[tor-talk] Cryptocurrency, Privacy Coins, and Overlay Networks ie: Tor [was: MONKEYROCKET]

[grarpamp <grarpamp@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Off topic

Not really...

Many Tor users use cryptocurrencies.
Many cryptocurrency users have little clue as to the
extremely limited privacy most cryptocurrencies offer.
This makes it an important topic of awareness
for Tor users on tor-talk.

The continuous attacks and analysis upon the blockchains by
dataminers, marketers, lawful and unlawful government agencies
including law enforcement, taxation, NSA style GPA / GAA / parallel
construction, questionable untested new "laws", corporations, status
quo anti-adoption efforts, internet censors, DPI filters, researchers,
even other users... all around the world... is at least on the same
level as that against anonymous overlays like tor, and even clearnet
itself.

Most of the cryptocurrencies out there...
- don't use TLS, thus their entire networks have zero
privacy / auth / integrity over the end to end transport
- don't use internal cryptoprivacy to protect transaction info
- don't have communities much aware of or using overlay
networks, out of band comms, encryption
- don't really care much about privacy in the currency itself
- don't have clients that directly support, or services that reside
on, overlay networks. This includes exchanges, miners and
mining pools, relays / nodes, payment gateways, forums,
wallets, DAOs, etc.

So if you're a tor user for reasons, and want a cryptocurrency
that demonstrates similar reasons / capabilities, your choices
are limited. And there's a lot of lingering 'cryptocurrency is private'
promotion from earlier days left to dispel and to re-evaluate.

If you want to follow / try / contribute to some recent
developments in stronger cryptocurrency privacy search out
- privacy coins
- decentralized exchanges
- even older forms might be noted / useful such as...
coin mixes, blenders, swaps, joinmarket, etc

Examples...
Zcash ZEC, BitcoinPrivate BTCP, Monero XMR,
Zencash ZEN (uses TLS), Bisq exchange, etc

Though evaluating them might be off topic,
since tor users are likely to have interest in
cryptocurrency privacy feel free to list / link more
cons / services / evals that you find in this thread
for reference.

BitcoinCash BCH might adopt something soonish,
as may some of the other leading cryptocurrencies,
check their respective roadmaps.

Bitcoin (Legacy) BTC not likely anytime soon.
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