And it wasn't just me. Even Satoshi Nakamoto believed that bitcoin and cryptocurrency

 And it wasn't just me. Even Satoshi Nakamoto believed that bitcoin and cryptocurrency

 more generally, as there became more flavors of cryptocurrency, had these anonymous properties. It was only, I would say, at least fast-forward a whole decade, around 2020, that I started to realize how completely wrong I was about this. How not just I was a little bit wrong, but actually 180 fully opposite

 of correct about this—that bitcoin is actually fully traceable. In fact, it is much easier to follow the money if you can crack and decipher the blockchain with cryptocurrency than even with traditional finance. It was actually when I started to see the Department of Justice credit this one company, Chainalysis, which is a cryptocurrency tracing firm, in one announcement after another, I started

 looking into this world of investigators who had figured this out much earlier than me. I saw that this small group of detectives had learned to trace cryptocurrency within law enforcements in many cases, and had used this to take down one massive cybercriminal operation after another over the last 10 years. That escalating spree of massive busts and takedowns is the story of this book, Tracers in the Dark.