[Cryptography] Bitcoin theft and the future of cryptocurrencies

[Howard Chu]

grarpamp wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 24, 2017 at 4:36 AM, James A. Donald <jamesd at echeque.com> wrote:
>> On 12/20/2017 3:27 PM, grarpamp wrote:
>>>
>>> Bitcoin is nowhere near private or anonymous.
>>> Genuine cryptographic privacy needed for that, such as found in
>>> the Zerocash (Zcash) family of coins,
>>
>>
>> We already are facing big trouble over scaling.  Zerocash is too damned
>> slow.
> 
> https://z.cash/ shows near term updates coming that significantly
> raise performance.

Lots of promises, very little delivery thus far. Their github issue tracker 
looks like a disaster area.

>> I suggest that rather we should employ the coinjoin algorithm.
> 
> https://reddit.com/r/joinmarket
> 
> There are surely other mix implementations you could list,
> including mix coins such as Monero, or simple swap services
> such as helix / fogcore.
> 
>> Pretty soon, the state is going to declare some bitcoins to be "blood bitcoins".
> 
> Already happens, search: chainanalysis
> 
>> Coinjoin, like zerocash, makes
>> equality of bitcoins a fact of mathematics, rather than a policy of humans.

Zerocash does no such thing.
https://btcmanager.com/linkability-zcash-transactions-study-precipitates-debate-opt-privacy/

And coinjoin was already demonstrably broken over a year ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/5cb74u/blockchain_analysis_and_antimoney_laundering/

(Unfortunately the original text of the above post has been deleted. I've been 
looking for an archived copy but haven't found one yet. Suffice to say, it 
showed that as of 2016 law enforcement already had off-the-shelf software 
capable of deanonymizing coinjoin'd transactions.)
> 
> Which is why all of swap / mix / privacy methods may be
> useful in certain use cases. However as before in the Zcash
> thread, in general, a well studied reviewed and used true cryptoprivacy
> coin may seem to be most and long term resistant to analysis,
> usage error, liquidity / anonymity set, unlike swaps / mixes.


-- 
   -- Howard Chu
   CTO, Symas Corp.           http://www.symas.com
   Director, Highland Sun     http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
   Chief Architect, OpenLDAP  http://www.openldap.org/project/