Re: Eventually the FUNGIBILITY issue of bitcoin will make headlines ...
I do not disagree that there is a privacy issue and I obviously support any attempts at improving this aspect.
The whole point of my intervention is this thread is that fungibility and privacy are two different concepts that are too often conflated.
Bitcoin, fundamentally, is absolutely fungible. Perfectly so in fact. Two satoshis are exactly alike much like two atoms of gold are indistinguishable and can be perfectly substituted.
I can taint gold and make it somewhat traceable using radioactivity. That doesn't make gold non-fungible but only traceable to a certain extent.
TLDR; When people speak of Bitcoin's fungibility "issue" they really are referring to a privacy/traceability one.
The whole point of my intervention is this thread is that fungibility and privacy are two different concepts that are too often conflated.
Bitcoin, fundamentally, is absolutely fungible. Perfectly so in fact. Two satoshis are exactly alike much like two atoms of gold are indistinguishable and can be perfectly substituted.
I can taint gold and make it somewhat traceable using radioactivity. That doesn't make gold non-fungible but only traceable to a certain extent.
TLDR; When people speak of Bitcoin's fungibility "issue" they really are referring to a privacy/traceability one.
Privacy and fungiblity are different concepts, but perhaps there is some overlap? The fact people often conflate them would indicate this.
When individual or groups of satoshis may be (on the basis of unique traits or general taint) identified and discriminated for/against, how is Bitoin "absolutely fungible?"
If Bitcoin is "absolutely fungible" then how did BTCE [do whatever they did] with the Evolution coins?
I see your point about gold (in spite of the tenuous radioactivity example). (Non-radioactive) gold is fungible, even if a particular institution acts in a particular way towards some particular customer's particular gold.
But wouldn't the gold be be even more (ie exhaustively) fungible if it could somehow negate the ability of any and all institutions to discern its provenance, thereby destroying the possibility of non-interchangeability in all particular instances?
...anyone that uses Bitcoin as it is meant to be should...
Bitcoin: Absolutely fungible, even when it isn't. Because No True Bitcoiner.
Monero: Private and unlinkable. Can't be not-fungible.
BTW, if it was illegal for merchants to accept XMR, we'd just use shapeshift or https://xmr.to/ and be on our fungibility-not-affected way!
