The stackexchange is abandoned, the subreddits feel haunted, there are sparse posts that are few and far between with limited and carefully monitored activity, there isn’t much talk about Monero even in general cryptocurrency communities other than the occasional passing mention. Did i miss something? are external factors at play?
Its almost Monero’s 10th anniversary you guys, where is everybody?
check out this episode of monerotalk
https://www.monerotalk.live/monerotalk-304
Roman Sterlingov arrested and charged - without sufficient evidence - for using / operating a bitcoin mixer.
Based purely on SPECULATIVE chainalysis, heuristics cannot guarantee that he was the user. However, as chainalysis is in bed with intelligence services it is their gold standard. Now there is legal precedent to admit SPURIOUS chainalysis evidence in court. As noob judges/juries don’t in2 tech they are strong armed by the state into accepting it.
Therefore anyone who holds a tainted bitcoin (or any public ledger crypto) can be tainted by that coin IN LAW and charged for any crime that utxo ever got near.
The lawyers give a great rundown of the case here demonstrating how badly justice has failed.
-He KYC’d BTC in 2011 on Mt Gox -His utxo’s bounced around a few wallets and ended up being used to buy the bitcoinfog domain [he is accused of buying the domain w/o proof] -He later pulled some BTC out of Bitcoinfog into KYC’d exchanges to off-ramp [he is accused of being paid by bitcoinfog for services w/o proof]
The fact that the ghouls are harvesting data from early days (eg/ 2011) that anyone who ever KYC’d anywhere can be linked by chainalysis with a crime. Hence a cooling effect on crypto writ large.