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"I would especially question that being at all effective in an environment where clients are frequently compromised." Could elaborate on that ? I am curious.

• acdha 5y ago
  A range of things we’ve seen in authoritarian regimes: sophisticated attacks like NSO, but also things like mandatory TLS CAs or government monitoring apps, police analyzing phones seized from dissidents or crossing borders, etc. or the very low-tech strategy of offering the guy you just nabbed a lenient sentence if he flips on his partners or having police informants pretending to be part of the underground economy (are you sure the local exchange isn't secretly compromised? That the app you're using doesn't have some intentional flaw?). There are some people who’ll say their personal opsec is so good they’ll never fall prey to that but even if that was true it’s also everyone you transact with. If you’re living in a repressive regime, you have to worry about everyone you interact with as well, and that’s deadly for a currency network. It’s especially so for one nobody needs to use — if the police stop you and you have the equivalent of Venmo/PayPal on your phone, that’s not risky because millions of people use it and they follow local laws but if some cryptocurrency did successfully allow you to avoid government oversight simply having a wallet app installed would attract attention you don’t want. People who aren't trying to hide their activities won't want to risk that, which means that there'll be less volume in which to hide your transactions.