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"Crypto" is named for the use of public/private keys for receiving/sending, and maybe also for the hashing algorithms in Proof of Work. For most cryptocurrenci

"Crypto" is named for the use of public/private keys for receiving/sending, and maybe also for the hashing algorithms in Proof of Work. For most cryptocurrencies (including Bitcoin and Ethereum) it is trivial to calculate someone's balance if you know their public key (aka wallet address). Someone can maintain multiple wallets for privacy, but transactions between them (directly or indirectly) can be used to correlate and find the source of funds. This is why bitcoin mixers[1] exist. There's a whole bunch of so-called "privacy coins" that attempt to address these issues and others (e.g. by making it harder to tell which IPs transactions are broadcast from). [1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/12/suspected-tornado-cash-developer-arrested-in-amsterdam/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/12/suspected-tornado-cash-dev...

sshine 4y ago
> There's a whole bunch of so-called "privacy coins" that attempt to address these issues and others. Why do you say "so-called"?
- ZGDUwpqEWpUZ 4y ago
  Good question. Avoiding blanket endorsement/nudging people to do their own research, I guess.
- olliej 4y ago
  To start off, I'm trying to be unbiased here, but I am generally anti-"crypto", nonetheless here goes: I obviously can't speak to OP's view, but in general the privacy coins are all small bit players. Because of that they are vulnerable to 51% attacks, this _can_ happen as the first google hit I did just now so that I could appear smart and knowledgeable :D : https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/11/08/privacy-coin-grin-is-victim-of-51-attack/ https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/11/08/privacy-coin-gri... How practical such an attack would be on the bigger networks I don't know, there were a couple of February ones saying monero was at risk, but I have no idea how plausible that would actually be. I would also consider smaller coins more likely to run into transaction correlation simply due to volume - I really don't know how secure the coins are if there are few participants, but if it's a small network looking for 10btc/eth transfer with a corresponding transaction in the small network, and then a later transaction back, doesn't seem implausible. My thinking here is purely along the lines of "imagine a mixer that only has 1 participant", that's obviously going to achieve nothing, but how many participants are needed before it stops being useless?

sshine 4y ago

> There's a whole bunch of so-called "privacy coins" that attempt to address these issues and others. Why do you say "so-called"?

ZGDUwpqEWpUZ 4y ago
Good question. Avoiding blanket endorsement/nudging people to do their own research, I guess.
olliej 4y ago
To start off, I'm trying to be unbiased here, but I am generally anti-"crypto", nonetheless here goes: I obviously can't speak to OP's view, but in general the privacy coins are all small bit players. Because of that they are vulnerable to 51% attacks, this _can_ happen as the first google hit I did just now so that I could appear smart and knowledgeable :D : https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/11/08/privacy-coin-grin-is-victim-of-51-attack/ https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/11/08/privacy-coin-gri... How practical such an attack would be on the bigger networks I don't know, there were a couple of February ones saying monero was at risk, but I have no idea how plausible that would actually be. I would also consider smaller coins more likely to run into transaction correlation simply due to volume - I really don't know how secure the coins are if there are few participants, but if it's a small network looking for 10btc/eth transfer with a corresponding transaction in the small network, and then a later transaction back, doesn't seem implausible. My thinking here is purely along the lines of "imagine a mixer that only has 1 participant", that's obviously going to achieve nothing, but how many participants are needed before it stops being useless?