Railgun : Vitalik Buterin supports it, FBI complains about it – What’s going on with this small privacy coin?
Last Updated on 23 April 2024 by CryptoTips.eu
Railgun is a relatively small privacy coin that has been in the news quite often in recent days. First there were the links with North Korea, then the FBI complained about the coins’ usage as a crypto mixer and a few days ago even Vitalik Buterin seemed ready to invest. What’s going on?
Monero and Zcash
Privacy coins is one of the main reasons why regulators have an issue with crypto. Thanks to digital currencies like Monero and Zcash, you can transfer crypto anonymously from one user to another. According to international organizations such as Interpol and the FBI, these privacy coins are very popular with hackers, simply for that reason.
Railgun recently took over the role of Tornado Cash (the company that was closed by the FBI in 2023) as a coin mixer, in other words a crypto site that you can use to convert your earned (or hacked) coins into other crypto coins in order to obscure the origins of the original crypto coins. According to the FBI, hacker groups from North Korea, such as the infamous Lazarus group, have been using Railgun more and more lately.
Privacy is normal.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) April 15, 2024
Railgun uses the privacy pools protocol ( https://t.co/DekkatsMR5 ) which makes it much harder for bad actors to join the pool without compromising users' privacy.https://t.co/MG0huDzpAu
Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, has come out as a fan. He recently transferred $300,000 through Railgun. When a crypto site pointed out the rumors about the cryptocurrency and their alleged connections with hackers, Vitalik said that they were still following the rules of the crypto playbook and therefore admitted that he indeed moves money via Railgun quite often.
The price of the small privacy coin reacted to Vitalik’s support and shot up. It rose about 200% in the past month alone.
