Bitcoin Forum

A year ago there was talk about a side-chain, Zerocoin (?) - what happened to it?
There's been a lot of hyping of a a Dark Wallet - but not much lately. Are the devs on the right track or has the project been abandoned?

And there's of course the altcoins. Darkcoin, Kryptonite, Monero - do any of these really have anything to offer, or are they just premine pump-n-dump?

Should we just conclude that Bitcoin is pseudonymous - and accept it for what it is  ???

CryptoNote is the best anon tech atm. Use it.

Cant say much about side chain & alt coins, but Dark Wallet is just getting stronger than ever. Here is the latest release => https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=848088.0. The only wrong part here is that Amir Taaki & Cody Wilson get the media glare all for the wrong reason.

I am not seeing that much of a difference in the anon. of BTC. it's just got more publicity that's all.

Government can accept BitCoin due to the pseudo-anonymity.
The will ban all anon Coin... "terrorism", etc. :P

Monero offers true anonimity. The rest of coins are mental masturbation.

Yes. For the vast majority of users it will not be possible for an attacker to determine that you are the person conducting a specific transaction as most users will send only small amounts of bitcoin which are more difficult to trace

Isn't Dark Wallet using a centralized model of coin mixing (i heard CoinJoin technique) ?

Darkcoin is basically CoinJoin, but the developer claims that it's improved CoinJoin.

Monero offers higher level of untraceability due to nature of CryptoNote protocol which is completely different from Bitcoin protocol. However this tech is still in very early stage of development.

Zerocoin is the most advanced technology for untraceability and privacy. However it's impractical because of ridiculous high tx size. It's successor, Zerocash (still in development) solve the transaction size problem but create another problem (can't be implemented in a trustless manner).

I've never heard about Kryptonite.

Honestly I don't know this coin very well... can you explain better why Monero offers anonimity? What are its main features?

Why are you suggesting Dark Wallet isn't being worked on? There have been some major changes with Obelisk, sx which darkwallet is dependent upon.
Recent changes:
https://wiki.unsystem.net/en/index.php/Libbitcoin/Blockchain/htdb_slab_Performance
https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-explorer
https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-server

Changes 2 days ago as well directly to darkwallet:
https://github.com/darkwallet/darkwallet

Latest full release:
https://wiki.unsystem.net/en/index.php/DarkWallet/Alpha7

Please donate directly to their multi-sig as they are running on a shoestring budget.
https://www.darkwallet.is/

Sure, Bitcoin will always remain pseudonymous.

The pseudonym identifies a holder(public address), but do not disclose their true names (that is, legal identities).

the only wrong is that Amir Taki is involved in it.. i wont ever touch anything from that scammer ever again

Did he personally defraud you or was he just working for a company that defrauded you?

he published bitcoinica source code which contained a password which lead to the second theft of the remaing bitcoinica funds... (btw he was not allowed to publish it and he wasnt the owner; just an employer)

i've lost much ;(

Hmmm... ok, sorry about your loss. IMHO that would qualify him has making a mistake or possibly being irresponsible. As he is a large open source advocate I can see him wanting to open up all code to the community.

i know that my feelings about him are a little bit irrational.
but if you deal with money (i'd work for a bank as programmer a few years ago - currency risk analyses) you have to be careful what you do...

btw. that incident was the reason why gavin has thrown him off the bitcoin security mailing list - i dont know if he has access by now.

Darkcoin had been almostly crashed

market focus chaging
many scam dev/coins involving claiming anon when they were BS
actual GOOD anon coins not "making it yet"
the list goes on......

This is true, been using it for a while now.

The volume of bitcoin transactions is high enough so that it is possible to use a mixer/tumbler to make it difficult to link the source of any transaction and as a result it is not possible to know for sure that any public address can be associated with transactions associated with such public address

Every tumbler is potentially just an NSA honeypot. And those that are not, are just waiting to be hacked or the owner running with the coins when the situation is right (need for cash, extortion, wanna retire).

Who cares ? That's pure theory and it pales into insignificance against the massive redundancy that the Darkcoin network now has with it's background pre-emptive coin supply anonymisation.

Monero is a single tier approach technology. It has to do it's "anon" in realtime at the point of the transaction.

With Darkcoin, your entire wallet has been anonymised into oblivion way before you've even decided you need to do the transaction. Darkcoin's actual mixing algo could be only half as effective as any other and yet the network will still deliver far a more secure service in terms of untraceability.

Another area where Darkcoin is architecturally optimal is in deciding what to evolve and what not to evolve. It has a 2-tier network which lets it do all its anon-development without disrupting or coupling with the commercial interface which is Bitcoin compliant. That's another area where cryptonote is sub-optimal. If Bitcoin itself hadn't consolidated so well this year I'd have said that these things were still up for grabs. But as things have turned out, Bitcoin has all but killed off all the competition. Its nearest threat was Litecoin which got to within 2% of Bitcoin's valuation at the time. It's now sitting at 0.02% of BTC's marketcap.

So what does this mean as far as commercial protocols go ? It means that any future player that wants a look in on the cryptocoin retail and trade market needs to use the Bitcoin prototcol which Darkcoin does - that was the whole basis behind its 2-tier approach.

Good luck to Monero and solving the cryptonote issue.
I'm in this for TRUE privacy.

Coinjoin as it's used by coin mixers is flawed.
This is common knowledge...
Do you really think the dev (Evan) doesn't know this?
He has infact fixed the flaws with coinjoin and made it flawless.
Trustless/Decentralized/No tracking payments with Darksend.

Darkcoin is the current winner and market cap projects this.
All the FUD about Darkcoins approuch to coinjoin is to misguide you.
Come to the Darkcoin thread and ask questions about Darkcoin,
we welcome you with open arms, noobs.

Darkcoin is a joke when it depends on people running nodes. It would be TOR in coin form all over again even shittier. If the feds want they can buy shit tons of DRK and become main nodes and intercept people's addresses. Monero tries to solve this.

The feds can't buy shit tons of nodes without driving the price up. As the price of DRK rises, the incentive to run a masternode increases - for everyone.

Any coin is a joke when it depends on people running nodes. Do you feel smart now?



They are welcome to try. The price will skyrocket. They will never be able to buy enough coins to beat 8x Darksend mixing.

Ok so unlike "tor" you must buy darkcoin to host a "node" to have 50% of the masternode network you would currently need around 600,000 darkcoins, all tied up in masternode wallets.

1. I don't think a buyer would be able to buy enough Darkcoins on the market.
2. If he could buy those Darkcoin it would cost $$$$$$$$$s
3. His buying of that amount of Darkcoin would send the marketcap skyhigh, increasing usage of the coin (exactly what "they" don't want.)

You describe "running nodes" as manual labor... You update to latest version and just watch the money roll in?

Current masternode count is 1200. To have 50% of the nodes you'd have to buy another 1200 = 1,200,000 coins. And even then, having 50% is not nearly enough. :)

Yes, your right. Make that $$$$$$$$$$$s

as stated above, even 50% of the masternodes won't be enough to trace coins mixed 8X  Probably not even a good enough outcome with 4X mixing.  Where is that chart?  LOL, something like .001% chance of tracing.

It's nothing like having 50% of the mining power, that's a totally different issue, don't mix the two.

And if the next argument is going to be "but those masternodes are centralized"  Let me say now that we are aiming for 3000 masternodes.  I think, at best, Bitcoin has 7000 miners, possibly less, and most hashing power goes to 4 pools, making it VERY centralized.  We have hundreds of separate masternode owners, and the numbers are growing.  With financial blows to anyone trying to game the system, it's highly unlikely anyone, even with a ton of money, can ever get a reliable trace on any coins using DarkSend. 

Add to that, Darkcoin's advantages stated above, ie can use the Bitcoin infrastructure, doesn't rely on trusting a "key" to have been destroyed, future proof, because rudimentary quantum computers are already out, in the near future it isn't unreasonable to suspect quantum computers will be able to crack the cryptography of cryptographicly anonymized coins.  You better hope, if you did something the guv doesn't like, that enough time will have gone by so that they can't hold any of that against you! 

DarkSend uses simple, logical mixing that logically can't be followed.  No matter how fast a quantum computer can analyze the mixes, it still won't be able to conclude anything.

I am of the opinion that true anonymity must be the choice of the user, and must be a freely available choice.  At the opposite extreme is for example, a charity with a published send-to address.  Clearly it is in everyone's advantage to positively verify that address IS THAT CHARITY.

Then consider a donor wishing to donate to that charity, who has a long bitter experience of being deluged by snailmail and email by charities he has donated to, who promptly sell his info in a mail list.  He seeks and should have available anonymity.

Finally, consider the serious problem of virtual currency use in current or future totalitarian societies.  We must consider the better interest of the small guy in such circumstances, and give him an ability to cloak his identity. 

Since this thread has become a fight between altcoins (with the appearance of Darkcoin fanboys), should it be moved to Altcoin section ?

Zerocash?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=362468.msg3878992#msg3878992

Not true at all. Darkcoin's anonymity is be default, easily centralized and easy to compromise. Nodes must be hosted of which most are on centralized servers(Amazon etc), if those nodes are taken down then Darkcoin's coinjoin is taken down.

Also, Darkcoin's Darksend was Broken for a while, meaning anyone who used Darkcoin during that time to send coins anonymously could be traced, and that Darkcoin is suspectible for bugs that would destroy it's anonymity system.
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/darkcoin-finds-fixes-darksend-privacy-bug/

Overall, Darkcoin relies on external things such as the setting up of nodes, to give it's users privacy, while Monero does not. Monero's privacy is built in, and thus can't fall susceptible to things Darkcoin can.

An easy solution to the person not wanting to get "hit up" by other charities once it is known that he is willing to donate is to use shared sent and/or some other mixing service to an intermediary address and then send the bitcoin from the intermediary address to the chairity; this would prevent others from knowing who it ask for money from in the future while still helping his cause

Overall, Monero relies on external things such as the setting up of mining nodes. Do you feel smart now?

Mining pools are being run and miners are mining because it's profitable. Likewise, masternodes are being run because it's profitable.

The sidechain idea is really another genius invention. I can't wait to see how bitcoin evolves in the coming years.

Has anyone wondered what happens if the gov banns all anon coins ?

Which gov? Gov of Tuvalu?

But has anyone wondered what if the Pope banned all anon coins?

To set up a mining node requires 0 coins. Setting up a masternode requires coins. What a lame comparison. Yeah, you feel really smart.

The cost of a (profitable) miner is (depending on a coin) about the same as the cost of a masternode. Sometimes way more. Sometimes slightly less. And if you live in a country where electricity is not cheap, you might not be able to mine any coin without taking a loss. So tell me again, how is running a miner different from running a masternode from the incentive perspective? Both are needed, and both are being run only if there is incentive.

Monero has been around a while and has been pretty good. It has had some great tech, but time has not been great to it. What has advanced the tech recently is Deeponion. The TOR network and Deepvault are revolutionary. It gives anyone true anonymous transactions. What is amazing as well has been the community. It has just as strong of a community as Monero and other top 10 coins, but has a very low market cap still. I really do hope others see how revolutionary the Deeponion tech is and get in on now, especially with the great air drop oppertunities. I you guys need more info go to https://deeponion.org/community/.