7 ms·

Entirely traceable money is easier to trace than borderline untraceable money? Great.

by prvit 4y ago

pclmulqdq 4y ago
Most people still have no idea that a blockchain is 100% traceable. People get freaked out when you tell them the contents of their wallets.
- aliqot 4y ago
  some blockchains are 100% traceable.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    s/some/most/, especially if you're counting by market cap or number of users.
  - t-3 4y ago
    Got examples? I can't see how an untraceable blockchain could still be considered a blockchain (or what use it would be). Isn't the whole point to be perfectly traceable?
    - sodality2 4y ago
      Monero has public transactions but the recipients and senders' addresses are encrypted so you can't really trace it to wallets
      - aliqot 4y ago
        Every UTXO is also randomized as far as input selection and distribution and also the way they're labeled as they travel through the system. For the simplest example, reference early monero code (at the time BMR, and MRO) where Borromean Ring Signatures were used, where the same operation is performed multiple times per-input effectively mixing inputs at the atomic level, rather than in later iterations (RingCT, Arcturus, etc) that extended this further to obscure also the amounts of these inputs and to trim some of the inefficiencies of Borosigs.
    - Communitivity 4y ago
      Private blockchains. Imagine a crime cartel with a private blockchain. Obviously they are not KYC. You can withdraw funds from the cartel, or pay for cartel services with the coin. Ironically, a version of this was in private fiat currency - the coins in the John Wick movies were used this way.
      - t-3 4y ago
        That's still a traceable blockchain though, just privately kept. As soon as you start keeping a ledger, you make transactions traceable. With a single or low number of ledgers, network analysis becomes easier the more heavily each actor uses the currency as well, compromising anonymity.
        aliqot 4y ago
        Private blockchain is a term that refers to blockchain tech that does not divulge balances and transaction history without being a signing party to that transaction or without a delegated 'view' key created by the keyholder for the purposes of the audit. It's a confusing term which should have a better name, I agree. For an example, most cryptonote networks function this way unless they have explicitly damaged or disabled the functions responsible, like in the case of Electroneum.
    - tenebrisalietum 4y ago
      I think I got the below right, correct me if wrong: What's stored in the blockchain that makes it work are public keys, and how you can talk to nodes who can append to the blockchain have to work over a network. You can always walk the whole chain at any time and account for all the activity of all public keys, and that is actually required because it's the primary way that the network knows "who" has what. So what connects the public key to a person? If: - private keys are never in the hands of a third party (public keys don't matter), and - transaction processors/miners are only available over secure channels that somehow dissociate the involved keys from loggable networky things like IP address, and - information like IP address is not stored in the blockchain, then a blockchain would be untraceable to anyone who does not have a complete view of all Internet activity between all the participants. Anyone with your private keys (which you can make more up any time you want) could transact under those keys as long as they can talk to enough processors/miners through any transport method, and alter "your" stuff, that's why you guard those with your life.
- gonzo41 4y ago
  The most sensible thing to do with blockchain is to track produce from when it's picked to when it's sold for QC. Every other use suggested, like voting, is just stupid trouble.
  - Lukas_Skywalker 4y ago
    I always ask myself how the blockchain would work with physical products. Isn‘t there always a human who needs to either - enter the data somewhere - put a tag on the product - scan a tag and where they could, knowingly or not, produce false data?
    - rtkwe 4y ago
      Yeah this is the fundamental problem, the only benefit you get with a blockchain is you know the data hasn't been altered from the original but there's no guarantee the data originally entered was correct. All the pitches about tracking shipments have the same issue, shipping companies already do most of that without blockchain and the main issue of people lying to the computers isn't solved by adding a chain to the mix.
      - jonhohle 4y ago
        Why is blockchain needed for that and not any other immutable ledger?
        acdha 4y ago
        It’s not, but if you say that you’re also saying that the people who’ve already put a lot of money into the system won’t get rich reselling their tokens.
        rtkwe 4y ago
        It's not needed that's my point, the proposals for blockchain in most instances are best served by a WORM database and even that doesn't solve the actual issue of lying to the machine. The proponents all have a vested interest in something making their tokens worth while or at least bringing in new money so they can actually cash out. That's why NFTs exploded they were a great way to bring in new real money to allow people who were *coin rich to cash out to real usable money.
- JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
  Blockchains are anonymous, not untraceable. Except Monero, which is both.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Pseudonymous, usually. You tend to have a 1:n mapping of wallet addresses to transactions. Unless you use Monero, which is anonymous.
insanitybit 4y ago
> The traditional banking model achieves a level of privacy by limiting access to information to the parties involved and the trusted third party. The necessity to announce all transactions publicly precludes this method, but privacy can still be maintained by breaking the flow of information in another place: by keeping public keys anonymous. The public can see that someone is sending an amount to someone else, but without information linking the transaction to anyone. This is similar to the level of information released by stock exchanges, where the time and size of individual trades, the "tape", is made public, but without telling who the parties were. > Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible. - Satoshi The reality is that Satoshi envisioned bitcoin very differently from how things are currently implemented. They envisioned public keys being rotated, single use addresses, etc. The current systems don't provide any of the privacy that the original paper sought. > It is high time for blockchain enthusiasts to ask this question: Have the primary principals underlying bitcoin’s design — privacy, fraud proof, non-inflationary— been completely destroyed by today’s blockchain operators? You can pick apart this Medium post if you'd like but I think it's really an excellent question. Read the original paper and ask yourself if what we're seeing in the market is really the "Satoshi vision".
- emporas 4y ago
  Proof of work was invented from the start, as an anti-spam measure. The user sends data to a server and alongside of that, sends some proof of work data. This simple system has a downside though, that is ASICS. A specialized ASICS hub of servers, can create as much spam as they wish, because proof of work for the specialized system is trivial to compute. One solution to that problem, is for ASICS hubs, to create the proof of work, and sell it to users. Add on top of that a public database of what ASICS proof of work was sold to who, and you've got Bitcoin. It is really that simple. Instead of fighting the ASICS hubs, you work with them. This technique, is so simple it should not be even be considered a technology, it is just a technique. A myriad of technologies can use this technique to add some additional properties, to an already existing technology. For example, in the IOT world, an oven connected to the internet, could be used only by a particular key in the blockchain, thus proving ownership to control the oven. One microtransaction can turn on the oven, or turn it off. The most important aspect of bitcoin, is of course spam prevention. Gmail servers just block any unknown mail provider, just in case they are spammers. When spam was limited to email messages, that was a viable solution for the internet. This however is gonna change. Synthetic data, i.e. deepfakes, are really gonna take off right now. Synthetic faces of people can be uploaded by the tens of millions to facebook each day. Synthetic photographs of places can be uploaded to Insta. Synthetic conversations can can be uploaded to twitter by the billions. Synthetic songs can be uploaded to bandcamp, terabytes of them every day. Synthetic videos can be uploaded to youtube, or tik-tok, petabytes every day. The advertisement based free model of posting information on the internet, will go down in flames in less than 4 years. A new technique is going to emerge, in which we send value to the hosting providers, for our information they are willing to host for us. That value, trillions and quadrillions of microtransactions, less than a cent each per day, it is difficult to track, but it can be done, the question which arises is, what can someone gain doing that?

Entirely traceable money is easier to trace than borderline untraceable money? Great.

by prvit 4y ago

Entirely traceable money is easier to trace than borderline untraceable money? Great.

Most people still have no idea that a blockchain is 100% traceable. People get freaked out when you tell them the contents of their wallets.

aliqot 4y ago
some blockchains are 100% traceable.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  s/some/most/, especially if you're counting by market cap or number of users.
- t-3 4y ago
  Got examples? I can't see how an untraceable blockchain could still be considered a blockchain (or what use it would be). Isn't the whole point to be perfectly traceable?
  - sodality2 4y ago
    Monero has public transactions but the recipients and senders' addresses are encrypted so you can't really trace it to wallets
    - aliqot 4y ago
      Every UTXO is also randomized as far as input selection and distribution and also the way they're labeled as they travel through the system. For the simplest example, reference early monero code (at the time BMR, and MRO) where Borromean Ring Signatures were used, where the same operation is performed multiple times per-input effectively mixing inputs at the atomic level, rather than in later iterations (RingCT, Arcturus, etc) that extended this further to obscure also the amounts of these inputs and to trim some of the inefficiencies of Borosigs.
  - Communitivity 4y ago
    Private blockchains. Imagine a crime cartel with a private blockchain. Obviously they are not KYC. You can withdraw funds from the cartel, or pay for cartel services with the coin. Ironically, a version of this was in private fiat currency - the coins in the John Wick movies were used this way.
    - t-3 4y ago
      That's still a traceable blockchain though, just privately kept. As soon as you start keeping a ledger, you make transactions traceable. With a single or low number of ledgers, network analysis becomes easier the more heavily each actor uses the currency as well, compromising anonymity.
      - aliqot 4y ago
        Private blockchain is a term that refers to blockchain tech that does not divulge balances and transaction history without being a signing party to that transaction or without a delegated 'view' key created by the keyholder for the purposes of the audit. It's a confusing term which should have a better name, I agree. For an example, most cryptonote networks function this way unless they have explicitly damaged or disabled the functions responsible, like in the case of Electroneum.
  - tenebrisalietum 4y ago
    I think I got the below right, correct me if wrong: What's stored in the blockchain that makes it work are public keys, and how you can talk to nodes who can append to the blockchain have to work over a network. You can always walk the whole chain at any time and account for all the activity of all public keys, and that is actually required because it's the primary way that the network knows "who" has what. So what connects the public key to a person? If: - private keys are never in the hands of a third party (public keys don't matter), and - transaction processors/miners are only available over secure channels that somehow dissociate the involved keys from loggable networky things like IP address, and - information like IP address is not stored in the blockchain, then a blockchain would be untraceable to anyone who does not have a complete view of all Internet activity between all the participants. Anyone with your private keys (which you can make more up any time you want) could transact under those keys as long as they can talk to enough processors/miners through any transport method, and alter "your" stuff, that's why you guard those with your life.
gonzo41 4y ago
The most sensible thing to do with blockchain is to track produce from when it's picked to when it's sold for QC. Every other use suggested, like voting, is just stupid trouble.
- Lukas_Skywalker 4y ago
  I always ask myself how the blockchain would work with physical products. Isn‘t there always a human who needs to either - enter the data somewhere - put a tag on the product - scan a tag and where they could, knowingly or not, produce false data?
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    Yeah this is the fundamental problem, the only benefit you get with a blockchain is you know the data hasn't been altered from the original but there's no guarantee the data originally entered was correct. All the pitches about tracking shipments have the same issue, shipping companies already do most of that without blockchain and the main issue of people lying to the computers isn't solved by adding a chain to the mix.
    - jonhohle 4y ago
      Why is blockchain needed for that and not any other immutable ledger?
      - acdha 4y ago
        It’s not, but if you say that you’re also saying that the people who’ve already put a lot of money into the system won’t get rich reselling their tokens.
      - rtkwe 4y ago
        It's not needed that's my point, the proposals for blockchain in most instances are best served by a WORM database and even that doesn't solve the actual issue of lying to the machine. The proponents all have a vested interest in something making their tokens worth while or at least bringing in new money so they can actually cash out. That's why NFTs exploded they were a great way to bring in new real money to allow people who were *coin rich to cash out to real usable money.
JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
Blockchains are anonymous, not untraceable. Except Monero, which is both.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Pseudonymous, usually. You tend to have a 1:n mapping of wallet addresses to transactions. Unless you use Monero, which is anonymous.

insanitybit 4y ago

> The traditional banking model achieves a level of privacy by limiting access to information to the parties involved and the trusted third party. The necessity to announce all transactions publicly precludes this method, but privacy can still be maintained by breaking the flow of information in another place: by keeping public keys anonymous. The public can see that someone is sending an amount to someone else, but without information linking the transaction to anyone. This is similar to the level of information released by stock exchanges, where the time and size of individual trades, the "tape", is made public, but without telling who the parties were. > Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible. - Satoshi The reality is that Satoshi envisioned bitcoin very differently from how things are currently implemented. They envisioned public keys being rotated, single use addresses, etc. The current systems don't provide any of the privacy that the original paper sought. > It is high time for blockchain enthusiasts to ask this question: Have the primary principals underlying bitcoin’s design — privacy, fraud proof, non-inflationary— been completely destroyed by today’s blockchain operators? You can pick apart this Medium post if you'd like but I think it's really an excellent question. Read the original paper and ask yourself if what we're seeing in the market is really the "Satoshi vision".

emporas 4y ago
Proof of work was invented from the start, as an anti-spam measure. The user sends data to a server and alongside of that, sends some proof of work data. This simple system has a downside though, that is ASICS. A specialized ASICS hub of servers, can create as much spam as they wish, because proof of work for the specialized system is trivial to compute. One solution to that problem, is for ASICS hubs, to create the proof of work, and sell it to users. Add on top of that a public database of what ASICS proof of work was sold to who, and you've got Bitcoin. It is really that simple. Instead of fighting the ASICS hubs, you work with them. This technique, is so simple it should not be even be considered a technology, it is just a technique. A myriad of technologies can use this technique to add some additional properties, to an already existing technology. For example, in the IOT world, an oven connected to the internet, could be used only by a particular key in the blockchain, thus proving ownership to control the oven. One microtransaction can turn on the oven, or turn it off. The most important aspect of bitcoin, is of course spam prevention. Gmail servers just block any unknown mail provider, just in case they are spammers. When spam was limited to email messages, that was a viable solution for the internet. This however is gonna change. Synthetic data, i.e. deepfakes, are really gonna take off right now. Synthetic faces of people can be uploaded by the tens of millions to facebook each day. Synthetic photographs of places can be uploaded to Insta. Synthetic conversations can can be uploaded to twitter by the billions. Synthetic songs can be uploaded to bandcamp, terabytes of them every day. Synthetic videos can be uploaded to youtube, or tik-tok, petabytes every day. The advertisement based free model of posting information on the internet, will go down in flames in less than 4 years. A new technique is going to emerge, in which we send value to the hosting providers, for our information they are willing to host for us. That value, trillions and quadrillions of microtransactions, less than a cent each per day, it is difficult to track, but it can be done, the question which arises is, what can someone gain doing that?