[HN Gopher] De-anonymization attacks against the privacy coin XMR
___________________________________________________________________
De-anonymization attacks against the privacy coin XMR
Author : DbigCOX
Score : 144 points
Date : 2025-05-28 14:11 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (monero.forex)
(TXT) w3m dump (monero.forex)
| TarikHassan3 wrote:
| Great article, and I'm glad to see privacy being a focus in a
| cryptocurrency, but I would like to see some other sources that
| aren't also promoting the token.
|
| That said, I do think it's got the brightest future of any coin
| besides BTC for the very reason.
| stuxnet79 wrote:
| > That said, I do think it's got the brightest future of any
| coin besides BTC for the very reason.
|
| Brightest future in terms of what? Traction? Market cap? This
| is what I thought 7 years ago, and I beefed up my XMR position
| as a result. Meanwhile, Bitcoin an objectively inferior
| technology, has 25x since then.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Preface this by saying I am not a fan of any cryptocurrency,
| but I really struggle to understand why Monero has a smaller
| market cap than BTC. It has to be inertia related right? Monero
| just seems like a fundamentally better piece of technology.
|
| Are there scaling issues with Monero, similar/worse than BTC?
| dboreham wrote:
| > better piece of technology
|
| Technology quality is uncorrelated with market cap. This
| would be like saying Frontier Airlines should have a higher
| market cap than United because one uses Linux and the other
| is still on mainframes..
| PokedBear wrote:
| It doesn't need a lot of speculative value in order to be
| useful. It just needs enough value to make the transactions
| meaningful. And that means people are a lot less likely to
| drive up the price via speculation.
| ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote:
| BTC is not about usefulness. The Bitcoin community has
| abandoned all of the original principles that made them. It
| is now just about line goes up and make money.
| MoneroDotForex wrote:
| The Monero community is the one that at least tries to
| emulate to Satoshi's Bitcoin.
| tromp wrote:
| Yes, it scales much worse:
|
| * node resources scale with the size of the UTXO set (unspent
| outputs), which in Monero's case balloons to the entire TXO
| set (all outputs, orders of magnitude larger)
|
| * a typical 2-input 2-output transaction is 4 times larger
|
| * wallets have to track all outputs to choose random decoys
| for transaction inputs
|
| One can argue that this is the price to pay for significantly
| better privacy, but the largest benefits come from having no
| visible amounts or addresses, which can be achieved with
| significantly better scalability than BTC [1].
|
| [1] https://forum.grin.mw/t/scalability-vs-privacy-chart/8114
| coldblues wrote:
| Tari uses Mimblewimble (privacy coin developed by previous
| Monero devs with a focus on privacy), so we're not far from
| being able to benefit from it.
| proxynoproxy wrote:
| Don't forget that opaque blockchains can have invisible
| inflation. Transparent blockchains will always be worth
| more, as the user can verify that inflation has not
| occurred. This applies to grin as much as xmr.
| beeflet wrote:
| In opaque blockchains, the mechanism that prevents
| inflation is the same mechanism that prevents double-
| spending. The user can verify that inflation has not
| occurred by running a monero node.
|
| Everything considered, I don't think that the risk of a
| monero inflation bug is greater than a bitcoin inflation
| bug when you consider the complexity associated with
| scripting.
| tromp wrote:
| Indeed that is one downside of hiding amounts, as shown
| in row "Fully auditable supply" in [1]. Finding out just
| one discrete log (log_G(H)) can collapse the whole system
| with undetectable inflation.
|
| [1] https://phyro.github.io/grinvestigation/why_grin.html
| beeflet wrote:
| >but the largest benefits come from having no visible
| amounts or addresses
|
| MWEB is certainly an improvement over transparent
| transactions (and other methods such as coinjoin, coinswap,
| cashfusion, etc.), and I welcome the litecoin upgrade. I
| agree that decoy-based privacy is weak.
|
| However, I don't believe that the mimblewimble meets the
| standard of privacy needed for most users. It's not the
| visible amounts and addresses, but the links between
| transactions that are the main problem. CTs on their own
| are just a "nice-to-have".
|
| The end goal should be a zcash or firo style of privacy. I
| think you can scale that to a global network with an
| adjustable block size, payment channels, and atomic swaps
| between multiple cryptocurrencies. The problem is that
| zcash and firo have weak tokenomics compared to monero.
| Grin will have a hard time finding an initial niche that
| isn't currently satisfied by monero, and if it does take
| off, its changes could be merged into bitcoin
| (https://www.truthcoin.info/blog/imex/).
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| Mindshare and hype tend to be self reinforcing and create
| their own gravity. BTC has the largest market share because
| it has the largest market share. The moment it got
| derivatives and ETFs listed and traded on major US exchanges
| (e.g. CME futures), it became the clear winner because if you
| are a hedge fund and want to get on the crypto bandwagon,
| it's easily accessible, liquid and doesn't require extra
| paperwork. So you trade that instead of going on some
| unregulated exchange where you might end up as a news
| headline of "Hedge Fund loses money in crypto exchange exit
| scam".
| im3w1l wrote:
| One important factor is that Monero are printed at a constant
| rate, unlike BTC that are printed at an exponentially slowing
| rate.
|
| A constant rate of printing means the supply is uncapped but
| the inflation _rate_ will approach zero.
|
| Monero's choice is arguably better for actual use as a
| currency, as the printing will prevent deflation from lost
| coins. But it makes it less attractive as an investment.
| sfjailbird wrote:
| Isn't BTC privacy achievable these days with coinjoin,
| lightning network etc.? In that case no much reason for
| monero.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It still seems fantastical to me that lightning network is
| presented as "something running on BTC", when it is
| "something running completely separately, instead of BTC".
| Transactions on Lightning network are not transactions on
| BTC, and have none of the guarantees of BTC (and in fact
| have no reliable guarantees of no double spending).
|
| The only way to get BTC-like guarantees of no double-
| spending for Lightning network transactions is to put every
| transaction on the BTC block chain ("close the channel"
| after every transaction). And then, of course, you get back
| all of the problems of BTC (minuscule TPS not enough for a
| small village, 0 privacy, huge energy costs).
| swores wrote:
| If what tsimionescu says about Lightning is wrong, can
| somebody kindly reply to them explaining why rather than
| just downvoting which doesn't help anyone. (Maybe there's
| a reason they were downvoted that isn't their being
| wrong, but I don't see what that would be.)
|
| (And sorry for going against the guidelines and talking
| about downvotes, but I'm really just asking for someone
| to either confirm what they said is right or explain why
| it isn't, I'm not caring about the votes themselves.)
| tromp wrote:
| See https://blog.breez.technology/lightning-btc-
| iou-62e3a712c913 for instance.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| As that post makes clear at the end, if you don't monitor
| the BTC block chain actively (with an app or by paying a
| third party you trust to hopefully do it for you), you
| _can_ be cheated out of your BTC with Lightning.
| lawn wrote:
| > Are there scaling issues with Monero, similar/worse than
| BTC?
|
| While there are scaling issues with BTC it's severely
| worsened by the fact that BTC had refused to scale on-chain.
|
| Monero is technically much harder to scale but since it
| doesn't have the same self-imposed restriction it can handle
| more transactions than Bitcoin can.
| protocolture wrote:
| >It has to be inertia related right?
|
| Consider that a lot of Bitcoin is assumed to be locked up.
|
| If an old satoshi wallet started moving funds, the price
| would probably halve.
| welsandjeremy wrote:
| The recent ByBit hack and subsequent takedown of the exchange
| that was used to convert the USDT and BTC to Monero essentially
| proves that XMR is private from even western governments.
| jijijijij wrote:
| It's evidence at best.
| IceHegel wrote:
| All I know is that if the government is trying to ban it, the
| tech probably works.
| DJHenry56 wrote:
| I agree, that's the biggest proof so far.
| Retric wrote:
| Alternatively, because they're talking about banning it
| without actually banning it, it must be compromised.
| stasmo wrote:
| If the US debt problem leads to capital controls, using Monero
| will become a federal offence overnight. Might as well call it
| money-laundering coin.
| ChrisfromLees wrote:
| Do you think that is a likely scenario under this government?
| ty6853 wrote:
| IDK about this particular administration, but the government
| did place Tornado cash on the sanctions list (now removed).
| Which does operate differently than monero, but from the view
| of a bureaucrat I think similar effect.
| ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote:
| Yes. I would bet on it. Certain Democrats don't like Monero
| because of the criminal activity around it. If the king told
| Republicans to ban it, they would be able to get enough Dems
| on board to avoid any filibuster problems.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Money laundering is that crime where you commit the
| unforgivable offense of not telling the government how you
| earned your wages and interfering with their unconstitutional
| war against drugs, right? The one that makes it so they can
| confiscate the money out of your pocket if you're walking
| around with cash?
|
| Given that, "money laundering coin" just sounds like great
| marketing. I'm already half-sold.
| ty6853 wrote:
| No I think money laundering is when you knowingly mix
| proceeds of crime, obscuring it.
|
| Like if I make drug dealing illegal, then require drug dealer
| to pay taxes. And then take the tax money, and conceal and
| intermix it into the form of the value of the 8th street
| bridge to cross the creek.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >No I think money laundering is when you knowingly mix
| proceeds of crime, obscuring it.
|
| I can exempt myself from the $10k
| deposit/withdrawal/structuring rules at the bank by
| affirming to them that it's not the proceeds of a crime? If
| a cop decides to take the $300 out of my wallet, I just
| state "that's not drug money" and he has to give it back
| then and there?
|
| Keep in mind that I can lose the money without a
| conviction, trial, or even being charged, so I don't think
| this has anything to do with it being the proceeds of a
| crime.
| greenavocado wrote:
| The second capital controls drop, the feds will rebrand
| privacy as "terrorism" faster than you can say "civil
| forfeiture."
| ty6853 wrote:
| Lol they already have. Hawaladars are basically synonymous
| with terrorists now.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > Might as well call it money-laundering coin
|
| The state's concept of money is private and it has just enjoyed
| help in getting data about electronic ledgers for the last 55
| years, by deputizing banks. And for the last 18 it has also
| enjoyed public ledgers of crypto currencies.
|
| But the successful stigma of financial privacy doesn't invent
| its right to having data. This is just a privilege, and private
| money is a reversion to the mean.
| im3w1l wrote:
| I long used to think that private money was a good thing for
| freedom helping the little guy living under state repression,
| but I'm recently starting to worry that it will do the
| opposite, by helping the ultra-rich engage in corrupt
| schemes.
|
| The rumors that people bought Trump-coin for the sole purpose
| of currying favor got to me.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| None of the transactions systems are aiming to solve for
| that. The legacy financial system enables this too. Trump
| coin just happens to be more liquid than expensive dinner
| seats, campaign donations, and less cumbersome than a
| Trust. It is not private.
|
| So its fine to feel disillusioned from that goal because it
| was a misplaced goal.
|
| Monero on the other hand is private by default, and you can
| disclose transactions. It has optional auditability. This
| is a power dynamic I can appreciate.
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| DERO could be an alternative with their full encryption of user
| balances and transactions
| TBaaddi wrote:
| Monero has been used and proven for over a decade.
|
| No one wants to switch to some unknown tech with an unknown
| development team.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| The latter is arguably the more important of the two.
|
| I remember a scare some years back around a Monero developer
| that turned out to be a nothingburger, but it goes to show
| how important it is that the core development team is
| trustworthy, or at least sticks to their beliefs and don't
| capitulate to third-parties (whether public or private in
| nature).
|
| Monero is the one coin I can confidently say I trust the core
| developers on, it's had a strong history of making the right
| decisions where it counts in my opinion (breaking ASICs w/the
| monero-classic situation, making the official client default
| to downloading the entire chain, etc)
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| How much of the Monero development team is actually known?
| Last I checked some of their core team were anonymous but
| that might have changed
| arccy wrote:
| known as in have a proven reputation / track record.
| MoneroDotForex wrote:
| Proven but pseudonymous, like Satoshi was.
|
| Adopted and used first by darkweb pot dealers, like Bitcoin
| was.
|
| Price supressed by government and banking hostility, like
| Bitcoin was.
| beeflet wrote:
| Dero privacy got busted about a year ago due to developer
| incompetence
|
| https://gist.github.com/kayabaNerve/b754e9ed9fa4cc2c607f38a8...
|
| After seeing this and their weak attempts at making a CPU-based
| PoW, I don't have any confidence in dero or its developers.
| FabHK wrote:
| Fun fact: After some $330m of BTC were stolen last month, Monero
| spiked 40%+, presumably because the proceeds of that theft were
| laundered.
|
| https://x.com/zachxbt/status/1916756932763046273
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > presumably because the proceeds of that theft were laundered
|
| this phrase highlights some really common but unnecessary
| misunderstandings
|
| 1) the proceeds swapped to Monero. there is nothing
| "presumably" about that because we can see they were swapped to
| Monero. It isn't a correlation, the instant exchanges show and
| retain records that they were swapped to Monero.
|
| 2) they are unlinking the origin and destination of illicitly
| obtained funds, so that is laundering BUT
|
| 3) its equally as likely that Monero is the destination. there
| is no further swapping out to hide. no further laundering to
| complete. Monero can be used to purchase goods, services, and
| invest with as well. I think this is as misunderstood as people
| actually wanting to hold bitcoin was 10 years ago.
|
| 4) Monero is an old coin, from one of the first crypto cycles,
| one thing that's held people back from using it and other
| mixers is the liquidity. If a large hack of funds used any one
| of them, then most of the funds coming out would be
| probabilistically part of the hack and illicit. But if MANY of
| the hacks used it and other licit sources, this would improve
| the liquidity for everyone and other hacks. Liquidity begets
| liquidity. It was only a matter of time before someone started
| it.
| ofjcihen wrote:
| I wonder how common this kind of swapping is. Its an
| interesting financial vehicle when a valid and legal investment
| strategy is to try to time the laundering of different assets.
| multjoy wrote:
| It's massively common. USDT is the usual coin of choice
| because even though the ledger is public, the convenience and
| relative stability massively outweighs the security risks. In
| the jobs I've seen, the marks will be 'investing' in BTC but
| the criminals will be moving those funds out into USDT the
| moment it hits the bandit wallet.
| hoppp wrote:
| USDT can be frozen so its not the best choice. Its
| definitely a failure of the Tether team if criminals can
| openly use it to launder funds without it getting frozen,
| but they are famously anti regulation.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Wouldn't the interface between BTC and Monero be the weak
| point? Where do they make that swap reliably?
| zargon wrote:
| I can't find a date on this article. And this is exactly the type
| of content that needs a date.
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| 2024-12-23 through 2024-12-30, if the HTML metadata is to be
| believed. It's always a pain when article-oriented websites try
| to hide this sort of thing.
| madars wrote:
| This reads like standard AI slop. A giveaway is structured
| Attempt/Methodology/Efficacy pattern repeated all the way
| through the article, while top level categories are
| overlapping. (ZeroGPT: "Your Text is Likely generated by
| AI/GPT".)
| MoneroDotForex wrote:
| Thank you for the input. As the linked news and opinion blog's
| editor I saw a spike in traffic from this HN thread, and I'm
| happy to answer any question anyone here may have about it. I
| have added the date and author's name to this article and will
| make that the standard.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > Conclusion: Monero's Privacy Remains Resilient
|
| tl;dr every method from the private sector and the state has
| resulted in nothing, or an upgrade to the Monero network
|
| for anyone interested in using Monero, consider using Feather
| Wallet. This wallet implements some better best practices than
| the community's wallet.
|
| Feather Wallet does initial syncing over clearnet for speed, and
| then connects to TOR and then only connects to other nodes hosted
| over Onion network. So you aren't even needing to connect to exit
| nodes.
|
| It also hides the root address which starts with 4, and only
| shows you subaddresses that starts with 8. I always felt it was
| important that nobody ever could distinguish between a root
| address and subaddress.
|
| It ensures you don't re-use addresses, which is an _ancient_ and
| still relevant best practice that most cryptocurrencies and
| wallet have avoided for user experience. Feather Wallet makes it
| easy though.
|
| Timing attacks are still relevant. For anyone aiming to use
| Monero as merely a conduit, wait 1 week or 2 before moving funds
| out, and move them out in different denominations than you put
| in. (In comparison, if you put $50,000 of XMR in, and a couple
| ours later moved $50,000 of XMR out in one transaction, this
| could realistically deanonymize you.)
|
| The more people using Monero for benign but equally as private
| purposes, the more it improves the utility of Monero for
| everyone.
| ianmiers wrote:
| This is by no means a comprehensive analysis. This analysis
| misses the most major limitation with Monero's decoy based
| approach to transaction obfuscation: Eve-Alice-Eve attacks (also
| known as ABA attacks). It also misses an analysis of the possible
| insecurity of churning and a significant history of randomness
| implementation errors and flooding attacks specific to Monero.
| The exact consequences of some of these attacks remain an open
| question, but worthy of mention.
|
| A simple and surprising limitation of Monero and any other decoy-
| based approach is that if you repeatedly withdraw money from one
| exchange and then deposit it to another, those transactions are
| not private (edit: even if we ignore payment value). This is a
| form of Eve-Alice-Eve attack.
|
| Monero uses decoy transactions to obscure the transaction history
| on-chain, but it does not remove the history. There's a reason
| every other major privacy protocol (Zcash, Tornado Cash, Railgun,
| Aleo, Penumbra, etc.) does not use Monero's decoy-based approach,
| and even the Monero developers are moving to the standard zero-
| knowledge proof over an accumulator (IIRC a merkle tree like
| everyone else) based approach that they call Full Chain Anonymity
| Proofs.
|
| As a meta-comment, this is one of a genre of Monero "privacy"
| analysis documents that are circulated as a way to claim there
| are no known actively used exploits. This is little better than
| the classic "my scheme is secure; here's a bounty for anyone who
| breaks it" form of cryptographic analysis we often see with
| flawed encryption schemes. Breaks will not always be public.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Correct, I don't find these to be limitations for any user of
| Monero, its just a way not to use it.
|
| > repeatedly withdraw money from one exchange and then deposit
| it to another
|
| right, don't do that. Withdraw to your wallet. Wait several
| days. Transfer elsewhere in different denominations.
|
| Problem solved for everything you wrote, and its been nearly
| the same for the entire lifespan of Monero, 11 years now.
|
| > Breaks will not always be public.
|
| There are court cases that give the confidence necessary. It is
| also something to stay abreast of. Always just ask yourself who
| the transaction is intended to be hidden from.
| beeflet wrote:
| >right, don't do that. Withdraw to your wallet. Wait several
| days. Transfer elsewhere in different denominations.
|
| Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. The EAE attacks
| only require that the end destination is colluding with the
| start destination.
|
| Like everything with decoys, privacy is stochastic. So I
| wouldn't go around making absolute claims about the privacy
| as many proponents of monero like to do. The developers
| advise against making these sorts of claims. Monero makes
| privacy a lot easier, but it's not perfect.
|
| >There are court cases that give the confidence necessary. It
| is also something to stay abreast of. Always just ask
| yourself who the transaction is intended to be hidden from.
|
| In the free world, we have the concept of innocent-until-
| proven-guilty and evidence-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt. Decoy-
| based approaches give you plausible deniability, but this
| often isn't enough for more domains where a lower standard of
| proof is needed.
|
| Fortunately, all this and more will be fixed in FCMP++
| upgrade.
| coldblues wrote:
| https://www.getmonero.org/2024/04/27/fcmps.html
|
| After this is implemented, it will really strengthen its privacy.
| It will take a few years of development, iteration and planning.
| Move slow and... don't break things?
| ddtaylor wrote:
| I was interested to see some AI providers support crypto as their
| payment. I think we are entering a future where AI regulation
| puts more people on the darknet.
| jijijijij wrote:
| Very cyberpunk and all, but how are AI regulations driving
| people to the darknet? You think those highly centralized
| billion dollar compute operations will secretly offer hidden
| services so people can ... what? Generate fucked up shit
| without restrictions? Lol, you could probably do traffic
| analysis with thermal imaging from a satellite.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| > Generate fucked up shit without restrictions? No, that
| already exists and is not relevant IMO. My comment has
| nothing to do with what kind of content you generate.
|
| The USA in specific has had a similar problem before with
| encryption being classified as a munition making very
| problematic to import or export encryption. That's actually
| pretty well documented in various pieces of Java code from
| Sun if you're curious, because different algorithms could not
| be part of the JRE/JDK that was distributed publicly.
|
| Your mention of "highly centralized billion dollar compute
| operations" is actually related to the training of the models
| not the inference. Doing inference for many of these models
| is readily available at modest consumer hardware
| availability. There are many different ways to break up
| models (MoE) etc. The notion that you need a large super
| computer to do inference is unfounded.
|
| Also, as a reminder, cryptocurrency mining has already proven
| this to be a thing. Some stay above ground, some go to
| geopolitical areas for shelter and some stay underground
| entirely.
|
| For your entertainment I will also include a more simplified
| play-by-play of how this can play out in the near future:
|
| 1. OpenAI or some other USA based AI company continues to get
| outplayed by foreign models (Qwen, Deepseek)
|
| 2. Company cries to government
|
| 3. Government does a similar munitions or tariff to what we
| saw with encryption. Requires at the least anyone wanting to
| use AI gets one from the good boy list etc.
|
| Now you either (a) use only AI from the good boy list and get
| outplayed in the global marketplace where our main export is
| global technology or (b) start acting like a Chinese citizen
| and using a VPN to access AI services not available only on
| the approved good boy list.
|
| I will stop here because the rest is already very well
| documented with how this progresses and you get the same
| result as the darknet marketplaces (DNM). DNS censorship for
| AI services not on the good boy list. DNS censorship and
| legal pressure for VPNs that allow non-good-boy-list
| services, etc.
|
| Why wouldn't someone change a few .com endpoints to .onion
| and keep it moving while you send some coin to a wallet?
| hoppp wrote:
| There is no point in hosting Ai endpoint on a .onion
| domain. The point of Tor is privacy so if you want private
| Ai prompts just run a local model.
|
| The philosophy behind Tor is maximum privacy, the most
| private way to do AI is locally.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| There is a large market for people who need/use AI
| inference that have no interest in maintaining any of the
| infrastructure associated with it.
| asdff wrote:
| I thought Tor was already a honeypot?
| jijijijij wrote:
| Good times, when you were able to restrict information
| export through airport security... Don't forget Paypal and
| Wikileaks! Oh my bad, that was Bitcoin talk. That's not a
| currency anymore, but an asset. Like gold.
|
| > Doing inference for many of these models is readily
| available at modest consumer hardware availability.
|
| Then why exactly do I need a darknet service for that,
| instead of running it locally?
|
| > Now you either (a) use only AI from the good boy list and
| get outplayed in the global marketplace where our main
| export is global technology or (b) start acting like a
| Chinese citizen and using a VPN to access AI services not
| available only on the approved good boy list.
|
| Yeah, businesses are totally gonna buy tons of crypto to
| pay for outlawed services from China to stay competitive.
| Instead of running models locally as you suggested above.
| And of course the government will just fold in face of this
| crypto enabled libertarian hell.. I mean utopia. Can't beat
| math, amirite? There will be no more taxes, everyone will
| be free, armed and get as much fentanyl as they want, and
| we will just build a Dyson sphere around the sun to power
| this awesome new financial behemoth. It will be so worth
| it.
|
| Better invest now!
| ddtaylor wrote:
| > Good times, when you were able to restrict information
| export through airport security... Don't forget Paypal
| and Wikileaks! Oh my bad, that was Bitcoin talk. That's
| not a currency anymore, but an asset. Like gold.
|
| All of that is irrelevant to the context at hand. How
| good, trade-worthy, or the value of a cryptocurrency is
| not directly tied to the amount of computation work done
| to mine the coin. All different combinations exist.
|
| > Then why exactly do I need a darknet service for that,
| instead of running it locally?
|
| For the same reason most people are completely capable of
| running a modest PostgreSQL server with Nginx or a few
| docker containers on their hardware, yet they pay for the
| service of other people doing it. The same is true for
| backup, storage, and a plethora of other services they
| gladly fork over a few dollars for.
|
| It being over the darknet is not a techncial requirement,
| it's an economic / market requirement.
|
| > Yeah, businesses are totally gonna buy tons of crypto
| to pay for outlawed services from China to stay
| competitive
|
| They already gladly look the other way and do shady
| things to procure data.
|
| > Instead of running models locally as you suggested
| above.
|
| Weird, when they tried to do that the DNS resolution for
| the domain name failed. Guess they'll fire up their VPN
| to start grabbing the model, etc. Maybe just by AICoin
| and move on?
|
| > And of course the government will just fold in face of
| this crypto enabled libertarian hell.
|
| For about 15 years you have been able to go into a .onion
| and grab whatever you what on a DNM. Many have been taken
| down. You can currently go on a .onion domain and grab
| whatever you want.
|
| > I mean utopia. Can't beat math, amirite?
|
| They seem able to catch a DNM every once in a while, but
| there are always a dozen or so viable and active
| alternatives.
|
| > There will be no more taxes, everyone will be free,
| armed and get as much fentanyl as they want
|
| I'm fairly certain the United States is getting as much
| fentanyl as it wants already. You can walk to some place
| in any city and get it in pill form quickly and cheaply.
| How much involvement the DNMs have in that right now I
| don't know. In the past some DNMs have policed that and
| some provided "quality testing" to verify the lack of
| presence of fentanyl in other substances.
| phusion wrote:
| Clickbait, wonderful.
| phusion wrote:
| Clickbaity.
| password4321 wrote:
| I don't have a link but I vaguely recall some criminal being
| tracked down because they cashed out the exact same value of
| Monero they received for their crime in a single transaction. I
| believe this falls under item 1 in the article but the reference
| link does not even discuss Monero.
|
| I am interested in any references to tracking Monero in criminal
| court cases. So far it seems to be one of the most effective ways
| to "keep getting away with it".
| woah wrote:
| Timing and amount correlation is something that not even the
| most sophisticated cryptography can stop.
| john_alan wrote:
| I work in applied cryptography and XMR is my preferred
| cryptocurrency.
| woah wrote:
| Why not Zcash?
| linschn wrote:
| Not the OP, but Zcash's privacy feztures are optional and
| seldom used in practice, whereas monero is secure by default.
| It helps with blending in the crowd.
| password4321 wrote:
| What is the least amount of effort to setup a Monero address like
| a tip jar, deferring transfers and if necessary even checking the
| balance until setting up something more full-blown later?
| beeflet wrote:
| Check out feather wallet (https://featherwallet.org/) on
| desktop or cake wallet (https://cakewallet.com/) on mobile.
|
| Once you create a wallet and write down the seed phrase,
| generate a "view key". Creating a new wallet from this "view
| key" allows you to see incoming transactions to your addresses,
| but not spend them. So you don't need as much security for
| "view-only" wallets.
|
| You can generate an address from either wallet. It's a long
| string of numbers and letters that begins with an "8", under
| "Receive".
| storus wrote:
| Given EU is going to ban all privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies
| in 2027, what are the options for EU citizens?
| protocolture wrote:
| Do it anyway
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