Quote from: volyova on January 28, 2017, 11:49:29 PM

Do you still assert that "cryptography has never been a significant part of cryptocurrency", tokonormal?

You only found 1 clanger ?

Apparently there are 5848 posts in there. Im sure you can deplete the accuracy rate more than 0.017%. Get digging. (And always remember to quote out of context - you'll have more impact that way Grin

)

The "clanger" was that I replaced the word "encryption" with "cryptography". The correct quote would have been "cryptocurrency does not use encryption" (which was actually more supporting of my case than what I posted - so feel free to keep citing it).

Here's the original audio so you can rest your weary eyes.

To recap:
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"Encryption is the branch of cryptography that deals with how do you hide data" (what you don't what you want in an unbacked, un-nominated monetary token)

"Signatures is the branch of cryptography that deals with how you authenticate data" (what you do want in an unbacked, un-nominated monetary token)

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I quoted that in the context of a discussion about the merits of burying public addresses - who's anonymity is already protected by a 1-way cryptographic hash - in yet another layer of encryption. The reason I questioned it is that by doing so you're loosing all the advantages that technology was designed to deliver - i.e. a transparent and public network which could engender a massive level of confidence & integrity without any loss of security over the ability to control the address balances.

The only financial networks where you need "hiding" in favour of "showing" are legacy assets that predate the invention of transparent cryptographic tokens, i.e. records of credit which are nominated (in terms of a personal or corporate entity) and backed (by a trusted party such as a cryptocurrency exchange for trading balances or a bank for fiat credit balances).

On the other hand, where a base asset is concerned that has no owner other than the possessor (like a diamond, lump of coal, gold nugget or bundle of grain) the monetary priorities are reversed. Transparency is paramount or you've got a potentially valueless asset due to the poisonous ambiguity you injected into the system from trying to hide its significant properties.

Conclusion: cryptocurrency technologies that try to market themselves as "obscured" are selling hot air. A technology that's 10- a penny, been in use for decades in various forms including SSL and available to you independently of the purchased asset. If something has value, people will find a way to hide it, it doesn't concern them whether it comes "with its own safe". What concerns them is that it has value and the way to increase value in an unbacked asset is to dispel ambiguity, not impose it.

Meanwhile, optimising anonymity in the sense of real cash through transparent fungibility is a very different and far more worthwhile pursuit in terms of adding value.

Put another way, by remaining both transparent and fungible, Dash protects its holder's privacy while keeping itself out of the blockhchain obfuscation scam.