Bitcoin Forum

It seems like there is a big demand for anonymity, and not just for nefarious purposes. The altcoins which offer anonymity, ranging from Anoncoin to the CryptoNote coins, have never really taken off. The ability to make anonymous transactions with any number of altcoins is available, but nobody seems to be using them on a sizable scale.

So, why do no altcoins which feature anonymity have a price over 10 USD? And why are they not more widely utilized? And please, let's not turn this into another "why X altcoin is better than Y altcoin" thread: I would just like to know why none of them have been widely utilized.

Disclosure: I have a handful of each of the CryptoNote coins and Anoncoins, but mainly use/invest in BTC.

Thanks for your opinions.

First sentence runs in contradiction to the title.  Beyond trolls on Bitcointalk, who has any real use for anomymity coins beyond pedophiles and terrorists?  Ditto.  I'm sure people will come out of the wood work to naysay me but you know I am right.

Anonymity is a fad that people can now see is dying.

Anon coins were the next wave of coins the pump and dump spinsters grabbed onto.

In this case there actually was a subset of BTT users who wanted this feature.

I too think it would be a nice thing to have, but not such an important feature to be the stand alone and stand out feature in a coin.

I put it up there with being able to have aliases or send messages with transactions. It's cool, but not a deal maker and not nearly enough to break Bitcoin.  

Also..... There has been a lot of work on Darkwallet for Bitcoin which basically gives some level of anonymity to Bitcoin. It's already in beta. And if it works, then basically every alt can just port that wallets tech into their platform.

So to sum up, anon is nice, but it's not that important or that special to really get a nice market.

Bitshares is anonymous, and is ranked no. 4 on coinmarketcap.

There are only two coins which can be called anonymous -  Darkcoin and Monero.

Darkcoin - Use of third party controlled masternodes for mixing system. Uses coinjoin like darwallet and bitcoin mixing services

Monero - Mixing system built into protocol itself. Has very high inflation. Low current price

Both these coins have been around for a year only, so the market is still very young

Decide which one you want and hold for 3 years

Can you trace a Dogecoindark payment? If so let me know.

We are not playing games here. We are talking actual worldwide adoption. Your darkdarkcoindark wont hold a candle when influential powers like the government turn anti. Go get yourself educated on what type of research is going on in cryptonote technology by monero devs, cryptographers, and scientists.

This is not a playground, you cannot become untraceable by adding a 'dark' in front of your name.

Dogecoindark does mixing of coins which can be done same way with any bitcoin mixing service. When these centralized mixing nodes are attacked, Hooray, you are naked

Will snowden use dogecoindark for his privacy?

because they are still immature and or appear to be a scam.
I'm following them myself and I'm on board when my skepticism radar doesn't ping.
I bought a few coins of one I like for now only time will tell how it matures though.

While I am a supporter of bitcoin, the love is fading fast. It's like the old ford model T's. The horseless carriage is here to stay.
Which one we drive is another story.
I want my digital currency to act like cash but more. I thought bitcoin would be it when I signed up years ago.
I now feel different about that. I don't believe I'm the only one at this point either.
And no I'm not a pedo or a terrorist but it's none of your dam business what I spend my cash on and I want my digital world to be the same.

I believe it is because no altcoin has shown enough promise for largescale use, such as litecoin was a decent coin and gained a fair amount of trust in the community for having strong dev's and a good name (rep).

Obviously you are so arrogant that you have not even looked into Dogecoindark.

Can you explain how is it any different than what i cited above

I simply asked for you to trace a payment, can you do it? Or attack a node?

 What you are saying is according to what you believe to be true.

There is a whole announcement on it so why am I going to waste my time repeating here. Go look yourself.

As for why Anonymous coins are not being widely adopted yet is that it takes time, like it did for Bitcoin.

The general public has not yet understood the future necessity and implications of Bitcoin so how could they understand it for the much more important subset of anonymous currencies?

It is so short sighted to see use cases for illicit activities only that I won't even start to argue that point.

The world will slowly wake up to the total deterioration of privacy and its consequences for the freedom of the individual and society as a whole, only then people will see and understand the importance of anonymous transactions and communication.

Watch Brazil or read 1984...it used to be fiction but it will be reality should we not create the tools and means to resist.

Why would anyone waste time and resources attacking crapcoins

because blockchain matters , 99% cryptos failed to maintain a stable blockchain , people can't risk their money on it

Do BitShares Titan transactions qualify as anonymous?

At least no one can see the amount you hold in your account name, even if they know it.

Only 2 coins?

there are more, like NAV and XST, to name only these 2 others...
there are even some coins that stopped working on anon feature or even removed a working anon features because the feature wasn't even used, like Neoscoin. (but the anon feature could be put back at a later time if real demand and use for it).



very true.

I will take back the example of XST (Stealthcoin), wich have the healthiest network on bittrex with over 20 connections at all time and has been this way (#1) since July 2014, with no real contenders.

In terms of user adoption, a healthy coin that never falters is the way to go.  
A useful coin has no forks or tendency to fork and dependable confirmation times.
Fast confirmation times help, and those that moved around some XST knows how fast it is, but dependability is most important.

adoption follows confidence and that confidence is built on a foundation of dependability.
alt markets are still at a very early stage.

Yes, there are dozens of anon shitcoins too. Research yourself carefully.

Navajo hasn't even launched the anon function yet.

Darkcoin didn't have Darksend from the start.

Shadowcash is waiting for its secuirity and code review to happen.

Only a few (possibly 2) offer robust and proven anon functionality but this will surely change.

You are all talk.

Yes, they are fully anonymous. Only the sender and receiver know the parties involved, everyone else can only see the amounts being sent.

Yes, if someone is interested in premined coins

Titan is not "fully anonymous" it is just stealth addresses, which an automated way of not reusing addresses. Every transaction is fully traceable, just like Bitcoin.

Bitshares is supposedly going to add mixing in some manner, but I don't know the details.

Anyway, to answer the original question, the main reason I think is that cryptocurrencies as a whole have not "taken off", and certainly not over the past year or less since the anon coins have been around. Everything that is happening now is still either speculation or early stage startup businesses hoping to make it big in the future. Bitcoin is the oldest, largest and most mature in terms of infrastructure, so naturally it is the largest, but even BTC is tiny by comparison to the fiat economy. Naturally the newer less mature coins are going to be much smaller.

Also the price-per-coin is pretty irrelevant to anything.

How are they traceable?

There is no ambiguity as to source or destination at all. If you send me a coin I can see where that coin came from and where it came from before that. Likewise if I send you a coin I can see when and where you spent. If I've ever dealt with those people (or do in the future) I will likely see the relevant connections as coins are combined and change is returned. If I happen to be a large economic actor such as an exchange, payment processor, etc. I may well have dealt with a huge number of participants and be able to identify many of them.

I'm pretty sure there is a thread on bitsharestalk or whatever your forum is called where bytemaster explains this and acknowledges that TITAN isn't really intended as a full anonymity solution but more of user-friendly incremental improvement over reused addresses. I've seen that thread before but I couldn't find it just now.

You are right:

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=7374.msg98157#msg98157

Yes that's exactly the one I remember. Good job finding it.

My main desire to see one or more anonymous altcoins succeed has nothing to do with criminal activity and everything to do with privacy. Comments by BCwinning and Shrikez struck a chord with me. Whether by governments, corporations, or hackers, so much of what we do is being monitored and recorded. I think that almost any product that offers increased privacy will be in much greater demand soon. We can see this demand growing already in products like VPNs and even the growing popularity of Tor. And since I see that demand growing in so many places, it led to my initial question of why anonymous altcoins which can offer privacy don't seem to be taking off.

Thanks for all of your replies. Several of you pointed out some things I wasn't aware of and I will look further into those.

Bitshares is not premined. It was mined as protoshares and then the wealth was transfered to bitshares along with their crowdfunded angelshares.

because it's overhyped, useless (for the MOST part, but not entirely) and associated with the 'dark or negative' side of crypto and bitcoin.  not to mention many "devs" who try to make anon coins happen are doing a poor job of it (except maybe Darkcoin), and even then real world/mass adoption will be difficult to attain.

you want a coin/coins that are going to actually take off?  stick to anything that has mass market, mainstream appeal that has no 'dark side' connection.  coins that target real world business use are probably great bets, along with your usual mainstream type directed coins for "real world everyday people" usage kinda thing.

none of you even mentioned bitcoindark. Which I think has something going for it right now.
darkcoin is a scam imnsho, monero is a lame name that I will never use on principal. and the fact the users irritate the piss out of me with all their shilling.

I think anon tech is good to have in this day and age tbh.


teleport is  underrated imo. btcd and all supernet core coins vrc/opal/bbr etc will have amazing anon tech.

Because its overrated and majority doesn't care about it and those who care use cash.

Good question.  The answer is:

Darkcoin's early boom and bust, driven by erratic hype rather than crypto tech, set back the entire sector.

Nobody but a fanboy is going to trust delicate compromised layers of unproven 'Masternodes' to keep them out of jail or otherwise safe from the JBTs.

The anon sector is healing from the damage done by DRK, as it awaits Monero to be Ready^TM.

Darkmarkets and other privacy-sensitive entities will jump on XMR's train when the fiat exchange, database, GUI, emission halving, and multisig are done.

Anonymity was a fad. Not a pure fad like the animal coins or the country coins since it did have an actual real-world use that Bitcoin hasn't quite yet mastered as well as an active userbase that found such features useful but speculators blew it out of proportion compared to the actual demand that existed at the time. For 99% of people, Bitcoin is "anonymous enough" and this percentage rises further once mixers and tech like Dark Wallet are taken into account. Yet Darkcoin's market cap rose from $2.5 million to $65 million in 50 days. Monero's market cap sextupled in the same time. That sort of trend is unsustainable. There will be a time when their market caps rise again but the initial craze was unsustainable.

Also you're missing Darkcoin - which has been the most successful anonymous coin. Monero is actually the more anonymous coin however, although the CryptoNote protocol that it uses has a few problems of its own as well.

If people "use cash" they will want to "use cash" online too. That is inevitable.

If you say people are comfortable with everything be tracked and traced that's one thing. But once you acknowledge the need for cash, the need for anon online has to be there too, for all the same reasons, and some others too.

I agree with the past few comments that it got ahead of itself and blown out of proportion by speculators.

Basically this:

https://i.imgur.com/31odowW.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

Its just a matter of time before they are…
Shadows lengthening…


He did.

anonymity IS required on the blockchain

why ?

As you may know (or maybe not), companies like IBM & Samsung are making an Internet of Things working with blockchain (in their case, they use an Ethereum fork https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1XOPIqyP7A)

Imagine in some years when every connected object use the blockchain, do people really want to have all their data visible by everyone ?

The answer is obviously ... No. That's why we need a shadow/dark blockchain, something to protect our privacy in the fully connected world that is ahead.

Maybe the shadow blockchain use is not so big at the moment, but in the future it will be only more and more useful

.

That graph looks eerily like DRK over the last year...massive pump before we'd even finished any features!

Yes that is the whole point and it looks like a graph of all of the "anonymous coins" that were around back then and are still around. Arguably it looks like Bitcoin too going back about 18 months or so.

This phrase is the perfect synthetization of the reason why I'm interested in cryptocurrencies. Much thanks, I wouldn't be capable of syntethize this in one simple phrase.

On-topic: I think anonymous altcoins are still something new. The majority of these coins haven't completed 1 year yet.

Why? Laws vary greatly from nation to nation... and not all of them are reasonable.

I think one of the main issues is that altcoins aren't being adopted in general.  I mean sure, there are a few which have found some niche (doge on reddit, ltc has some uses).  But in general there aren't too many people using cryptos and of those who do use cryptos like 99% of are using BTC.  Then there's the questions about the conditions of some of these "innovative" alts which are areally just premined pump-n-dumps.  I think that's my best answer to your question.

Bitcoin hasn't been adopted in general - only 250,000 users (addresses are not people).

If you really want to make the Bitcoin evangelicals moody then point out that many alternates have a capitalization and userbase which took Bitcoin years to attain.   :D

No cryptocurrencies at all are in wide use. This is a small niche that does not appear to be getting much bigger. The average person does not have a clue about how to use or why to use crypto.

All objective metrics show it getting bigger, just at a fairly modest rate.

Your ears and nose get bigger as your  age and some allege they continue growing after you die.   Maybe Bitcoin continues to acquire more users but is otherwise a dead man walking.  The Ottoman Empire of digital currencies, the sick man.

Whatsapp is newer than Bitcoin and has 300 million users.  Instagram is newer than Bitcoin and has 200 million users.  Even on that website instagram people are making literal fortunes and it's not restricted to the people, unlike Bitcoin, who bought back in 2009.  It is a better investment to devote time to instagram than bitcoin.


There's countless countless examples of things newer than Bitcoin which took off.   Bitcoin at 250,000 users over 6/7 years (an eternity in tech) has not taken off and perhaps never well.  Did you know Jed McCaleb was going to get Wells Fargo into Bitcoin but that felled through due to Mt Gox and his association with it?  That is, perhaps, the date of when Bitcoin died and nobody wants to acknowledge it.


http://www.coindesk.com/history-ripple-stellar-tell-all-report/

These are systems that operate within an established paradigm, all of them incremental improvements (?) over previous ones. You see much the same in other contexts. Facebook (not even the first social network) took around 2 years to grow to 10 million users and 4 years to grow to 100 million users, yet newer systems reach that milestone much faster.

Decentralized finance is a much bigger paradigm shift than yet another social network.

Wasn't talking about paradigm shifts and Bitcoin built on predecessors.  There are recent estimates that eGold both had a bigger capitalization and userbase than Bitcoin and that was many years ago.  

The idea of digital money and payments goes back to the 1990s and it did not stop PayPal from hitting 150 million users and a capitalization of $40 billion (their capitalization is calculated differently from Bitcoin.   If PayPal was a store of wealth like BTC then PayPal would be $Trillions, after all they dominate internet payments!)


 

egold was not decentralized, nor was Paypal. Duh, that is the whole innovation of Bitcoin in a nutshell. It has never been done before.

If you compare them to todays use of money, you see these anonymous coins, namely Darkcoin, being a replacement for cash. So yes, if you wanted to use cash for a transaction, you should use dark. When people don't care, bitcoin is fine for them. They should care, but they don't. No one should want every purchase traced back to them, I don't care if it is coffee, internet, or giftcards for Amazon. People are letting themselves be tracked more and more and they don't seem to care. People must fight for their freedom to have any.

how are you going to pay for strippers during your business trip without your wife knowing?

certainly not with your bitcoin wallet you buy normally stuff with. mixing bitcoin (with possibly stolen coins) or trying to keep a hidden wallet is too much of a hassle.

this should fully answer OP's question.

just don't tell me you don't go to strip clubs - of course you don't.

Nobody goes to strip clubs, that's why the parklng lots are always empty and the strip club owners are broke.

Yeah...but the old rules of history say that the more disruptive the technology, the longer it takes for it to be mainstreamed. Case in point: there were primitive televisions working in the late 1920s. AT&T was promising video calls c.1970 and even had a working test system with small teevees at that time. And - a nice one if you're a trivia buff - the first jet boat, the "Sea-Doo," was sold by Bombardier in the early 1970s. It was a gas hog, so it was wiped out by the oil crisis of 1973. The first one I saw was a rusty number in a private junkyard.

I know "disruptive" is a buzzword now, but tech innovations that are truly disruptive follow the old rule: ordinary folks need a lot of time to get used to them. Do you know what killed off AT&T's vidphone? Not the primitive technology. No, it was the client base - at the time, mostly housewives - who balked at the idea that the other person on the other end of the call would see them in their housecoats.

As far as I knew beforehand, the world record for invention -> innovation -> mainstreaming was the steam engine. The first one built, was built by Hero of Alexandria at the time Christ walked the earth....

...but as it turns out, ol' Hero was also responsible for the vending machine!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_Alexandria

Because most of them don't work or are just knock offs of bitcoin.

Isn't Dark Wallet a CoinJoin implementation? The anonymity provided by CoinJoin is good (Darkcoin uses a version of it too) but I've read that it's not quite as robust as CryptoNote's ring signatures.


I admit I haven't really kept up with BTCD development these days. Although I do I remember the price exploded when jl777 adopted it. It seems to be trading at much more sensible levels now.


Hmm... You're right. Using a bigger version of that chart, I labeled four points on it (minus the slope of enlightenment) as well as their corresponding points on the DRK price chart.

http://s17.postimg.org/g5wlqep9r/chart1.png

http://s17.postimg.org/bvhxutk6n/darkcoin.png

And here's the same chart for Monero:

http://s16.postimg.org/li5n7dh79/monero.png


Other than Bitcoin and perhaps Litecoin and Dogecoin, all cryptos are ignored by the mainstream media so the fact that articles about Monero aren't being featured on CNN or the WSJ isn't surprising. The reason why the mainstream media calls Bitcoin anonymous rather than pseudonymous is probably because most people don't know what the latter means.

And as I mentioned previously, Bitcoin is probably "anonymous enough" for 99% of people.


The CryptoNote coins (e.g. XMR and BCN) aren't based on Bitcoin. They do have problems with blockchain bloating though.

Because price and volume are so unstable

They aint bitcoin, just look at lat.. if your no fast, your last ;)

In the grand scheme of things anonymous altcoins are in the phase 1 "Technology Trigger".
Or altcoins are dead.

I can't imagine anything in between.

Certainly they are not in the "Plateau of Productivity" phase because: Look at the title of this thread

Quite simply, not interested..

http://www.themightyginge.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/harry-tuttle.jpg

Its true.. we should all remember to be more like Harry Tuttle.

No but really, if you haven't seen Brazil yet, go watch it... Yes its worth the time out of your life.

As far as the anon thing goes, if you compare the contributions and activity on GitHub of darkcoin and monero you will see that there is a lot more development and contributors on the darkcoin side. Monero is too hyped, requires too much - some would say relentless - spamming in order to retain relevance... plus it has a dumb name.

Oh, and the reason why nobody uses them is because nobody really uses bitcoin, either. Adoption is going more slowly than some (me) had anticipated, but the technology is still under construction altogether... there has to be more every-day use instead of pure speculation.

I still think the main reason why no anonymous altcoins are being widely utilized comes from the fact that altcoins in general aren't being widely utilized.  I mean, it's a subset relation.  If altcoins aren't being widely utilized then it's clear that no subset of them is being widely utilized either.  So your question really becomes about why altcoins aren't being so widely utilized.  To answer that you have to realized that even bitcoin is only barely being "widely utilized" and a lot of folks, myself included, don't really want to contribute energy to side projects that take away from the potential to grow bitcoin.

For me, once bitcoin has become a staple of everyday life for even a large minority of the people of the earth, then I'll consider looking more closely at competitors.

This is largely bullshit. Monero development is more decentralized. Development happens primarily on many different github repos belonging to developers and contributors, whereas darkcoin has more going right on the main repo.

(This is not intended to say that darkcoin doesn't have some numerically larger amount of development/commits/whatever, I don't know and it wouldn't surprise me given that darkcoin is a larger and older coin with more money going into development. I'm just saying that "Look at the github!" does not tell the correct story.)


This is 100% not bullshit.

The "subset" part is logically true but if you look at the altcoin projects that are not:

1. intended as mere interconnections between banks/exchanges/etc. (ripple/stellar)
2. In zombie state (ltc, nmc)
3. "Platforms" for DAO, etc. (BTS, maybe NXT)
4. Obvious scams (I'm not going to name names but you pretty much know who they are if you are paying attention)

i.e. actual coins intended to be used as coins, there are in fact very few left and the list is dominated by DRK and XMR and a few others (PPC, maybe DOGE, I don't really follow either).

I see three (somewhat) viable niches for altcoins at the moment:

1. interconnection tokens
2. app/DAO platforms
3. anon coins

You have an interesting point that the altcoins which are intended to be used as coins are an even further subset of the zoo that's out there.  I have to say that one of the reasons I'm so turned off by altcoins is not only my feeling that I'd rather focus on bitcoin and bring energy there (for now) but also the circus of altcoins which as you say, many are scams, many are zombies, etc, has left me turned off.  I suppose that with time the wheat will be sorted from the chaff but I'm just staying away for the time being (and I think many others probably feel the same way).

Guys/gall's, there is simply no incentive to use anything other than bitcoin, and even bitcoin has come to the point where the majority of user's have become so tight, that new user's to bitcoin realise it's not worth the hassle anymore.. new user's cant mine when they realise the cost of mininng from home, and most new user's will just say fuck that.. so folks say use the faucet's.. the origional was good, ya got 1 btc, but now look at it.. instant reward's paid instantly, to another external wallet that is not paying out instantly.. why would anyone wanna stick with crypto currency at all?

In the end, long term bitcoin users are grabbin what they can and giving out so little, it is pointless to new user's.

Long term bitcoiners cant see for the btc sign in their eye's..

Simply put in any e-coin, the rich or the originators get rich or richer. There's not really many faucets that aren't ad supported anymore, and faucets pay out so little. New users learn to cheat the system, put in the long hours for pennies, or give up. It's the same way for all the coins, but you can lose out of your work or cheating with alt-coins. All the alt-coins are diluting the cash that is going into these currencies, and most of them have no future. It takes hard work and a unique idea to get a coin that gets traction, otherwise it needs to ride on top of bitcoin to be valuable.

As for why you can buy so much more with bitcoin than anything else, is liquidity. RonPaulcoin is still trading good, but is it only on one exchange? That's not very liquid. There's many more examples, coins need to have direct coin to fiat, and have many avenues for that to be useful for more things like everyday purchases.

Darkcoin nearly as liquid as Bitcoin, but they are not as widely traded. Why? 

A nice and easy marketplace for the novice and a truly anan coin to spend there would be a big step forward.

I would say the main reason is that they are not required in every situation. for example, if I intend to remain anonymous for a transaction, then I would do so by using that currency , but I won't be really using it all the time. And the number of times they are required is less, as bitcoin already covers that gap for normal usage.

Stigma. The word dark, is bad for some people. It's never got to the place it should be because of this. The good news is dark is become Dash. This can change everything and finally get it to the number 2 position with the possibly of usurping bitcoin. Time will tell, but a push in price can still be expected now from the name change news. This isn't like bitcoin, there's not as many coins out there, with huge demand and so few selling. It's a great time to be in dark, the deciding factor is how it changes over to Dash, but they changed names before, they can do it again.

So be patient, and I think the first alt-coin to go majorly mainstream will be Dash.

Not enough liquidity for them to be able to move big amounts. Using exchanges, mixers etc it is easy to wash BTC so there is no reason to try an altcoin which is difficult to liquidate.

As anaylsis programs get better, this will become a much less viable option(Google chainanaylsis and what happened a few days ago with Bitcoin). Besides that, when you use mixers, there's a high chance of getting someone else's tainted coins, whether it be a scammer or whatnot, there's a chance you'd be getting dirty coins back. And, of course, there's the chance of the mixer scamming you yourself and just running away with your Bitcoins.

Mixers on bitcoin are great in theory but in practice have never really worked well for all the reasons you state. Also:

1. Mixers may be honeypots that are themselves collecting data or being spied upon. There is no way for you to ever know.
2. You can't really mix very much on most mixers, because the volume going through them is low. Try to mix a lot and you either get a lot of your own coins back, or you wait forever.

My opinion is none of these coins will truly make u invisible. They didn't bust dpr because of Bitcoin. It was all other actions he did around it  As long as u have to
A use the web
B cash out

You will never be unseen it's just how bad they want u .  Remember anarchist are smart government is too government pays better where u think the smartest people go?

because its still fairly easy to hide btc profit from taxman if you aren't stupid and impatient, when governments get their act together coins with anon features will increase in popularity, that could take a while i mean look at how useless authorities are at catching cybercriminals, they are 5 years behind

exactly.
and hiding from taxes is far bigger market than black markets.
most of the world think bitcoin is anonymous and 100% fungible.
they even haven't heard about other coins yet.

- anonymous coins emerged when bitcoin was in a long and brutal downtrend
- it's not easy to make a proper anonymous altcoin and the tech needs to prove it is good first
- we don't even have a proper dark marketplace which is mandatory to see any widespread use of anon

when you count in all the little things, i think the answer why we have no wide use is quite clear

Except that big amounts have and are being successfully liquidated. The latest is the 7000 BTC from Bter hack.

Compare this to any altcoin and it is difficult to see how it can be done through them. There is simply nowhere near enough volume.

Using an altcoin as a bitcoin mixer largely suffers from the same issues as any other bitcoin mixer, and I agree in practice it may be worse. You are still going through some kind of chokepoints (exchanges, etc.) which will keep logs, and as you say volume will be an issue (though not so much if you are willing to do it slowly over time; same with bitcoin mixers).

Good anonymous coins simply eliminate the need for mixers altogether by keeping the blockchain opaque. If I wanted to move 7000 BTC worth of XMR privately as XMR (not converting it) I literally could do it quite easily even though that's something like half of the total capitalization of the coin.

Obviously 7000 BTC worth of XMR is unlikely unless XMR gets a lot bigger.

You can move, but you can't sell them and thats the issue. Recall the NXT hack from Bter, the hacker was willing for a cut price deal rather than sell them.

An anonymous coin by itself is not attractive enough to become big enough. If it is something else which becomes big and happens to have the anonymity feature then that can be used later.

I agreed with you that moving funds through (meaning into then out of) an altcoin as a means of using that altcoin as a mixer is not a good use case.


This is where I'm not sure. Forget about the idea of using the alt as a mixer and consider that people may simply value their privacy and not want to go through the trouble of a special "mixing" process at all. Sure if you are a hacker and you want to wash 7000 stolen BTC then going through mixers, gambling sites, exchanges, etc. are fine.

Normal people, dealing in smaller amounts where the liquidity of many alts is perfectly adequate, or even routine modest-sized business transactions, aren't going to do that and may still not want their affairs broadcast out on a public blockchain. They may prefer to simply use a monetary system that doesn't have so much built-in visibility to begin with that you need mixers.

Even if this is only a minority of people, that may still be a very large market, just as there is a large market for financial privacy in the conventional banking system.

What I am saying is that it is a chicken and egg problem. It becomes useful if there is a large number of users, which will come if it is useful. If it initially was useful due to other features besides anonymity then it could gain the required userbase before being useful for its anonymity.

Personally, I think a future proof coin would need to be held by a lot of people, a modest paying POS coin, that no one can massively stockpile. Everyone may brainstorm on how to make a coin be kept by the masses and used, but that it's not useful to horde in large quantities.

I like clam today, but it's already getting stockpiled. Dash now will be a hit, but will there be a time that it transitions to POS. And if bitcoin transitions to POS at some point, all bets are off.

There is nothing in the pipeline about Dash transitioning to POS, let alone BTC. Might it be practical in the future (years, if not decades down the road), perhaps, but no where near to being reality at this juncture.

DogeCoinDark is being traded right now on EXCHANGED.i2p. Check it out! ;D Also, come chat with us on freenode at http://www.dogecoindark.net/radio/ or you can find us on i2p at #dogecoindark.

So is servicing the underground economy, which consists more and more of folks hiding from laws and regulations. Case in point: an illegal immigrant running a hot-dog stand, nail salon, or whatnot. Slowly, the U.S. is becoming similar to Hernando de Soto's Peru (https://books.google.ca/books/about/The_Other_Path.html?id=5u28pV-1FRwC&redir_esc=y).