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MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

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Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#141
post #19
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"MobileCoin does not rely solely on SGX for maintaining transaction privacy. Transactions are designed to employ CryptoNote1 one-time addresses and onetime ring signatures, so MobileCoin will still maintain transaction privacy through unlinkable addresses if an attacker is able to defeat SGX and view transactions on the network." https://www.mobilecoin.com/whitepaper-en.pdf Other than that, i very much share your con…

Interesting. So it has the same privacy protections as Monero, the only cryptocurrency with a track record of being untraceable so far? I wonder if the Stellar network is "leakier" than a decentralized network would be, though.

Here's the problem with cryptonote: if I play 10 hands of poker at an online casino, with money I bought on an exchange, I have very little privacy. Anyone who can coerce or compel the casino and exchange's cooperation can get my real identity simply by looking at intersections amongst potential ancestor payments. This is because in cryptonote, each payment only has e.g. 4 potential ancestors. While each of those themselves have the same property, you can still look at intersections and deduce linkages with very high probability.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#142
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it works like Stellar (which it sounds like it does), it's still a decentralized network of nodes, but each individual user isn't a node. They pick a node to work with, and that node is then connected to a set of other nodes. Anyone can run a node, but there's just not any point to it for most users.

How is that better or different from Bitcoin users trusting CoinBase?

You can't just spin up your own CoinBase if you don't trust coinbase.com. I mean, it's BitCoin, so you can run your own transactions, but you can't do any of the other stuff CoinBase does.

But with Stellar or something based on its consensus protocol, you can run your own node if you want, or more likely, a bunch of public nodes can exist and you can pick the one you trust to work with. For example, if banks decide to start working with MobileCoin, then Chase could offer a node and, as a Chase customer, you could decide to trust their node (since you already trust them to manage your money) and use that one.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is a technological wonder Oh, dear lord. > ultimately not as advanced as its younger brethren. These must then be simply out of this world. Superwonder technologies. Double digit transactions per second!! /$ The hype around this piece of software is getting out of hand.

Perhaps you do not understand it's revolutionary aspects.

Nothing revolutionary about distributed consensus. It was the 2008 financial crisis that brought the anti-banking crowd into frenzy, seeing all sorts of claimed benefits in using this sort of thing for money. They would have been goldbugs or tulip collectors under other circumstances.

Or do you mean the revolutionary scamming techniques never seen before? /s

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you do not understand it's revolutionary aspects.

Nothing revolutionary about distributed consensus. It was the 2008 financial crisis that brought the anti-banking crowd into frenzy, seeing all sorts of claimed benefits in using this sort of thing for money. They would have been goldbugs or tulip collectors under other circumstances. Or do you mean the revolutionary scamming techniques never seen before? /s

Trustless Byzantine fault tolerant decentralized consensus as long as < 50% of participants are not acting in concert. That _is_ revolutionary.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that better or different from Bitcoin users trusting CoinBase?

You can't just spin up your own CoinBase if you don't trust coinbase.com. I mean, it's BitCoin, so you can run your own transactions, but you can't do any of the other stuff CoinBase does. But with Stellar or something based on its consensus protocol, you can run your own node if you want, or more likely, a bunch of public nodes can exist and you can pick the one you trust to work with. For example, if banks decide t…

> you can run your own node if you want, or more likely, a bunch of public nodes can exist and you can pick the one you trust to work with

Still not getting it. If I don't trust CoinBase, I can go to any other online wallet that manages my private keys. With some effort, I can even start one myself. If Chase is running such a wallet, I can use them.

How is a decentralized protocol not a superset of a "federated" one?

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#148
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cash is cheaper for merchants, but people have only continued to use credit cards more. Further, if crypto becomes attractive from a cost perspective Visa will just be forced to bring down fees and stay competitive. It's pretty near impossible to imagine crypto with costs less than Visa's database.

A wire transfer fee to China would cost me ~$45. Sending it in bitcoin would cost ~$17.

Actually, even less than that. To get an avg sized txn sent within the next 14 hours it would cost:

226 * 100 * 0.0000001 * $17761 = $4.01

https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/

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