7 ms·

The thing I don't understand, and am concerned about the most is that cryptocurrencies rely on public ledgers, and therefore not private. That is all monetary t

The thing I don't understand, and am concerned about the most is that cryptocurrencies rely on public ledgers, and therefore not private. That is all monetary transactions are in essence public record, which is very odd to me, and really doesn't sit well.

lawn 9y ago
Exactly. Monero is the only real cryptocurrency because it does not have a public ledger. Monero is fungible, meaning you cannot tell two coins apart, which is an essential property of money. This is a very real issue most people into Bitcoin does not seem to care about. Anyone you transact with can gain insight into your personal finances which at best informs your friends of how rich/poor you are and at worst making you a robbery target.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  Bitcoin cares about decentralization. The Chinese government doesn't. So that's why there is bcash. If low fees were important, you'd just use litecoin. It has been around for years. They even have segwit, which allows atomic cross-chain swaps, which even further enables privacy. It is no surprise that the chinese government controlled crypto bcash didn't want that.
  - dylz 9y ago
    Why do you keep using the large phrase "chinese government controlled crypto bcash" instead of just calling it bcash? Sincerely, someone that isn't involved in all of this.
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
      Because bcash is overwhelmingly run by bitmain, a chinese company, at every point in its service delivery. The miners, the nodes, and now the payment processor are all one chinese company. It is also not surprising that they have specifically disabled the privacy improvement of segwit in their altcoin. So no atomic cross-chain swaps are possible either. It is a walled garden where they control all of the access.
    - CryptoPunk 9y ago
      It's not even called bcash. It's called Bitcoin Cash. The 1 MB maximalists call it bcash because they don't want it to carry Bitcoin's legacy in the public mind.
      - ryebit 9y ago
        Labelling everyone who does that "1 MB maximalists" is a little extreme, and is probably why people are irritated with BCH's marketing tactics. To view your statement in a different light.. maybe people don't care for it trying to succeed based on another coin's name, rather than trying to stand on it's own merits. Bitcoin Gold (for all it's problems) doesn't try to insist it's the real Bitcoin. And 90% of the coins out there were confident enough in their tech to not prefix "Bitcoin" to their name.
        CryptoPunk 9y ago
        Bitcoin Cash was a hard fork of Bitcoin to implement Bitcoin's original scaling plan, and original vision to be a "peer-to-peer electronic cash", and includes all account balances from before the hard fork. You may disagree that it's the real Bitcoin, but it's undoubtedly open to interpretation, and some of its advocates calling it that doesn't justify mislabeling it as bcash.
        Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        > and original vision Where in the original white-paper is the emergency difficulty adjustment? https://medium.com/@jimmysong/bitcoin-cash-difficulty-adjustments-2ec589099a8e https://medium.com/@jimmysong/bitcoin-cash-difficulty-adjust... > peer-to-peer If you don't run a node, or you can't run a node because of resource requirements, you're not a peer.
        CryptoPunk 9y ago
        The specifics of the difficulty adjustment algorithm are not critical to the original vision, but way to deflect (from the original scaling plan) to a different point. >>If you don't run a node, or you can't run a node because of resource requirements, you're not a peer. We had this discussion before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15883911 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15883911
- mrb 9y ago
  Zcash and DASH implement private transactions too. As good as, if not better than, Monero.

lawn 9y ago

Exactly. Monero is the only real cryptocurrency because it does not have a public ledger. Monero is fungible, meaning you cannot tell two coins apart, which is an essential property of money. This is a very real issue most people into Bitcoin does not seem to care about. Anyone you transact with can gain insight into your personal finances which at best informs your friends of how rich/poor you are and at worst making you a robbery target.

Frogolocalypse 9y ago
Bitcoin cares about decentralization. The Chinese government doesn't. So that's why there is bcash. If low fees were important, you'd just use litecoin. It has been around for years. They even have segwit, which allows atomic cross-chain swaps, which even further enables privacy. It is no surprise that the chinese government controlled crypto bcash didn't want that.
- dylz 9y ago
  Why do you keep using the large phrase "chinese government controlled crypto bcash" instead of just calling it bcash? Sincerely, someone that isn't involved in all of this.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    Because bcash is overwhelmingly run by bitmain, a chinese company, at every point in its service delivery. The miners, the nodes, and now the payment processor are all one chinese company. It is also not surprising that they have specifically disabled the privacy improvement of segwit in their altcoin. So no atomic cross-chain swaps are possible either. It is a walled garden where they control all of the access.
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    It's not even called bcash. It's called Bitcoin Cash. The 1 MB maximalists call it bcash because they don't want it to carry Bitcoin's legacy in the public mind.
    - ryebit 9y ago
      Labelling everyone who does that "1 MB maximalists" is a little extreme, and is probably why people are irritated with BCH's marketing tactics. To view your statement in a different light.. maybe people don't care for it trying to succeed based on another coin's name, rather than trying to stand on it's own merits. Bitcoin Gold (for all it's problems) doesn't try to insist it's the real Bitcoin. And 90% of the coins out there were confident enough in their tech to not prefix "Bitcoin" to their name.
      - CryptoPunk 9y ago
        Bitcoin Cash was a hard fork of Bitcoin to implement Bitcoin's original scaling plan, and original vision to be a "peer-to-peer electronic cash", and includes all account balances from before the hard fork. You may disagree that it's the real Bitcoin, but it's undoubtedly open to interpretation, and some of its advocates calling it that doesn't justify mislabeling it as bcash.
        Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        > and original vision Where in the original white-paper is the emergency difficulty adjustment? https://medium.com/@jimmysong/bitcoin-cash-difficulty-adjustments-2ec589099a8e https://medium.com/@jimmysong/bitcoin-cash-difficulty-adjust... > peer-to-peer If you don't run a node, or you can't run a node because of resource requirements, you're not a peer.
        CryptoPunk 9y ago
        The specifics of the difficulty adjustment algorithm are not critical to the original vision, but way to deflect (from the original scaling plan) to a different point. >>If you don't run a node, or you can't run a node because of resource requirements, you're not a peer. We had this discussion before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15883911 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15883911
mrb 9y ago
Zcash and DASH implement private transactions too. As good as, if not better than, Monero.