Quote from: death_wish on Today at 11:11:35 PM

Quote from: danadc on Today at 10:18:29 PM

I am a very fan of Snowden, especially or what he did, although his statements about BTC do not like this time, he wants more privacy, but does not understand that BTC goes far beyond privacy.

I agree with Snowden. Loth though I am to say this, Bitcoin has a problem: Privacy is Bitcoin’s Achilles’ heel.

To say that “Bitcoin goes far beyond privacy” is like saying that a tower goes far beyond its foundations. Privacy is a fundamental characteristic, it is an economic necessity insofar as it affects fungibility, and it needs to be built-in: It is a part of the foundation, not a roof ornament.

Mixing does not work; that is a child’s game, and it costs you money in fees to achieve an inferior form of something that should be built-in, provided out of the box. (On another note, Monero is essentially a coin with a built-in mixer.) I have spent a ridiculous amount of money over the years on Bitcoin privacy, so I think I am qualified to opine. And no, LN is not an adequate solution. I am not inclined to make an extensive technical critique here—just saying, um, no, that doesn’t do it.

None of this is any criticism of Satoshi. Given the state of the art in 2008-era cryptography, Satoshi had two choices: Try to build a centralized currency with transactional privacy, like Digicash—or build a decentralized system, which exposes all transaction data so that every P2P node can validate it. Either/or. In 2008, the technology did not yet exist for anything else. Satoshi made some breakthroughs with Bitcoin, but he himself was obviously not a cryptographer; and it would be unfair to expect him personally to solve every major problem at once, all by himself!

In 2010, when he was still here, Satoshi was struggling with this issue:

Quote from: satoshi on August 11, 2010, 12:14:22 AM

This is a very interesting topic. If a solution was found, a much better, easier, more convenient implementation of Bitcoin would be possible.

[...]

It's hard to think of how to apply zero-knowledge-proofs in this case.

Bitcoin gave the impetus to terrific advances in cryptographic research. A wave of breakthroughs in zero-knowledge proofs started in 2013–2014. Alas, by then, Satoshi was long gone. Not that we need his permission to improve Bitcoin: I think he would have liked to have seen that, and to have been involved in it as Satoshi.

Thus, as it stands:

Bitcoin has less practical privacy than bank transactions. (Your bank knows your bank transactions. The whole world knows your Bitcoin transactions.)
Such monstrosities as Chainalysis exist, and they invisibly spy on you much worse than you know.
Bitcoin’s fungibility is always more or less under threat—in the large, systemically, and in the small, for each user. Governments and spy-companies draw up blacklists of coins. Bitcoiners fret over avoiding “tainted” coins—a ridiculous concept which should not exist. Even if you are irresponsibly apathetic about privacy, you need to pay attention to what this does to Bitcoin economically.
The only major implementation of zero-knowledge proof privacy is an altcoin which, I recently discovered to my dismay, now plans to go POS. Snowden likes that altcoin. So do I—as long as it stays POW. (I am proud to be a Zcasher since Sprout.)

A constructive solution: Bring real privacy to Bitcoin! Don’t say, “We don’t need that,” when we obviously do. I say, “We can do it.”

Quote from: danadc on Today at 10:18:29 PM

Bitcoin “Is Failing as an Electronic Cash System”: Edward Snowden

Quote

Edward Snowden has said that he is "very much a fan" of Bitcoin, but he thinks that its lack of privacy could mean it fails in the long term.
The American whistleblower said that there are multiple crypto assets that can be thought of as money akin to gold rather than currencies.
He added that he thinks competition between cryptocurrencies is a net positive for the world.

Source: https://cryptobriefing.com/bitcoin-failing-electronic-cash-edward-snowden/?utm_source=feed&utm_medium=rss

I think everyone is looking for is focusing more on payments, Fiat money and do not see the complete potential that BTC represents.

Payments without privacy are—a problem.

I also agree with Snowden that competition is good. Bitcoin doesn’t retain its dominance due to meme graphics. It stands on being the best. That means it needs to be the best. The best never fear competition; and Bitcoin will only be improved by competition, if its response is “we can do it!” rather than “we don’t need it”.

I also like that Snowden tweet about gold being a non-networked form of Bitcoin. Quotable. He apparently has quite a high regard for Bitcoin. If he offers some constructive criticism of it (as I do often), that is for the good of Bitcoin.

There is one area where its current restraints of privacy , is sort of a good thing. Regulation. (try not to vomit)

I wonder if BTC would be where it is today if it was a privacy coin...... I mean it opens up an attack vector for tptb/regulators....

Feel like BTC has walked that tightrope pretty well......

A world with widely adopted truly private digital money, could well come with issues of its own, some positive, and, some negative.

But, 100% on the fungibility issue, and privacy issue as a whole.