Book review: Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency, by Andy Greenberg
Real people and actual actions, all rolled together into an exquisite novel that is fully non-fiction. Turn after turn, Andy Greenberg keeps you on the edge of your seat in this fast moving narrative of real world events. The actual humans in this story are revealed in the complex relationships of real life—keep up if you can.
Even if you’ve never played with cryptocurrency, this world affects the society around you. It not only facilitates death from drug overdoses and unspeakable child abuse—it perpetuates itself as many of the big fish stay free, even while people in the economically depressed parts of society find themselves in jail from low level drug offenses. This situation impacts the general economy that everyone uses—the one working in nation state issued fiat currencies.
Greenberg’s book is a technology and law enforcement thriller, which whips the reader back and forth from elation over successes to depressing hopelessness. Be ready to witness the seedier side of tech—amazing cleverness put to nefarious purposes. The non-fiction problems described in this book are still there—and there’s no (technological) solution in sight. Some autocratic governments (which you probably can name yourself) are themselves havens for cybercriminals—whom they press into service for their own purposes, and thus have reason to protect their own criminals.
Any possible solution encounters the understandable concern of legitimate civil libertarians, which is itself balanced by the equally understandable need for law enforcement to utilize just laws to protect people from criminals who would do them harm for their own profit. The same goal of anonymity desired for the cryptocurrency used by criminals also serves to protect dissidents who resist the abuses of repressive regimes. This is a conundrum for which there is no apparent answer. One answer I think is worth pursuing involves reducing economic insecurity, so there will be fewer desperate people feeling the need to take desperate actions—that in the end might be the most effective path to removing the foundation of large scale criminal activity.