In the last month, we’ve seen the United States Federal Reserve come after BitMEX for failing to identify customers, crypto intelligence firm CipherTrace report that most crypto exchanges are not collecting enough user info, and the so-called “FinCEN Files” demonstrate that even large banks that collect and report vast troves of suspicious transactions are not doing enough to unbank the bad guys. Suffice to say, it’s a great time to be alive for compliance hardliners and a rough patch for privacy advocates, aside from a healthy recent boost in the price of Monero (XMR).
Stepping back and looking at the larger trend, many in the crypto community are now imagining a world with two “Bitcoin blockchains” — or perhaps, two distinct networks of various blockchains. The first is a blessed white blockchain, or “lightchain,” akin to a friendly neighborhood where everybody knows each other’s name; the other is a sinister “darkchain” full of drug traffickers, pimps and terrorists (as far as we know).