No
there is no mention of "withdrawing from a prior exchange"
only that a swap was performed.
the transparency was all on the *Bitcoin side*
and simply seeing Monero arrive at a surveiled CEX account isn't "tracing monero".
also they nowhere say they apprehended him due to the exchange KYC data,
you just made that up.
There is implicit mention of withdrawing from a prior exchange
You cannot get money from exchange A to exchange B without withdrawing it from exchange A
Seeing an amount of monero leave exchange A and roughly *the same* amount arrive at exchange B within minutes, 4 different times, is a classic timing analysis trace
As for "apprehending" him, that is an interesting word choice. They did this to identify their suspect as the money handler so they could pin charges of money laundering on him. It was because of the trace tbat they could identify him as the perpetrator of that crime.
automatic custodial exchange are a thing, no user initiated withdrawal may have been necessary.
but whether user-intitiated or not,
and whether there was an intermediate wallet or not, they nowhere claim to have visibility into any "withdrawal." it is not mentioned at all.
nobody contests there was timing analysis done, but seeing Bitcoin go in and Monero come out isn't "tracing monero."
there is no "monero tracing" when their only monero data point is seeing coins arrive on the CEX.
and if you dont like the word "apprehend", we'll use your word "find".
nowhere do they claim they "found" him by "tracing monero" (as they dont claim to trace monero at all).
so your statement on the case "the DoJ found the admin of Incognito Market by tracing his monero" is a straight up lie.
no tracing, no finding.
you just made all that up to deceive people i guess.
or show me where the FBI says that they first identified him from his Exchange 1 KYC information.
I accept I may have missed that,
but so far it's just you making up more data points that fit your narrative.
> automatic custodial exchange are a thing, no user initiated withdrawal may have been necessary
It would have been necessary whenever the amount he deposited into the second exchange differed significantly from the amount he deposited into the swap service. I grant that the first time he did it, it's plausible that he did not withdraw the money; the amount he swapped was identical to the amount he deposited at the second exchange, so perhaps he just entered the second exchange's address as the recipient for his swap.
But if that is what he did, he clearly wisened up, because in the other three cases, he made the amounts vary a bit: once he sent a bit extra to the second exchange, the other times he sent a bit less. Indicating that he withdrew the money to a separate wallet first. So in all cases except possibly the first one, a user initiated withdrawal *was* necessary.
> whether there was an intermediate wallet or not, they nowhere claim to have visibility into any "withdrawal."
They mention the exact XMR amounts he received via the swap. That is insight into the withdrawal that they should not have had.
> it is not mentioned at all
Here it is:
Question: how did they know exactly how much he received via the swap? It wasn't the same amount he deposited into the second exchange. So they must have gotten that info from somewhere else. I think the first exchange *told* them how much money he received via the swap. Which means they got data they shouldn't have.
> nobody contests there was timing analysis done, but seeing Bitcoin go in and Monero come out isn't "tracing monero."
Seeing bitcoin go in is clearly tracing bitcoin. Seeing monero come out is clearly tracing monero.
> there is no "monero tracing" when their only monero data point is seeing coins arrive on the CEX
That's not the only data point. They saw the amount and time of two different monero transactions: the withdrawal from exchange A and the deposit to exchange B. That's not one data point, it's two.
> and if you dont like the word "apprehend", we'll use your word "find".
nowhere do they claim they "found" him by "tracing monero" (as they dont claim to trace monero at all).
They found him to be the launderer by means of this trace. The term used is the correct one. But if I change "they found the admin of Incognito Market by tracing his monero" to "they traced the monero of the admin of Incognito Market in order to identify him as a money launderer" will that be an improvement in your eyes?
to be clear
you're saying that LE supposedly getting his tx data from the swap service,
which is not part of the evidence but implied for the reasons you gave,
then comparing that to tx data from his exchange account and seeing these close matches constitutes "tracing monero?"
Replace Monero with Lightning in this scenario. How would this have changed anything? It wouldn't have. The problem is obviously with the chokepoints which are the exchange and swap services where they can see this extra data that isn't revealed on the network themselves.
Unless you would define that as "tracing" Lightning too, if so, fair enough but not sure I would agree this was tracing Lightning itself.
I agree that if the admin had done the exact same action with lightning the timing analysis would have worked against lightning too
You may not want to call that tracing but I think it is the accurate term
