That's exactly how people get caught.
- https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.05332
- https://darkwebinformer.com/chainalysis-successful-deanonymi...
-https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266628172...
Lightning is a token representing bitcoin, same as USDT representing USD.
It is NOT bitcoin, never was.
No, it is NOT. It is not even blockchain based. Not providing anything, as you can easily google all of this yourself.
#1: "between 2019 and 2023"
#2: the author wrote "This attack is not realistic. ... This is why everyone needs to run their own node"
#3: "digital forensic approach can still reveal sensitive information by examining off-chain artifacts such as memory and wallet files"
So...
#1 seems to have been mitigated.
#2 seems to not be an issue if you run your own node.
#3 seems to not be an issue if you don't let others do forensic analysis on your own computer (not the Blockchain).
It's good that people do this research to help make Monero better. I am not criticizing the people that published what OP linked to. But of course OP's post is like saying "What makes you think paint is safe? Here's a post about how paint used to include lead."
Do you think they published their current state of the art?
Trumps "Bitcoin payment" portrayed extensively by the media was done in the Lightning network.
Bitcoin's fungibility is limited by its incredibly slow transaction speed. (This is true of all cryptocurrencies AFAIK -- even the fastest ones that are only capable of 100K TPS at best.)
Bitcoin's transaction rate is artificially limited.
I think if a true crypto economy does emerge anywhere it's likely to be Nigeria, Lebanon etc - places with a significant population of educated entrepreneurial people but where the state is run abysmally and you can't rely on those institutions anyway
The alternative to governments monopoly on violence for enforcement, no matter if you exchange in monero or giant stone discs, is broad use of vigilante violence.
So while crypto seems like an interesting technology for moving money around, it seems like it doesn’t solve for the point of exchange problem and thus crypto that focuses on making that difficult for government mediation are bound to be only useful for illegal activities.
What you actually have is the opposite problem (in a sense) - the transaction is irreversible, the seller will receive payment and keep it even if they shouldn't (i.e fraud). So there is more risk for the buyer than in a fiat system where transactions can be reversed by legal processes
You can dial the risk in either direction with any payment scheme (20% down balance due on delivery etc) but you can’t eliminate it.
A good example is how disputes work on P2P crypto exchanges like bisq - you have a crypto contract of some kind that holds funds in escrow, but ultimately disputes are resolved by a team of actual humans who look at the facts and make a decision, not everything can be "code is law"
It comes from stability. Predictability.
Courts and law enforcement certainly provide these things, but they are not required. The inherent design of blockchains makes them trustworthy (an oversimplified statement), which is even better.
The transactions aren’t atomic so someone is taking on counterparty risk. One of governments prime responsibilities is dealing with that risk, no matter the currency in question.
That's the wrong answer. The existence of tokens predates the existence of government. It's the next step after barter. The correct answer is reputation. A vendor who cheats his customers builds up a bad reputation, and the only way he can keep doing it is by changing customer bases, for example by moving to a different town. Think of the traveling snake oil salesman who moves on once people realize his remedies don't work.
You use monero not to exchange for fiat but, for example, oil.
You can have a Visa-like network that supports chargebacks, but design it in a way that the dispute arbitrators cannot seize your money. If you report a transaction, they can either decide to release the money to the merchant or return it back to you, but the contract logic prevents them from doing anything else with that money. If both sides agree that the transaction has successfully taken place, it can be released automatically, despite the arbitrators' wishes.
This is something you can't do in trad fi, so we use laws and legal contracts as "hacks" to make it somewhat possible.
Society's answer to that is violence. More specifically, the threat of violence. If people don't do what's expected of them, at some point people with guns will show up and the violence will commence, and it will continue until the desired order is restored.
Stuff like laws and courts are just extra steps towards that violence. No matter the context, the threat of violence looms eternal and that's what makes people behave reasonably.
On the example you give, large majority of people just pay and accept payments using monero natively. When you are talking about large amount of money, then it is worth a visit to places like El Salvador where you have a bank account with BTC. The conversion tends to take place in exchanges outside 1st world supervision and from El Salvador you can convert BTC to other currencies according to the exchange values or just use it with a credit card.
If you want to convert smaller amounts in Europe without tracing, mostly a matter of settling the transactions with small providers albeit you should be prepared to pay a fee between 20% to 30% as commission for the service.
Monero has since many years been the only option worthy of truly being called a cryptocurrency. Doesn't even make sense to use anything where anyone can see all the value in your private wallet and where you are spending them.
The rest should really be designated as "virtual coins" or just call them "casino coins" because that is their use case.
You might be confusing monero with all the virtual "coins" out there.
The "coin" you mention is not private by default, therefore "weaker".
The weakness in monero's cryptography is dependence on ring signatures, which will be improved with the FCMP++ upgrade. In other words, it is an issue of sender privacy. Stealth addresses protect recipient privacy.
jqpabc123•2mo ago
danlugo92•2mo ago
fruitworks•2mo ago
I think the bigger obstacle to most people is just the idea that cryptocurrency is difficult, and the idea that buisnesses are trustworthy by default.