美国国家公共电台 NPR--'Tracers in the Dark' explores the growth of illicit commerce with cryptocurrency

'Tracers in the Dark' explores the growth of illicit¹ commerce with cryptocurrency

Transcript²

NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with Andy Greenberg about crytocurrency crime. Greenberg is the author of the new book, Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency.

STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE³: The writer Andy Greenberg says he missed his chance. More than a decade ago, in the early days of cryptocurrency, he grew curious about something called bitcoin.

ANDY GREENBERG: I actually did, in the course of reporting my first story about bitcoin in 2011, try to buy about $40 worth of it, which would have been 40 bitcoins. And there was a bug⁴ in the exchange that I used. And I wasn't very persistent⁵ about it, and I gave up. And that was a potentially multimillion-dollar mistake that I try not to think about too much.

INSKEEP: Because bitcoin later soared in value. It has since periodically crashed as well. It's a wild world of commerce and speculation⁶ where people make fortunes and lose them. Just in recent days, one of the main cryptocurrency exchanges collapsed⁸. Greenberg's new book, "Tracers In The Dark," explores the growth of illicit commerce with crypto. In the style of a thriller⁹ novel, he also follows some U.S. law enforcement agents who tracked illegal transactions around the world.

GREENBERG: Around 2011, the Silk Road appeared, which was this new phenomenon - a vast market for practically every drug imaginable, like narcotics¹⁰, available on the dark web. And bitcoin had enabled the Silk Road to allow people to create this eBay for all manner of contraband¹¹. And soon, the Silk Road and its kind of mysterious creator, who called himself the Dread¹² Pirate Roberts, was transacting¹³ in millions and millions of dollars' worth of narcotics.

INSKEEP: I want to explain to people who don't visit the dark web. The Silk Road was just the name of a website, right? But it's one that you could visit without being traced yourself. Or you thought you could visit without being traced.

GREENBERG: Right. The dark web was years-old technology, but it had never seemed like it was possible before to do e-commerce on the dark web because it seemed like any kind of PayPal or, God forbid, credit cards that you used could easily be traced. The bitcoin changed that and opened up this new world where the Silk Road and its many, many drug dealers¹⁴ believed that they could do millions of dollars' worth of narcotics deals and nobody could follow the money.

INSKEEP: You interviewed at one point, I believe, the person who identified himself as the Dread Pirate Roberts. And he described this not just as a way to make money illicitly¹⁵, but a kind of ideology¹⁶. What's the ideology here?

GREENBERG: Well, the Dread Pirate Roberts, who turned out to be this 29-year-old Texan named Ross Ulbricht, he did have a kind of ideology of victimless crime. And he saw bitcoin as the secret ingredient that was going to allow him to launch a revolution where the states - you know, capital S, as he puts it - would no longer be able to control what people bought and sold or put in their bodies or all sorts of other things that you can do with truly untraceable money, as he believed that it was.

INSKEEP: Many people believed bitcoin transactions were untraceable. That's because you go on some online exchange; you send cryptocurrency to somebody; and both the sender and the recipient¹⁷ are identified only by some random¹⁸ string of letters and numbers. Here's our producer Kaity Kline reading such a string.

KAITY KLINE, BYLINE: 1-5-T-7-S-A-G-S...

INSKEEP: Understandably, Andy Greenberg himself used to think there was no way to track a transaction.

GREENBERG: There was this kind of slow-motion epiphany among, first, technology researchers and then a few technology entrepreneurs and then finally law enforcement that, in fact, bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies are anything but untraceable.

INSKEEP: Even if the transaction is masked, it has to be posted in public to prove it ever happened. Law enforcement agents can use that fact and other clues to track transactions. Greenberg's book tells of the collapse⁷ of the Silk Road and also of an IRS agent who followed up on that case.

GREENBERG: And found, by tracing bitcoins, that not one, but two federal agents - a DEA agent and a Secret Service agent - had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of bitcoins in the process of their investigation¹⁹. These were corrupt²⁰ agents. So those two agents were identified and, in fact, served prison terms because their bitcoins were traced. And that was the first case where anyone actually traced bitcoins to prove someone's guilt²¹.

INSKEEP: So let's talk about the bottom line for cryptocurrency. It seems to me, as you describe it, there's a fundamental problem with the idea of private cryptocurrency transactions in that the assurance that the currency even exists is that something about the transaction is public. Is that right?

GREENBERG: Right. I mean, the only sense in which a bitcoin can be said to exist or to move or whatever is because that is recorded on the blockchain. And I think once it became clear that the blockchain actually makes bitcoin just the opposite of private, there are now, I think, very few cybercriminals left in places where they are still vulnerable to Western law enforcement who are using Bitcoin under this illusion that it is untraceable.

There are, like, the people who are using it for legal purposes just as an investment or whatever. Then, there are criminals who are still using cryptocurrencies, but very often, they're based in Russia or North Korea, places where they know that even if the money can be traced, they're still beyond the reach of Western law enforcement. And then, maybe there is still this group that's small and perhaps dwindling²² of people who still are working under the misapprehension that if they're clever enough, they can still prevent their cryptocurrency transactions from being traced. And they are doing something that they want to be private or maybe even illegal and playing that cat-and-mouse game and hoping to stay a step ahead.

But the kind of remarkable²³ thing about this cat-and-mouse game is that every time the cats catch up, these, like, essentially²⁴ blockchain surveillance agents and companies, they don't just gain the ability to trace the mice going forward. They can actually go back in time and look at the past transactions on the blockchain, which cannot be changed - they're a permanent record - and catch people doing criminal things from years or even, like, some cases, a decade earlier.

INSKEEP: Does the success of law enforcement in this area mean that the ideology of cryptocurrency has failed?

GREENBERG: Well, I think that the ideology of cryptocurrency has certainly changed. There was once a belief that bitcoin was going to be cash for the internet in the sense that you could buy a cup of coffee with it and in the sense that it was essentially anonymous²⁵, the same way that cash can be. And then - I think very few people believe that today. People now see a new ideology in bitcoin, which is that it's sort of, like, better gold than gold.

But it's worth noting, too, that in the larger cryptocurrency community, people are still trying to build truly private and even untraceable cryptocurrencies, like Monero and one called Zcash, that used new tricks to try to ensure people's privacy. I think that in some cases, law enforcement will find ways nonetheless to trace those, and it will be an unpleasant surprise for some of those users, just as there was for bitcoin.

I actually have to say that I do think that it is technically²⁶ possible to build an untraceable currency. Zcash, for instance, fully²⁷ encrypts its blockchain. And if that catches on and there is truly untraceable money of the kind that people once mistakenly thought bitcoin was, but now for real, that could change societies in ways that are really hard to predict.

INSKEEP: Andy Greenberg's new book is called "Tracers In The Dark: The Global Hunt For The Crime Lords Of Cryptocurrency." Thanks so much.

GREENBERG: Thank you, Steve.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

1 illicit   

adj.非法的，禁止的，不正当的

参考例句：

• He had an illicit association with Jane.他和简曾有过不正当关系。
• Seizures of illicit drugs have increased by 30% this year.今年违禁药品的扣押增长了30%。

2 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 bug   

n.虫子；故障；窃听器；vt.纠缠；装窃听器

参考例句：

• There is a bug in the system.系统出了故障。
• The bird caught a bug on the fly.那鸟在飞行中捉住了一只昆虫。

5 persistent   

adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的

参考例句：

• Albert had a persistent headache that lasted for three days.艾伯特连续头痛了三天。
• She felt embarrassed by his persistent attentions.他不时地向她大献殷勤，使她很难为情。

6 speculation   

n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机

参考例句：

• Her mind is occupied with speculation.她的头脑忙于思考。
• There is widespread speculation that he is going to resign.人们普遍推测他要辞职。

7 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

8 collapsed   

adj.倒塌的

参考例句：

• Jack collapsed in agony on the floor. 杰克十分痛苦地瘫倒在地板上。
• The roof collapsed under the weight of snow. 房顶在雪的重压下突然坍塌下来。

9 thriller   

n.惊险片，恐怖片

参考例句：

• He began by writing a thriller.That book sold a million copies.他是写惊险小说起家的。那本书卖了一百万册。
• I always take a thriller to read on the train.我乘火车时，总带一本惊险小说看。

10 narcotics   

n.麻醉药( narcotic的名词复数 )；毒品；毒

参考例句：

• The use of narcotics by teenagers is a problem in many countries. 青少年服用麻醉药在许多国家中都是一个问题。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Police shook down the club, looking for narcotics. 警方彻底搜查了这个俱乐部，寻找麻醉品。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 contraband   

n.违禁品，走私品

参考例句：

• Most of the city markets were flooded with contraband goods.大多数的城市市场上都充斥着走私货。
• The customs officers rummaged the ship suspected to have contraband goods.海关人员仔细搜查了一艘有走私嫌疑的海轮。

12 dread   

vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧

参考例句：

• We all dread to think what will happen if the company closes.我们都不敢去想一旦公司关门我们该怎么办。
• Her heart was relieved of its blankest dread.她极度恐惧的心理消除了。

13 transacting   

v.办理（业务等）( transact的现在分词 )；交易，谈判

参考例句：

• buyers and sellers transacting business 进行交易的买方和卖方
• The court was transacting a large volume of judicial business on fairly settled lines. 法院按衡平原则审理大量案件。 来自辞典例句

14 dealers   

n.商人( dealer的名词复数 )；贩毒者；毒品贩子；发牌者

参考例句：

• There was fast bidding between private collectors and dealers. 私人收藏家和交易商急速竞相喊价。
• The police were corrupt and were operating in collusion with the drug dealers. 警察腐败，与那伙毒品贩子内外勾结。

15 illicitly   

违法地，不正地

参考例句：

• That substance illicitly to fool quality-inspection testers because it can mimic the properties of protein. 乳制品之所以添加三聚氰胺是因为它可以虚增蛋白质含量、在质量测试中蒙混过关。
• Western governments international bodies should police Gaza's borders and crossing-points to stop weapons illicitly coming in. 西方政府和国际组织应该巡查加沙边界和交叉区域，阻止武器的非法流入。

16 ideology   

n.意识形态，(政治或社会的)思想意识

参考例句：

• The ideology has great influence in the world.这种思想体系在世界上有很大的影响。
• The ideal is to strike a medium between ideology and inspiration.我的理想是在意识思想和灵感鼓动之间找到一个折衷。

17 recipient   

a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器

参考例句：

• Please check that you have a valid email certificate for each recipient. 请检查是否对每个接收者都有有效的电子邮件证书。
• Colombia is the biggest U . S aid recipient in Latin America. 哥伦比亚是美国在拉丁美洲最大的援助对象。

18 random   

adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动

参考例句：

• The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。

19 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

20 corrupt   

v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的

参考例句：

• The newspaper alleged the mayor's corrupt practices.那家报纸断言市长有舞弊行为。
• This judge is corrupt.这个法官贪污。

21 guilt   

n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责

参考例句：

• She tried to cover up her guilt by lying.她企图用谎言掩饰自己的罪行。
• Don't lay a guilt trip on your child about schoolwork.别因为功课责备孩子而使他觉得很内疚。

22 dwindling   

adj.逐渐减少的v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The number of wild animals on the earth is dwindling. 地球上野生动物的数量正日渐减少。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He is struggling to come to terms with his dwindling authority. 他正努力适应自己权力被削弱这一局面。 来自辞典例句

23 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

24 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

25 anonymous   

adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的

参考例句：

• Sending anonymous letters is a cowardly act.寄匿名信是懦夫的行为。
• The author wishes to remain anonymous.作者希望姓名不公开。

26 technically   

adv.专门地，技术上地

参考例句：

• Technically it is the most advanced equipment ever.从技术上说，这是最先进的设备。
• The tomato is technically a fruit,although it is eaten as a vegetable.严格地说，西红柿是一种水果，尽管它是当作蔬菜吃的。

27 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。