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>Cryptocurrencies are not "useless except for criminals"... Blockchain is also not useless. You say this, and yet fail to mention a legitimate use case, which

>Cryptocurrencies are not "useless except for criminals"... Blockchain is also not useless. You say this, and yet fail to mention a legitimate use case, which is exactly what a big part of the article is about.

illiac786 4y ago
I thought that was obvious, apologies: anonymous payments. Do you also require an example of why anonymous payments are useful to non-criminals?
- only_human 4y ago
  >I thought that was obvious, apologies: anonymous payments. That isn't a legitimate use case. Cash is still largely superior at anonymous transactions, and it always will be because every crypto transaction inherently leaves a rather large paper trail. This can be obfuscated with cryptography techniques but can't be totally eliminated, traditional network tracking still goes a long way. >Do you also require an example of why anonymous payments are useful to non-criminals? No because they largely aren't. Any activist use case you think you have is disproportionately benefiting criminals. The larger the sum of money they're trying to launder, the more they gain from this. The problem with your line of thinking is that "anonymous payments" isn't actually a feature, it's the default state of things. Big corporations and shady governments would absolutely love to not tell anybody anything about what they're spending money on unless they can put a marketing spin on it. The transparency, accounting and reporting requirements are things that society built because we acknowledge that those who have large amounts of money have more power and therefore deserve more scrutiny.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  But actually conducting an anonymous payment, even on a blockchain, is not straightforward at all, and it’s almost certainly a bad idea to do so on a permanent public ledger.
  - illiac786 4y ago
    Well I am not super savvy and I managed to use MobileCoin in Signal... What other mean of online anonymous payments exist? I'm not very up to date on this front.
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      Neat! I haven’t tried that, and someone above said Monero is actually pretty easy. But people imagine e.g. Bitcoin transactions to be anonymous (they’re not), and zcash is (last I saw) the most private option but also (last I saw) it was extremely nontrivial to actually set up a transaction. Edit: Going through MobileCoin info it’s not super clear to me how you deposit/withdraw currency but keep in mind that this is historically a plenty sufficient amount of information to put your entire transaction’s privacy at risk (from certain adversaries anyway). I.e. if you are suspected of a crime but the only info available to prosecutors is you deposited $N and then your alleged conspirator withdrew $N out the other end, the fact the transaction itself was private is not going to save you.
  - zeroclip 4y ago
    Running a server is not straight forward, but people still manage to do it. These UX problems can be solved. An example is Aztec protocol[1] which makes it easy to send and receive anonymous payments without running a private blockchain node. [1] https://zk.money/ https://zk.money/

illiac786 4y ago

I thought that was obvious, apologies: anonymous payments. Do you also require an example of why anonymous payments are useful to non-criminals?

only_human 4y ago
>I thought that was obvious, apologies: anonymous payments. That isn't a legitimate use case. Cash is still largely superior at anonymous transactions, and it always will be because every crypto transaction inherently leaves a rather large paper trail. This can be obfuscated with cryptography techniques but can't be totally eliminated, traditional network tracking still goes a long way. >Do you also require an example of why anonymous payments are useful to non-criminals? No because they largely aren't. Any activist use case you think you have is disproportionately benefiting criminals. The larger the sum of money they're trying to launder, the more they gain from this. The problem with your line of thinking is that "anonymous payments" isn't actually a feature, it's the default state of things. Big corporations and shady governments would absolutely love to not tell anybody anything about what they're spending money on unless they can put a marketing spin on it. The transparency, accounting and reporting requirements are things that society built because we acknowledge that those who have large amounts of money have more power and therefore deserve more scrutiny.
ethanbond 4y ago
But actually conducting an anonymous payment, even on a blockchain, is not straightforward at all, and it’s almost certainly a bad idea to do so on a permanent public ledger.
- illiac786 4y ago
  Well I am not super savvy and I managed to use MobileCoin in Signal... What other mean of online anonymous payments exist? I'm not very up to date on this front.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Neat! I haven’t tried that, and someone above said Monero is actually pretty easy. But people imagine e.g. Bitcoin transactions to be anonymous (they’re not), and zcash is (last I saw) the most private option but also (last I saw) it was extremely nontrivial to actually set up a transaction. Edit: Going through MobileCoin info it’s not super clear to me how you deposit/withdraw currency but keep in mind that this is historically a plenty sufficient amount of information to put your entire transaction’s privacy at risk (from certain adversaries anyway). I.e. if you are suspected of a crime but the only info available to prosecutors is you deposited $N and then your alleged conspirator withdrew $N out the other end, the fact the transaction itself was private is not going to save you.
- zeroclip 4y ago
  Running a server is not straight forward, but people still manage to do it. These UX problems can be solved. An example is Aztec protocol[1] which makes it easy to send and receive anonymous payments without running a private blockchain node. [1] https://zk.money/ https://zk.money/