Tommaso Gagliardoni (@tomgag@infosec.exchange)
infosec.exchange
I have been thinking for a while about the issue of anonymity in Web3 (and, more in general, anonymous transactions). The growing realization of the damage caused by decentralized financial technologies is nagging my cypherpunk self, who has been at war for a lifetime against invasive tracking, manipulative marketing, and surveillance capitalism. I collected my thoughts here: https://gagliardoni.net/#20250427_privacy_compliance Spoiler alert: I'm not endorsing backdoors, but I think some middleground solution must be found. #horizenlabs #crypto #cryptography #privacy #compliance #aml #kyc #anonymity #web3 #gnutaler #bitcoin #monero #zcash #tornadocash

And soon the woes arrived. Bitcoin and friends de facto enabled ransomware, as well as money laundering and tax evasion on a massive scale, providing means and incentives and giving rise to criminal industries that would simply be unthinkable without anonymous payment tech. Allegedly, North Korea financed its whole nuclear missile program through ransoms collected by their cyberattack operations, and it is pretty certain that Russia is massively using web3 technology to circumvent sanctions, just to name two cases. Luckily, no shady business ever happens in the western world thanks to cryptocurrencies, amirite?