num_pages: 367
description: 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 freelywhether in drug dealing money laundering or human traffickingthan 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 and 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 wasnt 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 hard-boiled 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 take-down 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 worlds most brazen criminals behave if they were sure they could never get caught?
language: English
title: Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency
publisher: Doubleday Books