rpietila Altcoin Observer

[aminorex]

The government actor is the only substantive challenge

Actually, "evil NSU CPU cluster" was intended just as a flippant example of an organisation that is believed to have a lot of CPU power.  If governments wanted to shut to cryptocurrency, they'd most likely do it through the courts...

The problem is not governments shutting down crypto.  The problem is governments taking over crypto, and destroying its useful features, such as finite supply and transactional privacy and freedom.

[Queeq]

Question to AnonyMint.

Having read some of your posts (frankly, not many, just those that happened to appear in topics I follow) I came to the conclusion that you only try to find flaws in those coins you touch, thus not giving preference to any of them. I saw this behavior towards XMR and DRK (and Ethereum?). Maybe some others too, but that's too much effort to look through all of your posts. So the question is: am I right? Or do you have any coin(s) that you particularly like? If not, would you mind writing a short summary post about those you examined and things you like and dislike about them?

Thanks.

[synechist]

The block chain scaling can't be fixed.

"Can't" be fixed is a bold statement. Care to offer proof of that? Because there are ideas being developed for doing just that (that might not work).

"Fixed" for what purpose? Full mobile wallets?

This would be unlikely, but I'm open to persuasion.

[devphp]

Question to AnonyMint.

Having read some of your posts (frankly, not many, just those that happened to appear in topics I follow) I came to the conclusion that you only try to find flaws in those coins you touch, thus not giving preference to any of them. I saw this behavior towards XMR and DRK (and Ethereum?). Maybe some others too, but that's too much effort to look through all of your posts. So the question is: am I right? Or do you have any coin(s) that you particularly like? If not, would you mind writing a short summary post about those you examined and things you like and dislike about them?

Thanks.

Yeah, he basically says they all suck one way or another, and we should give up all hope and go back to fiat which sucks too because inflation eats it away. The only good investment he recommends is IT skills in the coming Knowledge Age. That's what I gathered from reading his posts. Many of them are insightful, but giving up hope on cryptos is not something I can agree with him on

[pinky]

Question to AnonyMint.

Having read some of your posts (frankly, not many, just those that happened to appear in topics I follow) I came to the conclusion that you only try to find flaws in those coins you touch, thus not giving preference to any of them. I saw this behavior towards XMR and DRK (and Ethereum?). Maybe some others too, but that's too much effort to look through all of your posts. So the question is: am I right? Or do you have any coin(s) that you particularly like? If not, would you mind writing a short summary post about those you examined and things you like and dislike about them?

Thanks.

Yeah, he basically says they all suck one way or another, and we should give up all hope and go back to fiat which sucks too because inflation eats it away. The only good investment he recommends is IT skills in the coming Knowledge Age. That's what I gathered from reading his posts. Many of them are insightful, but giving up hope on cryptos is not something I can agree with him on

He never said this, but the opposite. Crypto's + knowledge will be the only way to escape and hide from the goverment in the coming age. However, he sees many problems with the bitcoin and altcoins and he is exploring (and hopefully programming) what features should the "killer coin" have in order to be truly anonymous and make users safe from the goverments and powers that be.

[Triffin]

"In order to be truly anonymous and make users safe from the goverments and powers that be."

That's a fair statement of the 'goal' ..
But if a coin were released that delivered on that feature set ..
Wouldn't the risk be that TPTB would ban the thing .. or try to ??

Triff ..

[kbm]

"In order to be truly anonymous and make users safe from the goverments and powers that be."

That's a fair statement of the 'goal' ..
But if a coin were released that delivered on that feature set ..
Wouldn't the risk be that TPTB would ban the thing .. or try to ??

Triff ..

Bluntly, that kind of thinking is pretty lame, fearful and cowardly.

Is it banned now? You're never gonna know if it can be something more unless you try.

I mean this is a cryptocurrency forum, a few years ago people were terrified both for and of bitcoin because it was used for silkroad. Now it's got regulations that don't ban it.

That's dead-end thinking, and not how to get anywhere.

[Triffin]

Cowardly ?? How about realistic ..
BitCoin for most users is anonymous enough ..
DRK/CLOAK/XMR and others are pushing the envelope in the other direction ..
You've got to assume that some level of 'anonymity' is going to attract regulator's attention ..
That will impact the investability of these coins would it not ??

Triff ..

[kbm]

Cowardly ?? How about realistic ..
BitCoin for most users is anonymous enough ..
DRK/CLOAK/XMR and others are pushing the envelope in the other direction ..
You've got to assume that some level of 'anonymity' is going to attract regulator's attention ..
That will impact the investability of these coins would it not ??

Triff ..

But you're missing the details.

How is the anonymity handled? Is it permanently obscured such that there's no proof of payment to either parties involved ever, does it allow the transaction to be viewed by a third party/anyone in the future in some way that can be demanded in a court of law?

If a regulator were to want my financial information right now, they'd get the information from my bank. Key point here is that they need the bank's consent, which is given by law .. and as I'm not in outright revolt right now I'd have to say that mine is given as well

If a regulator were to want my financial information with bitcoin, they'd type in blockchain.info and cross reference any of my previous wallet addresses they have. Key difference here is that once anyone has my address, they immediately can find out any information about me, and that my address is something I share with everyone, not just my bank. Bitcoin might be anonymous enough right now in July 2014, but what happens when people actually start using it? It's an unknown - and I can paint an ugly picture here, or a pretty one. One case involves everyone you share your wallet address (in order to receive payment) with knowing all your finances - something I don't intend to do ever .. and one is where magically everyone doesn't look up everyone's wallet addresses on blockchain.info. Tell me which one's a more likely scenario?

If a regulator were to want my financial information with a cryptonote coin, that's still a grey area. I could paint a pretty picture where banks somehow manifest to keep your digital information secure, where they hold your wallet and viewkeys, and share it whenever needed .. or can tell you they could pass regulation demanding you share your view key on demand (which still must be given under some form of consent or theft) .. or whatever story you'd like to hear. The point here is that it's an unknown, which does not make it illegal at all. That unknown can be answered in the future, but nobody can tell you how it's going to play out. Being worried about people's attention should be the least of your worries, when you're taking the next step into a bright new frontier.

If a regulator were to want my financial information with a coinjoin coin, I can immediately tell that it could cost them a lot of needless dollars (if they were so inclined to invest them) because the only implementation that's similar and I'm a little familiar with involves masternodes. To have proof-of-payment from those would take a lot of resources (but can be done) .. which will only serve to raise your taxes when more computers are put into place to track your every move anyways. But again, they could just demand you present your financial ledgers in a court of law.

I'm not seeing how fearing if it's going to be banned should stunt your attempt to get it banned in the first place. What is there to ban here? Clearly the tendency has been to regulate and not ban, so if anything it would seem like that would be the route taken.

[smooth]

"Fixed" for what purpose? Full mobile wallets?

This would be unlikely, but I'm open to persuasion.

I don't know what you mean by "full" mobile wallets. Full node? If so, then only Moore's law will give us that, and it probably will. I don't know how far back you have to go for today's mobile devices (quad core CPUs, 64 GB of storage etc) exceed a typical desktop PC, but it isn't that far. You won't have to go far into the future for a mobile device exceed today's typical desktop computer, and the latter is certainly capable of running a full node.

If you mean some sort of method of operating a lightweight wallet on a phone that is short of a full node but doesn't rely on a trusted server, that is being worked on. I'm explicitly not promising this will succeed and there is no promised delivery whatsoever, so don't start calling this vaporware. I'm interested in a persuasive argument if there is one, that it "can't" be done.

Furthermore there is work being done to directly reduce the size of the blockchain itself, which is what I meant. I guess it could be argued that gets closer to there being a full node on a mobile device (i.e. trims some time off waiting for Moore's law).

[Brilliantrocket]

But you're missing the details.

How is the anonymity handled? Is it permanently obscured such that there's no proof of payment to either parties involved ever, does it allow the transaction to be viewed by a third party/anyone in the future in some way that can be demanded in a court of law?

If a regulator were to want my financial information right now, they'd get the information from my bank. Key point here is that they need the bank's consent, which is given by law .. and as I'm not in outright revolt right now I'd have to say that mine is given as well

If a regulator were to want my financial information with bitcoin, they'd type in blockchain.info and cross reference any of my previous wallet addresses they have. Key difference here is that once anyone has my address, they immediately can find out any information about me, and that my address is something I share with everyone, not just my bank. Bitcoin might be anonymous enough right now in July 2014, but what happens when people actually start using it? It's an unknown - and I can paint an ugly picture here, or a pretty one. One case involves everyone you share your wallet address (in order to receive payment) with knowing all your finances - something I don't intend to do ever .. and one is where magically everyone doesn't look up everyone's wallet addresses on blockchain.info. Tell me which one's a more likely scenario?

If a regulator were to want my financial information with a cryptonote coin, that's still a grey area. I could paint a pretty picture where banks somehow manifest to keep your digital information secure, where they hold your wallet and viewkeys, and share it whenever needed .. or can tell you they could pass regulation demanding you share your view key on demand (which still must be given under some form of consent or theft) .. or whatever story you'd like to hear. The point here is that it's an unknown, which does not make it illegal at all. That unknown can be answered in the future, but nobody can tell you how it's going to play out. Being worried about people's attention should be the least of your worries, when you're taking the next step into a bright new frontier.

If a regulator were to want my financial information with a coinjoin coin, I can immediately tell that it could cost them a lot of needless dollars (if they were so inclined to invest them) because the only implementation that's similar and I'm a little familiar with involves masternodes. To have proof-of-payment from those would take a lot of resources (but can be done) .. which will only serve to raise your taxes when more computers are put into place to track your every move anyways. But again, they could just demand you present your financial ledgers in a court of law.

I'm not seeing how fearing if it's going to be banned should stunt your attempt to get it banned in the first place. What is there to ban here? Clearly the tendency has been to regulate and not ban, so if anything it would seem like that would be the route taken.

You're quite naive if you think that Monero is truly anonymous. The reality is that real anonymity is impossible, for now anyway. The best you can hope to achieve is privacy.

[smooth]

But you're missing the details.

How is the anonymity handled? Is it permanently obscured such that there's no proof of payment to either parties involved ever, does it allow the transaction to be viewed by a third party/anyone in the future in some way that can be demanded in a court of law?

If a regulator were to want my financial information right now, they'd get the information from my bank. Key point here is that they need the bank's consent, which is given by law .. and as I'm not in outright revolt right now I'd have to say that mine is given as well

If a regulator were to want my financial information with bitcoin, they'd type in blockchain.info and cross reference any of my previous wallet addresses they have. Key difference here is that once anyone has my address, they immediately can find out any information about me, and that my address is something I share with everyone, not just my bank. Bitcoin might be anonymous enough right now in July 2014, but what happens when people actually start using it? It's an unknown - and I can paint an ugly picture here, or a pretty one. One case involves everyone you share your wallet address (in order to receive payment) with knowing all your finances - something I don't intend to do ever .. and one is where magically everyone doesn't look up everyone's wallet addresses on blockchain.info. Tell me which one's a more likely scenario?

If a regulator were to want my financial information with a cryptonote coin, that's still a grey area. I could paint a pretty picture where banks somehow manifest to keep your digital information secure, where they hold your wallet and viewkeys, and share it whenever needed .. or can tell you they could pass regulation demanding you share your view key on demand (which still must be given under some form of consent or theft) .. or whatever story you'd like to hear. The point here is that it's an unknown, which does not make it illegal at all. That unknown can be answered in the future, but nobody can tell you how it's going to play out. Being worried about people's attention should be the least of your worries, when you're taking the next step into a bright new frontier.

If a regulator were to want my financial information with a coinjoin coin, I can immediately tell that it could cost them a lot of needless dollars (if they were so inclined to invest them) because the only implementation that's similar and I'm a little familiar with involves masternodes. To have proof-of-payment from those would take a lot of resources (but can be done) .. which will only serve to raise your taxes when more computers are put into place to track your every move anyways. But again, they could just demand you present your financial ledgers in a court of law.

I'm not seeing how fearing if it's going to be banned should stunt your attempt to get it banned in the first place. What is there to ban here? Clearly the tendency has been to regulate and not ban, so if anything it would seem like that would be the route taken.

You're quite naive if you think that Monero is truly anonymous. The reality is that real anonymity is impossible, for now anyway. The best you can hope to achieve is privacy.

The reality is your FUD doesnt work and Monero is proven mathematically to provide enough anonymity and is not a bitcoin close so is more flexible and fix many of bitcoin problems plus people embraced Monero already so game over man.

Guys "anonymity" just means "without a name." Even bitcoin does that.

It is not a term with a useful, specific, technical meaning. When used in the context of coins it is used for marketing purposes and shouldn't be taken too literally.

Even "privacy" is somewhat unclear unless given a context, though it is more applicable than anonymity.

More precise concepts that are more useful to discuss in detail are unlinkability, untraceability, block chain analysis, etc.


 

[kbm]

But you're missing the details.

How is the anonymity handled? Is it permanently obscured such that there's no proof of payment to either parties involved ever, does it allow the transaction to be viewed by a third party/anyone in the future in some way that can be demanded in a court of law?

If a regulator were to want my financial information right now, they'd get the information from my bank. Key point here is that they need the bank's consent, which is given by law .. and as I'm not in outright revolt right now I'd have to say that mine is given as well

If a regulator were to want my financial information with bitcoin, they'd type in blockchain.info and cross reference any of my previous wallet addresses they have. Key difference here is that once anyone has my address, they immediately can find out any information about me, and that my address is something I share with everyone, not just my bank. Bitcoin might be anonymous enough right now in July 2014, but what happens when people actually start using it? It's an unknown - and I can paint an ugly picture here, or a pretty one. One case involves everyone you share your wallet address (in order to receive payment) with knowing all your finances - something I don't intend to do ever .. and one is where magically everyone doesn't look up everyone's wallet addresses on blockchain.info. Tell me which one's a more likely scenario?

If a regulator were to want my financial information with a cryptonote coin, that's still a grey area. I could paint a pretty picture where banks somehow manifest to keep your digital information secure, where they hold your wallet and viewkeys, and share it whenever needed .. or can tell you they could pass regulation demanding you share your view key on demand (which still must be given under some form of consent or theft) .. or whatever story you'd like to hear. The point here is that it's an unknown, which does not make it illegal at all. That unknown can be answered in the future, but nobody can tell you how it's going to play out. Being worried about people's attention should be the least of your worries, when you're taking the next step into a bright new frontier.

If a regulator were to want my financial information with a coinjoin coin, I can immediately tell that it could cost them a lot of needless dollars (if they were so inclined to invest them) because the only implementation that's similar and I'm a little familiar with involves masternodes. To have proof-of-payment from those would take a lot of resources (but can be done) .. which will only serve to raise your taxes when more computers are put into place to track your every move anyways. But again, they could just demand you present your financial ledgers in a court of law.

I'm not seeing how fearing if it's going to be banned should stunt your attempt to get it banned in the first place. What is there to ban here? Clearly the tendency has been to regulate and not ban, so if anything it would seem like that would be the route taken.

You're quite naive if you think that Monero is truly anonymous. The reality is that real anonymity is impossible, for now anyway. The best you can hope to achieve is privacy.

Actually, I don't recall mentioning Monero in the least. Your attribution of Monero being equal to Cryptonote is a much welcomed delusion, and I hope you carry that one with you well into the future and I'm glad we put that idea in your head

Onto your actual stance though:

However you want to define a process in which you personally cannot find out my financial details, is what I'm trying to describe here. Bitcoin allows you personally to find out details of my finances, and as far as I can tell you personally cannot with with cryptonote or coinjoin (edit: Unless you had lots of money and resources). To me, that's anonymity or privacy.

Sorry if you have some super awesome definition of those words that you read to yourself every morning right before praying to whatever god you worship .. but that's all it means to me. Maybe you could try sharing this super awesome definition with us all some day, as I'd surely like to hear what privacy and anonymity mean to you?

The scenario bitcoin will continue to and has already put me in is unacceptable. It has likened the sharing of a simple wallet address to being the same as sharing an extremely personal encounter like sex. The problem and reality with and of that is that there will be people I have to interact with and share my wallet address with whom I don't like, I don't trust and who will take advantage of me if they have this information. Both cryptonote and coinjoin offer at a protocol level that which does not allow such a gross overstep to happen so easily from simple casual encounters -- they offer something that does not allow the world to be so personally invasive (unless, of course you have lots of money and resources - things a hot-dog vendor likely wouldn't waste on me). As I already have this with banks .. I'm having trouble digesting that there's an argument at all .. but different frontiers and such I guess?

Maybe you're just trollin me?

And now I have to add as a disclaimer because apparently everyone on the forum flips out and overexaggerates: Cryptonote and Monero are alpha-level software whose usage is not yet ready to be adopted by the world. If you have a problem with claims of possible superiority, please leave your concerns in this thread.

[AnonyMint]

The block chain scaling can't be fixed.

"Can't" be fixed is a bold statement. Care to offer proof of that? Because there are ideas being developed for doing just that (that might not work).

I will wait to see what you guys come up with. Good luck on that effort.

Or do you have any coin(s) that you particularly like? If not, would you mind writing a short summary post about those you examined and things you like and dislike about them?

Thanks.

I like Monero's (Cryptonote's) one-time ring signature. That is definitely an innovative feature. It is a form of a Zero knowledge proof. But using it every time has a cost to block scaling. Whether that trade-off can be mitigated remains to be seen.

I don't like DRK's CoinJoin. It has a simultaneity requirement and DRK employs master nodes to solve the jamming problem inherent in the two-step CoinJoin protocol, and this opens it up to Sybil attacks, etc.. But rather than argue the intricacies of how I think it is impossible for them to solve the issue fully, the simultaneity requirement is enough to make it a non-starter in my view. It is not totally useless, but I don't think the simultaneity requirement can scale well for one.

I don't like anonymity that relies exclusively on Tor or I2P, because I know that low-latency Chaum mix-nets are subject to timing analysis, even when the adversary can't decrypt the packets. Supporting it as another layer of anonymity is not totally useless however, but I am wary of masses getting complacent about it and think they've done enough to secure their anonymity and privacy.

I like the technological innovation in Zerocoin and Zerocash, and these technologies could potentially be useful in side-chains, but as for a universe where someone was trusted to delete the master key and in the case of Zerocash we will never know if they didn't and are secretly generating unlimited coins—is unacceptable in my opinion (and seems many others share this view?). Also the crypto is too complex and too new (unvetted) to trust the world's money supply and anonymity with. I much prefer where each user generates their own keys for their anonymity and ownership, e.g. Cryptonote's one-time ring signature. Geometrically more difficult for an adversary to attack all millions or billions of users' keys. In short, I like decentralization over centralization and that applies to the cryptography keys as well.

I like the mini-block chain design in Cryptonite (not Cryptonote). I helped analyze and comment on it, so I've been following it for some months. Their effort lacks anonymity and other things I like. One-time ring signatures appear to be fundamentally incompatible with it.

I don't like any of the proof-of-work algorithms over Bitcoin's thus far (at least given what I think we know about Cuckoo hash thus far, i.e. seems to be highly parallelizable even if slightly sublinear thus I don't think it will keep GPUs at parity? It might have some role if the number of lightweight cores on mobile increases to some huge number). I have expended a lot of effort on this and have some work in progress in this area. As far as I can see as of now (subject to additional insight or information), Cryptonote's hash is somewhat ASIC resistant (will be very complex to implement) but it is slow (maybe they can mitigate the ramifications of that, MemoryCoin 2.0 was even slower), but I am concerned that if ever there is an ASIC later then it could be proprietary.

I like the concept of programmable features on top of the blockchain, i.e. Ethereum. This appears to be a holy grail of decentralized economy if it can be made to work without failing into centralized outcomes, e.g. a centralized app store to combat viruses. I also like some of the technology discussion over at Ethereum's blog and wiki (probably also the forum but haven't had time to dig in there). Ethereum is off in many directions because they are considering such a huge space of concepts. However, I don't see yet that they've worked out some of the fundamental issues.

I like Lamport signatures with Winternitz optimization.

I am interested in the GHOST refinement over Satoshi's longest chain rule. There is a blog post at Ethereum about it. I have also proposed an additional idea that goes further on a dubious case if rented mining hardware becomes ubiquitous.

I hate POS. I call it piece-of-shit. There is no entropy there. Caveat: I need to digest Ethereum's blog post on POS, to see if I have missed some insight. Also I must admit that I haven't done enough formal analysis especially of hybrid PoW+PoS. But I do expect my fundamental insight of the lack of entropy to remain fundamentally true and thus my conclusion to remain valid.

I hate transaction fees. I like (smallish but not too small) percentage perpetual debasement. My rationale is contained in my thread (and follow links off to discussions in other threads, such as Monero economy thread).

I don't like coins that have a rapidly declining debasement schedule, e.g. Monero is much faster than Bitcoin, because this means early adopters (which could potentially by botnets early on for any coin) get a disproportionate amount of the coins and I have argued upthread that I think this diminishes network effects by the N squared in Metcalf's Law.

I've probably failed to mention quite a few things I like and dislike in the decentralized crypto-economy space.

[AnonyMint]

"In order to be truly anonymous and make users safe from the goverments and powers that be."

That's a fair statement of the 'goal' ..
But if a coin were released that delivered on that feature set ..
Wouldn't the risk be that TPTB would ban the thing .. or try to ??

How can you ban what you can't track?

We might have to go to extreme measures though such as hiding the protocol in normal web traffic. And or I see Finland (or ?) is broadcasting the Bitcoin blockchain with shortwave radio.

If we get to that point, the SOBs have lost, because they can't fight even 10% of the population if people realize they have the tools to fight back effectively.

I do realize there is a lot of grey area in between the ideological extremes I've stated. So yes banning could be a struggle of good versus evil for while.  But good wins.

The Homelust screwurity papers have I think revealed they expect cyberware. Or was that a US Navy doc? I forget. Any way, I think that may be coming...

Hiding in the closet waiting for the bogeyman to find you with his ax is less effective than grabbing the shovel and whacking him upside the head. I'd rather be proactive.

[AnonyMint]

"Fixed" for what purpose? Full mobile wallets?

This would be unlikely, but I'm open to persuasion.

I don't know what you mean by "full" mobile wallets. Full node? If so, then only Moore's law will give us that, and it probably will. I don't know how far back you have to go for today's mobile devices (quad core CPUs, 64 GB of storage etc) exceed a typical desktop PC, but it isn't that far. You won't have to go far into the future for a mobile device exceed today's typical desktop computer, and the latter is certainly capable of running a full node.

If you mean some sort of method of operating a lightweight wallet on a phone that is short of a full node but doesn't rely on a trusted server, that is being worked on. I'm explicitly not promising this will succeed and there is no promised delivery whatsoever, so don't start calling this vaporware. I'm interested in a persuasive argument if there is one, that it "can't" be done.

Furthermore there is work being done to directly reduce the size of the blockchain itself, which is what I meant. I guess it could be argued that gets closer to there being a full node on a mobile device (i.e. trims some time off waiting for Moore's law).

Isn't the more significant issue the download time of the blockchain? Bitcoin is over 10GB and it isn't any where near the volume of Visa, not to mention the orders-of-magnitude increase for micro-transactions we need (to replace the Google monopoly ad model of funding the internet and to support Ethereum style crypto-economy).

And the one-time ring signatures (with transactions split into standardized factors to enable mixing) have another few orders-of-magnitude on top of that (at least is a constant multiple).

We are looking at block chain that exceeds a Terabyte easily. Might take a year to download it if we are talking about decentralization and accommodating slower connections.

The mini-blockchain can prune away most of that bloat, but one-time ring signatures are fundamentally incompatible with it as far as I can see.

[AnonyMint]

You're quite naive if you think that Monero is truly anonymous. The reality is that real anonymity is impossible, for now anyway. The best you can hope to achieve is privacy.

...

However you want to define a process in which you personally cannot find out my financial details, is what I'm trying to describe here. Bitcoin allows you personally to find out details of my finances, and as far as I can tell you personally cannot with with cryptonote or coinjoin (edit: Unless you had lots of money and resources). To me, that's anonymity or privacy.  

If the only information the adversary has is the blockchain and you have employed the one-time ring signatures with sufficient mixing (i.e. the adversary hasn't Sybil attacked your inputs), then (assuming the cryptography hasn't been cracked) the adversary can not reasonably trace the transaction such as to identify the originating and destination address.

However if the adversary has hacked or has an inside contact at your ISP (or upstream router), or is the NSA, they can potentially use information about your traffic patterns to break the anonymity on the blockchain (not only for you, but for potentially for everyone mixing with you on the blockchain if they can do this for many of you).

In other words, the anonymity can potentially fall apart in the real world.

This is why Monero is adding I2P support to try to obscure this additional vector of information leakage. However, these low latency networks admit in their FAQs that they are not able to obscure from an adversary who can see both the entry and exit traffic because timing analysis can be employed. If you only have a few pools, then the exit nodes for mining shares and transactions should be known and hackers can target their ISP or upstream router (correct me if I am wrong).

So yes time and resources are needed, but I bet surprisingly less time and resources than you might be assuming.

Hacking is something that can't be just wished away. It is a real and growing phenomenon. And your private information is for sale to the highest bidder.

Privacy is the notion that your identity is associated with some activity, but certain details of the activity are not disclosed. Anonymity is the notion that your identity is not associated with some activity.

For example, Zerocash obscures all the transaction information—it is all private. But there is no mechanism to obscure that you are connecting to the Zerocash network, thus your participation in the network is not anonymous.

So do note I said one-time ring signatures are an improvement, but they come with a high cost in terms of blockchain scaling (as far as I can see).

[kbm]

However you want to define a process in which you personally cannot find out my financial details

However if the adversary has hacked or has an inside contact at your ISP (or upstream router), or is the NSA, they can potentially use information about your traffic patterns to break the anonymity on the blockchain (not only for you, but for potentially for everyone mixing with you on the blockchain if they can do this for many of you).

In other words, the anonymity can potentially fall apart in the real world.

Let's break this down into chances. Me making my statement is probably true for 99% of the people that could potentially use cn/cj. Therefore, the fact that it does not hold true for 1% of those people does not necessarily accelerate the possible attempts of the other 99% to learn all of my information. Unless we're saying it absolutely does? Sure anonymity can fall apart in the real world, only that it hasn't been done yet .. there's not even a rich list for cn .. which tells me right off the bat that access to this information, if and once it's obtained, will be much harder to come by with at least CN. The fact that it's much harder shows that it has spam resistance which, again, is favorable IMO.

I agree that people could just get an ISP contact, or obtain access to resources. I've made the point that those resources would become infinitely valuable if we were to trust this information to them just the day before yesterday. The access to those resources will escalate to the point where it would be too costly for most people (spam filter).

So yes time and resources are needed, but I bet surprisingly less time and resources than you might be assuming.

I'm not worried about my nieces hand ending up in my mailbox, if that's the level to which you're trying to observe my trust in online financial anonymity from people I've never met toward other people I'll likely never meet .. but I'm not gonna pack it up and go home just because some anonymous stranger on the internet tells me my goals are too big to be tackled (however good their intentions are). I'm not here to track the exact level of anonymity and throw it all down on horses, I'm here to say which guy is running faster or slower than the others .. and right now no matter the level toward which my finances are secure .. bitcoin is in dead last (you've helped me understand that by a lot). There's other problems with specific details, that you've also pointed out and I'll admit that list I made in your thread was created largely from your information, and some others.

Hacking is something that can't be just wished away. It is a real and growing phenomenon. And your private information is for sale to the highest bidder.

That's why you're the best I got, Lisowski ! All of anything ever is for sale to the highest bidder! The higher they have to pay, the more value I feel comfortable placing into what they're paying for. Of course there is a limit to which I'd trust anything .. but I can say right now that I'd be fine buying goods under $10 dollars right now with CN .. provided the service was offered .. of course I could also say the same about bitcoin here .. but at least with CN I might feel comfortable making $100 purchases in the future. With bitcoin I do not. Is this wrong?

[jerrylemon]

I don't think anyone in this thread actually believes monero could overtake bitcoins mainstream adoption, EVER.

Now that said, blockchain bloat can be an issue but lets take this into perspective with the quote above.

If bitcoin is the actual threat to the current banking industry we could view monero as the offshore banking currency to bitcoin.

I wonder how many people here have actually used offshore/swiss banking? Fees are much greater than traditional US/EU banking and people accept them on a daily basis because the offshore banking provides them whatever service they require.

Offshore banking in general is much riskier than traditional banking aswell. Anyone with the slightest experience in any type of offshore banking will confirm this in a split second.

Now my point being, whether it is Monero (likely at this point in time due to its tech) or another crypto down the line, blockchain bloat will be the least of the intended target audiences worries. These are the same people you are targeting who pay much higher fees in the real world for these services and a bigger blockchain is in reality a joke in comparaison.

Sometimes we step too far away from the real world problems that can be solved and dwell too much on smaller technical issues that are definatly acceptable in some situations in regards to the solutions they offer.

[r0ach]

I hate POS. I call it piece-of-shit.

I think introducing reputation is required to fix proof of stake.  Yea, I'm well aware reputation increases centralization, but I would argue it's extremely difficult to make something more centralized than Bitcoin already is using that method:

The BTC price is too high for it's current security model

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=710107.0

I consider current PoW a complete dead end unless you can do something outrageous like enforce p2pool at the protocol level.

If I can make a coin using PoS + reputation that most people would estimate would last years, if not decades or more before the security model really had even a chance to break down, how is that worse than Bitcoin when Bitcoin can collapse at any second?

There's a trade off for everything, but with PoW, we are currently being fed the illusion of decentralization and security, and it's basically a lie.