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No, it's good enough if precautions are taken. If you apply a moderate amount of care, your identity is not hard to protect when using it. There are a variety

by jki275 8y ago

No, it's good enough if precautions are taken. If you apply a moderate amount of care, your identity is not hard to protect when using it. There are a variety of ways to have private transactions across either the public internet or other networks. There are a variety of coins that use tor, for instance. It doesn't have to be bitcoin either. My point was that if you can avoid cashing out to fiat using well known gateways, anonymity isn't difficult to preserve. It only becomes an anonymity problem if you are careless or if you cash out using known KYCd gateways.

acdha 8y ago
> It only becomes an anonymity problem if you are careless or if you cash out using known KYCd gateways. This means you can't use it for currency transactions, with anyone you don't trust, or on any system which might be compromised by the authorities you're trying to evade. If you ever make a mistake, all of that not only won't help you but will be strong evidence of intention. There are very few threat models where “use cash” is not a much safer answer.
- jki275 8y ago
  That's not what that means. It means you need to operate inside the cryptocurrency ecosystem instead of counting on cashing out all the time, or you simply use any of the many non-regulated means to cash in and out of the ecosystem. That's becoming more and more possible to do.
  - acdha 8y ago
    > It means you need to operate inside the cryptocurrency ecosystem instead of counting on cashing out all the time, or you simply use any of the many non-regulated means to cash in and out of the ecosystem. None of which has any bearing on the problems I mentioned earlier. If you're worried about a repressive government, the odds are high that other people in the system are compromised and will help reveal your identity. Those “many non-regulated means to cash in and out” are similarly not readily available and extremely likely to be compromised as well. People sometimes act like mixers solve this problem but they aren't effective against attackers who can see lots of traffic and even if they worked as well as advertised, simply using one is going to be considered proof that you were doing something illegal and attempting to hide it. Finally, as we're already seeing you have the problem that in a repressive country simply being able to maintain software security is an unsolved problem: consider what the odds are that someone will manage to maintain perfect security of their devices and client trying to find software which is considered illegal and will attract attention simply by searching for it. Read anything about the history of people living under regimes with black market economies and ask what a blockchain is adding other than a gift-wrapped transaction history for the authorities. It's simply irresponsible to tell people that you're not exposing them to more risk in the hope that it'll make some money for you.
    - jki275 8y ago
      Mixers are hardly the only form of dealing with anonymity. We have multiple privacy coins and ways of getting in and out of them that do a very good job of dealing with the problems you mention if you are concerned about mixers for some reason. Somehow, people in China still manage to get on the internet, how do you think that happens? As it happens, the internet was designed to route around censorship, and it's done a very good job so far.

by jki275 8y ago

acdha 8y ago

> It only becomes an anonymity problem if you are careless or if you cash out using known KYCd gateways. This means you can't use it for currency transactions, with anyone you don't trust, or on any system which might be compromised by the authorities you're trying to evade. If you ever make a mistake, all of that not only won't help you but will be strong evidence of intention. There are very few threat models where “use cash” is not a much safer answer.

jki275 8y ago
That's not what that means. It means you need to operate inside the cryptocurrency ecosystem instead of counting on cashing out all the time, or you simply use any of the many non-regulated means to cash in and out of the ecosystem. That's becoming more and more possible to do.
- acdha 8y ago
  > It means you need to operate inside the cryptocurrency ecosystem instead of counting on cashing out all the time, or you simply use any of the many non-regulated means to cash in and out of the ecosystem. None of which has any bearing on the problems I mentioned earlier. If you're worried about a repressive government, the odds are high that other people in the system are compromised and will help reveal your identity. Those “many non-regulated means to cash in and out” are similarly not readily available and extremely likely to be compromised as well. People sometimes act like mixers solve this problem but they aren't effective against attackers who can see lots of traffic and even if they worked as well as advertised, simply using one is going to be considered proof that you were doing something illegal and attempting to hide it. Finally, as we're already seeing you have the problem that in a repressive country simply being able to maintain software security is an unsolved problem: consider what the odds are that someone will manage to maintain perfect security of their devices and client trying to find software which is considered illegal and will attract attention simply by searching for it. Read anything about the history of people living under regimes with black market economies and ask what a blockchain is adding other than a gift-wrapped transaction history for the authorities. It's simply irresponsible to tell people that you're not exposing them to more risk in the hope that it'll make some money for you.
  - jki275 8y ago
    Mixers are hardly the only form of dealing with anonymity. We have multiple privacy coins and ways of getting in and out of them that do a very good job of dealing with the problems you mention if you are concerned about mixers for some reason. Somehow, people in China still manage to get on the internet, how do you think that happens? As it happens, the internet was designed to route around censorship, and it's done a very good job so far.