Agreed, Just take a look at DASH the team is saying DASH was not a privacy coins. I have been seeing so many times DASH shillers are comparing the DASH coin with MONERO.
This is what Dash is saying :
Dash’s transaction rules are identical to Bitcoin, and therefore for regulatory and compliance purposes Dash can and should be treated identically to Bitcoin.
Source :
https://media.dash.org/wp-content/uploads/Dash-PrivateSend-Legal-Position-EN.pdf Dash is as much a privacy coin as Bitcoin (in other words, not a privacy coin).
* Dash and Bitcoin both have a public open blockchain, where transactions, amounts, senders and receivers are publicly viewable (pseudo-anonymous)
* Dash and Bitcoin both
optionally offer privacy on their transactions, through a form of CoinJoin in their wallets. Bitcoin use Privacy Wallets for that and its CoinJoin usage on its network was about 4% in 2019, Dash use its Dash Core wallet for that and the current CoinJoin usage (they call it PrivateSend) on its network is about 1-3%
* Dash main use case is not providing optional privacy on its transactions, Dash main use case is providing instant, secure, protected against double spending, transactions that can be used by anyone, anywhere in the world. Dash transactions settle in 1-3 seconds on its network (send - receive - spend), through InstantSend
* Dash is tranforming into a technology stack platform for building decentralized applications (Dapps) on the Dash network, which will expand Dash use cases
https://dashplatform.readme.io/docs/introduction-what-is-dash-platformhttps://bitcoinist.com/dash-launches-public-alpha-for-social-payments-wallet/* Dash is a fork of Bitcoin
Just because Dash (just like Bitcoin) offers optional privacy, does not make Dash (or Bitcoin) a privacy coin.
Privacy coins are those coins, that have one main use case and one main focus : privacy.
If Litecoin continues with its plans to implement privacy features, will that make Litecoin suddenly a privacy coin ? I guess that depends on Litecoin offering that privacy through
a choice (optionally) or not. Also it depends on Litecoin's use cases. And it depends if Litecoin wants to be associated with that 'privacy coin' label.
There is a real risk of Altcoins offering privacy / optional privacy on their transactions, getting classified as an Anonymity Enhanced Cryptocurrency (AEC) by the US government agencies.
Smaller US exchanges are uncertain about that classification and how to deal with that. Some of those smaller US exchanges choose to delist, rather then deal with it.