I was thinking earlier about the legal system vs crypto. Does anyone think user defined mixing will be a weakpoint of Monero in the legal department? As in, a fixed mixed count would have been preferable if attempting to design around the law when user defined is pretty similar to active mixing.
It seems kind of obvious that governments would be far more likely to consider active mixing as an act of laundering (darkcoin), while if anonymity is part of the protocol itself, it's just a shortcoming of government auditing. Both Monero and Zcash are safer legal-wise (than Darkcoin), although you would likely have to enforce a fixed mix count instead of variable if you really wanted to be safe in Monero.
I don't know the legal side of things, but in terms of the current protocol, the default fixed mixin count is the current implementation.
I.e., if you type
transfer
gingeropolous@payxmr.com 500
it will send me 500 xmr with a mixin (or ring size) of 3.... and nowhere in the command is there a 3 specified.
Yea, but the fact that it can be user defined makes it kinda sorta fall in the same category as active mixing. If/when crypto takes over the world, I'm sure there would be legal cases about BTC mixers and those laws would then be tested against the Monero implementation with a judge giving a subjective ruling on it. Although, even if you had a static mix-in variable, they might just attempt to rule the entire coin itself is just a mixer and try to ban it. I was trying to think of which anon system the legal system would come down least and most favorable to. It seemed like Darkcoin would come in last in the legal department, with Monero in the middle, and Zcash might do a little better legal-wise, but I'm not sure. Maybe they would all just be treated the same...