This is where I’m supposed to write “this is good news for Bitcoin,” right?
Nah, these stories are good for Monero
And Tornado, and Aztec, and all the other similar private exchange mechanisms.
From about 2015 through February 2024, RODRIGUEZ and HILL developed, marketed, and operated a cryptocurrency mixing service known as Samourai, an unlicensed money transmitting business from which they earned millions of dollars in fees.
There’s his problem right there, he tried making a business out of this. Paints a big target on someone arrestable and probably means it’s not as secure as it could be. The privacy features in stuff like Aztec or Monero are just part of the cryptocurrency’s infrastructure, not a separate “service,” so there’s not much that can be targeted for those.
If you don’t submit to America’s heavy handed surveillance laws, you’re screwed. Time to make that stop.
If the owners knowingly aided spearphishing and other business email compromise laundering, that’s not cool. That has nothing to do with any surveillance laws, either. Assuming there is evidence that proves this, then they should go down. If the evidence is just “yeaaaaahhhh they knew what it was used for,” that’s bullshit and falls into your complaint. Based on similar prosecutions, the feds wait to prosecute this stuff until they have actual evidence that shows the defendants knew they were directly supporting crime (assuming we’re not talking trumped-up narcoterrorism charges). As a security professional this narrow band, assuming all of my assumptions are true, is legit and should be prosecuted. You should not enable spearphishing and ransomware because that makes lots of problems.
If my assumptions don’t pan out, ie there is no direct evidence linking them to that narrow band, sure, it’s a shitty prosecution.
