Tracers in the Dark

Andy Greenberg’s gripping true crime tale of cryptocurrency forensics.

In Tracers in the Dark, Andy Greenberg traces the fascinating, horrifying, and complicated story of the battle over Bitcoin secrecy, as law enforcement agencies, tax authorities and private-sector sleuths seek to trace and attribute the cryptocurrency used in a variety of crimes, some relatively benign (selling weed online), some absolutely ghastly (selling videos of child sex abuse).

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/690603/tracers-in-the-dark-by-andy-greenberg/

Bitcoin’s early boosters touted its privacy protections as a game-changer, a way for people to exchange money with one another without anyone else being able to know about it. But the reality is a lot more complex. In a very important way, Bitcoin is the opposite of private: every transaction is indelibly inscribed upon the blockchain, linked to pseudonymous identifier.

In theory, if you are careful about not linking a wallet address to your real identity, then your transactions are not traceable to you.

In practice, this is really, really, really hard.

There are so many ways to slip up and expose your identity, and even if you maintain perfect operational security, other people might slip up and do…