digits from your authenticator app, check your email for the unique code.

That's my theory as well, but not just to catch digital criminals, but it's a test bed for the digital wallet / ID

I don't think it's exclusively american tho, it's a consortium between US/EU/ASIA, to establish the foundation of the world government, digital first

The FBI created the purportedly encrypted "AN0M" messaging app [1] as part of a sting operation running between 2018-2021 used to catch drug-traffickers.

Creating a fake app that people believe is secure or anonymous is an easier way to run a police sting operation than first making a significant breakthrough in Distributed Systems around the Byzantine Generals Problem.

For your conspiracy theory to be true, at some point a honeypot/sting operation must actually end and arrests be made and the evidence be used in court.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield

Would make a good tv show where a small group in a secretive TLA org started this but then made so much money they decided to keep it to themselves and get rich.

"Sorry director, the experimental project was a failure. We deleted it all now to clean up and free resources. Oh and yeah unrelated, I need to hand in my notice. Want to spend more time with my ...er... family. Thanks."

People who've seen what the nation state can do to those who draw it's ire don't do such things.

But other than that it would make a good show.

What are you talking about? The feds cant even prosecute arson against minority religions https://revealnews.org/podcast/trial-and-terror-rebroadcast/

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