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What are truly anonymous cryptocurrencies? Dash, monero zcash Bitcoin ethereum?

25 points by noloblo ↗ HN
Which crypto is truly anonymous? Which of the following crypto currencies provide true anonymity?

Dash Monero Anoncoin ShadowCash ZeroCash Other (please specify by replying)

What makes a crypto not anonymous as they are all just merely public keys/numbers?

14 comments

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gonmf
At some point you will need to convert fiat into cryptocurrency and vice-versa, and the companies that provide that service legally will require your identification.
throughnothing
Why? You can buy just about anything you want with any cryptocurrency you have through Purse.io + Amazon.
45h34jh53k4j
Sure, if your on the train. What do we tell those that are yet to purchase coin, and wish to anonymously?

Coinbase now requires 'selfies'!

Loony2
And you give up your anonymity as soon as you do.
influx
There are services like https://localbitcoins.com/ which I presume could be utilized to avoid identification.
sharemywin
not really you deposit the money in a bank. Not sure how long they keep video for but I imagine a while.
briceb8e
zcash, specifically when using the z-addr and not the t-addr sending method, can provide guaranteed anonymity. Others generally provide anonymity through obfuscation, which isn't "ideal".

Not to say zcash is perfect and alternatives are imperfect. There are pros and cons to each.

throughnothing
Bitcoin and Ethereum are not anonymous, every transaction amount, source address, and destination address can be seen by anyone.

Dash provides some anonymity features, but are generally opt-in (i.e there are certain transaction types which provide more anonymity, but they are not required). Even with "anonymous" transactions on Dash, I believe only the sender/receiver can be somewhat masked, but the amounts are not masked entirely.

Monero provides pretty anonymous transactions which have gotten better with it's recent introduction of Ring Confidential Transactions, which makes it so that new transactions have (by default, and to be enforced later this year for all Transactions) hidden amounts, sender, and receiver.

ZCash is arguably the most anynomous, as it has hidden amounts, sender, and receiver from the ground up, but comes with a bit more risk since it is essentially based on entirely new, and as yet unproven, crypto (zkSnarks). It is an exciting promise for the future, but it also required a "trusted" setup of a random seed which, if compromised by any party, could enable infinite, undetectable inflation of the ZCash currency.

In short, there is no perfect anonymity, everything is a scale and a spectrum of security, and what type of guarantees you can get around the anonymity properties you want.

bduerst
ZCash is fairly anonymous but it's also controlled by a privately owned organization in the U.S. Theoretically, they can be compelled to only let one transaction through on a block, which can be used to deanonymize the owner of the account on the other side.

ZCash also personally takes a cut of the mining, if I remember correctly, but that's not part of the anonymity.

Ar-Curunir
ZCash is the only one among these currencies that provides strong anonymity.

For an explanation of why Bitcoin is not anonymous, take a look at the recent Keybase post on adopting ZCash:

https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-and-zcash

shpx
what about Zerocoin?
shpx
This question was confused.

"Zerocash, the protocol that succeeded Zerocoin, is being developed into a full-fledged digital currency, Zcash."

http://zerocoin.org/

kilimchoi
Zcash, Monero, Dash, Komodo

It's anonymous when destination address & the amount sent are not seen by anyone. Zcash, Monero are anonymous by default.

However for Dash, you can specify whether your transaction is private or public.

Komodo is a forked version of Zcash. And Zcash implements zero-knowledge proofs which are known to protect recipient's anonymity however, there are some debates about that, http://www.coindesk.com/investors-know-trading-zcash/

If you want to learn more about other coins, check out http://coingenius.io