TL;DR

• The Finnish Bureau of Investigation found a way to trace privacy coin transactions, by watching when they were exchanged for BTC and then tracking the BTC addresses.

Full Story

There was a claim earlier this week that the Finnish Bureau of Investigation (KRP) had been able to crack the privacy of one cryptocurrency in particular. 

At first, this sounds pretty interesting. 

But in digging a little further we found this statement to be kinda click-batey, and we’re gonna peel back some layers to understand what's really happening here. 

The claim from the KRP was pointed at Monero (a privacy coin).

Privacy coins are the crypto equivalent of paying in cash – just as good as a credit card, but untraceable. In the crypto space if you pay with a privacy coin like Monero — your wallet address and transaction will all be withheld from the public eye.

Which is cool, but these coins get a lot of shade because (much like cash), criminals love to use them to transact. 

The next layer: 

The KRP was looking into these transactions because said criminals (☝️) had a tendency to take bribery payments through Monero.

(So figuring out how to trace these payments would be a huge unlock in their investigation).

Last Layer: 

It’s a click-batey headline because the KRP didn’t actually crack the privacy of Monero.

Instead, they watched when/where Monero was being exchanged for Bitcoin (a very publicly traceable coin), and connected the dots between known Bitcoin wallet addresses.

Et Voila, privacy coin “cracked.”