Can you imagine if Walmart started saying every customer has to show the cashier their bank statement first so the cashier can see where their money is coming from? The result would be outrage as well as a huge hit to Walmart's profits. But for some reason this community, despite being founded on the principles of self ownership and no third party control, are fine with this exact scenario, and continue to use and support exchanges which are openly spying on you. It is mind boggling.
There is a difference. It is the way this community thinks.They see Walmart as a store they pay at for groceries. And they see Bitcoin and Centralized Exchanges as a way to get rich. Here is where the discrepancy comes from. They would not share personal information with Walmart because Walmart is the one getting paid by them. You do not purchase an apple to sell it ten fold the next day. But in their mind, Binance does offer you exactly this. Buy AppleRocketshipMaster3000Coin today and tomorrow you may be a millionaire or continue to be broke.
I do get that the loudest voices and probably also largest group of people falls into that category though, but these people are no cypherpunks.
It's not possible for a cypherpunk to simply accept all those spying measures o_e_l_e_o described; all of us would react like the exemplary Walmart customer who would outrage if he had to prove fund origins when grocery shopping.
You're right! The taint community can simply say that all coins coming from "Service A", or "Off-chain Layer B" are all tainted! But talking about fungibility, what's the practical solution if they can even say that all Monero coins are "taintcoins".
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For simple untraceability/privacy without problems, I would recommend Wasabi to newbies for porn subscriptions or sex toy purchases that they want to hide from their wives.
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I agree, and I have debated that taint doesn't exist in the blockchain. Plus that's why it's important that most of your Bitcoin that were converted from fiat should never be converted back to fiat. It's a practical solution.
Aren't you contradicting yourself constantly here? On one hand you agree 'taint doesn't exist' and on the other hand, you 'recommend Wasabi' for 'avoiding problems'.[...]
For simple untraceability/privacy without problems, I would recommend Wasabi to newbies for porn subscriptions or sex toy purchases that they want to hide from their wives.
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I agree, and I have debated that taint doesn't exist in the blockchain. Plus that's why it's important that most of your Bitcoin that were converted from fiat should never be converted back to fiat. It's a practical solution.
YES I am. Because in my original post, I was merely saying that it might be better for some users to use Wasabi to avoid future problems that they might be encountering with "taint". It's for practicality's sake.
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As for your first question: 'What's the practical solution if they can say that all Monero coins are tainted'; it's in the question. Everyone can define taint as they wish. It's a subjective, arbitrary thing that you can simply choose not to accept. Who gives them the authority to define such a thing as 'taint'? The blockchain knows no taint, and we should stick to the blockchain, not some arbitrary group of people trying to convince us of properties that are not written on the blockchain.
But another problem for the "taint patrol", how can they distiguish which UTXOs came from "Mr. Heroine Dealer", and which came from "clean sources".
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I could just say for instance, that all UTXOs that are sent to addresses starting with bc1q666.... are criminal, because they contain evil due to the number 666 or something like this. Of course, everyone will laugh at this 'taint definition' and not care about my opinion; continuing to accept coins from those addresses. We should not treat these 'taint definition companies' any different.
I agree with everything you stand for whole heartedly. But from a practical standpoint for the newbies/ordinary users, would you recommend services that would taint their wallets that might make it hard for them to sell their coins in exchanges? Or possibly even have legal problems? I personally would not want that responsibility. I believe I would recommend Wasabi for less problems with the "taint patrol" if the objective was to merely hide their porn subscriptions from their wives.
