Quote from: toknormal on April 03, 2015, 11:57:47 PM

Quote from: Joshuar on April 03, 2015, 11:46:14 PM

The viewkey is nothing like the private key, the viewkey only allows a 3rd party to view your holdings, they can't do anything else, they can't even see who you sent (x) amount, or who sent you (x) amount.

That's my point.

You DO want to see that. You want to see the blockcain in operation - every single aspect of it and every address. You just don't want to be able to know who's controlling those addresses. That's where the fungibility comes in. How do you think people have been getting away with all these Bitcoin heists lately without every being found ?

Making it invisible isn't an option - because it ceases to have any monetary value. Visibility is an essential element of monetary value since most forms of money are some kind of 'call' on a common resource and that common resource must be out in the open - even though the private keys to control it are not.

Take a gold bar - it has value because it is part of the universal continuum known as the element with atomic number 79. The only reason it has value is because gold is an "out there" thing. Sure I can shove it under my bed but no-one's going to buy it from me unless I put it back in the public domain to have it rubber stamped as part of what everyone else agrees is that particular element of the earth's crust.

Similarly, a private key which controls part of a blockchain who's existence is only implicit will always be worth less than one that controls part of a blockchain thats explicit.

In both cases - as long as the tokens are sifficiently fungible - privacy is retained because my private key is...."private" Wink

Does the USD operate the way you propose right here? Does the government see every transaction that people make with their physical FIAT bills? Nope, so if even government issued currencies aren't that transparent, why restrict cryptocurrencies that way? Being "invisible" has nothing to do with it, as I previously said, Cryptonote coins are not invisible, they are "visible", but there is nothing you can know about the sender or receiver, which is how it's supposed to be and what makes them fungible and anonymous/private. Compare the amount and total value of bitcoins stolen vs the amount and total value of Fiat holdings stolen. The amount of bitcoins stolen are in the hundreds of millions, the amount of fiat stolen are in the hundreds of billions.

What you're describing isn't Cryptonote or even Coinjoin, it's Zerocash. If you're talking about "invisiblity" and not being able to see anything at all happening, sure, that's what Zerocash gives.