I think it's still just pseudo-anonymity, even for monero. Which means, practically, that I don't think it would have done more for these guys than just delay the seizure.
How many times are we going to learn that that's just not true.
There is no safe, only shades of safer.
Is the mathematical underpinnings of Monero sound? That's a good starting point. There are still implementation bugs, compiler bugs, architecture bugs, supply chain vulnerabilities, and state actors with unlimited $.
Until someone cracks it, that is. If it becomes the crypto of choice for some of the bigger fish, you can bet the government will find a way to trace it.
There is at least $625,000[1] on the table already. Not to mention how many blockchain analytics companies and other actors would pay millions to have such a capability.
There are ways to crack encryption that have nothing to do with math. It doesn't matter how good your crypto is. You could probably get by plain text as far as the FBI's effort to crack your crypto are concerned as they won't waste their time checking if you are that stupid.
This doesn't really make sense. In the case of a criminal laundering crypto, they don't know who the criminal is, so the rubber hose attack doesn't work.
Monero, ZCash, and mimblewimble-based cryptos (grin, beam) are certainly not pseudo-anonymous, and tracking is darn near impossible if the users don't do anything stupid.
