BTC vs. Monero

[cryptodromeda]

Thanks everyone!

[GingerAle]

to get you started, fluffypony went on a european tour and did some talks. Checkout the podcast here:

https://forum.getmonero.org/1/news-announcements-and-editorials/319/monday-monero-missives-30-june-29th-2015

When he was at the bitcoinference, there was some academic guy that gave a presentation before fluffypony's about how bitcoin fails to be money due to fungibility. If you could find his presentation, I'm sure that would help a lot.

here's the page.

https://bitcoinference.com/2015/speakers-Spring.html

 mebbe fluffypony can tell yah which of the talks it is.

ah, but there links appear to be dead. yay.

[binaryFate]

I'm in the process of writing a research paper for my night school in regard to cryptocurrencies, their capacity to be an alternative to the fiat banking paradigm and the various pros and cons of anonymity and fungibility.

Fungibility is a word that comes up again and again, and I've heard various different people discuss Bitcoin in regards to it. Monero addresses the fungibility issue but I still don't really understand what the implications are. Do Monero coins exist in a way that Bitcoins don't, even though that Bitcoin addresses are unique too?

In regards to anonymity, Bitcoin is anonymous by way of the fact that addresses cannot easily be linked to identity. How then does Monero better itself in this respect?

Are there others factors which I should take into account when comparing BTC and anonymous coins?

Any help would be appreciated.

Welcome to this long and exciting journey!

"In regards to anonymity, Bitcoin is anonymous by way of the fact that addresses cannot easily be linked to identity." This is called pseudonymity, not anonymity. It's very much like your nickname on this forum: once a link can be made with your real identity because of a single post, then your entire activity isn't anonymous anymore. There are degrees to anonymity, but in a nutshell it means none of your activity can be traced to you, and be traced one with another. Pseudonymity is much weaker. If you don't understand that point yet, you need to use Bitcoin, and read about it, and use it again and over again, until you get familiar with the way transactions work, with the information that you can see about them on different block explorers, with the use of different wallets, etc. Then this point will get much more clear.

Fungibility, and in particular the fact that Bitcoin is less fungible that what people think at the beginning of their crypto journey, is the next step to get. Many non-so-technical people don't really grasp it, and believe that with mixing you're good to go in all situations, or even that transfering your funds to another wallet of yours is sufficient.
It boils down to the fact that the Bitcoin blockchain is fully transparent, so even if you think you're so good to deceive the current analysis methods, you're in fact fighting against all methods that will be available in the future to analyze the blockchain. You're also vulnerable to a future mistake of yours, or a past one that you didn't notice, that would reveal your identity (real life one, or online one) and thus much or all of your Bitcoin activity would be traceable to that identity.

The Monero coins exist similarly to Bitcoin ones, they're introduced in each new block to the miner that produces it. But by the use of some clever cryptographic technics, Monero hides the source and the destination of the coins in every transaction. Practically speaking:
* If I pay you some coins, then I can't see if you spend them or what you're doing with them afterwards.
   With Bitcoin you can do both.
* If I pay you some coins, you can't see where they are coming from (from where did I receive them).
   With Bitcoin you can.
* If I give my Monero address to several people, or on my website, the transactions paying me will not look like they're going to the same destination.
   With Bitcoin, everybody paying me would know the others are paying ME too.
* If I give my Monero address to somebody, nobody can see how many coins I hold on this address.
   With Bitcoin, everybody knows it.

Now, the beauty of Monero is that if we give, voluntarily, some "view keys" to other people, then they are able to see things and the points above falls down to being (pretty much) like Bitcoin. It's useful if you're a non-profit and you wan't to be transparent about your funding for instance.
The reverse is not true: with Bitcoin you are transparent and there is no choice to be made about it. The best you can do then is obfuscation (mixing etc), while Monero does it intrinsically.

[J1mb0]

I'm in the process of writing a research paper for my night school in regard to cryptocurrencies, their capacity to be an alternative to the fiat banking paradigm and the various pros and cons of anonymity and fungibility.

Fungibility is a word that comes up again and again, and I've heard various different people discuss Bitcoin in regards to it. Monero addresses the fungibility issue but I still don't really understand what the implications are. Do Monero coins exist in a way that Bitcoins don't, even though that Bitcoin addresses are unique too?

In regards to anonymity, Bitcoin is anonymous by way of the fact that addresses cannot easily be linked to identity. How then does Monero better itself in this respect?

Are there others factors which I should take into account when comparing BTC and anonymous coins?

Any help would be appreciated.

You do realise that Monero is a cryptonote cut & paste clone of Bytecoin, do you? Also, you should realise that the activities of Monero supporters and developers, here on Bitcointalk, have made it a pariah in the cryprocurrency world.

If you You are far better off directing your questions at the Cryptonote or Bytecoin developers if you want to be academically rigorous.

[GingerAle]

I'm in the process of writing a research paper for my night school in regard to cryptocurrencies, their capacity to be an alternative to the fiat banking paradigm and the various pros and cons of anonymity and fungibility.

Fungibility is a word that comes up again and again, and I've heard various different people discuss Bitcoin in regards to it. Monero addresses the fungibility issue but I still don't really understand what the implications are. Do Monero coins exist in a way that Bitcoins don't, even though that Bitcoin addresses are unique too?

In regards to anonymity, Bitcoin is anonymous by way of the fact that addresses cannot easily be linked to identity. How then does Monero better itself in this respect?

Are there others factors which I should take into account when comparing BTC and anonymous coins?

Any help would be appreciated.

You do realise that Monero is a cryptonote cut & paste clone of Bytecoin, do you? Also, you should realise that the activities of Monero supporters and developers, here on Bitcointalk, have made it a pariah in the cryprocurrency world.

If you You are far better off directing your questions at the Cryptonote or Bytecoin developers if you want to be academically rigorous.

^^ yes, please, do that. I am interested to see the report generated by this approach.

[whap]

question

You do realise that Monero is a cryptonote cut & paste clone of Bytecoin, do you? Also, you should realise that the activities of Monero supporters and developers, here on Bitcointalk, have made it a pariah in the cryprocurrency world.

If you You are far better off directing your questions at the Cryptonote or Bytecoin developers if you want to be academically rigorous.

That ego must be a pain to you man! Do some sports...

[rangedriver]

I'm in the process of writing a research paper for my night school in regard to cryptocurrencies, their capacity to be an alternative to the fiat banking paradigm and the various pros and cons of anonymity and fungibility.

Fungibility is a word that comes up again and again, and I've heard various different people discuss Bitcoin in regards to it. Monero addresses the fungibility issue but I still don't really understand what the implications are. Do Monero coins exist in a way that Bitcoins don't, even though that Bitcoin addresses are unique too?

In regards to anonymity, Bitcoin is anonymous by way of the fact that addresses cannot easily be linked to identity. How then does Monero better itself in this respect?

Are there others factors which I should take into account when comparing BTC and anonymous coins?

Any help would be appreciated.

Welcome to this long and exciting journey!

"In regards to anonymity, Bitcoin is anonymous by way of the fact that addresses cannot easily be linked to identity." This is called pseudonymity, not anonymity. It's very much like your nickname on this forum: once a link can be made with your real identity because of a single post, then your entire activity isn't anonymous anymore. There are degrees to anonymity, but in a nutshell it means none of your activity can be traced to you, and be traced one with another. Pseudonymity is much weaker. If you don't understand that point yet, you need to use Bitcoin, and read about it, and use it again and over again, until you get familiar with the way transactions work, with the information that you can see about them on different block explorers, with the use of different wallets, etc. Then this point will get much more clear.

Fungibility, and in particular the fact that Bitcoin is less fungible that what people think at the beginning of their crypto journey, is the next step to get. Many non-so-technical people don't really grasp it, and believe that with mixing you're good to go in all situations, or even that transfering your funds to another wallet of yours is sufficient.
It boils down to the fact that the Bitcoin blockchain is fully transparent, so even if you think you're so good to deceive the current analysis methods, you're in fact fighting against all methods that will be available in the future to analyze the blockchain. You're also vulnerable to a future mistake of yours, or a past one that you didn't notice, that would reveal your identity (real life one, or online one) and thus much or all of your Bitcoin activity would be traceable to that identity.

The Monero coins exist similarly to Bitcoin ones, they're introduced in each new block to the miner that produces it. But by the use of some clever cryptographic technics, Monero hides the source and the destination of the coins in every transaction. Practically speaking:
* If I pay you some coins, then I can't see if you spend them or what you're doing with them afterwards.
   With Bitcoin you can do both.
* If I pay you some coins, you can't see where they are coming from (from where did I receive them).
   With Bitcoin you can.
* If I give my Monero address to several people, or on my website, the transactions paying me will not look like they're going to the same destination.
   With Bitcoin, everybody paying me would know the others are paying ME too.
* If I give my Monero address to somebody, nobody can see how many coins I hold on this address.
   With Bitcoin, everybody knows it.

Now, the beauty of Monero is that if we give, voluntarily, some "view keys" to other people, then they are able to see things and the points above falls down to being (pretty much) like Bitcoin. It's useful if you're a non-profit and you wan't to be transparent about your funding for instance.
The reverse is not true: with Bitcoin you are transparent and there is no choice to be made about it. The best you can do then is obfuscation (mixing etc), while Monero does it intrinsically.

+1

Great answer. I think there is a space for both transparency and anonymity within the cryptospace. Both Monero and Bitcoin share strong grassroots communities defined by a fusion of political ideology along with financial gain. In some respects I believe both coins have equal merit, but it depends how things develop politically. If it came down to it though I would probably choose Monero.

[doc12]

I'm in the process of writing a research paper for my night school in regard to cryptocurrencies, their capacity to be an alternative to the fiat banking paradigm and the various pros and cons of anonymity and fungibility.

Fungibility is a word that comes up again and again, and I've heard various different people discuss Bitcoin in regards to it. Monero addresses the fungibility issue but I still don't really understand what the implications are. Do Monero coins exist in a way that Bitcoins don't, even though that Bitcoin addresses are unique too?

In regards to anonymity, Bitcoin is anonymous by way of the fact that addresses cannot easily be linked to identity. How then does Monero better itself in this respect?

Are there others factors which I should take into account when comparing BTC and anonymous coins?

Any help would be appreciated.

You do realise that Monero is a cryptonote cut & paste clone of Bytecoin, do you? Also, you should realise that the activities of Monero supporters and developers, here on Bitcointalk, have made it a pariah in the cryprocurrency world.

If you You are far better off directing your questions at the Cryptonote or Bytecoin developers if you want to be academically rigorous.

How about: 80% premine = all coins in few hands = 0 anonymity

So STFU.

[everaja]

Monero is not like BTC but it inherit few traits from it.
Monero has skilled and very active devs.
Who cares about marketing. Coins that don't have active devs don't survive.
If you have good devs that are capable of innovating, then marketing will take care of itself.
It is the first fair launching of a CryptoNote coin, with a transparent dev team and successful deployment with constant improvement of a true anonymous cryptocurrency, just the code optimizations set it apart from Bytecoin with its 80% premine and unfriendly atmosphere.

[QuantumQrack]

In regards to anonymity, Bitcoin is anonymous by way of the fact that addresses cannot easily be linked to identity. How then does Monero better itself in this respect?

Bitcoin in no way is anonymous.  It is like comparing apples to oranges.  There are even companies (I think three now) whose sole purpose is in gleaning data from the bitcoin blockchain and eventually individual identities.

It is also why there are "markets" to make your bitcoin more fungible.  Pay for fungibility?  Yeah, I don't think so.  Not when I can use Monero.

[Abiky]

Hmm let me see...Bitcoin or Monero? I'll choose Monero as my favorite crypto.

[TrueCryptonaire]

Hmm let me see...Bitcoin or Monero? I'll choose Monero as my favorite crypto.

Excellent choice.
Sounds you are a smart guy. 

[iCEBREAKER]

Hmm let me see...Bitcoin or Monero? I'll choose Monero as my favorite crypto.

Good choice.

Bitcoin's radical transparency limits its disruptive potential.

Only the Black Market Matters

bring on the money laundering, tax evasion, drug marketplace, and unregulated taxi service software. Anyone who isn’t actively working to expand and empower the informal economy is wasting their time.

[GingerAle]

Hi everyone. Thanks for your responses thus far, especially the excellent answers from GingerAle and BinaryFate.

What are the variances in attitudes to the darkweb? To what extent is Monero exposed to criticism from the mainstream in regards to nefarious intent (tax evasion, money laundering, drugs, terrorism etc) in a way that Bitcoin is not? Is the libertarian argument enough to combat this? And if not, what are the implications of living under a Bitcoin dominated environment if pseudonymity is the only protection?

Also, please can I politely ask that we keep things on topic. This is a discussion about Bitcoin compared with Monero only - discussions about other coins should take place elsewhere if possible. Apologies if that wasn't clear - I've now changed the title of the thread accordingly.

I don't know about darkweb - don't really deal with it.

Monero and mainstream aren't a thing yet. The "nefarious intent" component has not been explored by the mainstream. For whatever reasons, DASH (aka darkcoin) has more mainstream (well, at least cryptocurrency mainstream) exposure, so there might be some insights into "nefarious intent" with a cryptocurrency with privacy features.

> the implications of living under a Bitcoin dominated environment if pseudonymity is the only protection?

that was detailed in some of fluffypony's talk. But the implications are obvious and many - people tracking your money. Its big brothers / big marketing dream. I mean, its already done in our existing world, bitcoin just makes it unavoidable. Your company pays you in bitcoin and then they follow the money... the car dealer runs a "credit check" and can get a really really really really good estimate of how much money you actually have available. Its impossible to be pseudonymous in real life. You walk into a store and pay for something in bitcoin, owner now knows your address and face, etc.

[generalizethis]

Hi everyone. Thanks for your responses thus far, especially the excellent answers from GingerAle and BinaryFate.

What are the variances in attitudes to the darkweb? To what extent is Monero exposed to criticism from the mainstream in regards to nefarious intent (tax evasion, money laundering, drugs, terrorism etc) in a way that Bitcoin is not? Is the libertarian argument enough to combat this? And if not, what are the implications of living under a Bitcoin dominated environment if pseudonymity is the only protection?

Also, please can I politely ask that we keep things on topic. This is a discussion about Bitcoin compared with Monero only - discussions about other coins should take place elsewhere if possible. Apologies if that wasn't clear - I've now changed the title of the thread accordingly.

I don't know about darkweb - don't really deal with it.

Monero and mainstream aren't a thing yet. The "nefarious intent" component has not been explored by the mainstream. For whatever reasons, DASH (aka darkcoin) has more mainstream (well, at least cryptocurrency mainstream) exposure, so there might be some insights into "nefarious intent" with a cryptocurrency with privacy features.

> the implications of living under a Bitcoin dominated environment if pseudonymity is the only protection?

that was detailed in some of fluffypony's talk. But the implications are obvious and many - people tracking your money. Its big brothers / big marketing dream. I mean, its already done in our existing world, bitcoin just makes it unavoidable. Your company pays you in bitcoin and then they follow the money... the car dealer runs a "credit check" and can get a really really really really good estimate of how much money you actually have available. Its impossible to be pseudonymous in real life. You walk into a store and pay for something in bitcoin, owner now knows your address and face, etc.

The view key answers this by letting you have the option of working with law enforcement and tax agencies. Most people don't want to break the law, and many who will use Monero will be more interested in having private and secure transactions for their business or personal affairs than buying drugs on the dark market. Monero is like cash and cash is both bad and good money--you need a currency to be able to both to be considered fungible.

[Nxtblg]

If you have good devs that are capable of innovating, then marketing will take care of itself.

Or marketing can be seen to later, once the codebase is more-or-less stable. This approach limits the spread of an innovative cryptocurrency to the self-appointed early adopters, who have less reason to complain about hardforks et. al. than Joe Average does. It makes for a far less fractious community on the way up.

[Nxtblg]

To what extent is Monero exposed to criticism from the mainstream in regards to nefarious intent (tax evasion, money laundering, drugs, terrorism etc) in a way that Bitcoin is not? Is the libertarian argument enough to combat this?

With regard to your last question: no, the libertarian argument is not sufficient but the "slag on DASH" method seems to work.

[XMRChina]

Just listened to all of the Monero talk at the Bitcoin Conference. Was very impressed.

Good job fellas.

http://youtu.be/GEVm1dMn5Ks

I agree that is a good video

[americanpegasus]

Just listened to all of the Monero talk at the Bitcoin Conference. Was very impressed.

Good job fellas.

http://youtu.be/GEVm1dMn5Ks

Either I hadn't seen that before, or have forgotten about it.  Either way, thanks for posting the link.

[BitcoinEXpress]

I'm in the process of writing a research paper for my night school in regard to cryptocurrencies, their capacity to be an alternative to the fiat banking paradigm and the various pros and cons of anonymity and fungibility.

Creative Writing and Fiction were also one of my favorite classes in school.

Good luck!


~BCX~



Added: The fact that this is a blatant Monero spam thread wasn't missed. One of the better ones I might add.