Jonathan Levin, the cofounder and chief strategy officer of Chainalysis, describes how the blockchain analytics firm helped the IRS identify the administrator of the largest child porn website in the world, which ultimately led to the arrest of the administrator, Jong Woo Son, and 337 site users across 38 countries. The work also led to the rescue of 23 minors from their abusers. He describes how the site used Bitcoin, how they used Bitcoin transactions to identify the users of the site, and how law enforcement worked with exchanges. We also discuss what impact privacy technologies could have on similar investigations going forward, as well as Levin’s perspective on the overall utility of Bitcoin despite it being used for illicit activity.
Thank you to our sponsors!
CipherTrace: http://ciphertrac
eToro: http://etoro.com
Episode links:
Chainalysis: https://www.
Jonathan Levin: https://twitter.com/
DOJ press release: https://www.justice.g
Chainalysis blog post: https://blog.chainalysis
Indictment against Jong Woo Son, the administrator of Welcome to Video: https://www.justice.gov
Bitcoin laundering: https://www.
Bitcoin exchanges Welcome to Video recommended + screenshots: https://www.
Screenshot of the site seized: https://www.justice.go
Joe Weisenthal’s column about how Bitcoin ETFs would make it easier for people to make illicit Bitcoin transactions: https://twitter.
Weekly news recap links:
Bloomberg article summarizing overall race to create a global coin: https://www.bloomberg.co
FT on why Libra members dropped out: https://www.ft.com/conten
Libra Association signs charter: https://libra.org/wp-
CNBC article on China’s race to release digital currency: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/
Fortune article further describing race between Chinese digital currency and alternatives: https://fortune.
Fed official saying US actively debating digital dollar: https://www.coindesk.c
Christopher Giancarlo’s op-ed in WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/
IRS tax form: https://www.coindesk.
Letter to payment companies from Senators: https://www.schatz.
SEC filing against Telegram: https://www.sec.gov/
Avichal Garg’s tl;dr: https://twitter.com/avi
Binance crosses $1 billion in profit: https://twitter.com/
A taste of how multi collateral Dai will change MakerDAO: https://twitter.com/
Willy Woo chart showing Growth rate in Bitcoin address with 1,000 BTC: https://twitter.com/
DeFi milestone: https://twitter.
Ali Yahya’s 12 questions: https://outlast.me/
