Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency

by Andy Greenberg

Cypherpunks envisioned a world where free cryptographic programs in the hands of everyday internet users promised total secrecy—from hackers, snoops, law enforcement, and even intelligence agencies. For ideological libertarians who dreamed of a day when governments could no longer control what they said, what they owned, or what they put in their bodies, encryption tools represented a new sort of untouchability: a future in which communications not only were impervious to eavesdropping but could be carried out behind perfectly unidentifiable and untraceable pseudonyms. And if anonymous and untraceable digital communications were possible, the cypherpunks believed, it followed that anonymous and untraceable online payments must be, too—an innovation that was sure to unlock both a new era of financial privacy and a vast, flourishing black market on the internet.