Hey Capslock,
maybe you know more than me. I just saw you are discussing Monero. I myself rented Amazon instances back then and mined Monero. I was wondering, do you think it is 100% safe? Take into account a company like Chainalysis. Can they crack Monero?
Edit: I am not asking for tax evasion reasons, not at all!!
I am asking because I want to understand what's possible with crypto.
Cheers!
It's very common for us to discuss Monero in here.
And no, I do not think it would be IMPOSSIBLE to trace transactions. But I think Monero offers the most battle tested privacy of any crypto asset, and to date any weaknesses found have been addressed. There is a reason a group of hackers smart enough to steal the designs of Apple's next processors are asking for the ransom to be paid in Monero. Also the extremely large bounty offered by the IRS implies the strength of it's privacy.
Until we see strong proof that Monero's privacy has fallen vulnerable to forensics, I would think it would be the safest crypto asset in that regard. Just it's history may be the most valuable reason to use it. In other words... so far, so good.
Hey Capslock,
just read about the hack. Interesting story. I am a bit surprised though that Monero isn't worth even more. I read the Coindesk article from January about privacy coins, there is a quite a lot going on. I wonder how effective the Taproot update will be, but if I understand correctly, Taproot does not offer full anonymity, does it?
Most of us regulars here in this thread have felt this way for a while.
I honestly do not think it is inaccurate to say Monero could be (one of?) the most undervalued crypto asset (shitcoin?) in existence. It is most certainly a contender for that spot.
Taproot will add an interesting privacy angle for Bitcoin, in that it will make it possible to do an array of transactions that cannot be identified as a particular type. A multi-sig transaction will look the same to a forensics team as a "regular" transaction. So it will add a great deal of valuable privacy for users. But it does not even BEGIN to approach the privacy Monero offers. You will be able to open a lighting channel and it not look like it, I guess... and then you get some decent privacy on that layer, but it does not change that Bitcoin is fundamentally a transparent ledger.
I believe Monero's future is also a very polarized set of possibilities for these reasons. From an investment angle it will live or die on it's privacy. That will be the reason it is successful, or that it fails. So far it is succeeding. But the response of world governments to it, the addition of useable privacy to Bitcoin, and the chance that Monero's privacy could be broken are the areas one must consider if looking at it as an investment. I am betting Monero excels or survives in all three of those areas ultimately.