this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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Maybe you haven't had your funds taken into custody yet. And by your funds, I mean the wallet that might host all the XMR for that network. Such is the case currently for polygon and USDT. It's called crypto custody and I see no reason yet why XMR (another ERC20 token) would be immune.
https://www.coindesk.com/learn/what-is-crypto-custody/
Get your head out of your ass.
Assuming that you're not joking... what you're wondering is actually very important: the difference between so-called custodial wallets (aka hosted wallets, web wallets) and non-custodial wallets (aka unhosted wallets, self-hosted wallets). I think at least a few people have their Monero in so-called custodial wallets with CEX, and they do have that risk you're talking about.
Mathematically, a "wallet" is just a secret key. It's a random-looking big number (better known as seed words). If you're familiar with PGP or SSH, it should be obvious for you that you don't share your secret key (private key) with anyone else. You'll generate your key pair locally, and only share your public key. If you do that, no one but only you can control your key. It's like a password. The same is true about cryptocurrencies. You're not supposed to share your secret key (your "wallet"), be it Bitcoin or Monero. There may be some exceptions, but normally it's cryptographically absurd to let someone else "host" your secret key while you don't have "your" own key. In such a situation, "your" wallet is not even yours to begin with.
On the other hand, if you have your own secret key (as you should), then it's computationally secure, meaning it's believed to be hard to "crack" your wallet.
Being computationally secure does not mean it's absolutely secure. In real world, there are non-mathematical attacks too (e.g. physical, political, legal). So you're right. Anything is not perfectly secure. But if you have your own key and no one else even knows that you have some Monero (i.e. no-KYC), then you see it's not easy for anyone to steal or freeze your Monero. This comment has nothing to do with whether or not I support AllArk.
I am not joking nor am I talkiny about custodial wallets. Rather, my wallet was non custodial (rainbow wallet). My funds were on polygon, in a pool on quickswap. Suddenly the pool was closed and all USDT on polygon was gone. This happened a few months ago and I doubt I will ever see my money again. A stablecoin custodian froze the funds.. all USDT on polygon, and lots more on other networks. Again... my wallet was non custodian but the wallet that held all funds for USDT on polygon (not my wallet obviously) was frozen.
"Hmm, I have a non custodial wallet, you see, but my crypto was not on it, and I lost my crypto.
This means non custodial wallets don’t work as they can’t secure coins that aren’t on it! Bad wallets bad crypto!"
Jokes aside, how can you compare another coin with Monero and say they are the same shit? There’s no lightning network or pool or any shit I don’t know that holds your coin with Monero, you either have it and fully own it on your non custodial wallet, or you don’t.
So you're telling me you only exchange XMR on the monero blockchain and don't move it to other networks to invest? Excuse my lack of knowledge in L2, L3 networks but it seems to me that if you are just keeping your funds on the monero blockchain then you're not using your funds, you're just holding. If you're just moving from fiat to xmr on monero, what good are your funds?
Now if you move some of your XMR to ethereum or polygon or any off-chain network, you can use your funds but your funds are as secure as any other ERC20 token, they don’t get some magical protection because they are XMR. If they are off chain, then there is a smart contract representing your funds off-chain and those funds can be frozen.
Well, here is your problem. Don’t move your coins off chain.
You see, people here use Monero as a currency and not mainly for exchanging and betting on what the price will be.
Coins are for hodling. Currency is for using.
Do any places accept monero on the monero chain? I have yet to see any. Can you do anything besides exchange for fiat (which is actual currency)? So far I am seeing that as a "no" which makes XMR about as beneficial as a savings accout, but with more volatility.
Mullvad is a great exemple, there is also njal.la hosting, and there was a website with all sites that accepted Monero that was around.
Or, you know, all the hidden and dark net markets use BTC and XMR
Occasional payment between individuals, or payment through websites that have crypto payment processors. I bought something on instant gaming with LTC for example.
Ok so let's recap here..
XMR is a currency with its own blockchain, like BTC, polygon, ETH, Cosmos, BNB, etc.
"XMR is superior to BTC and ETH" because as best I can tell it has its own blockchain, like BTC and ETH.
"XMR is better than BTC and ETH" because you can use monero on a handful of places and use BTC and ETH in many more places.
Yeah.. I must be an idiot here because I am still not understanding. XMR looks like BTC, just a lot less popular and worth less money.
So.. why would anyone want to be paid directly in XMR? This is the question that started my comments and I don't see a good answer.
What i see is that if you like XMR, get XMR. If you like BTC get BTC. If you want to avoid getting any crypto stolen, keep your funds in your wallet and don't move them to another network. Very cool. Good talk.
I never said that XMR was superior, it's down to personal preference, and imo they can't be compared as they have different use cases.
Privacy, anonymity and fungibility. One can easily trace which wallet currently holds a coin for BTC and ETH, and in case of governments or police forces, they can get the identity of a person behind a wallet if they used a CEX at least once.
This is not the case with XMR: each time a transfer/transaction is made, you multiply by 16 the number of possible routes it could have went. A single payment is enough to obfuscate the route (and certitudes); doing more (ex: sending to yourself 'churning') will multiply this number by 16 again, again, again...
16, 256, 4096, 65536, 1048576
By doing 5 transactions, you've set the number of possibilities to over a million. Congrats, your coin is now untracable.
Please note that churning is controversial among the Monero community as it increases the blockchain's size and people claim it could hurt your privacy, even though it clearly can't if you're churning your own single coin, you can only increase possibilities. At the end of the day, churning isn't for everyone, but it can be useful when you want to hide the origin of the coin or mask where it went. I churn once in a while.
BTC is known to have been a source of trouble when the coin you can get in swaps or exchanges can have a background of being stolen, in which case exchanges can freeze your account, ask you questions and annoy you, even though you weren't linked to the actual problem.
That’s L1 networks for you.
Security through obsfucation is not security. You’re describing a situation where an app (one that either hasn’t been written yet or is written but you don’t know about yet) can reverse the transactions you’ve done. Sure, it’s not as simple as going on etherscan and looking at a wallet, I guess.. but that’s not nearly the same.
Blockchain is a ledger. A ledger is a record of transactions. In order for the network to work, that ledger has to be verified. If the network can verify who has what in what wallet and where the money went, so can a purpose-built application or script.
I’m going to guess that’s because it probably isn’t security and comes at the cost of greatly increasing the size of the ledger, all so a script has to take a few more CPU cycles to get the information.
Security through obsfucation isn’t security but it does make you feel more secure because it’s harder for you to understand. When’s the last time you calculated a crypto transaction by hand? There’s a reason we let computers do this work.
Which network…? Because it sounds like you’re just describing L2/L3 networks in general. That was kind of my whole point with this.. Once you go to L2/L3, it doesn’t really matter if you have BTC or XMR or ETH, because as you put it yourself “the coin you can get in swpaps or exchanges can have a background of being stolen”. I don’t know if that’s what happened in my case, I just know one day I woke up and all USDT (a fairly well known coin) on Polygon was gone. My point is, that could’ve been XMR and it would have likely happened the same way.
My larger point is.. what good is money if you aren’t going to use it? Is it the L1 XMR network which earns you money or the DeFi options on L2/L3? If you’re just looking to HODL, then pick a coin on any L1 network, and don’t leave that network, and then I guess convert back to fiat some day or find a niche retailer. Otherwise when you go to L2 / L3 or do any of the “dAPPs” your precious XMR may be taken.
I use Monero as a currency, not for trading and betting. You’re not doing the same? Great for you, but don’t say it can’t be used like that.
Cryptocurrencies were first made as currencies, as their name states.
I’ve never talked about security, idk what you’re talking about. Btw if you can’t do simple statistics without using a computer, then there’s your problem.
Btw no specific apps are needed to trace BTC transactions, just a basic blockchain explorer and manual searching, it’s really easy.
But yea nah, there are definitely apps out there that do that, and I could make one myself. There’s no math involved or any hard things. It’s just like figuring out where money was transferred to (ex: bank account), but all transfers are public.
There’s no obfuscation that can be reversed or whatever you’re calling it, just decoy transactions which are indistinguishable from outside. Good luck finding which one of those 16 transactions attached was the real one spent, and which one of those 16 transactions before the real spend was the right one, and so on…
I don’t use XMR, period. But that’s not the point here. The point is you’re just describing L1 networks, not anything that’s special about XMR.
Can you pay your rent with XMR? No. Can you pay for a meal down the street with XMR? No. Can you buy some physical item that you need for every day life with XMR? No. Can you pay your rent with XMR? No. Can you buy virtual goods with XMR? Yeah, probably. Can you buy anything you want with an app/service/offramp that converts your XMR to fiat and pays the vendor in fiat? Yeah, most likely, but then you’re using XMR as more of a savings account with variable interest.
Can I walk over to a BTC atm and purchase bitcoin in cash? Yes! Can I buy virtual goods with BTC? Yes! Can I pay for some physical goods with BTC? Yeah, maybe kinda, but also maybe not due to US laws and retailers wanting to comply with US tax code. Under the table? Sure, but that’s true of any crytpo or really anything. Find a cool rock? Trade it for drugs! Idk.
Not the most fair comparison but my point is that XMR and BTC function the same as far as it goes being a “currency”. The only functional difference between the two is that one has more adoption, which is just a product of popularity and time. This may change for XMR. may change.
And they still are? This a weird angle. I think you may be looking at a very narrow version of currency. I’m calling currency anything that can be traded for goods and services, ideally something that’s more useful than just trading it for more currency of a different type (convert to fiat).
But then, trading you are doing, are you not? Each time you buy XMR, you buy it in fiat, which is a trade. You then trade it back to fiat, which is another trade. The cryptocurrency is volitile, so timing it is important and now we’re betting.
No, you’ve talked about hiding your transactions, which .. is security. Security in your peice of mind that your transactions are private. Security by way of obsfucation, which isn’t security as I’ve explained.
You mean decoy transactions which are meant to… obsfucate the true transactions? That’s obsfuscation.
Look, I’m not a cop but I write code. An investigation would start with a real transaction that was flagged, likely via some automated means. If I were tasked with hunting this down, I would just need to write a script to do so. You’re honestly making me want to give this a try, so if you feel you can point me in the direction of a good example that I could use as a challenge, let me know. No promises for any result any time soon but it would be fun to try to understand. My gut tells me that it’s not only possible, but very easy to do.
Granted, as a human with only web based tools, it’s near impossible, I understand what you are saying. But, some humans code…
You "buy" fiat by trading your time (working). You see, if you use this angle, everything can be considered a currency or can be deemed as not a currency because you trade something else to get it.
I don’t get why you’re so obsessed with the term "security". No, privacy and anonymity isn’t linked to the security aspect of XMR transactions. It just feels like you’re being dishonest about it.
I code too, I know what I’m talking about, it isn’t for anything that even the US government is looking to identify XMR transactions
Listen, I told you the thing that made XMR a good choice for currency usage: it’s the privacy aspect. You don’t want it? Good, XMR isn’t for you then. There are plenty of good alternatives!
Stablecoins can be controversial but are easy to use and you don’t really have to think. 1 USDT is 1 USD.
BTC is really known and accepted pretty much everywhere crypto is accepted, but has high fees and slow blockchain inclusion.
ETH is great for… making shitcoins I guess? And it’s nice that they changed to a more eco-friendly proof system.
LTC is BTC but with lower fees and fast blockchain inclusion, but it is less known.
I’m not trying to kill other cryptos, but I don’t get why you’re shit talking about XMR when you obviously don’t know the coin, and act like I said it was the best crypto in the world when I didn’t (although it’s my preferred one), and act like I said it was more secure and other nice things that I’ve just never said, or didn’t word this way.
privacy is a form of security my guy.
So google isn’t secure? Yea nah. You use security to protect your privacy, but privacy doesn’t mean security in itself.
I hardly disagree on that.
then why are you churning bro? if you don’t want privacy what is the point of even trying to fake privacy by obsfucation?
When did I say I didn’t want privacy? The systems in place to make decoys blend in transactions are perfectly secure and do indeed use cryptography.
They are in themselves secure as they work and can’t be worked around, but they do not make transactions more secure.
But come on, you must be doing this on purpose now.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15334570
Outdated + only applies to people who churn in a bad way. I know what I’m doing buddy.
I also don’t think XMR transactions had a minimum output count set to 2 before, which was a pretty big giveaway of churning being used.
But even when not churning, you don’t really expose yourself to any risk. Sure you could distinguish yourself from the rest of the blockchain, but it doesn’t do anything to the external eye as they still don’t know on which account the coin currently is.
Bro, you are literally giving tips on how to money launder, and poor tips at that.
You seem to want to be caught by police, so you do you bro.
That’s not money laundering but okay
If you have no interest in privacy, then we can stop talking now, as Monero will be of no use to you.
I take it you pay taxes on your monero, then?
Actually, yes I do lol
(Never admit you don’t, governments check your social media posts for admission of guilt)
But surely you pay taxes on your crypto incomes too :)
buddy, crypto uses cryptography. you aren’t putting extra crypto on top of that. give me a break. how would the network handle your transactions?!
decoys are obsfucation and obsfucation isn’t security. I am not the first person to say this; go read krebs on security. I got that memo years ago.
you are increasing your privacy in one very small and tiny way: you are making it harder for newbs to easily follow your transactions. are you concerned about newbs discovering your transactions or literally anyone with any sort of programming background.
keep in mind that the cryptography you are dealing with here has to do with accessing your funds (moving or receiving) via your wallet, that’s what crypto does. by making decoy transactions, you are actually painting a big target on your back, sort of the opposite of privacy. you’re associating your transactions with decoy transactions, which means it is more likely to get noticed.
seriously kid, go read up on how a linked list works, or a tree. it doesn’t matter what you do to try to obsfucate your transactions; if they worked on the chain, they are very much traceable.
but do give me a whitepaper or example transaction to look into. I could use a laugh. and maybe consider stopping painting a target on your back but hey.. you do you man.
wow, such noob
Yeah I am an idiot.
XMR is not some crap ERC20 token. It is actually what you think BTC is.
Yet not immune to freezes I see.
Unlike ETH, XMR is unstoppable.