Comment on Are there any payment aggregators (Like Paypal for instance) that prioritize user privacy?
ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com 3 days agoExcept for crypto, and then only I’d you put in a lot of effort to make it so.
Comment on Are there any payment aggregators (Like Paypal for instance) that prioritize user privacy?
ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com 3 days agoExcept for crypto, and then only I’d you put in a lot of effort to make it so.
litchralee@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Is this correct though, in terms of a confidentiality or non-repudiation guarantee? For a ledger system – blockchain or not – every unit can be traced back through the history, to one or more sources. Yes, multiple transactions can serve to obfuscate the sources, but the real source is within that subset of all possible sources. So unless obfuscation takes place by involving all possible addresses, there’s still going to be some amount of knowledge revealed about the relationship of some source and some destination address.
But I think non-repudiation could be more damaging in a cryptocurrency context. Imagine a corrupt politician that takes a cash bribe. Unless the briber recorded the serial numbers, the politician can plausible repudiate any connection with the briber, because the cash could have come from anywhere else.
Whereas with cryptocurrency, if the briber’s wallet address is ever revealed (eg. by hack, by change of heart, by blackmail, or by cryptographic collapse), then there’s a line which can connect the briber to the politician. They cannot deny that it’s possible to have received the bribe, which is itself a scandal unto itself. Probably not good enough to convict of a crime, but enough to do political damage.
Ultimately, I’m of the opinion that a ledger system still isn’t as strong on confidentiality as cash, because cash records nothing at all, so there’s nothing to accidentally reveal. To be clear, bribery is a stand-in for any sort of payment that would cause adverse effects if revealed. Other examples include secret child support, for a secret pregnancy, for a secret abortion, or anything else that people don’t want to reveal to the world. The whole point of privacy, I maintain, is to have a choice on what other people get to know.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Monero is untraceable because it uses zero-knowledge proofs and ring signatures.