rpietila Altcoin Observer

[dreamspark]

I remember someone saying something that is worthwhile to note :

What if you paid your dentist in bitcoin the first time you had an appointment , the next time you go he would know your balance and charge accordingly 

Eh?

You have all your BTC in one address and thats the one you carry around with you?

[HardwarePal]

I remember someone saying something that is worthwhile to note :

What if you paid your dentist in bitcoin the first time you had an appointment , the next time you go he would know your balance and charge accordingly 

Eh?

You have all your BTC in one address and thats the one you carry around with you?

Personally I dont

[darkota]

I remember someone saying something that is worthwhile to note :

What if you paid your dentist in bitcoin the first time you had an appointment , the next time you go he would know your balance and charge accordingly  

That is actually very true. since bitcoin is so transparent, everyone will see your balance and I'm sure as hell, that most bit coin users don't have multiple wallets to try and hide their true balance...for the regular bit coin user, they most likely keep their funds in one wallet...which would increase the likelihood of things happening similar to the post I quoted.


Even minuscule things like that is why privacy for crypto coins is needed, anyone who can't see that is beyond ignorant and can't be helped, just like those people who were skeptical of bit coin in 2010 and 2011

[dreamspark]

I remember someone saying something that is worthwhile to note :

What if you paid your dentist in bitcoin the first time you had an appointment , the next time you go he would know your balance and charge accordingly  

That is actually very true. since bitcoin is so transparent, everyone will see your balance and I'm sure as hell, that most bit coin users don't have multiple wallets to try and hide their true balance...for the regular bit coin user, they most likely keep their funds in one wallet...which would increase the likelihood of things happening similar to the post I quoted.


Even minuscule things like that is why privacy for crypto coins is needed, anyone who can't see that is beyond ignorant and can't be helped, just like those people who were skeptical of bit coin in 2010 and 2011

And one wallet is made up of many addresses...

Is very easy to obfuscate yourself, your dentist isn't going to go into deep blockchain forensics to attempt to work out which addresses are yours.

[drawingthesun]

I remember someone saying something that is worthwhile to note :

What if you paid your dentist in bitcoin the first time you had an appointment , the next time you go he would know your balance and charge accordingly 

Eh?

You have all your BTC in one address and thats the one you carry around with you?

That is not what we are saying at all, what we are saying is that it's possible to map the bitcoin blockchain and build up very reasonable assumptions about someone's wealth and their movements.

[drawingthesun]

I remember someone saying something that is worthwhile to note :

What if you paid your dentist in bitcoin the first time you had an appointment , the next time you go he would know your balance and charge accordingly  

That is actually very true. since bitcoin is so transparent, everyone will see your balance and I'm sure as hell, that most bit coin users don't have multiple wallets to try and hide their true balance...for the regular bit coin user, they most likely keep their funds in one wallet...which would increase the likelihood of things happening similar to the post I quoted.


Even minuscule things like that is why privacy for crypto coins is needed, anyone who can't see that is beyond ignorant and can't be helped, just like those people who were skeptical of bit coin in 2010 and 2011

And one wallet is made up of many addresses...

Is very easy to obfuscate yourself, your dentist isn't going to go into deep blockchain forensics to attempt to work out which addresses are yours.

Not yet, but Bitcoin tracing will become easier and easier.

Also how is it easy to obfuscate yourself?

[binaryFate]

Is very easy to obfuscate yourself, your dentist isn't going to go into deep blockchain forensics to attempt to work out which addresses are yours.

Some companies will provide that forensic expertise soon enough.

[Brilliantrocket]

I don't think CN coins are going anywhere, anytime soon. There's still a ton of development work to bring them to something resembling a marketable product. Even then, no one will want to run the client because the blockchain will be massive, and the resource use will be tremendous. Centralizing the network with light clients is not a solution.

The anonymity of CryptoNote (i.e. ByteCoin, Monero, and clones) requires that all transaction amounts be broken into separate transactions for standardized fragments which causes massive blockchain bloat (for any reasonable level of anonymity) and the blockchain can never be pruned. There is already a problem with Bitcoin's blockchain being too large and it doesn't have this massive bloat. In short, CryptoNote (and Zerocoin) can't scale.

[dreamspark]

I remember someone saying something that is worthwhile to note :

What if you paid your dentist in bitcoin the first time you had an appointment , the next time you go he would know your balance and charge accordingly 

Eh?

You have all your BTC in one address and thats the one you carry around with you?

That is not what we are saying at all, what we are saying is that it's possible to map the bitcoin blockchain and build up very reasonable assumptions about someone's wealth and their movements.

If I receive a payment to a fresh address and then spend that balance on items (including my dentist), what connects that address to any of my other addresses? Thats obfuscation. Yeah if I use the same address to keep receiving payments and then also keep topping that up with my main address it is traceable fairly easily, but even so, theres no proof that I own any of the addresses until the POS when my real name is connected to a single address. GMaxwell explained some of this very well when the whole gox fiasco was in full flow, people were jumping to all sorts of conclusions based on one hop away from certain addresses etc and he was saying that you can't just make presumptions like that, another example is the people who thought they were chasing the sheep market place thief through the blockchain.

I'm not saying its not an issue at all but I'd be more worried about the IP revealing stuff than my dentist running advanced blockchain forensics.  I'd imagine by the time the everyday Joe can run forensics like that there will be easy solutions to the problem.

[sonoIO]

I don't think CN coins are going anywhere, anytime soon. There's still a ton of development work to bring them to something resembling a marketable product. Even then, no one will want to run the client because the blockchain will be massive, and the resource use will be tremendous. Centralizing the network with light clients is not a solution.

Seems that BBR has an edge here at the moment, please correct me if i'm wrong

[drawingthesun]

I don't think CN coins are going anywhere, anytime soon. There's still a ton of development work to bring them to something resembling a marketable product. Even then, no one will want to run the client because the blockchain will be massive, and the resource use will be tremendous. Centralizing the network with light clients is not a solution.

Seems that BBR has an edge here at the moment, please correct me if i'm wrong

An edge? The edge is similar in scope to Litecoins edge over Bitcoin.

A lot of hype over small changes made out to be massive advantages.

[darkota]

Brilliantrocket is a Darkcoin supporter.

If anything, Darkcoin will never ever make it far, simply because of it's Name, 50% Instamine, and Centralizing Masternode system.

The masternodes centralize Darkcoin, people elect to run those nodes, if anyone were to buy up all the nodes he/she would be able to de-anonymize transactions(coinjoin which darkcoin uses isnt anonymous anyway)

Darkcoin's 50% instamine by their own Dev team is a crippling factor

Darkcoin's name, Darkcoin, makes it seem like it's affiliated with underground activities like the Darkweb and Drugs etc etc.

The fact is: All that's done to Darkcoin right now is Hype,  and pumping/support by large whales. No normal bitcoin user/person on the street will ever use Darkcoin because of just those 3 reasons above and there are dozens more.

And another thing, with Cryptonote coins, you don't need masternodes that can be centralized, to provide anonymity. Even with those masternodes, Darkcoin's anonymity is trivial compared to Cryptonote's Ring Signatures anonymity, which provides the highest level of anonymous transactions there is for Cryptocoins.

[darkota]

Also, Brilliantrocket quotes a statement that Anonymint made, but then was proved to be wrong.

Would you, Brilliantrocket, like me to quote everything gmaxwell, the creator of coinjoin, has said Against darkcoin and how it isn't anonymous and is never going to work/be taken seriously? Along with everything Anonymint said against Darkcoin and how it's "anonymity" is Trivial? Would you also like a little read up on the Darkcoin 50% instamine for desert?

[Brilliantrocket]

Darkota, Gmaxwell was referring to the original implementation of Coinjoin. Darkcoin made significant improvements. Also, the data that moves between masternodes will be encrypted, making Darksend trustless. The instamine is inconsequential when it comes to adoption. In the end, Darkcoin is a far more practical solution for privacy.

[drawingthesun]

Darkota, Gmaxwell was referring to the original implementation of Coinjoin. Darkcoin made significant improvements. Also, the data that moves between masternodes will be encrypted, making Darksend trustless. The instamine is inconsequential when it comes to adoption. In the end, Darkcoin is a far more practical solution for privacy.

Monero is now growing at only double Bitcoin's weekly mb chain additions, so Monero is perfectly practical even without the GUI (Which is coming).

Also the masternodes being encrypted does not solve the issue that the nodes can record what they are doing.

I have to ask, do you even know what you are talking about? Because: "Also, the data that moves between masternodes will be encrypted, making Darksend trustless" shows that you are completely mistaken. The encryption has nothing to do with making the transactions trustless, they are already trustless, that is the point of coinjoin, go back and read the original coinjoin concept and see trustless in the first post.

The trustless joining of transactions has nothing to do with requiring encryption. And this still doesn't solve the issue where a masternode can simply record it's in's and out's and thus un-anonymising the transactions.

[digicoin]

Also, the data that moves between masternodes will be encrypted, making Darksend trustless.

Encryption -> Trustless  How?

DRK supporters are unreliable   DRK is over-hyped

[Neo.op]

IMO, the whole "privacy" coin is premature. Its like one of the "Mac doesn't have virus" or "this a new algo which is GPU resistant" type of thing. Once the coin goes mainstream and toe to toe with bitcoin; it will be scrutinised in greater detail. For the most part, many of them will be found to be short on their "privacy" promises.

Interesting. The Monero team already have academics verifying the white paper and will soon move onto the code.

Also many Bitcoin core developers have scrutinised Monero with no obvious flaw in the ring signature concept.

Problem with software is while reviewing it many tend to check if it delivers what it promises, only when it creates a big impact (enough for people to try and steal) the software starts to be tested in ways, it was never thought before. Remember the heartbleed bug and bitcoin? Not really a bitcoin bug but enough to cause a hole in bitcoin's security feature itself.

So until these privacy coins (including monero) are put under the stress scanner I am not 100% sure on their anonymity feature. Till then they are like "X99 Pow - GPU resistant" kind of claim

[Brilliantrocket]

Also, the data that moves between masternodes will be encrypted, making Darksend trustless.

Encryption -> Trustless  How?

DRK supporters are unreliable   DRK is over-hyped

Trustless in the sense that your transactions cannot be unmasked through masternode owner collusion.

[aminorex]

Also, the data that moves between masternodes will be encrypted, making Darksend trustless.

Trustless in the sense that your transactions cannot be unmasked through masternode owner collusion.

That does not follow from link encryption.

[aminorex]

So until these privacy coins (including monero) are put under the stress scanner I am not 100% sure on their anonymity feature. Till then they are like "X99 Pow - GPU resistant" kind of claim

XMR is constantly under review, I can assure you.  Many defects have already been found.  The cryptonote code base was leaky as a sieve.  It is getting better.  Fortunately, the protocol is robust, and implementation defects so far have not involved forward secrecy loss.  It may be provable that no forward loss is possible, given some relatively weak assumptions about the implementation, but it has not been done yet, to my knowledge.