Bitcoin Forum

Most cryptocurrencies are not as anonymous as some people would like them to be. After the hack on Colonial Pipeline where attackers demanded to be paid the ransom in Bitcoin, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) could trace the transactions on Bitcoin’s blockchain.

Many of the coins that were marketed or known as privacy-centric succumbed to the pressure of the regulators in an attempt for mass adoption. It's only Monero that never waivered.

There were also some tokens bragging about privacy and anonymity but they are just pure BS.

Bitcoin is pseudonymous and it has never been anonymous.

If crypto was anonymous, it would be a haven for criminals and perhaps the government would declare war as soon as bitcoin first debuted in the news media. As you said, even everyone can track transactions, the FBI is no exception. So transparency is the promise of crypto in the first place, eliminating third parties then without centralized control.

Monero only offers privacy, that doesn't mean it's anonymous and will not be traceable (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/monero-outreach-algorithm-battle-flares-between-ciphertrace-and-monero-301124520.html.)

Well, that's the advantage and problem with Monero, due to its superb privacy features that's why the bad guys are using it as a tool to hide its footprint, and because of that reason, that's why the eyes of the authorities are focus on Monero and other privacy coins. In regards to Bitcoin, I believe it can be traced in the Blockchain because Bitcoin privacy is not that complex compared to Monero. and it was justified because of Monero's superb privacy features.

Well, it's already given that Bitcoin is you can't really use Bitcoin if you want to stay fully anonymous, there are still flaws if you want to use Bitcoin for that purpose. But I believe it is achievable, and using Monero also or other altcoins.
That's why there are "alternative coins"/"alt coins" which have specialty besides the real use of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is not an anonymous coin. Rather it's the most transparent coin where everything is recorded in blockchain and visible to everyone. Monero is a anonymous coin where you can trace and link one transaction with another. So the bad reputation is somewhat justified. Even majority of the darknet transactions arr powered by Monero nowadays. So there's no denying that Monero has actually empowered illegal transactions and anti socials to transfer money with ease. But we need to see how many percentage of the transactions are actually illegal. Unfortunately there's no way to estimate that!

Bitcoin it's not supposed to hide identity completely since it's pseudonym and there as you said Monero come with basically the most safest crypto out there if you won't to be traced especially by gov, Beside that maybe you can check DeepOnion. Basically it's depends on people use the crypto, Fiat itself was much larger to be used for any Crime but it's much easier to trace comparing to crypto that basically need some stuff to trace, I don't think people especially Gov can justified crypto was "Bad" since the technology behind crypto it's powerful, It's depends how they see the positive side from it.

Yes, but if the hackers are smart enough, they could used mixing services and hide their tracks in the blockchain.

And regarding the bad reputation, it's not justified in my opinion. Crypto isn't built to work this way, it's that this criminals have taken advantage of it. But as you can see, even fiat is being used by criminals so there's no difference at all. Government are just using this excuse to come and put their hammer on crypto specially on Monero.

That makes me think how come mixing services are not categorised as illegal one. Because these are like back doors for the criminals and FBI could easily justify this in the court and take down such services. Though I am not fan of mixing services, considering my minimum kept wealth on the internet/crypto.

But in the view of criminal justice, mixing would be illegal and they are accomplice of the whole thing so what can we say about that?

If Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous, then mixing help the track to disappear completely.  ;D

I am just making second thought here, how no regulatory bodies yet thought about this. 

No, I think it is not justified. But I think Monero (XMR) is not created to support crimes and other underground activities. It is created as a privacy coin. The creators of Monero did not develop technologies so that illegal activities will have a convenient currency outside the fiat setup. They develop technologies so that people who are giving value to their privacy will have an option. You cannot equate privacy-loving people with criminals.

UTXO based cryptos like Bitcoin can be traced, especially if you didn't use a VPN or received the Bitcoin from an exchange you KYC'd on. Account based cryptos are more private because tokens have no UTXO based data and cannot be blacklisted. There are also privacy focused UTXO based cryptos "monero' and account based cryptos "0xMonero" that can be used in conjunction with TOR or VPNs to preserve your privacy.

We can't close our eyes to acknowledges some cryptocurrencies are a paradise for illegal and unlawful action. So does how cash being used since then. We also must not ignore that cryptocurrencies could potentially be used to maintain privacy and preserve anonymity. But we need to look at it in the bigger picture. Does the bad outweigh the good? Well, personally I don't think so.

Nevertheless, it does not come by default, we need to maintain this space to be used for the greater good. The possibility of this space to be used for innovation and as a way for a handy transactional purpose across various aspects/subjects of life is enormous.

Judging by that particular incident, extortion by using cybercrime is no good, and we already saw  Bitcoin and Monero be used in similar types of attacks. But I think that accidents should not heavily rely on cryptocurrencies being judged. I mean the accident contains a lot of aspects that need to be a consideration within the company itself or the cracker. It's multi-variate problem so I don't think it is justified.