Which currency should I use to stay anonymous?

[Killiz]

I think OP was asking about digital currency

Oh really, I didn't realise I was on a digital currency forum 

[Gillette]

Zerocoin implementation that is supposed to launch early this year:
http://moneta.cash/technology.html
https://github.com/MonetaOfficial/moneta

I think it is basically a rebranded version of Zerovert, which was a closed-source implementation released last year. One of the creators is one of Matthew Green's former students.

That is Zerocoin, not Zerocash. Zerocoin is a mixer only for sending coins to your self and delinking, thus it is subject to all metadata correlation breakage the same as for Monero (Cryptonote coins and ShadowCash and everything else!).

Only Zerocash hides everything and thus is immune to metadata correlation. Zerocash mints zerocoins (which are not the same as the coins in Zerocoin). Zerocoin was created by some of the same people who created Zerocash, but they are totally different technologies. Zerocash is much more powerful anonymity because all the coins and all the actions (e.g. transfer payment to another) are totally hidden in one big blob.

With that being said, it's still unproven technology, and I think there are some issues with launching the currency in a trustless manner, so for now Monero is probably most bestest.

It is not even clear if Zerocash will work in a real world implementation for scalability and DDoS reasons (and maybe other issues).

But none of that absolves the fact that Monero is fundamentally (mostly) useless for the reasons I stated upthread.

But Shadowcash also mints new coins - the so called tokens.

[e-coinomist]

Bitcoin.

There are helpfull mixing services to move coins privately. Some guy from the US is currently checking out how to move 13000 BTC and getting away with that.

And don't use the same receiving address more than once or twice.  

And hide all your metadata perfectly (which is virtually impossible).

And trust the owner of that mixing site you are using (which is stupid as shit, especially given the NSA can serve him with a gag order or hack his servers).

Maybe they'll catch him. He's trying to move ~300.000 LTC also, and his nick handle is known, too.

Somehow along "Big Someone". Hope they will catch him. Others like that one tried tuxing their way into clear waters before, and ended up in japanese jails.

[TPTB_need_war]

[...]

I view Monero and Ethereum in the same light.  I'm sure you would have pointed out bitcoins flaws when it was $10 per coin and said "This will never work." out of some of the same principles you are using now.

I did point out in 2013 exactly how Bitcoin would end up failing, which I said would be game theory of centralization around mining. And I was correct.

I never wrote that Bitcoin would have no utility and in fact I wrote that the utility of Bitcoin was very inspiring. Why do you reckon I am still here in crypto if I didn't think so!

Problem Monero has is that there is very little demand for an anonymity for which the reliability is unprovable. It is a marketing utility problem, which Bitcoin doesn't suffer. Even if we did implement provable anonymity (e.g. Zerocash not Zerocoin), it still not clear if markets for anonymity would be great, especially if the decentralized, permissionless attribute isn't assured, because the government can simply take control over centralized mining and force the anonymity to be stripped off. OTOH, companies are saying that privacy is very important to them and perhaps they do not mean hiding from the NSA. And public block chains using encryption are superior conceptually to private block chains using perimeters defenses because even sneakernets fail (e.g. Stuxnet). But the things corporations want privacy on are the block chain 2.0 features that Ethereum is working on. The corporations aren't interested just in crypto currency alone as that doesn't have much utility to them. Cryptonote (especially combined with Confidential Transactions that hide values) is a very technologically interesting concept, but without any significant utility in the markets.

[...]

[americanpegasus]

TPTB_need_war, what about ShadowCash?

Just a (arguably plagiarized) copy of Cryptonote technology, so same conclusions as for Monero.

https://z.cash/ is the only potential solution for making metadata correlation irrelevant, but all I know about it is here:

http://zerocash-project.org/

Zerocash is deeply flawed on a fundamental level.  It requires "Genesis Keys" to be created at the origin block.  If someone held all these keys, they could basically utterly destroy/manipulate the currency.  There can be one key (really bad and unlikely) or even a hundred keys (more likely) - but the fact remains that if one entity ever held all these keys, the could destroy the currency.  That is an unacceptable risk. 
 
Also, it is too opaque.  If someone discovered a coin generation bug, no one would know until the market was endlessly flooded with counterfeit coins - the blockchain is too 'dark'. 
 
Cryptonote coins really are the best solution: Monero, Aeon, and possibly Boolberry if they can work the kinks out. 

[rustynailer]

TPTB_need_war, what about ShadowCash?

Just a (arguably plagiarized) copy of Cryptonote technology, so same conclusions as for Monero.

https://z.cash/ is the only potential solution for making metadata correlation irrelevant, but all I know about it is here:

http://zerocash-project.org/

Zerocash is deeply flawed on a fundamental level.  It requires "Genesis Keys" to be created at the origin block.  If someone held all these keys, they could basically utterly destroy/manipulate the currency.  There can be one key (really bad and unlikely) or even a hundred keys (more likely) - but the fact remains that if one entity ever held all these keys, the could destroy the currency.  That is an unacceptable risk. 
 
Also, it is too opaque.  If someone discovered a coin generation bug, no one would know until the market was endlessly flooded with counterfeit coins - the blockchain is too 'dark'. 
 
Cryptonote coins really are the best solution: Monero, Aeon, and possibly Boolberry if they can work the kinks out. 

Shadowcash doesn't suffer from that Zerocash flaw, but it has been built in such a way that if Zerocash ever comes to fruition then it will be able to slot strait into the Shadowcash framework. 

It currently has all the advantages of Cryptonote coins with the added advantages of being able to freshly mint your own coins by converting SDT into SDC (brand new coins with no tx history just like mining them) and it is built on the bitcoin code base which enables compatibility with bitcoin going forward as well as faster development. 

[tokeweed]

Bitcoin.

There are helpfull mixing services to move coins privately. Some guy from the US is currently checking out how to move 13000 BTC and getting away with that.

And don't use the same receiving address more than once or twice. 

And hide all your metadata perfectly (which is virtually impossible).

And trust the owner of that mixing site you are using (which is stupid as shit, especially given the NSA can serve him with a gag order or hack his servers).

Also use a VPN for a separate computer exclusively for Bitcoin/crypto transactions.

[americanpegasus]

Shadowcash doesn't suffer from that Zerocash flaw, but it has been built in such a way that if Zerocash ever comes to fruition then it will be able to slot strait into the Shadowcash framework. 

It currently has all the advantages of Cryptonote coins with the added advantages of being able to freshly mint your own coins by converting SDT into SDC (brand new coins with no tx history just like mining them) and it is built on the bitcoin code base which enables compatibility with bitcoin going forward as well as faster development. 

 
 
Shadowcash is a non-starter.  They had some wonky temporary PoW-transition-to-PoS silliness.  Basically they committed cardinal sin #1 of cryptoland which was having a launch that put a large number of coins into the hands of a select group of people in a non-fair manner then changed the rules of the game for 'everyone else'. 
 
No.  Just no. 
 
Give me a pure PoW shitcoin anyday over such juvenile games.  And with the vastly superior Cryptonote coins on the market you don't have to even choose. 
 
I recognize that Shadowcash is run by actual people, some of which actually have bigger dreams besides 'zomg rich'.  I have encouraged this camp to abandon the Shadowcash concept and come join us in Cryptonote land where the future lies.  There is real talent there, and those people are welcome to bring their abilities over to Monero and Aeon while it is still ultra-dirt-cheap to get in. 

[smooth]

brand new coins with no tx history just like mining them

This isn't true. The SDC coins that went into the minting (of Shadow) transaction are visible on the blockchain. When you go from Shadow to SDC, the coins still have a history and that history is visible as well, though obscured by ring signature mixing (and stealth). How effective that is depends on how long the coins where in the Shadow system, the amount of usage of Shadow, etc.

The distribution issues americanpegasus mentions are real. Sill the Shadow system is decent technology, especially if you stick with Shadow-to-Shadow payments and don't convert with SDC, worthy of a mention for sure.

AEON has slightly better theoretical anonymity properties than Monero at the moment, though Monero will have better anonymity properties once its hard fork activates in late March (at the cost of being heavier-weight). Neither is perfect. Nothing is perfect.

[rustynailer]

Shadowcash doesn't suffer from that Zerocash flaw, but it has been built in such a way that if Zerocash ever comes to fruition then it will be able to slot strait into the Shadowcash framework. 

It currently has all the advantages of Cryptonote coins with the added advantages of being able to freshly mint your own coins by converting SDT into SDC (brand new coins with no tx history just like mining them) and it is built on the bitcoin code base which enables compatibility with bitcoin going forward as well as faster development. 

 
 
Shadowcash is a non-starter.  They had some wonky temporary PoW-transition-to-PoS silliness.  Basically they committed cardinal sin #1 of cryptoland which was having a launch that put a large number of coins into the hands of a select group of people in a non-fair manner then changed the rules of the game for 'everyone else'. 
 
No.  Just no. 
 
Give me a pure PoW shitcoin anyday over such juvenile games.  And with the vastly superior Cryptonote coins on the market you don't have to even choose. 
 
I recognize that Shadowcash is run by actual people, some of which actually have bigger dreams besides 'zomg rich'.  I have encouraged this camp to abandon the Shadowcash concept and come join us in Cryptonote land where the future lies.  There is real talent there, and those people are welcome to bring their abilities over to Monero and Aeon while it is still ultra-dirt-cheap to get in. 

The reason why pow was cut short was to stop a big mining operator from scooping up a large % of the coins.  If you think the only fair way to distribute coins is through mining whereby only the big miners get the vast majority of coins then I guess we differ on that opinion.  Distribution is not really an issue to me as there has been plenty of time to purchase coins at a rate probably less than what it would have cost to mine them.  Honestly how many Moneros can the average person get by mining on their home pc? 

Also I dont see how any Cryptonote coin can be vastly superior to Shadows solution, fair enough cryptonote coins are much better than Dash or other mixing varieties but Shadow has a similar level of anonymity as cryptonote coins without the bloat and scaling problems that they have.

[americanpegasus]

All the issues I have mentioned aside (which are enough to sink the ship), the name itself is "shadow-". 
 
I do not see a path to mass-adoption with a name that brings to mind dark markets and illegitimate business.  To have large value, you must have many participants bring and store value in a network.  There is already a theoretical maximum number who will adopt a currency named 'shadow'.  The Cryptonote coins do not suffer from this branding error, and are primed to be worldwide financial networks.  This is where large-scale security and value both lie. 
 
All are linked together in a self-feedback loop: size of the mining network, adoption, usage, value, brand recognition, economy.  The majority (and especially large financial institutions where large amounts of human value are currently 'locked up') will not pour this value in to a crucible that feels designed to do something illicit. 
 
Even the Dash-kids figured this out. 
 
Stop your Sith madness and join the Jedi of the cryptocurrency world.
 

[rustynailer]

All the issues I have mentioned aside (which are enough to sink the ship), the name itself is "shadow-". 
 
I do not see a path to mass-adoption with a name that brings to mind dark markets and illegitimate business.  To have large value, you must have many participants bring and store value in a network.  There is already a theoretical maximum number who will adopt a currency named 'shadow'.  The Cryptonote coins do not suffer from this branding error, and are primed to be worldwide financial networks.  This is where large-scale security and value both lie. 
 
All are linked together in a self-feedback loop: size of the mining network, adoption, usage, value, brand recognition, economy.  The majority (and especially large financial institutions where large amounts of human value are currently 'locked up') will not pour this value in to a crucible that feels designed to do something illicit. 
 
Even the Dash-kids figured this out. 
 
Stop your Sith madness and join the Jedi of the cryptocurrency world.

Okay, I could repeat that first line and insert Monero for Shadow.   

Shadow is building on top of the currency a market for real world use.  I see mass adoption happening a lot quicker when there is a use for the currency other than just speculation by some traders.  It seems that most people dont give a shit about online privacy for normal everyday stuff, just look at facebook.  There is one such group of people that do want to trade anonymously on line (darkmarket) and currently there is no simple solution for them, so this is an area that actually has some real demand other than speculation of a currency rising in value.   

Good luck trying to get large financial institutions to accept Monero, I just cant see that happening anytime soon in this current outlook on the crypto scene.

[americanpegasus]

It doesn't matter what most people prefer; the sheep follow the shepherd, and the shepherds follow the wisemen.  
  
Privacy isn't some add-in feature of money; it's a primary requirement.  Bitcoin is not digital cash - it is a large public ledger, but not true digital cash.  The world will need true digital cash, and its usage will slowly leak into the real world until the leak becomes a stream, and the stream becomes a deluge.  
  
The 'sheep' will use cryptocurrency once it becomes a baked-in, easy to use feature of their smart phones.  They tolerate Facebook because Facebook is not their life; don't be a dolt.  Facebook is a carefully curated portrait of their life they use to advertise how happy and intelligent they are (well some do - others just whine).  The point is that if all the other activity of these people's lives were being broadcast onto Facebook along with their careful facade they would most *certainly* care.  
  
Bobby sure as hell doesn't want the world to know he is cheating on his spouse and buying presents for his sidechick at Victoria's Secret.  
Joe doesn't want the world to know he subscribes to a lesbian peeing website.  
John is transitioning to be a girl and doesn't want his family to know he makes extra money as a crossdressing cam girl.  
  
Humanity is basically a nest of taboo and dirty secrets - and those secrets need privacy to protected.  The shiny photos of a couple on vacation smiling is just once side of a very complex life cube.    
  
But think it's just about dirty secrets?  Think again.  Everyone demands some measure of privacy, and requires private space: both personal and financial.  You can see the push-back against Windows 10 as Microsoft collects mass data even for supposedly benign purposes.  The geeks might not be the mainstream, but they sure as hell influence which products ascend to the mainstream, and a DOA solution won't be the one that gets the nod.  As always, those same people that happily don't care who browses their Facebook data still would flip their shit if their friends could browse their credit card transactions. 
 
It gets bigger though, and as Monero and Aeon get large enough for corporate and government use, these factors will come into play as well.  
  
IBM doesn't want Google to know what companies it is ordering quantum computing components from.  
The USA doesn't want Saudi Arabia to know it has struck a secret oil contract with Iran.  
Goldman Sachs doesn't want Chase to know it has placed a hefty market bet against oil futures either.  
  
And all these people: Joe, Bobby, John, IBM, and the USA... they won't use "ShadowCash".  
  
So Shadowcash will have a maximum market 'cap' of perhaps a handful of million dollars.  Maybe it can grow to be a billion dollar crypto if the rest of the cryptouniverse succeeds.  But the real growth and opportunity?  That's in Aeon and Monero.    
  
Superior technology leads to speculation.  Successful speculation leads to goods and services being offered natively.  That leads to a functioning economy.  And once that reaches a certain size, institutional reserves become a factor.  
  
Shadowcash cannot climb this ladder, and without the potential to climb this ladder it is DOA.  
  
It is time for the Shadowcash camp to join the actual currency of the future: Cryptonote based blockchains.

[cryptodromeda]

It doesn't matter what most people prefer; the sheep follow the shepherd, and the shepherds follow the wisemen.  
  
Privacy isn't some add-in feature of money; it's a primary requirement.  Bitcoin is not digital cash - it is a large public ledger, but not true digital cash.  The world will need true digital cash, and its usage will slowly leak into the real world until the leak becomes a stream, and the stream becomes a deluge.  
  
The 'sheep' will use cryptocurrency once it becomes a baked-in, easy to use feature of their smart phones.  They tolerate Facebook because Facebook is not their life; don't be a dolt.  Facebook is a carefully curated portrait of their life they use to advertise how happy and intelligent they are (well some do - others just whine).  The point is that if all the other activity of these people's lives were being broadcast onto Facebook along with their careful facade they would most *certainly* care.  
  
Bobby sure as hell doesn't want the world to know he is cheating on his spouse and buying presents for his sidechick at Victoria's Secret.  
Joe doesn't want the world to know he subscribes to a lesbian peeing website.  
John is transitioning to be a girl and doesn't want his family to know he makes extra money as a crossdressing cam girl.  
  
Humanity is basically a nest of taboo and dirty secrets - and those secrets need privacy to protected.  The shiny photos of a couple on vacation smiling is just once side of a very complex life cube.    
  
But think it's just about dirty secrets?  Think again.  Everyone demands some measure of privacy, and requires private space: both personal and financial.  You can see the push-back against Windows 10 as Microsoft collects mass data even for supposedly benign purposes.  The geeks might not be the mainstream, but they sure as hell influence which products ascend to the mainstream, and a DOA solution won't be the one that gets the nod.  As always, those same people that happily don't care who browses their Facebook data still would flip their shit if their friends could browse their credit card transactions. 
 
It gets bigger though, and as Monero and Aeon get large enough for corporate and government use, these factors will come into play as well.  
  
IBM doesn't want Google to know what companies it is ordering quantum computing components from.  
The USA doesn't want Saudi Arabia to know it has struck a secret oil contract with Iran.  
Goldman Sachs doesn't want Chase to know it has placed a hefty market bet against oil futures either.  
  
And all these people: Joe, Bobby, John, IBM, and the USA... they won't use "ShadowCash".  
  
So Shadowcash will have a maximum market 'cap' of perhaps a handful of million dollars.  Maybe it can grow to be a billion dollar crypto if the rest of the cryptouniverse succeeds.  But the real growth and opportunity?  That's in Aeon and Monero.    
  
Superior technology leads to speculation.  Successful speculation leads to goods and services being offered natively.  That leads to a functioning economy.  And once that reaches a certain size, institutional reserves become a factor.  
  
Shadowcash cannot climb this ladder, and without the potential to climb this ladder it is DOA.  
  
It is time for the Shadowcash camp to join the actual currency of the future: Cryptonote based blockchains.

Agreed.

Monero and Aeon.

[smooth]

Shadow has a similar level of anonymity as cryptonote coins without the bloat and scaling problems that they have.

That's second part is nonsense. It uses the same methods and has the same bloat and scaling problems (assuming they are actually problems that aren't solved by ongoing improvements to technology), albeit with reduction in signature size by a bit less than a factor of two.

[rustynailer]

Shadow has a similar level of anonymity as cryptonote coins without the bloat and scaling problems that they have.

That's second part is nonsense. It uses the same methods and has the same bloat and scaling problems (assuming they are actually problems that aren't solved by ongoing improvements to technology), albeit with reduction in signature size by a bit less than a factor of two.

Is it?  Shadow blockchain is about 400mb.  How does that compare to Monero and Aeon? 

So while Monero investors are waiting on new technology to be invented the Shadow project will continue powering ahead.  Its too bad that the Monero devs are better at writing in forums than writing actual code.


@americanpegasus
While I agree with a lot that you have said earlier and I admire your enthusiasm and vision, I wouldn't be so quick to write Shadowcash off.

[smooth]

Shadow has a similar level of anonymity as cryptonote coins without the bloat and scaling problems that they have.

That's second part is nonsense. It uses the same methods and has the same bloat and scaling problems (assuming they are actually problems that aren't solved by ongoing improvements to technology), albeit with reduction in signature size by a bit less than a factor of two.

Is it?  Shadow blockchain is about 400mb.  How does that compare to Monero and Aeon?  

The difference is all about usage. There is no scaling/bloat advantage to Shadowcash other than the LLW signatures that are less than a fixed factor of two smaller on large mix factors.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot, Shadow uses 1235 denominations instead of 123456789 so there are more signatures needed for most payments. That should somewhat offset the LLW and leave the two almost identical in size.

[rustynailer]

Shadow has a similar level of anonymity as cryptonote coins without the bloat and scaling problems that they have.

That's second part is nonsense. It uses the same methods and has the same bloat and scaling problems (assuming they are actually problems that aren't solved by ongoing improvements to technology), albeit with reduction in signature size by a bit less than a factor of two.

Is it?  Shadow blockchain is about 400mb.  How does that compare to Monero and Aeon?  

The difference is all about usage. There is no scaling/bloat advantage to Shadowcash other than the LLW signatures that are less than a fixed factor of two smaller on large mix factors.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot, Shadow uses 1235 denominations instead of 123456789 so there are more signatures needed for most payments. That should somewhat offset the LLW and leave the two almost identical in size.

So for the same size tx Shadow will have a larger mixing set size giving it better anonymity.

And how large is the Monero blockchain?

[smooth]

Shadow has a similar level of anonymity as cryptonote coins without the bloat and scaling problems that they have.

That's second part is nonsense. It uses the same methods and has the same bloat and scaling problems (assuming they are actually problems that aren't solved by ongoing improvements to technology), albeit with reduction in signature size by a bit less than a factor of two.

Is it?  Shadow blockchain is about 400mb.  How does that compare to Monero and Aeon? 

The difference is all about usage. There is no scaling/bloat advantage to Shadowcash other than the LLW signatures that are less than a fixed factor of two smaller on large mix factors.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot, Shadow uses 1235 denominations instead of 123456789 so there are more signatures needed for most payments. That should somewhat offset the LLW and leave the two almost identical in size.

So for the same size tx Shadow will have a larger mixing set size giving it better anonymity.

No. The LLW signatures reduce the tx size but the reduced denomination set increases it. Probably ends up the same or larger.

And how large is the Monero blockchain?

2.4 GB. The difference is accounted for by higher usage, not any difference in the technology.

[rustynailer]

Shadow has a similar level of anonymity as cryptonote coins without the bloat and scaling problems that they have.

That's second part is nonsense. It uses the same methods and has the same bloat and scaling problems (assuming they are actually problems that aren't solved by ongoing improvements to technology), albeit with reduction in signature size by a bit less than a factor of two.

Is it?  Shadow blockchain is about 400mb.  How does that compare to Monero and Aeon?  

The difference is all about usage. There is no scaling/bloat advantage to Shadowcash other than the LLW signatures that are less than a fixed factor of two smaller on large mix factors.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot, Shadow uses 1235 denominations instead of 123456789 so there are more signatures needed for most payments. That should somewhat offset the LLW and leave the two almost identical in size.

So for the same size tx Shadow will have a larger mixing set size giving it better anonymity.

No. The LLW signatures reduce the tx size but the reduced denomination set increases it. Probably ends up the same or larger.

And how large is the Monero blockchain?

2-3 GB I think. The difference is accounted for by higher usage, not any difference in the technology.

Is that higher usage in Monero is mainly made up of small mining tx or dust?  Monero 2-3 GB vs Shadows 400MB.  I would think that it is a difference in technology as to why Shadows blockchain is so much smaller, POS rather than POW, without even taking into account of the reduced ring sig size by a factor two.