This seems to be all about a technicality involving how these sanctions are applied. Sanctions are meant to be applied to people and the companies they run, and a US court ruled that these sanctions couldn’t be applied to a smart contract because it’s just a bunch of code, and not the property of a sanctioned individual. This ruling was made back in November, they are just getting around now to removing the sanctions. From what I can tell, the sanctions against the people involved in running the service are still in effect.
Good, mixers are legitimate privacy tools
Do you have any evidence to back this up?
It’s reasonable to assume that the vast majority of their throughput is used for crime.
The overwhelming majority of people do not leverage crypto in any way. Even crypto scam promoters almost exclusively focus on speculation and do not use crypto as money.
And you do not need the payment for your order of bell peppers and toilet paper to be private. Let’s be real here.
Over the 15+ years that we’ve had crypto, there have been only two viable uses. All others have failed:
- Criminal activity (including brutal stuff like enabling NK/Russia and drug cartels)
- Financial speculation (in of itself often a malicious activity where the goal is to dump your worthless bags on a mark)
And you do not need the payment for your order of bell peppers and toilet paper to be private. Let’s be real here.
the zcash method really doesn’t work. because then when you want to pay for something legitimate privately, that’ll immediately be “suspicious” and you know who will be knocking on the door soon.
I do want to pay for bell peppers and toilet paper privately and everyone deserves to be able to do so, for similar reasons why I want to keep my youtube watch history private, even from google, and why am I using a pseudonymous forum.
that’s why I almost exclusively use cash too. fuck the cashless society.Over the 15+ years that we’ve had crypto, there have been only two viable uses. All others have failed:
Criminal activity (including brutal stuff like enabling NK/Russia and drug cartels) Financial speculation (in of itself often a malicious activity where the goal is to dump your worthless bags on a mark)Huh, Weird… Every use I’ve ever used crypto for doesn’t fall into these two categories. So I guess your assumptions and thus everything you based your logic/responses on must be faulty and incorrect.
I use Crypto much like I use my second language/citizenship. Rarely… However, that doesn’t mean I don’t use it legally. And simply holding onto the crypto != financial speculation. Nobody treats a savings account as “financial speculation”.
I’ve paid for plenty of things from my crypto wallets. Ranging from several to thousands of dollars.
And yes, I would like my payment for toilet paper and bell peppers to be private. Strictly for the fact that I don’t want Mega-corpo stores to be able to track and advertise to me based on my payment method. “Club cards” to advertise/track you are a thing. Large chains can do this same thing with payment methods details. So yes, being “real” here, I not only require it, but demand it.
Your premise is bad. And based on your other responses you don’t care to address it at all.
Nothing what you wrote contradicts my original OP.
You using crypto to buy your toilet paper is not a mass scale use case and it is irrelevant.
You can of course be pedantic and say, well I buy toilet paper with crypto therefore what you’re saying is wrong.
Way to go man!
The need for privacy in crypto is significant and a hinderance to wide adoption. With most crypto if you send me money once I then know your wallet address and I can then look up every transaction you’ve ever made with that wallet and every future transaction you make later. Clearly that’s a problem.
The fact that criminals are more motivated by privacy concerns doesn’t reduce the need and expectation of privacy for the rest of us.
you have basically ignored one part of their response, and invalidated the other part. good job!
You using crypto to buy your toilet paper is not a mass scale use case and it is irrelevant.
So then you claim that being able to buy stuff isn’t a “mass scale” use case…
You realize that’s fucking stupid right?
As I said, I can and do buy things regularly (though “rare” comparatively with the normal fiat purchases) with crypto. Other’s can do with me as well as the sites that I do it on do it as well. I can prove that by looking at the block chain and seeing the traffic in their wallets.
So “way to go man!” Unless you actually have something more meaningful than “nuh uh”. You’re kind of full of shit.
Edit: Lack of “big” vendors doing it != not possible at mass scale.
Dell at one point accepted crypto. They stopped because of regulation, not because of technical limitation. And sites like Newegg still accept it.
And you do not need the payment for your order of bell peppers and toilet paper to be private.
Yes I do.
Just because you don’t value your privacy doesn’t mean nobody does. It’s none of the government’s business what I buy, nor is it my bank’s. They’ll need to find another way to catch criminals than forcing me to be transparent about my transactions.
You debasing the notion of privacy and government spying if you think your toilet paper purchases are relevant in the context of this discussion.
Tell us you don’t understand privacy without telling us you don’t understand privacy.
It absolutely is relevant.
The government shouldn’t be able to know whether I’m buying toilet paper, ammunition, or anti-government books. There should be no way to track purchases to me unless I opt-in and provide it (e.g. register for a warranty, submit to background check, etc). They don’t need to know both sides of any transaction to enforce any law, because that would be a violation of my 4th amendment rights (or whatever privacy/anti-search laws you have in your country).
I happen to not commit crimes, generally speaking, but that’s completely irrelevant to the discussion about whether my purchases should be in the clear. Ideally, everywhere would accept some form of privacy-oriented cryptocurrency, like Monero. How money gets from me to the vendor is completely unrelated to law enforcement, all they need is a record of transactions for tax purposes, and there’s nothing stopping the store from tracking that in the same way they do cash. If they suspect someone of a crime, they can do old-fashioned police work and prove it (e.g. subpoena camera footage, station officers at the scene, interview people, etc).
I’ve used crypto for legitimate transactions in the past. It bailed me out once, big time, when I had to top up a foreign SIM card while abroad and their website wouldn’t take my US credit card. I found a site selling top-up codes that took crypto and sent some from my phone, and I was back in business. (The site was legit, but even if it turned out to be a scam I knew they could never take anything more than what I sent them because of the way crypto worked.) But this was back when people were still using it to transact.
The worst thing that ever happened to law-abiding people using crypto was when it’s price zoomed up. Because for all those early adopters, every individual transaction now has a considerble capital gain attached. That’s why people don’t spend crypto anymore, because it’s been turned by the market into a Store of Value. (And by developers, but that’s a different thread).
This is not a serious example in terms of scale and market share.
My point stands.
Well, nothing anyone says is going to convince you, because you’re obviously correct. How silly of me to question you!
Totally, your top up example is so relevant! It’s a major part of economic activity!
The true killer use case for crypto!
no one’s opinion and experiences count until they buy at least 10 pallet of toilet paper every week! wait, even that is not major in even your country’s economy so bad luck…
You are what we like to call “confidently incorrect”.
Well, when we’re trying to be nice, anyway.
Keep telling yourself that!
I have my own experience. Didn’t want people I transacted with to know how much I had, so I had to use some kind of mixer eventually
Ridiculous example.
This is not an issue for any transaction. When I send my friend money from my bank account, they don’t know how much is on it.
No, but if the US government sends money into your bank account, they can just as easily take it back.
Crypto was designed to be a peer-to-peer method for immutable transactions. Crypto transactions are irreversible, even for governments.
Don’t be stupid. If the government wants to get your crypto, they will.
It’s all a matter of whether they see the effort as being worth it.
you have no idea whatsoever what your talking about
I shouldn’t feed the troll, but there is a teachable moment here.
Crypto transactions that are direct on a Blockchain, by design, are immutable. Once they are validated in a block, and future blocks are validated on top of that, it is impossible for any entity to change that history unless they control a majority of the validation power of that network. Yes, even the NSA can’t do it. It’s math.
Yes, if the government wants your crypto, it will get it. But the only way to do that is to obtain your private keys. It cannot reverse a transaction, nor reverse-engineer your private keys from a transaction. Yes, not even the NSA can do it. It’s math.
Governments do have other tools at their disposal. But those tools must center on obtaining the key. They cannot “hack” it any other way.
It’s fascinating how you assume that anyone who has a critical outlook on crypto has no clue what they are talking about.
Although it is to be expected for crypto promoters (see my OP about crypto being used either for criminal activities or for dump bags on the next mark).
In crypto, it 100% is. All you have to do is look at the sender’s address on the blockchain and you see exactly how much that address has.
We are not talking about your bank account, we are talking about public transactions on public ledgers
That’s the point. You can send people a transaction via a bank account and they won’t know how much you have.
This who privacy thing is a roleplay thing for you.
But the bank will. You prove my point
About damn time. This is a win for those of us who wish to use crypto as actual money and need privacy. Because not everybody should know the balance of your accounts. That’s just stupid. This is why the majority of my dealings with crypto are in Monero.
I’m really curious here: What are you buying and dealing with crypto? I am old and I remember the first discussions about Bitcoin and other cryptos and the privacy topic was discussed back then. People were skeptical of the technology, exactly because every transaction was public and people were even more skeptical after others started to use bitcoin to buy drugs with it online. So why are you using technology that is not really suited for privacy by design and expect privacy?
you did not ask me, but here is another perspective. I’m paying for online services. like twitch, with gift cards. not it doesn’t cost more. why don’t I pay with a bank account? because I don’t trust twitch and their payment provider with my data, like I refuse to add my phone number because that would make my account linkable with other things. I also don’t really trust my bank about what do I pay for, and it’s not like there are better banls out there.
Monero does provide privacy because while it is a public blockchain, the sender is obscured, the receiver is obscured, and the amount is obscured. The IP address of the node is obscured.
To somebody not participating in the transaction, they basically see the equivalent of “? Sent ? Xmr to ?”
You completely skipped the part about what you’re buying and selling. That’s not suspicious at all.
Well, my most recent purchase was toilet paper. And before that was liquid hand soap. I also bought a SenseCap T1000E meshtastic node.
As for what I sell, I have knife blocks, steak knives, baking dishes, etc. https://xmrbazaar.com/user/AuroraGeneralStore/
