Show me the lie

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.

You neglected to mention that they observed "the right amount" of monero arrive in his CEX account "in the right time frame," namely, within minutes after withdrawing them from a prior exchange. That is called a timing analysis trace and it would not work if monero didn't leak data about the amount and the time of a transaction.

My expectation is that more usage also brings more contributors and more eyes on the code

If the number of contributors and eyes approaches the numbers bitcoin core has then I think the risks you mention approach zero

Sure, the more the merrier

I'm a fan of knots because I think the extra customization options are neat and some of the default settings seem more sensible to me than the ones in bitcoin core

And I get hyped when more people become fans of things I like

Seeing adoption of knots grow therefore delights me, and if more miners start adopting it, that counts too

The following chapter from Lightning Provacy goes into some detail on what data routing nodes and LSPs can log: https://lightningprivacy.com/en/routing-analysis

I don't know of any analyses about the privacy implications of NWC. I suppose a relay could log how often you communicate with your node via that relay and what size your messages are, which may sometimes tell them what command you are using.

Hmm...I think this would be easy to mitigate via message padding, which should be quite practical because NWC messages are just enceypted json, so you can add fields that don't do anything and pad all messages to a fixed length with no downsides. Hey, I think that's a pretty good idea. Thank you for making me think of it!

> My questions now are: 1. Are there any nodes that that specialize in opening small channels?

Here is a list of channel sellers: https://supertestnet.github.io/list-of-channel-sellers/

I am particularly excited about liquiditystr, which is a frontend that lets you explore liquidity ads created by users of some FOSS LSP software. 4 people are currently running that software and advertising channel sales, with the cheapest option being a channel with 1 million sats of inbound capacity (about $1000) for a cost of under 900 sats (less than $1).

> 2. What are the major concerns/factors that affect who you open a channel with?

- Cost of the channel

- Duration of service

- Reliable uptime

- Good connections

- Success of payments

- Privacy policy

> 3. Are there any privacy considerations?

Yes. Your channel counterparty gets to see some data about transactions that you are involved in, if they pass through his or her node. He or she gets to see partial amount info, partial fee info, timing info, payment hashes that might be linkable to you, and he or she gets to see that your node is the next hop on the route or, if you are the sender, they get to see that you are the prior hop on the route.

Ideally, your LSP should have a nondisclosure policy, a habit of regularly deleting this data, and no means of contacting them, that way nothing can be subpoena'd from them. If an LSP does not seem to publish a privacy policy but DOES have a way to contact them, consider asking them to publish a privacy policy and to disable their contact form.

> 4. Is 21K enough to do anything?

I'm not sure what you mean by "anything." If you mean "is there anything I can buy for 21k sats?" then yes, that's worth about $20 so you can buy a gift card with it from bitrefill, for example. It's also plenty for the kind of lightning work I do, which is mostly experimental. But if you're a heavy lightning user and spend your coins often, you'll probably run out of outbound capacity pretty fast and have to frequently top up your lightning wallet, which could be annoying. In that case, I would get a bigger channel of at least 200k sats.

> My goal is just to open a small channel to start testing BOLT12 payouts from @OCEAN

It seems to me that a channel with 21k sats of inbound capacity would be fine for such tests.

I say that identifying the destination of your own coins counts as tracing. You may think it doesn't, that's fine. But focusing on whether it technically counts as tracing or not is missing the point, which is: it is bad for receiver privacy for the sender to learn that info. Monero gives that info to the sender for free. Lightning doesn't. That's a point in LN's favor.

You don't need to open up any channels. People who want to pay you or route traffic to you will open up channels *to* you if they think they will benefit from doing so.

But if you *do* decide to open up channels, they are pretty cheap to acquire. Here is a list of channel sellers so you can see the different prices out there: https://supertestnet.github.io/list-of-channel-sellers/

The cheapest one I see is from user xmrk at this website: https://liquiditystr.space/

He is selling a channel with inbound capacity of 1 million sats, or about $1,000, for 894 sats, less than $1.

thank you for calling my webpage sexy, that is not an adjective I expected anyone to use for it

it's part of every poisoned output trace so...yup

> it's just knowing that XMR arrived in a perps exchange wallet

it's not "just" knowing that

it's knowing that the "right amount" of monero arrived in a perp's exchange wallet "in the right time frame" so as to connect it to the "same" amount "withdrawn from" another service

i.e. a timing analysis trace

which is exactly what I said it was

What seems retarded to me is looking at a clear example of a timing analysis trace performed on monero and whining that I shouldn't call it that

just because a fact hurts your narrative doesn't mean it's false

monero is traceable, has been traced, and crimes have been pinned on people due to those traces

oh yeah and lightning offers better tools than monero for making a trace like this more difficult

> the document doesnt "imply" anywhere they have insight into that wallet

It's still a timing analysis trace, it meets all 4 conditions. You act like condition 2 requires there to be an external wallet; I think there is evidence of an external wallet, but it's not even a requirement of doing such a trace. It's theoretically possible for someone to withdraw straight from a swap service to a KYC'd exchange and they could still do a timing analysis on that, though in at least in one case that's obviously not what he did, he clearly sent it to some other wallet first where he picked up 4 extra XMR -- which just makes the trace cover more hops.

> so youre not "providing evidence" ... you're suggesting your own conclusions about what the evidence means

That's a strange pair of sentences. I didn't provide "evidence" but I draw conclusions about "the evidence"? What evidence? The evidence I supposedly didn't provide? Get real.

it seems like I keep providing evidence and you keep saying "that is not evidence, it's just you saying things"

if you have nothing further to add then I think we are done here

> these 4 paragraphs are just "supporting evidence" that a trace was performed

"Supporting evidence" is the precise term you used when you said you were waiting for "supporting evidence" that they traced monero

Now you criticize me for using it? Sheesh.

> there is NO "exchange A." it is a swapping service

A swapping service is an exchange

> as you see below in *the actual text* there is no suggestion the subject made a withdrawal from the swap service at all. ... "On or about May 17, 2022, at approximately 09:59 UTC, Administrator

Wallet-1 transferred 1 Bitcoin to Swapping Service1 where it was swapped for approximately 176.07 XMR. Approximately 27 minutes after the 1 Bitcoin transfer from Administrator Wallet-1, which was converted to 176.07 XMR, Crypto Account-1 received a deposit of 180 XMR"

There is evidence in the text you provided that he made a withdrawal from the exchange: he acquired "approximately 176.07 XMR" on the swapping service and 27 minutes later his CEX account "received a deposit of 180 XMR." Where did the extra 4 XMR come from? The implication is clear to me: he withdrew from the swapping service (Exchange A) to somewhere with some extra funds, and then sent the money from there to the CEX.

> show me the "trace" in this text

The text accurately describes a timing analysis trace.

Those paragraphs precisely identify three of the four steps of a timing analysis trace and imply the other:

(1) the target acquired amount K of XMR on exchange A

(2) he withdrew amount K of XMR from exchange A (this is the one they imply)

(3) he sent amount K of XMR to exchange B

(4) he did this all within the span of a few minutes

Describing a timing analysis trace is supporting evidence that they did a trace of monero. They did a similar trace 4 times in each of the subparagraphs I cited.

> your assetion that they identified him *through* any activity like that is another straight up lie

They did the trace for a precise reason: without that evidence, they only *suspected* the target laundered the money. In order to *identify* him as the perpetrator, they needed to do the trace that linked the criminal proceeds to a monero wallet and then do a further trace to link that monero wallet to his KYC'd identity (and they did that part by tracing it to a CEX that had his identity documents)

nope, I do not see that

Pages 24-25, the section "LIN’s Crypto Account-1 Received Marketplace-1 proceeds," subparagraphs i, ii, iii, and iv

A statement is not a lie just because you disagree with it

I agree, that is fair

Yes

I wonder if moneroleaks.xyz is already the most popular stupid little anti-monero website in existence

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