Railgun contributor Alan Scott Jr. unveils US Senators and the FBI’s support for crypto privacy. Gain insights into their regulatory efforts and Railgun’s innovative privacy technology in the cryptosphere.
Alan Scott Jr., a contributor to the Ethereum privacy protocol, feels that regulators and government agencies in the US should get greater recognition for their efforts to educate themselves about cryptocurrencies.
Advocate and researcher Alan Scott Jr. of Railgun believes that US lawmakers and intelligence agencies might not be as hostile to privacy-focused crypto protocols as people think.
On May 2, Alan Scott Jr. spoke with Cointelegraph at ETH Global in Sydney. He is one of Railgun’s supporters. Scott stated that he has not seen a significant push for crypto privacy on Capitol Hill based on his conversations with senators and the FBI in Washington, D.C.
According to Scott, many intelligent government officials aspire to safeguard people and do the right thing.
A unique process called Railgun ensures the privacy of your transactions. For users of decentralized finance (DeFi), it makes use of Ethereum smart contracts. Also those on their networks, like Polygon and Arbitrum.
Railgun has a connection with Tornado Cash and other cryptocurrency privacy methods. Tornado Cash has recently encountered legal problems.
On April 17, an account claimed to be the official Railgun account. It stated that neither North Korea nor any other sanctioned group has utilized it to clean up crypto that the group had gained in illegal ways.
The account discussed an FBI statement claiming that during the incident in 2022, Railgun made use of it to clean over $60 million in Ether.
Railgun mentioned that their technology deters malicious users from utilizing their system through features like “Private Proofs of Innocence” and zk-proof.
Scott explained that the FBI is a large organization made up of many divisions. The FBI agents he spoke with at the FBI aren’t very concerned about the privacy system. They were more focused on catching criminals who use crypto for illegal things.
“Their concern is the potential problems around impeding their ability to catch bad actors.”
“Which is a great thing for them to be concerned with,” Scott said, mentioning earlier that other privacy techs like….
Scott stated that he had generally positive conversations with American legislators and regulators. Many of them sounded curious to find out about recent developments in the crypto world.
He explained:
“Whenever we talk about crypto, or we talk about DeFi you know, they ask well-informed questions and try to understand what the tech is like, how it operates, and why people like us like it so much,”
On April 24, the developers of Samourial Wallet, a Bitcoin wallet and crypto mixer, got into custody. The Department of Justice charged them with money laundering. According to the DOJ, the site assisted with $100 million in money laundering and handled $2 billion in illicit transactions.
Scott said that despite the arrest of Samourai Wallet’s creators and ongoing legal issues with Tornado Cash’s developers, there is not a big complaint against privacy in crypto.
“What [Railgun} is building is the disintermediation of finance, and DeFi is really quite a beautiful and very important thing to do.”
“Privacy is a keystone element of that. So while we’re advocating for it and being loud and talking about privacy as an important thing — it’s completely normal, and it’s actually quite boring,”
“It’s already a part of the traditional finance that exists today.
It would be very regrettable, he continued, if the idea and use of privacy in crypto were to become illegal.
“It just means we created a really hyper-accurate surveillance machine that can be monitored in real time.”
