Unproven Proprietary Software Jails Bitcoin User

Roman Sterlingov was recently convicted for running a Bitcoin mixer.

Dangerous legal precedent

Because the only hard evidence for him to potentially serve 20 years in prison is that his KYC Bitcoin went through many hops and wallets, before being used later to supposedly buy a domain name. This domain was then used for a Bitcoin privacy service, that had not yet even been declared illegal during its initial operation. That’s why it operated on both the clearweb and Tor.

Even if we ignore the fact that Bitcoin privacy “mixing” was not considered illegal in 2011, this has a bigger implication for the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. This court case means that anyone is responsible for the future actions of anyone you pay, because if those funds turn out to go to anything illegal, you’re automatically on the hook.

And people wonder why we like Monero?!

Proprietary

Further this is dangerous because the Chainalysis software used to prove his guilt is proprietary.

This means there no longer is a burden of proof for the government, if the software has an unknown method, which was not even properly explained to the jury. The jury trusted them at their word. [1]

Conflict of Interest

Even worse, Chainalysis sells services to the US government. So having zero feedback mechanism on their blackbox unknown conviction tool is a likely conflict of interest. As CoinDesk points out.

Chainalysis

“The value of Chainalysis’ government business stretches into the tens of millions, according to government documents.” [2]

Rotating Door

And to make the conflict of interest even worse, there’s a rotating door of employment with US government, with employees going back and forth, and vica-versa. As TFTC points out:

“The original prosecutor on the case has since joined Chainalysis and serves as their General Counsel and has been replaced by the FBI agent who initiated the investigation against Roman.” [3]

So the prosecutor joins the for-profit witness, with an unknown methodology?! In fact, the Chainalysis proprietary black box software was so flawed, that a conflicting firm CipherTrace was going to testify against this software, but suddenly backed out due to pressure from its parent company Mastercard. [4]

From CoinDesk:

“Competitor analysis firm CipherTrace, submitted a 41-page expert report claiming Chainalysis used “unverifiable” and “incomplete” techniques to incorrectly link Sterlingov to Bitcoin Fog. Mastercard, which bought CipherTrace in 2021, later spiked the report."

“We lost our tracing expert right before the trial,” Ekeland said (Sterlingov’s lawyer), adding “we never got a really clear reason why.” [4]

Freedom

If you value your freedom, please discuss and link your friends to this issue. You can use my words, or your own. These politicians will take as much power from you as they can get away with. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Your vote is meaningless, all that matters is your actions.

The sources for this article can be found here

If you really want to learn and take your privacy to the next level, subscribe to our new content via: Nostr, Bastyon, Session, RSS, Ethereum Push

Tips to Avoid Getting Flagged with P2P Monero

Legally avoid problems with your financial institutions

[SP]

Oct 13, 2024

Bitcoin's transparency hurts its use

When you spend Bitcoin, it creates tiny capital gains

[anon-bobo]

Oct 12, 2024

Make money off the Telegram founder being jailed?

Bastyon is the Russian Nostr, and it's rising in popularity. Even if just 1 or 2% of Telegram's userbase moves over to posting on Bastyon, the coin would have to dramatically increase