Topic: The IRS offers reward to anyone able to break Monero and the LN (Read 256 times)

This is very bad news. Monero's privacy is now put at risk as a result of the contract between the aforementioned analytics companies and the government. Developers must strengthen privacy techniques on the XMR blockchain if they want to maintain Monero as a privacy coin. As far as the Lightning Network goes, I wouldn't worry much about it since the network is not heavily used in the mainstream world yet. But if developers are planning to make people use Bitcoin's Layer-Two scalable solution for micropayments, they'd need to improve privacy on the LN as soon as possible. Right now, it's survival of the fittest. I doubt these companies will expose Monero and the LN's flaws/vulnerabilities to the community. If they did, the community will render its efforts in vain.

If Monero and The Lightning Network continues to be compromised by companies like Chainalysis and Integra FEC, then we're going to have to migrate to other privacy coins like Grin and Beam. Zcash is not an option as it's said the same has a backdoor implemented by the cryptocurrency's own developing company (Electric Coin Company). Besides this, Zcash's requirement of trusted setup is not ideal for full-fledged privacy. If the IRS successfully manages to hire these same companies to crackdown other privacy coins as well, then the whole crypto industry will be doomed. I hope I'm wrong and crypto emerges victorious in the long run. Just my opinion

Actually the reward is offered to two companies,



https://beta.sam.gov/opp/5ab94eae1a8d422e88945b64181c6018/view

Now it's a waiting game, let's see if they are true to their promise that it can be delivered in less than a year.

All the government really wants is to control all things evident of all the surveillance theyve been doing on everyone on the internet. The thought of something going under tge radar scares them and rightfully so. The power of the government is to control its people, without that itll fall apart.

It is a bit of insider trading but also it is not regulated so I am not sure if you could do it without any problems at all, if you are stealing from the wrong people you will be in trouble, lets say you manage to crack IRS's Monero wallet and get all their money (not that they have one, just an example) you would be prosecuted and probably found guilty, or maybe you cracked the code on some drug dealer and took all his money, what is he going to do, sue you? So, it probably depends on whose money you stole (much like dollars too).

However the fact that if you could hack into any wallet or anything you would probably make more money with that over letting IRS know how you did it, why notify them when you could make money directly from the source, plus if you do it big enough IRS would know about it and not pay you anymore since its already hacked.

If they're able to "crack the code", even with a fork or a quick fix, they'd already have enough information from the past to link addresses to identities and intrude our privacy. Quite ironic how the agencies we pay intrude our own private life and come up with silly excuses for it.

The future regulations coming to Europe will probably include at least a partial crypto ban - or restrictive use - for privacy coins. I really expect them to take some kind of action against the stuff they fear.

I highly doubt that programmers and coders capable of breaking the code would even be interested in such a move,,, these types of people have a very different motivation and the fame is going to earn them millions down the road with a great job and advisory role;)

But if they did, they would of course involve a friend and third party to do that market manipulation.

Great for us XMR holders because we know it will not be broken. Free advertising;)

Certainly you do both! Its not considered insider trading if its not a registered security.



Well, the reward collecting is going to be a public ceremony I would imagine -- news of your newly-discovered Monero vulnerability will break before you have the chance to plunge your reward money into a highly-leveraged short. So you'll have to borrow funds, which wouldn't be as easy. But you can still use your reward money to capitalize on the fallout -- it would likely take a long time for the price of XMR to completely unwind.

It would honestly be more practical to build something that monitors all Lightning Network transactions to trace where funds are going. But I have some drinking to do, so you guys have at it.

Unfortunately hackers don't see it necessary to utilize their skills on genuine hacking offers like this one (at least a hacking approved by the government should be considered as genuine right! ), they prefer to rather follow the unethical way and have it all, $625k is a big sum but hackers will rather go for millions, causing havoc in the process, that being said,

Crypto can be use in money laundering and so is fiat, to me i would say till now fiat is the highest currency use for money laundering ( this is just from my point of view and not base on any statistic  ) so how exactly are the government tackling the fiat money laundering issue! That should be their focus point and not some privacy coins.

What is the purpose of breaking monero privacy ? The coin has been created to ensure privacy of the users.
Monero is the root of privacy coins in the crypto. So if the privacy on monery has been compromised, then the privacy of other coins may be able to compromised as well in the future and there will be no more privacy in cryptocurrency.

The IRS is indeed afraid of XMR and other privacy coins. That's largely because privacy coins provide true freedom to people in the mainstream world. Their hardened privacy and security mechanisms, make government surveillance efforts worthless. That's why US government agencies like the IRS and the SEC are desperate in finding a way how to compromise privacy coins' blockchain networks. They're also interested in Bitcoin's Lightning Network as it brings a somewhat-greater level of anonymity than the main Blockchain. As long as they're able to track every crypto user's transactions, they'll give the "green light" for the growth of the industry. Otherwise, you can expect the government to declare crypto to be illegal.

If the IRS manages to find someone to crack Monero and the Lightning Network's code, there's nothing stopping the community in performing a counterattack by rendering government's efforts useless. Of course, the community needs to know the flaw/vulnerability before it's fixed. Otherwise, Monero and the LN will remain compromised leaving people to seek other alternatives in the crypto/Blockchain space. Let's hope the government fails in the long run in order to protect people's privacy in the mainstream world. Just my opinion

I understand that there could be some bad people who wants to use monero to avoid government and cops but shouldn't that be followed by places like FBI? They are responsible for federal unlawful stuff and since monero doesn't belong to any one state (or even nation) that means it should be followed by FBI to see which bad people are using it, get involved and figure it out and fish them outside to convict them.

When IRS is trying to figure it out, that means they are not after bad people at all, they are after people who have money but do not pay their taxes to the government, which is funny if you think about it, total Al Capone situation, you can kill anyone you want but if you are not paying taxes for your murdering income, you are going to jail eventually.

I am not sure if "afraid" is a right word for this. XMR isn't any kind of threat to establishment any more then TOR. They just want to crack open value transactions and possible money laundering to track the criminals. This was actually pretty anticipated move and they will probably rise the price at some point if it doesn't get cracked.

No one used Monero on darkmarkets in 2014 and 2015 and very rare in 2016. Even today Bitcoin is most used cryptocurrency on darkmarkets. What Monero provide was known to everyone that wanted to listen and read. Al that was pointed out in 2014 and made plans how to tackle that.  Since all Monero development is voluntary you cant develop things immediately, but it took years.  Luckily Monero development was lead by smart people and they realised what are priorities. Not the GUI that was already started working on in mid 2014 and then set on pause.  Monero ledger was most opaque of all cryptocurrency ledgers in 2014 and 2015 and 2016 as it is today. There is no real competitor.

As the OP mention LN. IRS will easily monitor transactions on LN. LN and Monero are very different things when we talk about achieving anonymity.

I read that the IRs are offering something like 650k for the one who breaks it. I wonder why the IRS are going such extent to break it . Too much use of it in money laundering and dark web ?

I think one of the major reasons why the government is investing this much to crack monero is Inorder to track tax evaders and drag them into the tax net. The issue of money laundering and terrorism financing is not far from the purpose either. But I still think its not the best way to go about the issue. I feel the government is encouraging hackers and that's not justified.

i am with that opinion also. i dont think IRS will disclose once someone break the code. more then likely, this situation will be silent afterwards and we wont know if it has been broken or not. or maybe, we will just read news in the future that someone has been charged with laundering of money, but they wont tell how they got that person.
 but with this public call, at least monero team knows that they are in hot position and has the advantage to ensure that their system can't be broken easily. it also add the fact that they will gain more popularity because of this case

Monero is our last point of privacy in the crypto in my opinion. I hope it strong enough for IRS

This attempt to "break the code" gives the strength of Monero and LN's codes a good contour. While both may be strong enough not to be broken yet, there has to be at least one little flaw in the coding - Bitcoin has had its own flaws but all have obviously been quickly fixed.

The thing is, if IRS is willing to pay someone for the flaw, I suppose we will never find out whether there is any that has ever been found or if they're making use of it at all. In other words, unless the community finds the exact same way to "break" the code, we'll never know about it.

It's funny how they're willing to break something that gives you privacy and freedom. It's like paying someone to break your house, or your safe. Seems like they're pretty afraid of XMR.

This is only good publicity for Monero and Bitcoin of course. What the IRS is trying to do is kind of illegal, if in my country the use of crypto is legal and I paid my taxes.

When Monero started it had a flaw, anyone could opt out of mixing and anyone who could identify those could pick out the coins that are later mixed, they have fixed that in 2017 and now every transaction has mandatory decoy mixing. During that phase there were big bust in the dark market space and i am not sure whether these flaws were a major factor or the site admins were identified and pinpointed through other means.

That being said the most common mode of identifying mixed coins are by timing the transactions, some of the mixers were shut when they were exposed or someone or the authorities were able to identify that flaw. If someone has the time and energy to sample the transactions and time it may be it will be possible to identify the transactions or if there is a flaw that is identified in the future then they can dig all the past transactions, so anything is possible.

I also have a similar thread, SEC offered a 625K bounty for a tool to track LN and Monero.

As others have commented on them, government will do everything to break our anonymity with Monero and then some, to get those tax evaders as well. So it will never be an ending battle here, cat and mouse game, as the saying goes.

Nothing but a desperate attempt, just shows how good Monero is and that is serving the purpose if anyone had any doubts regarding that.

Lol, they are trying hard to crack down on the networks which provide anonymity but, I don't think it would be that easy to break Monero in fact, I think it will cost hacker more to break into Monero then the IRS reward.

That's certainly true, mate. However, not everyone posses trading skills. I think that the $625k reward is more than enough to attract hackers in breaking down Monero and the Lightning Network. This is of course, unethical. But the government wouldn't care more or less as long as they get what they want. Their main excuse is that crypto can be used for money laundering and terrorist financing. But we all know their hidden intentions. Since privacy coins like Monero and Grin are virtually untraceable (sort of), they become a threat to the existing monetary system. In case of the Lightning Network, it's much easier to break it since nodes have a collection of IP addresses linked to them. Even if the IRS successfully manages to find someone to do their dirty work, developers from the aforementioned projects will improve network security to tackle the agency's efforts in the long run.

With the Monero blockchain constantly improving itself every 6 months with a new hard fork, I don't see how the US government will be able to maintain surveillance on the network. In the end, they might as well give up trying to expose the identity of crypto users on various blockchain networks. If governments efforts are in vain, they might declare crypto/Blockchain tech to be illegal. No matter what happens, crypto will be here to stay thanks to its decentralized and open source nature. Just my thoughts

$625K I think will motivate already but then its IRS that they are dealing to which is quite not an agency that someone from crypto would trust.

You can see this monero is really a threat to them and you can see how much potential XMR in the future. Its still fungible even if they will ask the CEX not to accept it anymore, the rising popularity of DEX will just unstoppable.

Reward is $625,000? Wouldn't you make lot's of more money if you shorted monero with all the possible leverage right before giving the info? I mean it wouldn't be ethical but one could argue that breaking monero and giving the info to IRS is not ethical either. Or would that be considered insider trading?

According to an article on Cointelegraph, the US taxation agency (the IRS) is offering an attractive reward for anyone able to break the world's biggest privacy coin, as well as, Bitcoin's Lightning Network.

In a world where nothing is perfect, existing technologies have their own flaws. With this government initiative, the probability of compromising the XMR blockchain and the LN "Layer-Two" scaling solution becomes higher than ever. Of course, this is if someone is able to successfully crack into the aforementioned blockchain networks. Developers can easily counterattack government's efforts via a hard fork or something similar. However, by the time a fix is implemented, the government would've already exposed some users on the network. This raises some concerns, since it could threaten the privacy of people in crypto land.

Do you think the IRS will be able to find someone that will break into Monero and the Lightning Network? Or will it be impossible to achieve? What will be the outcome of crypto once it becomes compromised by government agencies? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.