So, there is the growing school of people that preach an amazingly difficult sort of privacy hygiene for Bitcoin, and it surprises me that these folks do not see that they are essentially just making their coins ready for a "list". We are already seeing exchanges treat these coins differently. Accounts get closed, and transactions are refused.
There's something more going on than that cAPSLOCK, no?
We are not just going to throw up our hands and do whatever the scared and increasingly needing to be compliant exchanges want, right?
Wouldn't part of the goal be to get all or most of the private transactions going through hygiene or mixing services, and then the exchanges have to choose whether they are going to be in the bitcoin business or not.
Of course, there needs to be options so that bitcoin HODLers still have ways to use their coins whether through exchanges, direct interactions or other ways of liquidating (or getting coins) products/services.
Plus the trouble to which one must go to keep their Bitcoin private is beyond the skill level of even very technically adept people. It is unrealistic to "make every transaction a coinjoin" currently. This is ON TOP of the fact that it also might be a bad idea.
What we going to do? just throw up our hands and give up? These kinds of tools are likely to continue to be developed.. and hopefully become increasingly more user-friendly.
And frankly the idea that we can add enough privacy features to bitcoin at this point is VERY dubious in my opinion. There are certainly some ways it can be done... BIP 47 is a HUGE improvement, and I hope we see that implemented more widely (currently only as PayNyms in Samourai), and layer 2+ can be built to be much more private. Liquid for example has some of Monero's mojo in it.
That's the spirit!!!!!!!!! Think more positively.
You fuck.Anyway. I think this needs to be a much wider discussion in the Bitcoin community since we are already seeing government organizations use bitcoins transparency, and they are only going to get better at it.
Can't disagree with you here.
Ultimately Bitcoin's fungibility is as good as we make it as the users. Do we care about what satoshis we are paid with? I think that is part of the answer... I just don't know how we all get there. It's an interesting problem.
Potentially part of the problem that you are having is to attempt to answer for all people, and for sure, bitcoin remains a plane in the air that continues to be worked on while in flight.. and there are going to be people at all kinds of variations of levels, skills, abilities and desires... so for sure, some people can handle the implementation of more complicated tools, but others need the various tools handed to them on a silver platter
(I know I am mixing all kinds of metaphores). Part of my point remains that all of us know that we are continuing in quite early days and the Canadian situation (and even some of the reactions/seeming plans of other govts) has highlighted various bitcoin weaknesses... and difficult for sure to get into attempts to directly attack status quo institutions at this time.
We can see that these are early days.. and sometimes if we might be engaging in transactions with others, we might even get worried if we might be receiving coins that either had been blacklisted or happen to be 5 hops down the chain.. and for sure, we have likely gotten dollars in those kinds of ways, but we have not even known about that.
I am not going to presume that everything is going to play out into easy-peasy transition into bitcoin dominance and fungibility - but at the same time, we cannot be throwing up our hands, either. Of course, some of the more OG folks and even the more technically knowledgeable can help us to get through some of these times by presenting some of the ideas and dilemmas.. and for sure, you are one of those folks.. and for sure, the Canadian issue had helped to highlight some of the thorny issues that both currently exist and highlighted some of the difficult ways forward too... not all doom and gloom for sure because bitcoin surely has tools..that might need to both become more user-friendly but also better if they are more wide-spread in their adoption/usage too.....
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