There's a whole industry of commercially available products that analyze blockchains transactions for the purpose of tracing them. Anyone can simply buy these services. It is functionally accurate enough to find and prosecute criminals.

▲

dragonwriter 2 days ago | parent [-]

> It is functionally accurate enough to find and prosecute criminals.

Is that a high bar? I mean, you could have said that about forensic fiber analysis—and then it was revealed that the entire history of the field was just expert witnesses lying their asses off for whatever conclusion law enforcement wanted. It turns out that to prosecute criminals, being complex enough that expert witnesses can provide a smoke screen to rationalize law enforcement targeting that is actually based on prejudice and not concrete facts can be sufficient.

▲

kube-system 2 days ago | parent [-]

Nobody is being prosecuted on the basis of blockchain analysis data alone -- what I mean is that the data is good enough that that it provides information valuable enough to find the criminal in meatspace with the related physical evidence.

e.g. police look for online drug dealer with blockchain data, get warrant, bust down door, find big pile of drugs.

The point being, the data might not be "proof" on its own but it absolutely illustrates that there is no privacy on public ledgers.

	▲	kachapopopow a day ago \| parent [-]
		depends on the wallets you use and what you do with them, being able to identify criminals is honestly a plus and if you really wanted to you could make their job really hard if you wanted to truly hide from an abusive government. Not being able to hide huge transactions in the millions / billions is honestly a good thing. Imagine the transparency we could get if all governments used crypto currencies instead of the walled garden that is SWIFT.