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The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

bloomberg.com

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Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#32

Post by fsiefken »

thisisit wrote: post #9

> Its main competitor, Zcash -- which isn’t known to have a significant criminal following -- can offer even better privacy protection . On zcash, there was this discussion: http://jeffq.com/blog/on-the-linkability-of-zcash-transactio... which suggested that nearly 31.5% of the hidden transactions in Zcash has some transparent parts to it.

On the linkability of Zcash transactions - Jeffrey Quesnelle

Zcash is a fork of Bitcoin with optional anonymity features. While transparent transactions are fully linkable, shielded transactions use zero-knowledge proofs to obscure the parties and amounts of the transactions. First, we observe various metrics regarding the usage of shielded addresses. Moreover, we show that most coins sent to shielded addresses are later sent back to transparent addresses. We then search for round-trip transactions, where the same, or nearly the same number of coins are sent from a transparent address, to a shielded address, and back again to a transparent address. We argue that such behavior exhibits high linkability, especially when they occur nearby temporally. Using this heuristic our analysis matched 31.5% of all coins sent to shielded addresses.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.01210

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#33

Post by albertgoeswoof »

fsiefken wrote: post #29
tribby wrote: post #4

monero has become popular in this space, but the average (illicit) user is still probably making operational mistakes while buying, using, and selling it. in the case of monero a lot of people like to skip the step where they download a 30GB+ blockchain over tor, and I can't blame them. when the privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies are effortlessly private, that's when they will have arrived so to speak. I'm fairly opti…

DAG based coins don't have a blockchain to download. Byteball offers Blackbytes for privacy right now over Tor http://freebe.byte-ball.com/

Does byteball require a centralized conductor for security? (like IOTA)

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#37

Post by StavrosK »

Geee wrote: post #24
tribby wrote: post #4

monero has become popular in this space, but the average (illicit) user is still probably making operational mistakes while buying, using, and selling it. in the case of monero a lot of people like to skip the step where they download a 30GB+ blockchain over tor, and I can't blame them. when the privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies are effortlessly private, that's when they will have arrived so to speak. I'm fairly opti…

I'm confident that we won't need something like MobileCoin, which is based on secure hardware which you have to trust. I'm pretty sure someone will come up with some kind of combination of RaiBlocks and Monero, for example. Also, SpectreCoin might be onto something if they are able to implement stealth staking.

I'm less confident. It's hard to combine those two, as one doesn't have a unified ledger and the other needs it.

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#38

Post by greyman »

zeep wrote: post #23
acover wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote you. Your comment provides little new information and looks like bullshit. Lots of people are predicting bitcoin's fall. For lots of reasons. People can rarely time the markets, I'd expect strong evidence otherwise. Do you track all your predictions?

/speculation: If Bitcoin doesn't implement the lightning network or something else withing 3 months, they will die, eventually.

It will not. A lot of people, even very rich, use Bitcoin as a store of value, something like an electronic version of gold.

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#39

Post by blueprint »

paulmd wrote: post #10
thisisit wrote: post #9

> Its main competitor, Zcash -- which isn’t known to have a significant criminal following -- can offer even better privacy protection . On zcash, there was this discussion: http://jeffq.com/blog/on-the-linkability-of-zcash-transactio... which suggested that nearly 31.5% of the hidden transactions in Zcash has some transparent parts to it.

re: only 3.5% of traffic using z-addrs: The dirty secret of crypto is that there is almost no economy that exists for any of the altcoins, and relatively little even for Bitcoin (which functions as the reserve currency due to its lions' share of the economy). Effectively, by volume most altcoins are held by either miners (who sell immediately), or daytraders who will pump and dump. A very small fraction is held by tr…

You're making big generalizations about lack of usage and economy, and you've provided no citations or verifyable grounds. For example, did you know about https://www.projectcoralreef.com?
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