Over 3 years ago, the IRS issued a request for proposals and spent $1.25M as well as US Homeland Security spending $2.4M to trace Monero transactions. Their attempts appear to have completely failed. This makes me even more bullish.

At least regarding Monero I’m in it for the tech.

In 2020, the IRS also gave out contracts to Chainalysis and Integra FEC worth a combined $1.25M. Now, it was a 1 year contract that began in Sept 2020, with a working solution due in 8 months, and the remaining 4 months for testing. To date, there has not been any update by either company or the IRS that they completed any working product, something these companies would have been sure to publicize, and it has been 3 years since. By all accounts they appear to have failed.

On top of this, US Homeland Security also contracts CipherTrace to trace Monero transactions a year prior to the initial IRS contract above and CipherTrace claimed to have completed a working product the same week the IRS requested proposals and software for the same purpose. It is very clear that CipherTrace’s product was a failure, at least in the eyes of the IRS, considering that CipherTrace wasn't simply awarded the contract. In addition, CipherTrace was only awarded $2.4M out of the potential full $3.6M.

All this to say, Monero stays secure despite multiple government attempts to crack it. This is bullish to Monero users as well as any users appreciative of privacy.

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Sources:

https://decrypt.co/43451/irs-1-million-contracts-data-firms-crack-monero

Request for Proposal 2032H8-20-R-00500 at sam.gov