Topic: Bitcoin Privacy Protocols - page 2. (Read 517 times)

Actually, now that you mentioned it, I don't think key blinding can be done on secp256k1 unless someone finds a deterministic pattern whereby the user can generate multiple public keys that hash into the same address.

But in the process of doing so, SHA256 will probably be broken in the process since patterns would have to be found in a hash function. But it would make the DER signatures virtually indistinguishable from normal signatures as the lowest such public key can be used for them as a sort of standardness rule.

I just don't get how you've reached to this conclusion. There is no message of him discouraging the use of absolute privacy tools. To me it rather seems as he saw it as "private enough".


He even talked about key blinding and group signatures long before Monero and other privacy protocols were introduced in concept:

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In my experience, the simple answers are usually the correct ones. Satoshi simply lacked the competence to do that. It wouldn't be surprising. The very first Bitcoin version was quite simple in concept, and if you read the source code, you could tell it was just above the average. He did some mistakes, like the value overflow or reorganizing based on block height instead of chainwork. Maybe he ignored privacy enhancing techniques on purpose, but that's because it would be more difficult to explain to the public. Another guess: Maybe he didn't ignore them on purpose, but simply because it was too late to introduce them at the date he revealed interest about them.

I believe Satoshi is a privacy expert.
He created an online persona and there is literally nobody else on this planet that knows this persona is linked with the real person behind Satoshi.

Now, let's speculate, just for fun.

1. Intentional choice:
Perhaps Satoshi wanted to increase our need for self-privacy. Perhaps Satoshi knew that privacy can be achieved with Bitcoin, but that it requires a little more effort.

2. Coincidence:
On April 23, 2011, Satoshi said "I have moved on to other things".


Perhaps Satoshi decided to add Ring Signatures and Stealth Addresses to Bitcoin when it was already too late. And perhaps Satoshi Nakamoto became Nicolas van Saberhagen and developed CryptoNote which is the base layer of Monero.

Conclusion:
Unfortunately we can only speculate. But, in my opinion, Satoshi knew about Ring Signatures and Stealth Addresses and the reason he didn't add them to Bitcoin was because he knew that people would speculate that Bitcoin is only built to support illicit activities. Some people still believe it today. The reason I am saying that, is that there is a message from Satoshi to Gavin Andresen that says:


It is obvious that Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to develop a transparent way to transact P2P and that would become widely adopted. Perhaps he intentionally added pseudonymity and not untreacability, so that people wouldn't think Bitcoin was only used for illegal activities. But...

I think he was a strong advocate for privacy. He reportedly used the IP-masking browser, Tor, for all his public interactions, which is why his public IP address could never be traced back to him.

He introduced password protection to Bitcoin’s JSON-RPC interface, which was crucial for safeguarding user funds, preserving privacy, and ensuring the stable operation of the Bitcoin node. But when it came to incorporating zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs), a privacy protocol, into Bitcoin, Nakamoto expressed difficulty in figuring out how to apply them.

https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/satoshi-nakamoto-zk-proofs-bitcoin
https://news.bitcoin.com/unraveling-the-online-legacy-of-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoins-mysterious-creator

So, he may have faced technical challenges in implementing certain privacy protocols in Bitcoin.

The absence of certain privacy protocols in Bitcoin does not necessarily mean he deliberately avoided them to evade regulatory scrutiny. It could be due to technical challenges or a different interpretation of what constitutes sound money. However, this is mostly speculation as Nakamoto himself has not publicly stated his reasons.

Well I wouldn't say mostly used for illicit activities it is surely used by the entire world basically and is very convenient but in the event that it is used for an illicit purpose it is indeed completely untracable. Bitcoin they can definitely have a much better chance of tracing the owner.In  Cyber insurance policies they also ban the use of XMR the policies will not pay out in any crypto except for Bitcoin. 

That was so nice of Satoshi Nakamoto. If bitcoin is like monero, it might also not be widely used as it is today. Nearly all countries do not ban bitcoin and the discovery mechanism would be one of the reasons many countries do not ban the coin.

Exactly. But it is worth knowing that fiat is mostly used for illicit activities today. It is mostly used for money laundry, terrorism financing, ransom and bandits funding etc. So far something is of value and can be easily transfer from one person to another as a money, some people will want to use such thing for illicit activities.

I'm not so sure if there's solid proof that Satoshi left out privacy stuff in Bitcoin only to steer clear of regulations.  In 2009, crypto and what it could lead to was pretty much uncharted territory.  Rules from government might not have been a main thing on his mind and  seems he cared more about creating a decentralized and immutable digital currency that didn't rely on centralized entity and couldn't be manipulated or faked.  Maybe those goals took priority over making payments impossible to trace.

Bitcoin still has its privacy feature but it isn't as strong as it was before centralized bodies had arrived. Before now, there has always been other ways to increase privacy like use of coinjoins which was introduced in 2013.
Satoshi understood a lot about privacy and its negative impact. He somehow knew that if Bitcoin's privacy was as completely strong as that of coin like the monero's, it would lead to more illicit activities using Bitcoin.

Exchanges must follow government rules and avoid trouble, so they might have to remove coins that offer completely untraceable transactions.

My take on it is that he understood that absolute privacy of transactions - be it BTC, fiat, or whatever - naturally opens the doors to a myriad of illicit uses. Only an immutable and public ledger gives a way to track those uses and yes, if need be, prosecute the folks involved. By being a public ledger he (thought he) removed the ability to use BTC for things that are against 'The Public Good'.

Now, the sticking point is that yes, transactions can be followed through the blockchain BUT who/what has ownership of coins cannot be discovered until they are exchanged into fiat or some type of physical goods which can be linked to people & organizations. He wanted to make sure that BTC had that discovery mechanism.

Of course ones definition of 'illicit activities' and  'The Public Good' largely depends on the individual and their governments...

With Binance delisting of XMR, there seems to be a growing trend that coins with privacy protocols are increasingly becoming a target of governments.

Is there any evidence that Satoshi Nakamoto deliberately avoided adding privacy-related protocols and functionality into Bitcoin in order to avoid the ban-hammer?

If so, how did he justify this decision when the very concept of sound money cannot be implemented in an environment where there is no guarantee of absolute transaction privacy?