Monero is private. Its the privacy that protects its users. It's the privacy that makes it fungible money. Why do people insist on saying anonymous when describing Monero? Monero is designed around privacy first. Not anonymity.
I'm not going to argue. But i will make it clear for other people reading this who don't know. I never said it didn't achieve anonymity.
The technology behind Monero is for the protection of the users privacy. First and foremost! The users of Monero want to protect their privacy. Anonymity on Monero is simply a byproduct of the technology. It is not designed to protect users anonymity. Its designed to protect their privacy! Because transactional privacy is what makes Monero fungible!
Its the privacy on Monero that makes Monero fungible. Not the anonymity of the user. You can be anonymous on bitcoin if you are extremely careful to stay away from kyc. But BTC is not fungible because all transactions are public. You are NOT private!
A persons anonymity IS NOT required for cryptographic system to work. The Anonymity set, and a persons anonymity is very different. People who only mention anonymity and Monero are sending the wrong message.
New people coming into Monero need to know the difference between privacy and anonymity! Transactions on the Monero blockchain are confidential and can not be traced. The persons anonymity is irrelevant. No one has to hide their identity when using Monero. The most public person in the world can use Monero and tell everyone they use it. But when they do use it, they have complete privacy!
Seriously, dude is splitting the tiniest hair. Would could engage in all sorts of wordplay here.
Transactions are private therefore I am anonymous
Transactions are anonymous therefore I have privacy
Transactions are private therefore I have privacy
Transactions are anonymous therefore I am anonymous
I liked the distinction between the two. Though I am not one of the people that use the words interchangeably. Privacy and anonymity aren't even synonyms if iirc.
As privacy entails that, only a very select group of people may access certain information or areas, when/if they match the criteria.
Anonymity entails, doing something in complete secrecy, where no other person or entity should know the source.
With information, something put out by an anonymous source is often public, while the source remains secret. Information that is private often comes from a known source but that information of the source is kept within a select group.
You got it back to front. Privacy is keeping your actions secret. Privacy is hiding the thing's that you do. Anonymity is everyone can see what you do but no one knows who is doing it.
The creator of Bitcoin is a perfect example. Everyone knows what he did, but no one knows who he/they are. Anonymity is only necessary for a small group of people. Like whistleblowers etc. They want everyone to know something but keeping their identity a secret.
Privacy is hiding your actions. You can be the most famous person in the world, but youll want to do things that no one will know about. Privacy is a necessity for absolutely everyone! Every single person deserves the right to privacy! And especially financial privacy! Its a fundamental human right.
I did mention that something put out by someone anonymous is public but the creator is secret.
I understand and agree. I think maybe I misspoke or my comment has been misconstrued.
However, I disagree with the private part. As many private things can be accessed by people within that privacy sphere. It depends on who you let in. Like your private life. It's private but people are able to be privy to that info, should you let them.
Anonymous is done by a secret party but put into the public.
Yes. There's many different aspects of privacy. Havilland a shower, going to the toilet, having sex with your wife etc etc. But this is a darknet sub and people are buying things that are most probably illegal. So financial privacy is paramount. Ordering, and any communication done on the DNM can be seen by others. So anonymity is important. But when it comes to purchasing, privacy is essential. If your actions are visible, everything that you have done can be linked to you if your identity is exposed. Better to hide your actions than to hide your identity IMO.
Another thing, think how authorities work. They find suspicious activities or illegal activities and then they gather the information from those activities and then they investigate to try and find out who are doing those activities. But if you keep your activities private authorities won't even know what is happening. There's nothing for them to investigate in the first place. I think people need to place more focus on having strong privacy over strong anonymity. These days breaking ones anonymity is much easier than breaking privacy. Be a ghost. Doing things that no one knows about is safer than people knowing things are being done, but just don't know who is doing it.
You shouldn't use the words interchangeably. Privacy and anonymity are two separate very different things. The fact is that People new to DNM and new to Monero are being misinformed all the time! People are believing that they need to be anonymous when buying Monero directly, or buying other crypto before getting XMR and using it. Its just simply not the case at all. Using the word anonymous when the point is privacy is misleading and confusing and people aren't learning what they need to know!
When people use Monero on DNM they are using it to protect their privacy. They are using Monero to hide their actions. What they are doing.
People who use privacy and anonymity interchangeably simply don't understand each words meaning, and how different they really are!
The other person said it's anonymous, which you took umbrage with, then have started this post with 'I never said it didn't achieve anonymity'. I think you're splitting hairs over something users don't need to know. I have NO IDEA about all this, and don't care to. It's worked exactly how I need it to, for as long as I've needed it to.
For most people this is a semantics debate which they dont care about. Does it anonymize me if i define anonymous as not being caught? Yeah. I understand the words mean different things but a lot of people dont care lol.
Its not semantics. If you think only being anonymous is going to stop you from getting caught, you are an ignorant fool. Telling people they don't need to worry about it is straight up disingenuous! People buying illegal things should be protecting their privacy!
The original design of Bitcoin was inherently NOT anonymous. The entire point of an immutable consensus-based public ledger means that you should in theory have a forever record that Account A credited Account B a Bitcoin and then later Account B credited Account C a Bitcoin. And everyone agrees that's what happened and the rest of the blockchain literally depends on that transaction remaining there forever.
Now good on you if manage to not be associated with your crypto account but if my halfanothersdozen coinbase account deposits $500 dollars worth of BTC into Crypto Wallet A and then Crypto Wallet A goes off and buys $498 worth of Adderall it's not going to take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened.
The original design of Bitcoin was inherently not anonymous, but it isn't because "you should in theory have a forever record that Account A credited Account B a Bitcoin and then later Account B credited Account C a Bitcoin." creates a requirement of a public ledger, since it's possible without the data being public.
Bitcoin is public because of the cryptographic landscape surrounding the time, not because it's inherently needed (or even necessarily good) to have all this data be public. They simply didn't know better (though you can't really blame them, even despite how little research was out there the original satoshi account still mentions ways to potentially incorporate anonymity schemes into the bitcoin chain, only for this to be forever forgotten after other entities took over the project).
Simply put: zero knowledge cryptography was not widespread enough and not researched (trusted) enough for the whole Account A credits Account B system to be implemented privately. In theory of course there was nothing stopping them, ring signatures predate bitcoin by awhile, but they created Bitcoin using trusted cryptographic primitives and kept things simple. It would be hard for them to predict that this would create issues later down the line.
Not reusing addresses is considered good practice, however, due to Bitcoins transparent nature solely not reusing addresses is insufficient for privacy. This is why mixers were created over a decade ago that have since become obsolete, evolving into what we know today as coinjoins. Coinjoins offer increased privacy within Bitcoin but even top Bitcoin developers understood that it isnt enough because it is still on a transparent ledger. This led to why Samourai wallet devs incorporated Btc <> XMR atmoic swaps within their wallets. 2 months later they were arrested, make of that what you will.
https://news.bitcoin.com/samourai-wallet-unveils-privacy-enhancing-btc-to-xmr-atomic-swaps-in-beta-launch/
https://mises.org/mises-wire/arrest-samourai-wallet-developers-shows-us-government-hates-privacy-and-freedom
Edit: tumblers/mixers became obsolete due to chain analysis capabilities advancing exponentially.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/07/usage-of-crypto-mixers-for-stymying-blockchain-investigations-hits-all-time-high/
You should stop leaving trace after converting any crypto to monero. Also directly buying monero from kyc exchange is not recommended. Always use 2 wallet hops to make a Dpurchase, and avoid starting from kyc exchange
so if i buy LTC and swap to Monero could it still be traced back to me?
Or should i buy LTC swap to Monero and then send that to another Monero wallet?
Monero is if you do it right.
Exchange -> Personal Wallet -> Market wallet
With Monero fees being really low, the extra step of putting it in a personal wallet shouldn't cost you much. Just takes a little time.
Monero is the least traceable would probably be the best way to put it because nothing is really anonymous if somebody chooses to dump enough time and resources into finding their identity out. You have to keep that in mind when doing things that may not be legal and ask yourself how important would stopping whatever thing you are doing be to a government agency and what kind of effort would they probably put into stopping such a thing from being easy to do for the average person and in that case what would the average person look like. Statistics and probabilities can really be useful even if they are just ballpark accurate and understanding them helps to know the risks and if they are worth the reward if taken.
Everything can be traced back. If there is a will, then there is a way. (Mostly I feel like)
Just try not to buy like, humans or hit mans or buy drugs on a really strict state and use proper safety measures. Nothing is promised.
Its not anonymous. A long time ago i made a comment about if you google your ip it shows all wallets addresses connected to it. Not even 5 minutes later it was scrubbed from searches
Depends how much money you are throwing around. Feds aren’t spending time and resources busting you for an oz of powder. If you are buying kilos then I would be more concerned.
Not all crypto is anonymous, except for Monero. To maintain anonymity:
Use a secure, anonymous, non-custodial Monero Wallet like XMRWallet.
Enhance network privacy by using Tor or I2P.
Avoid centralized exchanges. P2P platforms like Bisq are better.
Use multiple wallets.
Avoid reusing addresses.
Practice good OpSec.
Learn best practices and stay informed.
Not usually. Monero is anonymous in most cases but stuff like bitcoin is not.
Monero is private. Its the privacy that protects its users. It's the privacy that makes it fungible money. Why do people insist on saying anonymous when describing Monero? Monero is designed around privacy first. Not anonymity.
I don't care to argue with you. Monero achieves both privacy and anonymity because both are required for the cryptographic system to function.
I'm not going to argue. But i will make it clear for other people reading this who don't know. I never said it didn't achieve anonymity. The technology behind Monero is for the protection of the users privacy. First and foremost! The users of Monero want to protect their privacy. Anonymity on Monero is simply a byproduct of the technology. It is not designed to protect users anonymity. Its designed to protect their privacy! Because transactional privacy is what makes Monero fungible! Its the privacy on Monero that makes Monero fungible. Not the anonymity of the user. You can be anonymous on bitcoin if you are extremely careful to stay away from kyc. But BTC is not fungible because all transactions are public. You are NOT private! A persons anonymity IS NOT required for cryptographic system to work. The Anonymity set, and a persons anonymity is very different. People who only mention anonymity and Monero are sending the wrong message. New people coming into Monero need to know the difference between privacy and anonymity! Transactions on the Monero blockchain are confidential and can not be traced. The persons anonymity is irrelevant. No one has to hide their identity when using Monero. The most public person in the world can use Monero and tell everyone they use it. But when they do use it, they have complete privacy!
I mean functionally people use the two words interchangeably in this context. You sound super autistic.
Seriously, dude is splitting the tiniest hair. Would could engage in all sorts of wordplay here. Transactions are private therefore I am anonymous Transactions are anonymous therefore I have privacy Transactions are private therefore I have privacy Transactions are anonymous therefore I am anonymous
I liked the distinction between the two. Though I am not one of the people that use the words interchangeably. Privacy and anonymity aren't even synonyms if iirc. As privacy entails that, only a very select group of people may access certain information or areas, when/if they match the criteria. Anonymity entails, doing something in complete secrecy, where no other person or entity should know the source. With information, something put out by an anonymous source is often public, while the source remains secret. Information that is private often comes from a known source but that information of the source is kept within a select group.
You got it back to front. Privacy is keeping your actions secret. Privacy is hiding the thing's that you do. Anonymity is everyone can see what you do but no one knows who is doing it. The creator of Bitcoin is a perfect example. Everyone knows what he did, but no one knows who he/they are. Anonymity is only necessary for a small group of people. Like whistleblowers etc. They want everyone to know something but keeping their identity a secret. Privacy is hiding your actions. You can be the most famous person in the world, but youll want to do things that no one will know about. Privacy is a necessity for absolutely everyone! Every single person deserves the right to privacy! And especially financial privacy! Its a fundamental human right.
I did mention that something put out by someone anonymous is public but the creator is secret. I understand and agree. I think maybe I misspoke or my comment has been misconstrued. However, I disagree with the private part. As many private things can be accessed by people within that privacy sphere. It depends on who you let in. Like your private life. It's private but people are able to be privy to that info, should you let them. Anonymous is done by a secret party but put into the public.
Yes. There's many different aspects of privacy. Havilland a shower, going to the toilet, having sex with your wife etc etc. But this is a darknet sub and people are buying things that are most probably illegal. So financial privacy is paramount. Ordering, and any communication done on the DNM can be seen by others. So anonymity is important. But when it comes to purchasing, privacy is essential. If your actions are visible, everything that you have done can be linked to you if your identity is exposed. Better to hide your actions than to hide your identity IMO.
Another thing, think how authorities work. They find suspicious activities or illegal activities and then they gather the information from those activities and then they investigate to try and find out who are doing those activities. But if you keep your activities private authorities won't even know what is happening. There's nothing for them to investigate in the first place. I think people need to place more focus on having strong privacy over strong anonymity. These days breaking ones anonymity is much easier than breaking privacy. Be a ghost. Doing things that no one knows about is safer than people knowing things are being done, but just don't know who is doing it.
It's also irrelevant since both are required for Monero to function.
You shouldn't use the words interchangeably. Privacy and anonymity are two separate very different things. The fact is that People new to DNM and new to Monero are being misinformed all the time! People are believing that they need to be anonymous when buying Monero directly, or buying other crypto before getting XMR and using it. Its just simply not the case at all. Using the word anonymous when the point is privacy is misleading and confusing and people aren't learning what they need to know! When people use Monero on DNM they are using it to protect their privacy. They are using Monero to hide their actions. What they are doing. People who use privacy and anonymity interchangeably simply don't understand each words meaning, and how different they really are!
Does using Any monero exchange, even one that is built into a wallet app such as Exodus wallet, utilize the private monero blockchain??
The other person said it's anonymous, which you took umbrage with, then have started this post with 'I never said it didn't achieve anonymity'. I think you're splitting hairs over something users don't need to know. I have NO IDEA about all this, and don't care to. It's worked exactly how I need it to, for as long as I've needed it to.
For most people this is a semantics debate which they dont care about. Does it anonymize me if i define anonymous as not being caught? Yeah. I understand the words mean different things but a lot of people dont care lol.
Its not semantics. If you think only being anonymous is going to stop you from getting caught, you are an ignorant fool. Telling people they don't need to worry about it is straight up disingenuous! People buying illegal things should be protecting their privacy!
The original design of Bitcoin was inherently NOT anonymous. The entire point of an immutable consensus-based public ledger means that you should in theory have a forever record that Account A credited Account B a Bitcoin and then later Account B credited Account C a Bitcoin. And everyone agrees that's what happened and the rest of the blockchain literally depends on that transaction remaining there forever. Now good on you if manage to not be associated with your crypto account but if my halfanothersdozen coinbase account deposits $500 dollars worth of BTC into Crypto Wallet A and then Crypto Wallet A goes off and buys $498 worth of Adderall it's not going to take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened.
The original design of Bitcoin was inherently not anonymous, but it isn't because "you should in theory have a forever record that Account A credited Account B a Bitcoin and then later Account B credited Account C a Bitcoin." creates a requirement of a public ledger, since it's possible without the data being public. Bitcoin is public because of the cryptographic landscape surrounding the time, not because it's inherently needed (or even necessarily good) to have all this data be public. They simply didn't know better (though you can't really blame them, even despite how little research was out there the original satoshi account still mentions ways to potentially incorporate anonymity schemes into the bitcoin chain, only for this to be forever forgotten after other entities took over the project). Simply put: zero knowledge cryptography was not widespread enough and not researched (trusted) enough for the whole Account A credits Account B system to be implemented privately. In theory of course there was nothing stopping them, ring signatures predate bitcoin by awhile, but they created Bitcoin using trusted cryptographic primitives and kept things simple. It would be hard for them to predict that this would create issues later down the line.
Nakamoto says to stay truly anonymous using btc is to use the wallet address one time & one time only
Not reusing addresses is considered good practice, however, due to Bitcoins transparent nature solely not reusing addresses is insufficient for privacy. This is why mixers were created over a decade ago that have since become obsolete, evolving into what we know today as coinjoins. Coinjoins offer increased privacy within Bitcoin but even top Bitcoin developers understood that it isnt enough because it is still on a transparent ledger. This led to why Samourai wallet devs incorporated Btc <> XMR atmoic swaps within their wallets. 2 months later they were arrested, make of that what you will. https://news.bitcoin.com/samourai-wallet-unveils-privacy-enhancing-btc-to-xmr-atomic-swaps-in-beta-launch/ https://mises.org/mises-wire/arrest-samourai-wallet-developers-shows-us-government-hates-privacy-and-freedom Edit: tumblers/mixers became obsolete due to chain analysis capabilities advancing exponentially. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/07/usage-of-crypto-mixers-for-stymying-blockchain-investigations-hits-all-time-high/
Which is either not possible or not actually true depending on where you get your funds
Upvoting for honesty
You should stop leaving trace after converting any crypto to monero. Also directly buying monero from kyc exchange is not recommended. Always use 2 wallet hops to make a Dpurchase, and avoid starting from kyc exchange
so if i buy LTC and swap to Monero could it still be traced back to me? Or should i buy LTC swap to Monero and then send that to another Monero wallet?
If it goes to any hardware wallet on YOUR computer first it doesn't really matter where it goes after that
No
Monero is if you do it right. Exchange -> Personal Wallet -> Market wallet With Monero fees being really low, the extra step of putting it in a personal wallet shouldn't cost you much. Just takes a little time.
Monero is the least traceable would probably be the best way to put it because nothing is really anonymous if somebody chooses to dump enough time and resources into finding their identity out. You have to keep that in mind when doing things that may not be legal and ask yourself how important would stopping whatever thing you are doing be to a government agency and what kind of effort would they probably put into stopping such a thing from being easy to do for the average person and in that case what would the average person look like. Statistics and probabilities can really be useful even if they are just ballpark accurate and understanding them helps to know the risks and if they are worth the reward if taken.
Monero or Zcash is closest you're gonna get to that. Imo
Nothing is ever 100% safe. A cryptocurrency (privacy/fungibility) needs to constantly evolve and that's what we are seeing with Monero.
Everything can be traced back. If there is a will, then there is a way. (Mostly I feel like) Just try not to buy like, humans or hit mans or buy drugs on a really strict state and use proper safety measures. Nothing is promised.
Its not anonymous. A long time ago i made a comment about if you google your ip it shows all wallets addresses connected to it. Not even 5 minutes later it was scrubbed from searches
The feds are entrapping people?
Bro truth be told. It's all about proper preoperative processing. Taking the necessary steps to remain anonymous with whatever oneself is doing.
Depends how much money you are throwing around. Feds aren’t spending time and resources busting you for an oz of powder. If you are buying kilos then I would be more concerned.
Not even a little bit anonymous
Nothing is ever 100%
Monero is the best way to launder
Not all crypto is anonymous, except for Monero. To maintain anonymity: Use a secure, anonymous, non-custodial Monero Wallet like XMRWallet. Enhance network privacy by using Tor or I2P. Avoid centralized exchanges. P2P platforms like Bisq are better. Use multiple wallets. Avoid reusing addresses. Practice good OpSec. Learn best practices and stay informed.