Bitcoin Forum

Lol, I know there won't be any friendly discussion on the matter.

Which coin has the strongest features? I've heard each one has it's strong and weak points. I am unsure which has the least amount of weak points combined with the largest amount of benefits.

Zcash seems enticing to me, but there's that trust thing involved. How sure are we that the process was followed and secure?

I can't help but feel like Zcash displaced Dash/Monero because of it's superior features, but in reality, I have no clue if it's ACTUALLY superior. What do you all think?

Thank you.

Ps: I won't be arguing with you about it, that's not what I meant. I just know you guys will argue about it :P

Edit: Also, do coins like ByteBalls deserve a spot on this list? Are Dag chains going to be a future competitor? (no clue if any other coins in this list or elsewhere have implemented them it's purely just a example of a coin using a dagchain, just wanted to clarify)

I think Dash and Zcash are the best altcoins at the present . I still trade and hold these altcoins and many big whales invested to these coins
The value is always accepted on big exchanges and they will become the big competitors with bitcoin after then.

since you are not going to argue about it, I wouldn't either.

so I will mention another aspect. and that is the adoption. Monero has been around for many years and it has been adopted by many people. another good point that I give Monero is the fact that it is being used in real world as a currency for anonymous payments apart from being an investment. other altcoins are only investments and tools for traders to pump and dump.

so if I wanted to rank these three I go with Monero #1, Dash #2 and ZCash #10000 only because it is new and have been getting pump and dumped real hard.

Monero has been around for a while and has a strong team behind it and probably the best features out of the three you mention. The unique selling point of Zcash is zk-SNARK with regards to anonymous transactions where sender / receiver and the amount may be hidden. DASH do not have any 'zero knowledge' tech. and relies on mixing of coins through the masternodes which can be temperamental and stealth addresses. Monero will soon implement a hard fork and introduce RingCT which will hide the transactions amount as well as the participants in the transactions and so will will offer the same as Zcash but with a wide adoption. Zcash will likely fall behind Monero and DASH is behind Zcash again. You will need to do some careful reading as there are potentially some centralisation issues with DASH and the masternodes. Monero now also has a GUI wallet whcih Zcash do not have yet.

I would also consider our project Spectrecoin as this represent another strand or anonymity w/ ring signatures ala. Monero and dual key stealth addresses. This means that there is no link between the sender and receiver. In addition to all this there is the aspect of hiding your IP through Tor or I2P. I know that we will have Tor integrated so that Spectrecoin can only be run under Tor and you will not need any additional software and always be secure. Monero will soon implement I2P. So my ranking would discard Zcash and DASH and out of the three focus on Monero. However, we (Spectre) will also become a contender as we have intentions of rolling out some Android infrastructure that will be used for cash transfer.

Happy New Year all...

Dash has the ambition to become digital cash that even your own mother can use, which means it will need to be super user-friendly
while at the same time have all the elements that are already present in FIAT cash and have it all based on a digital decentralized model.

This mean Dash needs to be private, fast, secure, global, low fees, peer to peer and easy to use.
Currently Dash has all the above except ease of use, which will be addressed with the Dash Evolution update next year (or hopefully end of this year).

Dash also has a decentralized governance and budget model in place that is lacking in both Bitcoin, Monero and Zcash, making it much more
decentralized in its setup. Dash is actually a DAO (a Decentralized Autonomous Organisation) as everything from bottom to top is setup in
a decentralized way.

If we were to compare Dash with Monero and Zcash then not only are Monero and Zcash less decentralized in its governance system
but they also only focus on one aspect, which is the private aspect. Dash has much more to offer then just private transactions.


    

Again ?

I invest little effort in understanding how they work so i can offer little in that regard.

I do think pushing towards an ANON coin based coin is self defeating though.
You fail right out of the gate.. doomed and destined toil in niche obscurity forever.
Battling Govts and hackers.

So maybe what you should be asking is which coin has dev's that are the planets most talented security experts.
Because it's one thing to create code and it's another to defend it and your billion dollar investors.

DAO ring a bell ?  :D

I warned you kidiots and you won't listen.
And i sure as hell will be saying i told you so  8)

Except it doesn't work.

Zcash has some interesting promises, but with some fatal flaws. Unproven crypto which if broken allows the attacker to mint unlimited coins without anyone ever knowing about it. Combined with a subsidy for the developers quite similar to the Dash instamine in practice.

In the end both Dash and Zcash are just scams and shouldn't be touched with a stick.

Monero is the only serious choice.

Congratz with your new trolling account. That you may grow up as mighty a troll as cryptohunter and icey.

And we're conveniently forgetting that the governance system of Dash is fatally flawed and not in any way decentralized as already explained by iamnotback/anynomint/etc numerous times. In short: masternodes fueled by the instamine generates more dash -> more masternodes leading to centralized governance.

Monero also has a dynamic blocksize and tail emission allowing for more stable scaling than the alternatives. The dev team is also one of the most transparent and competent in crypto space. It is only in your uninformed opinion that "they also only focus on one aspect".

Not really as Dash has a yearly 7% cut in blockrewards (of which one is coming up next month), which means both masternodes / miners and our decentralized budget
will get less and less blockrewards / budget over time. This leads to more decentralization.

Next question please.
 

How would that even begin to lead to more decentralization? You don't even know what you're talking about. It's already too late and this won't reverse the existing centralization..

There seems to be around 4196 masternodes for DASH right now. The issue I see is that nobody knows how many MN each participant has. There maybe people with 100 or more MNs and so the governance could be extremely biased without there being any way to monitor or to assess this. With regards to cash. Cash is anonymous, only the payer and the payee knows the amount and what it is for and know each other, so this is as close to Monero as you can get once Monero forks in RingCT. At that point Monero will be as close to cash as any system and more so than DASH IMO.

Monero has the best tech in terms of privacy and fungibility.
We will see what the further adoption of Monero will bring in the future, but i am pretty sure it will pass Dash and Zcash by far, as it already does  8) ;D ;)

It is very simple but my apologies for thinking it was simple enough it needed no further explanation, but here you go :

Less blockrewards for masternodes means it will be getting more and more difficult for current masternode owners
to create new masternodes from the income of their already owned and running masternodes. This goes for both for early Dash starters
and for current masternode starters.

This will lead to a further decentralization where the influence of the early Dash starters simply deminish over time.

Of course Dash early starters will still have a big piece of the pie, just like in any early adapter situation. If you look at Monero's first miners
(using the not-crippled mining software of course), they too will have a big piece of the pie but their influence will not deminish like with Dash.

This due to how Dash has setup its blockchain blockrewards and how it handles the reduction in blockrewards.

    
  

Its actually 4220 (http://178.254.23.111/~pub/masternode_count.png), but who is counting 24K dash more or less ...
Let me ask you some simple questions : how many full nodes does Monero currently have running ? and how big is their blockchain size ?

Know the answer to those two questions and you will see why Monero will not be able to support digital cash like dash is striving to do.
 

Currently (https://monerohash.com/nodes-distribution.html) about 533 full nodes at around 16 GB.
Now i would like to see your technical analysis why Monero would not be able to support digital cash as you understand it  ::)

I was going for unique IPs
Total Masternodes: 4229 = 4224 actives + 5 inactives [4197 unique IPs] (Last refresh: Sun Jan 01 2017 11:42:04 AM)

but this is really besides the point. The point is that I know that some people got a lot of MNs some time ago when DASH price was significantly lower than today. My only point re. MNs is that you do not know who is running them and how many. Myabe the FBI is running 100? Who knows, right. And why when asked do the DASH team not consider implementing zk-SNARK or similar?

Its very simple :

https://www.ethernodes.org/network/1
Ethereum nodes (incl all wallets) : 4635

https://coin.dance/nodes#share
Bitcoin Core Nodes : 4630

http://178.254.23.111/~pub/masternode_count.png
Dash Full nodes : 4220

https://monerohash.com/nodes-distribution.html
Monero Full nodes : 533

Due to the limited number of full nodes (centralization) and the rather large blockchain size Monero will hit the exact same problem
as Bitcoin : full nodes will be dropping more and more due to increased blockchain size as there is no financial motivation for users to keep them running.

Also take into account that trading of Monero takes place purely on Poloniex (centralization & vulnurability to manipulation) and you will have a very centralized
Monero with very real problems on how to upscale to handle all those million and million of transactions that digital cash will bring with it.

  

Anything that can increase our privacy, while maintaining our open-ledger system like Bitcoin has will be looked into. But unfortunetely zk-SNARKS will lead to a closed ledger,
which means Dash can not continue with the route towards Dash Evolution and mainstream adaption (as that requires compatability with Bitcoin's open ledger model).    

any coin that has not been around for at least a year or two can not be compared with those coins that have been around for a very long time, kept the price up, and have been battle hardened. i am talking about Zcash, you should not even compare it with big coins like Monero or Dash. let it stay around for at least a year and if its price was still above $5 then we can talk :)

Wrong dash is a known proven scam coin it should not be compared to coins that are not proven to be a scam

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=999886.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=560138.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=559028.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=995710.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=999084.0

Anonymity is NOT wanted by the general public (but this industry will NEVER listen). Using it as a USP for a crypto is just tightening the noose around it's neck.

Monero will not emerge from darkweb usage and the more anonymous it becomes the more underground it will be driven. Soon Monero will be seen as another drug crypto. BTC is moving away from that but Monero's soul has been bought and it's become the anonymous BTC replacement for nefarious activities via AlphaBay. In return, Monero holders can now claim "real world usage" and lots of bagholder profits.

Read Faust (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust)

Advice for all cryptos. Stop with all the tech crap and start building proper tools for the general public to use. The killer crypto app will be the app that the public start downloading and using (yes, I'm stating the obvious). They will not have ANY INTEREST in the tech behind it as long as it works.

As long as we keep comparing dick sizes in terms of tech we will remain in this forum posting nonsense and arguing amongst ourselves.

My Monero blockchain is 8.5gb  what is rather small or even the smallest of the ones you mentioned.
Number of full nodes grow every day. So I guess there is a financial or some other kind of motivation to start running full nodes. Or would be the way around.



@BitWhale

One common thing of this 3 coins you mention is that they run as Proof of Work. Beside that they are quite different. ByteBalls are not even PoW but PoS, so you need to try to find better coins to compare it with.

Simplify it.. which Monero shill holds the password to the Github account ?
..which is under jurisdiction of US law by the way.
If they request data ..it will be given.
Same goes for the 90% of all Monero coins being traded on Poloniex with Picture ID.

Legal compliance is in effect.. "it is too late" ;)
It's already happening sweety LOL

Don't bother with the tunnel vision games here trying to debate one simple part of the whole picture.
While selling your bags sitting on Poloniex to noobs showing up.
Trying to pander to them is a fools game.
Adoption is where it is at.. and ANON is doomed in that respect.

If you guys can not see the larger picture then tough titty.
You will be steam rolled later..

Problem is that Monero's blockchain which will increase in time (and explosively increase if we are talking about digital cash usage), is only really to be used in combination
with SSD drives as the HDD drives are appearently unuseable with Monero (blockchain then just takes ages to sync or wont sync at all). Storing a growing blockchain on SSD's
forms a risk with power outage, where one risks losing all data. Besides it is also pricey to use SSD drives for blockchain storage, compared to HDD drives.  

Dash has no problem with storing its blockchain of a measly 2.4 Gb on HDD drives and the small footprint of its blockchain size enables it to run on practically anything :
Rasberry Pi, VPS 15Gb servers, from servers at home  .. you name it.

    

I cant discus how storing datas on SSD can  cause malfunctions. I am sure such disks should not be put on sale at all. And this is a matter of producer of those disks. If they give warranty then they should also repay all loss made by their product malfunction.  This is wrong place to question this, since no one can give you right answer here.

ssds are a blockchains best friend. of course its more money per gb but oh well.

just back em up. my chains (plus other important stuff of course) are automatically backed up to spinners in raid 5 nightly.

I agree with the jist of your post, except that anonymity is essential although not wanted by the big players, but it's important that the tech behind it actually works. Which is why the hate directed against Dash, Zcash and similar scams is important.

Among the selection i would definitely monero over all and theres no superior thing because most altcoins are the same but they only differ on some feautures and also monero(XMR) is quiet longer among other coins thats you said and that Zcash could not stand a chance on monero because its just a shitcoin which makes the price high because of the hype and now seeing the price drops drastically.

LOL, so awesome, I love how it morphed from sweet helpful crypto-loving friends to haters hatin' by page two. God I love you guys.

In all seriousness though, thank you for the overwhelming response.

Spotnik, always nice to hear from you, I do have to disagree I think that anon coins have a small place in each crypto investors wallets, granted within due time. We can't deny that dirty money is how this whole thing started, I definitely can't discredit it, I'd love to know how much value flows through the black markets daily. That being said, I definitely wouldn't want to buy any of the coins now at these inflated prices, its something I'm willing to wait for later on, and if I miss the train so be it. The time to buy them was summer 2 years ago eh. We will get another opportunity within due time though, who knows which coins will be the ones to pick though.

I am a trader, so I naturally try not to place personal bias into my trades, this makes me look at all 3 of these coins very subjectively. I literally want to know which has the best features. I can't help but mention that there is so many opinions flying around outside of this thread, he said she said, that it makes it very hard for an outsider like me to differentiate between good and bad.

Also, I should mention that I have already weighed in each coins years of existence and their adoption levels. This does matter to me, but my main curiousity is knowing which coin is actually the strongest competitor under the hood. If it came down to your life, freedom, and bank account, hypothetically, which coin comes out as the winner? Which coin is most trustworthy? It seems all 3 of these coins have some sort of "distribution" scandal. Which is the worst? I do feel like Zcash definitely can't be verifiably trustable, this is a problem... that doesn't fly in cryptoland.

Side note: I would prefer we don't bring obvious holes in anonymous features such as the use of third-party exchanges and their ID verification practices unless absolutely necessary, as no one is forcing the users to identify themselves. If the user was truly worried about their anonyminity they would use other means of obtaining the coins to ensure their identity/data is safe. Consider these type of scenarios already automatically applied.

Also to the person that said I should pick better coins than BB to compare, I merely mean the use of Blackbytes and their anonymous system. Had nothing to do with POW or POS and everything to do with anonyminity features.

So far, I'm leaning Monero :) Especially about what was said with "RingQT" I think it was called. Thank you all for the great info so far. It's exactly what I'm looking for.

Thanks ladies & gents, I appreciate the riveting discussion. Let's keep this argument a flowin'!

Grats on post #420 Zadicar. ;)


I do agree with you, I think its a losing battle that will end in charges no doubt. I am merely curious which coin actually has the best features though, as I do feel they will have their place in crypto. I might not like the fact that they are used for illegal things, but when it comes down to it, there's a good chance any one of the bills in the wallet in my pocket has cocaine dust on it from good ole Merica, as they say the USD is still more anonymous than bitcoin will ever be.

I know thats a shitty stance, heres a coin online that makes its name by providing black transactions, this will no doubt catch the eye of the feds. I do agree with you. That's why I laughed when "DarkCoin" rebranded itself as "Dash" in a poor attempt to try to renew their social image to a "fast secure payment network with anonymous transactions for the masses", it will always be DarkCoin to me... I just can't help but be curious which coin actually wins the race, after all the dust settles. The true "killer" will be the one that receives mainstream adoption and leaves all that kiddie shit behind, I agree with you.

So who is holding this in escrow? Also why would you choose shadowcrap code to fork? It's already been proven unreliable by Shen when he had to reveal the entire "hidden" blockchain before the Shadowcrap devs would admit there code was bad.


This is patently false. Actually masternodes make Dash on the most centralized chain there is. And it's governance is wholly controlled.

XMR has had more contributors than any coin I know of Sans BTC.


Lol, I'm glad you can speak for the "general public" it must be nice to have this type of access. Your post reminds me of kids that argue their harware is the best because they paid more for it or it's not a POS because theirs didn't break yet.

If you don't understand why the human race needs financial freedom from tyranny then you are either a lost cause/uneducated or just plain stupid.

AFA the OP's question, these projects are not even comparable.

And if you don't understand that the human race needs better financial tools than the geek stuff we're trying to foist upon them right now, then you are destined to remain forever posting on this forum (what's the next level after "Legendary"?)

We are using OgNasty as escrow for the ICO. The SDC code is good and the issue you talk about with the ring signatures has been resolved in Feb 2016 and our code do not have this issue. The SDC code was chosen as it suits our ulterior purpose. SDC and hence SPEC are underrated in the anonymous game as XMR gets all the attention. There is no issue with adoption of anonymous coins. We have set up the ICO so that you can buy completely anonymously if you wish and pay with Monero or SDC or whatever you want and we do not ask for any personal information so you can buy SPEC without leaving any personal info. If you want to trade later on use Bitsquare as we are planning to integrate with.

@BitWhale

I have never said ANON coins do not have a "Small place"
I admit they do.. effectively what boils down to a niche market.

And when you have that ? You will not have global major world wide general user adoption.

You guys simply can not defend your anon coin by claiming "niche market"
Then rambling on about global adoption right afterwards.
You are in fact contradicting yourself.

You guys pushing ANON coins imply that if Monero Dark Market usage takes off..
Then later we will see major world wide adoption.
That is simply fucking retarded.

Your defending them is often proving my central point i have been making for years.
There is a provable need for Dark market niche usage ?
EXACTLY !
I agree..
And guess what ?
You are proving my damn point about global adoption LOL

Every person i ever talked to on the street had a horrible view of Bitcoin itself.
The vast majority said something along the lines of BTC ? Yeah that online drugs & guns criminal currency thing.
They all have a perception of it that is stained and gets worse in time.
Now we have GOX and Ransomware and much more to add to that.
Then factor in the financial analysts from the pre-existing financial world who ALREADY were saying BTC is a ponzi since day one..
Google Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme and see what they say.. you may learn something. LOL
I did and was surprised to see they have some good points actually.

HEAD IN SAND.
..ignoring the context and reality of the situation.
Pushing a focused tunnel vision aspect of an "Alt" coin
And don't forget guys ..these are in fact "Altcoins"
The most you can claim is... "one day"

And that is what i am challenging boys & girls.
Not that you can not achieve a niche cult following pandering to the worlds worst criminals while simultaneously attracting the largest govt's to hunt you down like NSA food.. and DAO hackers LOL

I have a point and a damn good one.
You all usually ignore me because you can not refute what i am saying.
The best you can do is cause a diversion with focusing on about arguing about meaningless bullshit.

Off hand the one i would choose is the one i heard about pushing some compliance.. DASH.
If i was an "investor" i would be thinking ahead.
I suggest you all start doing that too.
By all means come to your own conclusion but please do look at the bigger picture from all angles guys.

Zoom out and try and see the larger context / perspective of it all !

Have the dumb penguin on mute, but if he blasts monero and zcash, while oddly being mum on dash, you can make an educated guess that he is shilling for them, or at least paid to keep his mouth shut. I wrote on the forum the other day that he had offered his FUD services many months ago to who will ever pay for them, now we see if there's proof.

(could just unblock and check, but it ruins the surprise)

Well My question to you would be how can we fix it instead of rambling on like a raving idiot. Not once in there did you mention how we can fix any of that... and NO I'm not going to read your previous threads to learn "how you already said it many times", I don't find what you say all that important, so why the fuck would I take the time to do that. All you do is belittle, yet you wonder why no one gives you the time of day lol. I have googled bitcoin, many times, I google bitcoin at least once a day since nearly mid 2011. You act like there can only be ONE coin and that ONE coin has to fill every single hole in humanity. I never said that Dash, Zcash or Monero were headed towards main stream adoption, i literally said exactly what you said, if oyu had bother to read, that they fill a fuckin' niche market, you egotistical numbskull.

You are so busy trying to drive your point home you don't even read the posts anymore, you just click reply and regurgitate the same bullshit over and over and let me tell you, it's not effective. I can't tell you how many times I just go straight over what you say because I'm not in the mood for 16 year old mentality that day. You might have a decent opinion, but your delivery is shit... Take it as constructive criticism if you are actually serious about wondering why no one pays attention to what you say. Your grandious attitude screams 'I have an inferiority complex so I must compensate by acting like I know everything' when in reality everyone can see through that shit from a mile away.

I literally agreed with you and you still tried to shit on me. Grow up you fuckin' twat.

Listening to you go on about caring about bitcoin's public opinion is fuckin' cringeworthy speaking being that you show up on nearly 80% of the threads on here spewing extremely immature anarcho-garbage with the rage of a jihadi. The mainstream wouldn't touch you with a 10 foot poll.

I've put you on mute. Funny because we have alot of the same views, it's a shame you are too immature to voice them in a manner that's actually worth discussing, instead of letting your insecurities & ego get in the way of a friendly discussion about cryptocurrency. Fuckin' tryhard.

I don't blame you dude, lol I'm surprised he hasn't been banned yet for acting like such a twat. If MPOE was banned for trolling, how the hell is this dude still around invading every single thread in existence.

Cloak deserves to be in this discussion. The tech is amazing.

I've heard of cloak, tbh I'll go read more on it now so I learn about it. Where would you rank it?

Since nobody can present any evidence on wich one is most effective I use them all in combination. Better safe thn sotty.

That's honestly not far off of how I planned on investing into them later down the road.

Say my confidence is 45% monero 35% z cash 20% dash, split the total amount I'm looking to invest into anons by this amount and buy accordingly.

I just wanted to know which had the best features. Spotniek killed it lol. Everyone has an opinion, it's very hard to surmise fact from them. I'm leaning Monero though, with Zcash in second and Dash a distant 3rd. Each 3 of these coins had some form of distribution scandal, so imo Monero is the most trustable (I can't trust Zcash that some hacker can't make millions of coins out of thin air, and this bugs me, I can't put money into something like that very willingly).

Secondly, when it comes to the actual features of the coin, I wanted to know which system held up to the most scrutiny. Which one of these will stand the test of time, regardless of the amount of attackers trying to circumvent it.

If RingQT is the best, I want to know why, eli5. <3

Cloak's low price, low supply, and amazing tech makes me believe it is the best coin to INVEST in. It is so low in price and has the potential to be the price of $4 or $5. It wouldn't hurt to put a small investment. The potential return is too good.

BLG, sorry man, I didn't mean to not respond, I tried to find Cloak last night (I was rather tired) and wasn't able to find the ANN. I will go hunting now once again. I'm interested in all of these coins that has these features, as long as they bring something new to the table. That's why I mentioned BlackBytes, not sure how it stands up to scrutiny, I am not as technically minded as some of you lovely folk. I would love to have that knowledge though...

I'm only going to comment on the technological side.  The speculation side is maybe totally different.  After all, for the speculation side, there doesn't even need to be a block chain or any code running: exchange IOU are sufficient, if hyped enough.  So the market cap, speculation, "making profit" side of crypto, which is ridiculous to me, is not my piece of cake.  Speculation has nothing to do with the technology of the coin apart from a sterile "hyping" feature.

I'm interested in crypto for "crypto anarchist" reasons, which I think are the only valid reasons to prefer crypto over fiat.  There's strictly no reason to go through the hassle of crypto of one wants to "go to the masses" and "comply to the law".  Fiat does that better, cheaper and more reliably than any crypto ever will.

As such, when comparing bitcoin, DASH, ZCASH and monero, my preference goes out to monero, but not because I'm a monero shill, but because the three others have significant no-gos.   Bitcoin is great, but not fungible, leaking incredible amounts of privacy information (way, way, way more than fiat does).  Bitcoin used to be grass roots, but has become a chinese consortium, and the only thing it has running for it is the fact that it was the first, and hence no suspicion on any premine scam can rest upon it.

DASH was a serious improvement over bitcoin on the privacy side, but essentially lacked the right technology.  Bitcoin technology is traceble, and the only thing that DASH did, although very important, was to automate the mixer process.  However, DASH had a scammy start.  The other problem with DASH is that in order to do privacy "automatically" with technology that is not adapted, it needs a whole messy structure of masternodes, and this invites the other problem of illegal security stuff.

Monero was the clean follow-up on the scammy, but brilliant bytecoin.  The new technology proposed by bytecoin, namely ring signatures, solved a fundamental problem of privacy in bitcoin like chains.  However, bytecoin started out with such a terrible scam, that a new coin was due, to rescue the technology.  However, monero's technology isn't perfect, it still leaks some entropy about privacy, and it is still missing scriptability.   That said, to me, it solves an essential shortcoming of transparent block chains, and monero is inherently fungible, and quite privacy oriented.  Moreover, it is also pretty grass roots.

ZCASH is a big disappointment.  It includes the best privacy technology as of today, better in principle than the ring signature scheme of monero, because NO entropy is leaked with zero knowledge proofs.  But it has been set up in a way that is both scammy (the dev tax) and a no-go: optional anonymity.  Moreover, it has had a very questionable to be trusted setup.   In other words, ZCASH has brilliant technology, but fucked up in its setup.

This is why, as of today, I only see Monero as a serious private coin in the list of the OP.  It is really a pity that zcash fucked up so hard.  It has potentially better technology.    bitcoin and DASH are "old generation" technology to me, with too many problems

There is nothing to argue here i am supporting Dash than Monero and Zcash,because Dash is the first coin i know who implemented the privacy feature and Monero came along and finally Zcash with all the hype .I think Monero is more popular among the dark market peers but Dash is also quite popular but Zcash is just a coin which is not accepted in any major markets as of now.

That right. They all have their own advantages.

I prefer to choose Monero and Dash both of this coin show a promising movement in 2016, I don't know whether this year is going to keep continue and for Zcash still show no sign to become powerful alt coin, so I personally still wont put my money into it, but it is all depend on how the investor see it, all of them got potential to grow

DNET - darknet about to be called something else. This for investment return.. or cloak.

Tech side I would guess monero or zcash since the experts on the forum seem to favour these on a tech basis.

Monero and Dash can hit  $50 2017 but zcash will give you an insane return if you manage to buy the bottom

This just shows your complete inability to research or that you are delusional. Well you could also be a shill.

The success, viability, longevity -whatever you want to call it- of an altcoin can easily be determined by looking at two variables: popularity and useage.

Monero is popular and many use it to buy drugs.

Dash is popular but nobody really uses it, kinda like Litecoin.

ZCash isn't popular and nobody uses it.

In other words, Monero is one of few (perhaps the only) non-bitcoin crypto with some long term promise. Dash is a step below it and ZCash is a fucking stupid ass shitcoin.

I think monero will become best choice for investment into it, be compared with DASH and ZCash because the marketcap of monero more large than dashcoin and ZCash,
we can check on here http://coinmarketcap.com/ but actually depend on us, what will doing with the coins because of i choose them for investing, so i use coinmarketcap become ref. i don't wanna argue about it, I want discussion about it. Thanks :D

As I said earlier, if the goal of the discussion is "what coin will allow me to trade myself rich" (at the expense of others), then the technology of these coins doesn't matter (apart as a source for hype of course): the only thing that matters is playing the hype of the brand name correctly, no matter what "runs under the hood" because that's not what matters in market caps sustained by exchange IOU trading.  It is true that of all three, probably ZCASH has most of the hyping potential and the right names and links to get hyped through the roof.  We saw that at the launch.  Whether the code actually does anything or not really doesn't matter.  It could even have been launched without any code or block chain. 

That said, the art of getting rich in these games is not that the stuff is hyped, but knowing in advance which hype is going to work out before it happens.  So if you have the right connections, probably ZCASH holds much potential to pump money (fiat, that is) from others into your hands.

nobody is using Monero to buy something. Still almost same transaction vol as one year ago. Went just a littleb it up cuz people are trading it more.

https://np.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/5md4xi/why_having_shadowcash_dash_and_zcash_in_the/

Great post about some of the "anonymous" currencies out right now.

http://weuse.cash/2016/10/26/warning-dash-privacy-is-worse-than-bitcoin/
Points out some serious issues with Dash.
(Not to mention the devs and their shady instamine. That alone is a reason not to use Dash IMO.)

That's unfortunately the state of crypto in general.  Bitcoin has *some* usage, but it is tiny as compared to its volume too.

Why do you say optional anonymity is a problem?  Monero also has optional anonymity via the view key.

https://moneroforcash.com/monero-vs-dash-vs-zcash-vs-bitcoinmixers.php

This is not what I mean.  The feature that makes anonymous should be the thing that is always used, so that there is no "suspicion" when it is used.  The goal of anonymity is to "melt into the crowd and to be indistinguishable for Joe Sixpack".  It is like an envelope for snail mail.  Everybody uses a closed envelope.  There's no suspicion that you want to be anonymous when you use a closed envelope.  If all letters would be sent in an open envelope, except those that wanted to keep private, they would stand out. 
Another illustration (negative this time), is if you want to be anonymous on the street.  You can put a bag on your head, but you stand out.  As almost all people show their faces, so if you put a bag over your head, you stand out.  Ok, people cannot see who you are, but they can see that you are a guy wanting to hide his face.

You can say it differently: if you are the *only* person using a service that wants to be anonymous, that should still work.  You shouldn't depend on *how many other people* want to be anonymous to get that anonymity without standing out.
For instance, if it became a habit to publish your viewkey systematically on a public web site when you do a monero transaction, then this principle would be harmed in monero too, because those few times that you would like to be anonymous, and not publish your view key, you'd stand out again.  But this is not what happens with the view key.  The view key is usually only used in a very restrained circle if you want to prove something to someone ; not publicly.

zcash is good, but seems monero will be more profitable for miners soon [Like me], and Dash for mining for now is low comparative against zcash and even monero or ethereum, i hope Dash price increase but at this moment isn't profitable for Mining, maybe for investment but I don't know  i'm not a magician.

Very well put, it amazes me that this needs to be explained ad nauseum.

I see your point.  Applying this same principle then we could say anyone opting for optional anonymity by using monero or zcash instead of bitcoin is looking suspicious.

Zcash has two different types of addresses, transparent "T" addresses or anonymous "Z" addresses.  

For example, if someone sends 1000 ZEC from a T address to a Z address, then from an outside observer's perspective, it just looks like 1000 ZEC was transferred from T address to Z address pool.  They can't see any specific Z addresses, their balances, or their transactions.

A large % of people who opt to use ZEC instead of BTC will also opt to use the Z addresses instead of the T addresses.  If Bob requests that someone send funds to his Z or T ZEC address, then it won't look any more suspicious than if he requests someone send funds to his XMR address.

100% fungability is the only solution for freedom.

The Trusted Setup of Zcash completely negates any positive argument in favor of Zcash. Everything comes back to having to trust a group of devs. This is counter to crypto, where the only thing you should have to trust is math.

https://blog.okturtles.com/2016/03/the-zcash-catch/

http://weuse.cash/2016/06/09/btc-xmr-zcash/

Every crypto runs on some degree of trust in the devs.  Some more so than others.  For example, a big part of Monero's market cap comes from the fact that people trust the devs not to dump all their monero and abandon the project.  A very unlikely scenario.

Ethereum is also working towards implementing zksnarks.  Vitalik's idea is to expand the trusted setup to 20-30 participants.  You would have to trust that just 1 out of the 20-30 successfully destroys their portion of the SNARK parameter private key.

If all trusted setup participants colluded to preserve the private key, then they would be able to create ZEC at will like a central bank.  Even in this unlikely scenario, they would not be able to de-anonymize transactions, so ZEC would still have value for temporarily transferring money in/out of ZEC just to use the zero knowledge function.

But how would you know that any coin's implementation of a trusted setup was done without collusion? Sure, the devs will say it was done honestly, but I just don't trust people with that kind of temptation: they could print as much money as they wanted and nobody but them would know. That is an incredible amount of power which few in the world possess. It comes back to trust, and that is a fundamental flaw. I'd rather trust only math. It's impartial.

True, there is always a degree of needing to trust devs, but using the example of Monero, the source is completely open, has academic research, and a core user base who is obsessed with privacy. As you said, their attempts to manipulate the price would likely only hurt them. Such risks are very small.

Those are different types of issues (I'm defining "issue" as a risk that has been manifested). The big issue with Zcash is at the fundamental level. Issues with Monero are not at the fundamental level. The deeper the level of the issue, the greater the chance for bad things to happen.

I dont  think that 180 contributors to the Monero code, have substantial amount of Moneros. It is impossible to be sure, but i am 99.99% sure that they have little, since so many saw how big gem Monero is and invested in it during past 3 years when coins was cheap.   Losing contributors is always bad and any coin, not only Monero, cant avoid that.  Most leave when get other priorities in RL. But when you have 180 contributors many would need to stop to have substantial impact on Monero development. What I expect is that number of contributors will only increase with wider Monero recognition.

I don't know if you realise it but you've just explained why Dash ditched targeting "dark markets", stuck with a transparent blockchain, pursued fungibility over obscurity and kept itself compatible with the Bitcoin "ecosystem"...because using an obscured blockchain over a fungible transparent one is the equivalent of "putting a bag over your head".

Only in the delusional world of an investor who thinks that their coin will be the only one in existence is that not the case.


Indeed. But which TYPE of fungibility (https://s29.postimg.org/6u23df3kn/fungible_Transparent.png) is the solution for maximum value ?  :)

I do agree that the 100% trustless setup of Monero is a great feature.

20% of the ZEC block rewards for the first 4 years go to the "founders".  That amounts to 10% of the maximum supply already.

If the 6 trusted setup participants colluded to preserve the private parameter key, then all 6 of those people would be able to secretly counterfeit ZEC.  Some of the 6 participants will be receiving a portion of that 10% of the supply^^^ and they will have an interest in preserving the value of it.

If I were a ZEC founder who was receiving 50k or 200k ZEC, then there's no way I would trust 5 other people with the ability to counterfeit ZEC and crash the value of my stash.  I would have a huge incentive to make sure my portion of the private key was properly destroyed.

The risk that all 6 colluded even though some of them had a huge incentive not to is very small.

When it comes to anonymity i choose Komodo. Anonymous transactions, fiat pegged assets and decentralized exchange

Bitcoin is the big one so ultimately I am looking at which one would replace it

Dash wants to present its self as the successor to Bitcoin and serve as the standard of digital currency. If I am not mistaken, it has a scamcoin grade premine which means that if Dash were to moonshot to forex trading world currency levels, there would be a large centralization of the currency. It would also seem that the maximum circulation of Dash is less than Bitcoin which would mean that if both BTC and Dash reached their total circulation, Dash would need to be worth much more to hold the same market cap. People talk about bitcoin being worth 1 million or more someday. For Dash to have the same market cap it would be much more than 1 million per Dash and having just a few to hold right now is like staring at retirement someday. Besides that, the team has an interesting governance and it does have quick transactions which will prove useful.  That premine thing and imagining the Dash whales to come if it moonshots is concerning. But it's not like we do not have that already with most crypto. Dash does have the ASIC problem which centralizes the mining a lot and personally results in manufacturing of hardware that just becomes obsolete with no resell value. It contributes to e-waste

Monero, I think will suffer with mainstream adoption due to the anonymity. It's advantage over Dash and zCash is that it is actually used. I recall old Monero vs. Dash wars and that Monero has some premine shenanigans too.

zCash has an interesting niche. It has that public and anonymous transaction thing going for it and it is like a Bitcoin clone but simply more advanced. It is ASIC resistant and the thing I like the most so far is the wealth is less centralized than all the above with it being mined by many people since the release and no premine where a few people became super whales. The closest thing to whales are the devs with 20% fee till a certain block but that is small on the grand scale compared to all the above.

Personally, I think something that functions like Dash that is ASIC resistant and not disgustingly premined from the start would be a good choice. Some stuff for personal opinion would be a far larger circulation since I think the public would prefer to count up rather than count down like we do with everything else.

You have proof for this? At the moment speaking nobody has found some, so you would be the first one here  ::)

I said I recall, not that there was. I'd have to dig through some older threads where it was wars over Monero and Dash before when Dash was 5 USD and Monero was 2 or 3

it is too early to tell, my guess zcash?

Well, in this case i would urge you to be careful when "quoting" something you recalled from somewhere that you actually can not find. I neither like the bashing between Dash and Monero but in some cases it shows the discrepancy between those two and the large differences in their approaches.

That is true if monero or zcash remain niche activities.  One could say that the culprit is then the unfortunate existence of bitcoin :)
This is like right now, where it becomes suspicious to withdraw cash.  There's nothing that can be done concerning anonymity if most people can opt to use a system which entirely exposes private matters.  The only thing we can hope is that sufficient users will use a privacy-protecting system, so that the use in itself of that system is not something that is suspicious as such.  But there's no reason to build a system that only allows you to opt in for that privacy protection.  It is much better to attract people to a system for different reasons, and to protect their privacy by default.


Actually no.  Right now, I haven't looked any more, but a month after launch, only about 6% of transactions were done with Z addresses.  Most were 'in the clear'.

You are right that only 1% of the ZEC is currently stored in Z addresses:

https://explorer.zcha.in/statistics

I'm actually not invested in ZEC, but in Komodo which copies the zksnarks to allow anon transactions.

The main thing that sets Komodo apart is its decentralized exchange with fiat-pegged assets.  There have been other decentralized exchanges that haven't been used much due to lack of liquidity.  This is why the Komodo "Easydex" will have some nodes connected to centralized exchange api to insure there is always liquidity.

One of the problems with Monero market now is most users who want to use its anon functions are going through central exchange in order to do so.  Easydex will allow users to go BTC->XMR->BTC or BTC->KMD->BTC without dealing directly with central exchange.

Not to mention KMD is the first altcoin ever secured by Bitcoin's hashrate.  Komodo "notary nodes" are writing KMD block hashes to the Bitcoin blockchain here:

http://blockchain.info/address/1P3rU1Nk1pmc2BiWC8dEy9bZa1ZbMp5jfg

Well just use Shapeshift.io

Shapeshift is a centralized exchange with usually less than 2 BTC maximum trade limit.

Easydex is a decentralized exchange that can do direct blockchain-to-blockchain trades (aka atomic swaps) without going through a middleman.  In this situation, Easydex would act as the order-matcher, but would never actually hold any coins.

Easydex will also have some "liquidity provider" nodes connected to central exchanges in order to offer instant trades in case users don't want to wait for order to be matched.

Well then we could use https://bitsquare.io/

Bitsquare and Shapeshift are both good services.

Easydex is combining Bitsquare-style trades, Shapeshift-style trades, and also fiat-pegged tokens like Bitshares has.

Easydex also has atomic-crosschain-trades between any assets you choose like KMD/XMR or XMR/BTC or ETH/KMD or EUR-peg/XMR

Here is a recent post in KMD thread that gives more detail about the development status:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1605144.msg17461420#msg17461420

How many of these needs your location and identity? My problem is my location and recently Shapeshift now recognizes that

Actually only these assets will be supported by Easydex initially.  Other assets like ETH or XMR would take some demand and work by Komodo devs to integrate:

"KMD", "BTC", "USD", "EUR", "JPY", "GBP", "AUD", "CAD", "CHF", "NZD", "CNY", "RUB", "MXN", "BRL", "INR", "HKD", "TRY", "ZAR", "PLN", "NOK", "SEK", "DKK", "CZK", "HUF", "ILS", "KRW", "MYR", "PHP", "RON", "SGD", "THB", "BGN", "IDR", "HRK", "REVS", "SUPERNET", "DEX", "PANGEA", "JUMBLR", "BET", "CRYPTO", "HODL", "SHARK", "BOTS", "MGW"

Shapeshift saves your ip address.  Bitsquare routes traffic through TOR to conceal your ip address.  

Easydex trading only requires public keys, not ip addresses.  It would take an attacker with large resources to correlate your public key to the ip address of your node.

This thread is exactly one year old. I've read all 5 pages up to here and I've counted the opinions:

Monero - 16 votes
Dash - 8
Zcash - 6

Monero seems the clear winner in January 2017. How about now? Which is the best anonymous crypto in 2018?