Privacy coins. How much do you think we need them?

[Febo]

while privacy slowly becomes a crime.

Privacy never was and never will be a crime. Crime is a crime. You should not do crime. Cars help criminals. But that dont means Cars are crime. Shoes helps criminals, but that dot mean shoes are crime. USD helps crime, but that dont mean USD is crime.

Financial privacy helps you to be safe. When you use transparent ledger cryptocurrencies, any criminal can check how much coins you have and where you use them and where you get them from. Very dangerous information's open to see by anyone.

[Balladtony77]

We all need our privacies is different ways, I believe privacy coins have good benefits, you can never tell when their needs will knock on your door one day even if you don't use them now, covering your tracks doesn't make you a criminal, most times you are doing it to safe yourself, it's why I invest in Monero, it's the best privacy coin I know.

[tvplus006]

I don't use anonymous coins for transactions, but there are a lot of people who are more scrupulous about their privacy. Therefore, coins such as Monero should be in circulation, so that everyone has the opportunity to use them. But the government will always be against such coins because they can't control such transactions.

[OcTradism]

I don't use anonymous coins for transactions, but there are a lot of people who are more scrupulous about their privacy. Therefore, coins such as Monero should be in circulation, so that everyone has the opportunity to use them. But the government will always be against such coins because they can't control such transactions.

If they don't practice as guided by developers of privacy coins, they won't get what you want. As a result of lazy, many people use privacy coins for their transactions and don't care about their own practices when doing transactions.

If they careless and blindly in practice, their privacy can be broken and they can not blame on others (developers or people who trace their transactions)

Privacy never was and never will be a crime. Crime is a crime. You should not do crime. Cars help criminals. But that dont means Cars are crime. Shoes helps criminals, but that dot mean shoes are crime. USD helps crime, but that dont mean USD is crime.

Financial privacy helps you to be safe. When you use transparent ledger cryptocurrencies, any criminal can check how much coins you have and where you use them and where you get them from. Very dangerous information's open to see by anyone.

Guns and gun powder can be used for good or bad, to protect peace and lives or to do terrorist. Depends on the people who use it and their purposes. The same causal results with privacy coins and transactions.

[20kevin20]

Financial privacy helps you to be safe. When you use transparent ledger cryptocurrencies, any criminal can check how much coins you have and where you use them and where you get them from. Very dangerous information's open to see by anyone.

That is until authorities get to monitor everyone's addresses - they would deny your argument and suddenly fall in love with Bitcoin. They're already doing it. It's the wet dream of a communist thinker: having an overview of everyone's wallets.

[calabasas_crypto]

So I wanted to gather a general opinion on the subject. What do you think? In the current times we're living, are Monero and privacy-focused coins a necessity?

Yes, but not the way they existed in the past. When we think of privacy it's easy to think of "illegal" transactions. Obviously that's a direct clash with legal / regulatory issues. There's concept emerging surrounding self sovereign identities. Combined with interoporable chains like DOT (as an example) I see a concept of privacy can work alongside ensuring legal activity. What I mean here is that if you have a decentralized identity tied to your person with KYC built in - this could be your entry point or gateway into blockchain enabled services. So rather then organizations having control of your data, your ID provides trustless access. For example you want to access a service that requires you to be 18 years or older and be a US citizen - use your DID. The service, without having to know who you are can trust that you meet the conditions. In addition, with interoparability projects like D4RK that plan to offer privacy services... you could operate discretely while still maintaining an identity and legality. So say in the case of running a decentralized store leveraging D4RK's discrete transactions and some self sovereign identity. No one needs to know who you are, you can operate freely yet still be bound to the restraints of your local legal system etc. Say my identity is 30 year old US citizen and I live in a state that allows the sale of pot for which I have a license. All of those things could be bound to the blockchain, yet obscured via privacy services. The legal terms could be worked in to the chain to flag illegal behavior satisfying governments and legal bodies. For example a smart contract that says okay this ID trusted and allowed to sell xyz products. But if the on-chain pot license expires or if they move to a state it's not legal it get flagged and reported to authorities.

Anyway that's my far away view of things - privacy, extremely important as well as regulations. It might be far away but I see a future where both are possible in concert... they don't need to be at odds.

As an aside... I think simple, dark, anonymous transactions aren't going anywhere. There will always be a some privacy project with users leveraging it.

[Janation]

I think this depends on how society will be accepting these private coins, and that is my answer to the poll.

Right now, we have the matter about India re-banning Bitcoin in the country. Posted in this thread, India will be prohibiting private coins in their country if that law was passed by the government. There are a lot of users of cryptocurrencies in the country but I think this is not a social decision but a decision of the government so that they could control their digital currency well. Still, these private cryptos might be necessary as not all people could use Bitcoin in the future.

[Psynthax]

it is quite important moreover for someone who overly obsessive about security when buying digital goods, there's always reason why I used throwaway email just for buying vpn or such just to make sure that in the future when any of the websites
I used got their data breached, I don't need to worry about my credentials  and using monero is definitely no brainer for me.

The fee for transaction is cheap too  but I bought digital goods like once a year.

[Febo]

Financial privacy helps you to be safe. When you use transparent ledger cryptocurrencies, any criminal can check how much coins you have and where you use them and where you get them from. Very dangerous information's open to see by anyone.

That is until authorities get to monitor everyone's addresses - they would deny your argument and suddenly fall in love with Bitcoin. They're already doing it. It's the wet dream of a communist thinker: having an overview of everyone's wallets.

Governments can have that power also when people use opaque ledger cryptocurrencies. They ask them to show them their view keys to see their transactions. It is your government so you show. With transparent ledger cryptocurrencies just anyone can see everything. Your neighbour. Someone that wants to apply for same job as you. Someone that runs same business as you. Someone that his business is to steal others people money.  Sorry but I simply dont see that huge use case for transparent ledger cryptocurrencies. Yes there is use case, but a niche one. In the future mainly will be used opaque ledger cryptocurrencies.

[target]

it is quite important moreover for someone who overly obsessive about security when buying digital goods, there's always reason why I used throwaway email just for buying vpn or such just to make sure that in the future when any of the websites
I used got their data breached, I don't need to worry about my credentials  and using monero is definitely no brainer for me.

The fee for transaction is cheap too  but I bought digital goods like once a year.

Buying digital goods is the one reason you can keep some privacy because at least buying digital goods doesn't expose your details including residential address. It serves its purpose. Not really very necessary for some since we still can purchase with USD, but if you don't trust the seller's identity it's best to just remain private.

The problem arises when government gets in the way for transactions involving contraband, this is when you will have to worry because users like us when identified by them can become a suspect.

[Argoo]

I think that over time, there will be increased pressure on cryptocurrency from states that want to keep it under control. Coins with a high level of anonymity and confidentiality will be the first to hit. They will be an indicator of the degree of such pressure by states on the decentralized cryptocurrency. Therefore, we need such coins, they are the ones that can resist states due to their anonymity. People have a right to anonymity and it is not necessary to equate such a right with the possibility of committing crimes.

[NeuroticFish]

That is until authorities get to monitor everyone's addresses - they would deny your argument and suddenly fall in love with Bitcoin. They're already doing it. It's the wet dream of a communist thinker: having an overview of everyone's wallets.

Given the immense number of "potential" addresses, governments monitoring all of them is virtually impossible.
Of course, most are careless and claim that they have nothing to hide, hence actually helping governments' surveillance.

Of course, privacy coins are necessary and I do hope that they will survive the continuous assault against them.
On the other hand, with every day passing by there are more criminals that will use privacy coins instead of Bitcoin, proving the viability of these coins, but making the governments' actions intensify.
I would hate to see privacy coins remain "alive" only on darknet...

[Anonylz]

Privacy coin are important to those who are more concerned about their privacy, some people don't care about it, to me they are necessary to have to prevent the authorities from keeping track of our financial status, already as a result of technological advancement people are very expose, nothing is private anymore, the internet has made sure of that, if your social life is not private then at least make your financial life private, away from the prying eyes of the government.

[RussianEnglishTranslation]

We are living in an era of technology. Our entire present is digitalised day by day as we move on to a new normal where online is more prominent and important than the offline world.

Education has moved to the Internet, something that would've been considered a negative influence over children only one year ago. Things have changed quite drastically, although it happened so smooth we already got used to our new way of living.

As we move on with the digitalization, Bitcoin becomes more and more used. However, a considerable amount of people choose Bitcoin to enhance their financial privacy. Considering Bitcoin is not a private blockchain, tools like Chainalysis owns are a threat against a significant part of Bitcoin's users since the largest part of them do not use coin control and consolidate outputs and dust the wrong way, revealing their historical traces.

In consequence, the existence of privacy-focused coins might come in handy in the era where surveillance and control are on an All-Time High. On the other hand though, that is not the case for everyone - especially since investors are being pushed away as cryptocurrencies like Monero are slowly being delisted from exchanges while privacy slowly becomes a crime.

So I wanted to gather a general opinion on the subject. What do you think? In the current times we're living, are Monero and privacy-focused coins a necessity?

My favorite privacy projects are incognito chain and 0xMonero.

[New_order]

If you aren't already using privacy coins for their use cases they can come in handy some day, there might come a time where people will have to go anonymous to cover their tracks, this is what most government don't want, it's why I believe that privacy coins will have a big place in crypto space soon, covering tracks isn't a crime and it can safe lives too

[20kevin20]

~

Hmm, very interesting point of view. Would be curious to know: if XMR-kind of anonymity is not going to go anywhere, do you think Bitcoin has a better future since it's a transparent ledger?

~

They do have the same power even with opaque ledgers, but when you have someone withdrawing 100 XMR out of an exchange after which you completely lose track of the coins, things go in the dark for them. All they know is you had 100 XMR in your wallet at some point. Meanwhile, you might have earned more or lost some of them.

How often are people asked about their cash savings, especially when they do not make it seem obvious that they've saved or earned a lot of money? It's quite hard, especially compared to the public ledger they now fell in love with.

~

Well, don't imagine the governments actually have hundreds of people checking manually everyone's addresses. No, it's much simpler and faster than that: if I used my BTC for 7 years straight without purchasing anything with it or so and then I suddenly make a payment, that's where my address starts getting marked with my identity. AI is advanced enough to do this kind of stuff automatically and constantly. There are lots of new addresses, but all they need is the mined transactions - so besides checking up on the entire BTC ledger next to the gov's database (such as payments to stores, withdraws from exchanges, IPs and so), all they need is to only update their database every new block.. so about every ~10min.

If they declare privacy cryptos illegal, it's going to be "fun" since Monero's dev team is preparing a fully open-source and free atomic swap function between BTC and XMR. At that point, the only thing left governments can do is also not accept "tainted" BTC no more.

[Japinat]

It soon to come the moment that Bitcoin is already controlled by the government and no longer hears about anonymity. Maybe it is a need for us to submit KYC in order to become a legit holder otherwise they will confiscate it from you. And this might be the reason why people must use privacy coins just to keep their identity out of sight.

But wait, that suppose to be a long and heavy work for the government if they wanted to control cryptos.
Anyway, never mind them, they are not doing good for crypto, they only just wanted to get some benefits from us that is why they wanted to make it centralized. Do they need transparency? They are joking, actually.

[NeuroticFish]

if I used my BTC for 7 years straight without purchasing anything with it or so and then I suddenly make a payment, that's where my address starts getting marked with my identity. AI is advanced enough to do this kind of stuff automatically and constantly.

That's correct. But I am sure that many can be careful enough to keep his coins in multiple wallets and even if they make payments, only a small part of his wallets will get revealed. Then I guess that mixers will keep coming up for those who want to "start fresh".
If change addresses are properly used, they will not be able to track all those addresses with good enough precision for linking them to actual persons.
And if change addresses are used properly, the agencies will have a lot of DB space spent for addresses used in 2 tx (one in, one out) and when we'll have proper adoption ... I don't want to see how will they handle their databases 

[Sanitough]

Not really a necessity, unless we don't trust in our government anymore, this coins are for complete privacy, however it can also be use for illegal activities, and we know that government does not want that. In a world that we are living, we have a government which we called a centralized, it wants to oversea or monitor its people and privacy coins if it will gain adoption, it might become a threat to the national security.

[tvplus006]

If you aren't already using privacy coins for their use cases they can come in handy some day, there might come a time where people will have to go anonymous to cover their tracks, this is what most government don't want, it's why I believe that privacy coins will have a big place in crypto space soon, covering tracks isn't a crime and it can safe lives too

Yes, it's a good idea to use privacy coins too, but some people who haven't used them are they don't know when the privacy coins will actually be useful in the future, in general they are very good, even though every thing has its own drawbacks.

Most traders use anonymous coins exclusively to make a profit. And they are not going to use them to hide their transactions. Only a small part uses anonymous coins for their intended purpose, to ensure complete anonymity when making a transaction. And a very large part of such transactions is accounted for by crime.