Book Review: Tracers in the dark, by Andy Greenberg

Welcome to my review of Tracers in the Dark by Andy Greenberg. I’m not going to talk about every part of the book, but I will mention some of what I thought was interesting. I’m not going to cover every single thing, but I will highlight what I thought was interesting.

The first part

Besides the first case of the Dread Pirate Roberts in the Silk Road case of many years back, the book talked at great length about a startup company called Chainalysis. It talked about how it was started and its help in catching the Dread red handed at a library. That part is 14 chapters roughly.

While Chainalysis has a hand in the majority of the book, how it grew in to this huge company where they developed software on the public blockchain of the Bitcoin crypto currency platforms is quite interesting.

It also talked about a paper by a woman named Sarah who thought that Crypto could be used for good, but as you find out, she likes what Chainalysis has done through the cases of this book.

Part 2

Besides the Silk Road, part 2 also talked about the demise of one of the first exchanges of Crypto Currency and bitcoin specificly. I forget the name of the exchange, but as you’ll read later, other exchanges have had their fate too, like FTX as an example.

Part 3

Part 3 covers Alphabay, one of the most covered stories of its day. It was another one of these drug bizars for its time. Unfortunately, one of the sad things you’ll find is that the perpitrator committed suicide, although the book talks about the feds killing him. Yu can make the decision on whether they did or didn’t.

Part 4

Part 4 I had to put down after the first chapter. The rest of the section talks about how they found the server of the video site in someone’s apartment, another suicide, but most importantly a different discovery found. I won’t give that away either.Suffice it to say, its a tictic that can be used in modern browsers to look at source code.

The chapter covers something known as CSAM, otherwise known as Child Pornogrophy.

Part 5

Part 5 was a hodgepodge of cases including the recent ones which include the January 6th case where Crypto was involved in. Its sort of a loose ends of interviews for the book that just made it in.

The book is 50 chapters and an epilogue covering 10 hours of reading on Audible. The Narrator actually did a great job. The book itself is not technical and the things discussed are explained. The chapters aren’t necessarily lengthy either.

About the book

Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency

From the award-winning author of Sandworm comes the propulsive story of a new breed of investigators who have cracked the Bitcoin blockchain, exposing once-anonymous realms of money, drugs, and violence. “I love the book… It reads like a thriller… These stories are amazing.” (Michael Lewis)

Over the last decade, a single innovation has massively fueled digital black markets: cryptocurrency. Crime lords inhabiting lawless corners of the internet have operated more freely—whether in drug dealing, money laundering, or human trafficking—than their analog counterparts could have ever dreamed of. By transacting not in dollars or pounds but in currencies with anonymous ledgers, overseen by no government, beholden to no bankers, these black marketeers have sought to rob law enforcement of their chief method of cracking down on illicit finance: following the money.

But what if the centerpiece of this dark economy held a secret, fatal flaw? What if their currency wasn’t so cryptic after all? An investigator using the right mixture of technical wizardry, financial forensics, and old-fashioned persistence could uncover an entire world of wrongdoing.

Tracers in the Dark is a story of crime and pursuit unlike any other. With unprecedented access to the major players in federal law enforcement and private industry, veteran cybersecurity reporter Andy Greenberg tells an astonishing saga of criminal empires built and destroyed. He introduces an IRS agent with a defiant streak, a Bitcoin-tracing Danish entrepreneur, and a colorful ensemble of hardboiled agents and prosecutors as they delve deep into the crypto-underworld.

The result is a thrilling, globe-spanning story of dirty cops, drug bazaars, trafficking rings, and the biggest takedown of an online narcotics market in the history of the Internet.

Utterly of our time, Tracers in the Dark is a cat-and-mouse story and a tale of a technological one-upmanship. Filled with canny maneuvering and shocking twists, it answers a provocative question: How would some of the world’s most brazen criminals behave if they were sure they could never get caught?