The US just recommended a 30-year prison sentence for alleged Bitcoin Fog operator Roman Sterlingov.
Sterlingov's case became known as the case to "put cryptocurrency tracing on trial", as much of the evidence presented was collected using Chainalysis' blockchain analysis software Reactor – The prosecution "haven’t pointed to any smoking-gun digital evidence retrieved from Sterlingov’s possessions or devices", as WIRED reported following Sterlingov's arrest.
Chainalysis described Sterlingov's guilty verdict as setting precedent for "Chainalysis blockchain analytics being used by prosecutors as evidence when they take criminals to court", arguing that the verdict "affirms the ways in which our solutions have become the industry standard, made possible by our partners in government who use our tools everyday to fight illicit activity".
The only problem: experts believe that the government's got the wrong guy, and that the jury has convicted a user of Bitcoin Fog as its operator – arguing that Chainalysis' tools are "flawed" and "shouldn't be trusted to convict defendants when they face decades in prison".
2024 is the year of dangerous precedents in which not just your right to privacy is on the line, but the very question of how much science matters in a court of law when it comes to BTC.
All the tea:
