https://twitter.com/JackTracante/status/1661114322469134362?s=20

Here's a story you freaks should be aware of; the case against Roman Sterlingov being brought forth by the Justice Department. It's a saga that highlights the perniciousness of chain surveillance companies like Chainalysis, how inaccurate their tools are, and the revolving door that is currently being erected between Chainalysis and many different agencies within the federal government. If you have the time I highly recommend you check out the thread from Jack Tracante embedded above to get the full picture.

For those who weren't convinced by my call to action to read the thread, the short of it is the Justice Department has brought a case against Roman claiming that he was the operator of a centralized mixing service called Bitcoin Fog. The Justice Department partnered with Chainalysis to find "evidence" that Roman was the operator of Bitcoin Fog by using a tool called Reactor to trace the purchase of the Bitcoin Fog domain name back to an address associated with Roman's Mt. Gox account. The problem with Chainalysis' "evidence" is that they are using a heuristic to associate ~36 BTC that were sent from Roman's Mt. Gox account to an address outside of the exchange with another Mt. Gox account that received funds from that external address later on. It is unclear what heuristic Chainalysis is using to determine with certainty that the external address is directly associated with Roman. From the looks of Roman's resumé, he doesn't seem like someone who got rich from running the world's largest custodial mixing service.

This case gets a bit more unnerving when you peel back the onion and learn about the revolving door and deal making web between the Justice Department, the IRS, the FBI and Chainalysis that seems to be emerging. The original prosecutor on the case has since joined Chainalysis and serves as their General Counsel and has been replaced by the FBI agent who initiated the investigation against Roman. In a press release, the Justice Department thanked a consulting firm owned by an IRS investigator that was later acquired by Chainalysis. It all stinks to the heavens. The blatant conflicts of interests on display would be nauseating if they hadn't already become so commonplace throughout our country. It's sad to say, but this is now expected in our clown world.

Roman's fate seems to be in the hands of a well connected group of individuals who are incentivized to make Chainalysis look like an omniscient crime fighting machine. If this case is able to set a precedent that Chainalysis' closed-source and questionable heuristics are accurate and deemed "scientific" by the Justice Department it would be bad for any bitcoiners who are deemed undesirables by the state. Chainalysis can be leveraged as a voice of authority in the realm of chain surveillance without having to show their work. If they truly have hard evidence that proves that Roman was the owner of bitcoinfog.com they should be able to prove that without a shadow of a doubt by showing their work. Anything short of that would be a miscarriage of justice.

Be aware, freaks.

Final thought...

Love you mama.