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Book Review - Tracers in the Dark
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Review: The digital sleuths who demystified cryptocurrency

“Tracers In The Dark" by Andy Greenberg sketches the evolution of a wholly new discipline — the tracking of cryptocurrency transactions by a new breed of digital sleuths

By FRANK BAJAK
Published - Dec 05, 2022, 01:21 PM ET
Last Updated - Jun 23, 2023, 08:13 AM EDT

“Tracers In The Dark" by Andy Greenberg (Doubleday)

The year was 2011. Cryptocurrency was a little-understood novelty, and Sen. Chuck Schumer called a news conference to vent outrage over a one-stop online shop for illegal drugs whose technology made sellers “virtually untraceable.”

The New York lawmaker’s description of Silk Road helped seed a persisting myth that technology reporter Andy Greenberg exhaustively dispels in “Tracers in the Dark,” that transactions of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can’t be tracked.

Greenberg sketches the evolution of a wholly new discipline in the surprisingly lively real-life police procedural, following law officers and programmers who invent and deploy cryptocurrency-tracking tools to catch a new breed of criminal. They take down Silk Road and other “dark web” markets and merchants, finger crypto money launderers and snare the sysadmin and users of Welcome to Video, a major South-Korea-based distributor of child sexual abuse material.

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