You think you don't need privacy until...
From the time I got started in cryptocurrencies and even now, the rhetoric has been that only use for bitcoin is criminal activity. Well once they realize that it wasn't as private as they thought, and privacy coins gained traction they said the same about them. Well I am here to tell you this, the value of privacy coins is derived from more than just those who may use it in a nefarious manner.
A majority of the cryptocurrency transaction are transparent as they use a open ledger and anyone can view transactions whenever they want. This is all well and good until you realize that on top of viewing transactions they can also see balances in the sending and receiving accounts. Well guess what that almighty adoption people are clamoring for, now can create a one stop shopping list for criminals to pick their target from.
For example, when the lightning network goes live and we are able to pay in store with bitoin for common things like a coffee at mcdonalds or a pair for shoes from the mall, we now have exposed both our Identity and our wallets. All it takes is one crooked employee to go go back and match customers to wallets and you now have a database of where these wallets are located who they belong to and where they frequent.
These lists could in turn be sold to criminals that can execute either digital or physical attacks to said person. This sounds far-fetched until you think about the legnths people are already going through to scam others of their crypto.
The use of privacy coins sure as Monero and Zcoin could help alleviate this issue as they can mask and or scrub the history with the coins involved. So no address attached and no balances revealed.
This is an issue that is still a ways off but one to be considered no less.
From what i have been reading, criminals are using more Monero for their activities than Bitcoin. I like your point that the moment people start using bitcoin on stores there goes privacy. As for me i don't have nothing to hide ;)
I have nothing to hide as well, but I still like to remain private.
Privacy is very important
always and always will be.
I absolutely agree with you on the positives for privacy coins.
But I really worry about investing in them, short term I don’t think it’s an issue. However long term how is the government ever going to permit them? They’re rife for money laundering of criminal proceeds as well as tax evasion. I feel that they will be killed off by regulation further down the line and hence will be worthless.
That was my initial thought. Then I remembered crypto was not meant to be regulated in this manner to begin with. So those who need to transact in this manner will find a way.
Yeah, when you think about it, it's crazy that hackers manage to hack even the most secure things. I agree that flashing your wallet to the public is just not really secure, since anyone can see how much money you've got. If you hold a lot of crypto in your wallet, it's a fantastic target for those hackers and they don't even need to do a lot of searching. It's just there for everyone to see. I think privacy coins will take over one day, because this is a serious issue and it will get worse after time.
Catch 22. Left unchecked privacy coins could open up the door for a whole slew of unintended consequences.
I guess everything has a catch...
Privacy coins are hands down the future, I've been investing hand over fist into them.
Which ones. Plenty scam privacy coins out there.
Once again really interesting thoughts.It's non-existing problem at the moment but in the future this must be changed.It's far future that you are talking about but this post had some impact on me since I realized how insecure it could be.Btw. goverments will always spread propaganda about anything that cannot be controled by them.Wishing to keep things private is a normal thing but now goverments are used to rule enslaved society who allows controlimg almost their every step.
FACTS
Interesting read and a valid point you are bringing up.
Especially if you consider that governments are already trying to hit on privacy coins. Here in Japan the FSA is pressuring exchanges to stop the trade of Monero or Dash.
Of course if you are the government it makes complete sense, don't allow anything you can't control. Crypto is pretty big here in the far east, but authorities want to keep pulling the string. If the exchanges wants to get licensed they might have to delist Monero etc.
Not the best news here these days
Even if the big exchanges delist them, decentralized exchanges are made just for this issue.
Yes. But it won’t help to make those coins popular. Especially in societies like here in Japan, so buying and paying with privacy coins might became illegal too.
Has being illegal stopped anyone in the past? This is just a another from of cat and mouse to be honest.
True but not good for main steam adoption. As i said, especially over here.
I wouldn’t mind if I’m wrong
Agreed but the general public seems to care very little about their privacy and data as they continue to plug away on facebook, etc.
It's not just about anonymity from individuals or the gov't as people think but also from these corporations and their data gardens.
Data mining is 300billion a year industry. Privacy has a price.
That is exactly what i was wondering few days back. And also steemit tool programmers are just keep making apps where you can check for all the personal details as well such as amount of funds in that account etc. That is like a shortcut to check the big whales and hijack. Good for minnows like me we got 0.5$ in account. We can sleep well :D
hmm good point.
:) good post
ZCoin is much less likely to be de-anonymized than Monero. Monero suffices for general private transactions, but zerocoin protocol entirely breaks the transaction link and offers a higher anonymity set than any other privacy protocol that I am aware of.
Thanks for the great article, I look forward to more!
I appreciate your insight as well. Both of these coin suffer from terrible wallet UI making it tougher for adoption.