Crypto influencer claims Monero founder is now Interpol informant

On Mar 25, 2023

Crypto Influencer James Edwards claimed Monero’s founder could be one of the informants for Interpol to trace the Monero network.

Monero founder Riccardo “Fluffypony” Spagni was captured in the United States in August 2021. This famous cryptocurrency personality was detained after being accused of crimes that first surfaced in 2009. He was reportedly fleeing fraud charges in South Africa. Spagni founded Monero in 2014 and further registered the coin in Australia. In Oct 2022, a few reports claimed that Monero developers were the main culprits behind the attack on Zcash.

On 20 March 2023, Crypto Influencer James Edwards claimed that the Monero founder could be one of the Interpol informants to trace the monero network.

1/ Not sure how this space missed this but @fluffypony (Riccardo Spagni), the founder & lead maintainer of @monero $XMR outed himself as an informant for Interpol after he was detained by U.S. Marshals pending extradition. Evidence strongly suggests he helped them track Monero. pic.twitter.com/ev1EycEdDI
— James Edwards (@librehash) March 20, 2023

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an author & analyst, also shared his opinion on such claims and said that if Monero’s founder is now an Interpol informant then his claim that every Bitcoin transaction can be traced could be accurate.

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2) Now there is a possibility that the fellow was not a mole. It still tells us systems can be infiltrated and will be infiltrated. pic.twitter.com/pwtp7Zojhq
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) March 22, 2023

Monero founder responded against crypto influencer James Edwards and said that such claims are unsurprising for him.

Imagine being so brain dead that you post this. If you want to track Monero then I recommend viewing the Breaking Monero series that the Monero community & researchers published:https://t.co/NxDR7DrB8W

This nonsense post is unsurprising, coming from a known scammer⬇️⬇️ https://t.co/8Cj36RzwqA
— Ric “el pony esponjoso” (@fluffypony) March 21, 2023

On all these things, the Monero founder confirmed that he never helped any law enforcement agency or any individual entity to help trace the Monero network.

Further Spagni admitted that Interpol asked him to help them to trace the Monero network but he was not able in any way because he doesn’t have privileged access to Monero’s code, GitHub repo, website, Twitter account, DNS records, donated funds, or anything else.