Quote from: BTCtester.com on June 06, 2021, 09:35:21 PM

Quote from: temple on June 06, 2021, 02:05:44 PM

But if you use a coin switching service that doesn't require KYC and you switch into Monero and from the provided address send it to another Monero address, it's over. There is no single way in the world to trace down transactions on the Monero blockchain, at least not from what we know to date.

No. While you're right that highly sophisticated transaction and mixing protocols like Monero or (Coinjoin..)mixers cannot be traced directly it can be done in the most cases indirectly. Successful scammers have to manage earlier or later a high number of addresses. E.g. if someone is doing 500 transactions and is only once or twice co-spending the wrong coins (e.g. unmixed with mixed or monero-forth-back-exchanged coins) then the house of cards collapses often.

I was able to link for this reason more than 20% of a Wasabi mixing transaction outputs to their inputs. If you think 20% is not so much then this was the success rate per single transaction. If people are doing hundreds of transactions then only a low % of scammers are able to stay untraceable over time. The scammer ripping off 307 BTC from Exmo exchange in December moved the coins for obfuscation reasons more than 300 times before he did a mistake by co-spending it with other coins. All the 300 transactions were finally a waste of time and fees.

The scammers human brain thinks two or three steps deep but the analytics software goes much deeper. E.g. scammers which move the coins in long transaction chains use manually chosen transaction amounts. They have other patterns then natural transaction chains where A is trading with B and B is buying something for crypto from C.

I see what you are saying and I know that companies like Chainalysis can go far beyond what many people think. But if you get your money into Monero and you send it a few steps ahead, maybe just divide it into a couple smaller transactions onto various Monero addresses, how are you going to identify the scammer? Isn't then the only way to crack Monero itself? I see why Bitcoin is relatively easy to trace even when mixers are used, but for as long as you are careful with hiding your IP and you are not unlucky using an infected TOR node, there is no way to really find you before any exit. Am I wrong?