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The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

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Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#71
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distric0x is a project working on this. Not necessarily for criminal markets, but for decentralized markets. https://district0x.io/

This is really cool - good luck with this one, if you're associated with it. This seems exactly the kind of applications Ethereum was meant for; however, is there a dispute resolution organ?

I'm not working on it, but it's a very cool project.

I'm not sure of the details, but this blog post may answer your question about dispute resolution (& malicious actors)

https://blog.district0x.io/introducing-the-district-registry...

Coding on Ethereum is hard, and this project is ambitious.

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#72
post #56

Monero's big problem, right now, is that the fees are high - around $3. They're working on "Bulletproofs" that will reduce the size of transactions, and hopefully fees, by 80%. Zcash has more advanced crypto, but it takes nearly a minute to generate a private transaction on a normal computer. My favorite "privacy" coin is PIVX. It uses the zerocoin protocol and is fast with low fees. Die-hard privacy advocates don't…

Whats the throughput on PRIVX? Last I checked, Zerocoin transactions were 25kb and the deployed versions were limited to one anonymous TX per block.

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#73
post #56

Monero's big problem, right now, is that the fees are high - around $3. They're working on "Bulletproofs" that will reduce the size of transactions, and hopefully fees, by 80%. Zcash has more advanced crypto, but it takes nearly a minute to generate a private transaction on a normal computer. My favorite "privacy" coin is PIVX. It uses the zerocoin protocol and is fast with low fees. Die-hard privacy advocates don't…

How do you feel about MimbleWimble?

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#74
post #48

A question to the experts: why don't the criminals use smart contract platforms like Ethereum? My amateurish take is that, for instance, a smart contract could work as an untraceable distributed Silk Road with escrow and everything else. Because there is no one machine where everything runs, it's impossible to shut down the server; there is nothing that links these transactions together, except for the commonly used…

because of the same problem as other contracts the lack of trustworthy Oracles, you need some trusted third-party to confirm what happened on the real world.

At my company (details in profile, sex-work related), this is exactly why we are centralized. Some competitors go on about smart contracts, and how people will meet for services and exchange escrow keys...it is far-fetched!

For example: We want to prevent underage users and duplicates. We do that by manually screening IDs. Hard to do that on a decentralized system...

Another major issue: In sex work, clients present a significant threat. An abusive client needs to be reliably banned. Having them put up a deposit is just not a substitute. E-commerce do not have this as client only receives what seller sends and poses no risk to seller.

We from our central point-of-view can detect rings, ban money launderers and traffickers, investigate and appeal if needed. Decentralized system that adds such a feature is ripe for gaming.

And yes: Single point to make money, campaign, run ads, provide incentives (sign-up-friend, get-$50-credit) and organize labor...this is an important aspect as well.

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#75
post #56

Monero's big problem, right now, is that the fees are high - around $3. They're working on "Bulletproofs" that will reduce the size of transactions, and hopefully fees, by 80%. Zcash has more advanced crypto, but it takes nearly a minute to generate a private transaction on a normal computer. My favorite "privacy" coin is PIVX. It uses the zerocoin protocol and is fast with low fees. Die-hard privacy advocates don't…

The problem is that miners cost in USD but Monero fee is set in XMR, fixed. If fee goes down 80% but XMR/USD goes up again 5 times then the problem persists. Not an easy thing to fix!

If Bulletproofs and the new CT format come in and the mandatory ringsize is increased to a level providing some privacy, the fees would be very worthwhile. But with ringsize 5 they are certainly excessive! We should hope they increase to at least 10. After ringsize, the difference between 1/2 and 2/2 txn continues to be an issue.

Or at a minimum a wallet update could fix some of these things issues. Better ring member selection that does not include odd ring sizes or in/out numbers.

If you are a seller and receive 2 payments from a user then you send that money to a known place (maybe exchange) you have are now near 100% traceability! This is because even with high-ring-size, the chance of both known-bad inputs happening in one tx is very low.

Currently Monero is doing a great harm to users by not having a prominent warning. Monero should adopt Tor Project attitude and tell users: Making a Monero transaction does not give you full privacy. Then link to a bit more nuanced discussion about churn and traceability. Especially for people that receive multiple payments! Monero may encourage people to rely solely on Monero (without churn) for privacy, to their downfall.

And even churn has a big disclaimer from MRL. They say in some conditions churn is statistically detectable. Maybe a big issue for dark net vendors that often receive payments then churn then send to their exchange...

Disclaimer: I am running an extrajursidictional company and dealing with payments will become a major focus as we start to pay out dividends and need to do so in an untraceable fashion. Plus...in a few months I will need to draw salary so this is very near-and-dear to my heart!

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#77
post #75
post #56

Monero's big problem, right now, is that the fees are high - around $3. They're working on "Bulletproofs" that will reduce the size of transactions, and hopefully fees, by 80%. Zcash has more advanced crypto, but it takes nearly a minute to generate a private transaction on a normal computer. My favorite "privacy" coin is PIVX. It uses the zerocoin protocol and is fast with low fees. Die-hard privacy advocates don't…

The problem is that miners cost in USD but Monero fee is set in XMR, fixed. If fee goes down 80% but XMR/USD goes up again 5 times then the problem persists. Not an easy thing to fix! If Bulletproofs and the new CT format come in and the mandatory ringsize is increased to a level providing some privacy, the fees would be very worthwhile. But with ringsize 5 they are certainly excessive! We should hope they increase t…

wtf is an "extrajursidictional company"? Do you mean you are running a tax evasion scheme?

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#78

A question to the experts: why don't the criminals use smart contract platforms like Ethereum? My amateurish take is that, for instance, a smart contract could work as an untraceable distributed Silk Road with escrow and everything else. Because there is no one machine where everything runs, it's impossible to shut down the server; there is nothing that links these transactions together, except for the commonly used…

It's sad to see the "Bitcoin doesn't do smart contracts" line repeated so faithfully - even implicitly as in your question. It's rubbish.

Bitcoin supports smart contracts, and has done so since launched in 2009. Even the simplest Alice-pays-Bob transaction is actually running a smart contract written in Script, a Forth-like language custom built for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin also supports metacoin protocols that create tradeable tokens, and has done so for a long time (e.g., ColoredCoins and MasterCoin).

Only a fraction of Bitcoin's full range of features are used today. This leads me to suspect that Ethereum's much-hyped VM will turn out to be mostly unused.

And, the majority of the interesting use cases for smart contracts require extrinsic (non-blockchain) state to operate. The price per barrel of Brent. Whether it rained over a piece of farmland. Randomness. Notice of the publication of a death certificate. All of these applications rely on a trusted server (or a federated system of them) for input. And they can be corrupted or shut down by a powerful adversary. Ethereum might be able to free itself from oracles to a small degree, but the difference will be negligible for many practical purposes.

In other words, Ethereum offers little more for day-to-day use than Bitcoin does. Ethereum does, however, enjoy a massive marketing advantage.

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#79
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that miners cost in USD but Monero fee is set in XMR, fixed. If fee goes down 80% but XMR/USD goes up again 5 times then the problem persists. Not an easy thing to fix! If Bulletproofs and the new CT format come in and the mandatory ringsize is increased to a level providing some privacy, the fees would be very worthwhile. But with ringsize 5 they are certainly excessive! We should hope they increase t…

wtf is an "extrajursidictional company"? Do you mean you are running a tax evasion scheme?

An extrajurisdictional company operates outside of existing jurisdictions. It might be helpful to think of us as being headquartered in space...if our opsec is correct, we might as well be! (Otherwise I'll be arrested and our contingency procedures will kick in to work with the successor.)

It is not for tax evasion: we fully intend to comply with tax law everywhere we offer service, though there are some practical issues. We chose EJC vehicle due to worldwide laws on sex work and unregulated securities. For example: In the U.S. mere advertising sites run the risk of legal persecution. How much more so for a full escorting platform?

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#80
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…

There is no solid guide on how to use Monero operationally in a safe manner. Everyone will yell to churn, but there is no official information on how much and how to churn. Ringsize 5 is dangerously low. Lack of proxy support in the wallet makes using Tor much harder. Bad decisions with offline signing mean it is difficult to use a separate transaction pusher.

Ringsize dominates all because the blockchain is totally persistent but not all IPs will be recorded by every attacker.

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