22
votes
Is there something about Bitcoin that prevents us from implementing the same privacy protocols of Monero and Zcash?
I'm curious as to why Bitcoin has not perused a similar path to privacy.
I want to start by commenting on the phrasing of this question. Bitcoin is defined by the consensus of its users, and isn't a ...
- 102k
20
votes
Accepted
Are Monero Transaction Anonymous?
Short answer: yes, it will be anonymous
Long answer:
The following applies to all Cryptonote based coins, unless stated otherwise:
On the blockchain, all addresses are one time addresses. In ...
- 786
17
votes
Accepted
Is my account balance publicly visible?
If your business partner knows your address, they can learn the transaction history and balance of that address. Often it is possible to guess or deduce that other addresses also belong to you, but ...
- 73k
15
votes
Is my account balance publicly visible?
If I'm sending someone my wallet-address, am I making my account balance visible to him?
Yes.
all transactions are public, means if I know the wallet address, I
can reconstruct the current ...
- 986
11
votes
Why is the ledger public?
When Bitcoin was invented, Blockchain analysis was not as advanced as it was today and pseudonymous transactions were believed to be closer to anonymous than they are with Bitcoin today. Under the ...
- 386
10
votes
Accepted
Can I send bitcoin to other address in my wallet to provide anonymity?
Let's assume you're the outside observer. You see 1 BTC go from aaa to bbb, then from bbb to ccc, then from ccc to ddd, and them from ddd to zzz (zzz being associated with service Z). Can you see how ...
- 3,224
10
votes
Accepted
Why is the length of the transport messages on the lightning network encrypted?
TCP and other stream based protocols do not have a 1-to-1 correlation of application level messages and IP packets. If you call send() 3 times, it might result in sending a single IP packet over the ...
- 3,324
9
votes
What are tainted coins exactly?
The term "Tainted Coins" is often misinterpreted as a measure of provenance. That's understandable considering the traditional definition of the word "tainted" coupled with the reality that many ...
- 101
9
votes
Accepted
How does not practicing address reuse hurt my privacy?
There's a bigger attack surface for someone that wants to doxx you. They only need to link a single transaction to your real life person to know all the transactions you've participated in. A single ...
- 7,749
9
votes
Accepted
Privacy friendly payment processor
I'm pretty sure that all crypto payment processors that deal with fiat <-> cryptocurrency exchanges are doing AML/KYC routines including chain analysis. That's not only true for BitPay and Coinbase ...
- 381
8
votes
Deanonymizing dust attack
A deanonymizing dust attack works by sending dust to large amounts of addresses. The assumption is that when people send transactions/perform consolidations in the future, dust from multiple addresses ...
- 16.9k
8
votes
What exactly is "privatekeys.pw"?
The site is a joke, or at best a confusing attempt to educate.
It literally lists all private keys, from low to high, as private keys are just numbers. There are of course way more than can be ...
- 102k
7
votes
How do Reusable Payment Codes work?
The gist of the reusable payment code BIP is that you can gain some measure of address privacy by combining BIP32 (hierarchical deterministic wallets) with Diffie-Hellman key exchange. To understand ...
- 7,749
7
votes
Accepted
Can you detect that the addresses generated by an HD wallet came from a single wallet?
No.
All addresses generated by HD derivation are indistinguishable to someone who does not know the parent's master key (the private one for hardened derivation, the public one for normal derivation)....
- 102k
7
votes
Accepted
Do confidential transactions produce an UTXO
In Confidential Transactions (as used in Blockstream's Elements and Liquid), there are still identifiable UTXOs.
The only change is that instead of the amount, a homomorphic commitment to the amount ...
- 102k
7
votes
Why do people claim that governments cannot confiscate Bitcoins?
While it is true that Bitcoin can still be physically taken away from you, it is still much harder to do that than it is for a government to confiscate your fiat stored in a bank account (as most fiat ...
- 68.6k
7
votes
What are the advantages/disadvantages to using the same Wallet Address?
Questions about altcoins are off-topic here, but the answer is essentially universal: if you re-use addresses, especially because of a desire to think of them as a long-term identity, you're ...
- 102k
7
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to identify UTXOs signed by HD wallets?
Almost every wallet today uses HD key derivation. You'd need to go back to software from 2016 or earlier to find any that don't. So I'd say your question is moot.
That said, there certainly are ...
- 102k
6
votes
What are the privacy implications of filtered blockchain downloads?
I know it is an old question, but it deserves an updated answer.
Since the introduction of BIP37 (=SPV with bloom filters) a number of serious privacy vulnerabilities have been discovered. By using ...
- 806
6
votes
Will Confidential Transactions allow us to reuse addresses safely?
My understanding of confidential transactions is that it only hides the amounts, not the addresses involved (someone please let me know if this is not the case).
Since only the amount is hidden, ...
- 14k
6
votes
Accepted
Bitcoin node Decentralization
Yes, independently operated nodes help decentralization more than the same number of nodes operated by a single entity. That's basically the definition of "decentralization" in this context. That is ...
- 8,822
6
votes
Accepted
Would quantum computing be able to deanonymize CoinJoin transactions?
No.
CoinJoin does not rely on any cryptography to hide transaction flows. It merely combines multiple transactions into one, and randomizes the order of inputs and outputs.
Of course, as you point ...
- 102k
6
votes
Accepted
Is It Possible to Prove Ownership of Public Key Hash without Public Key?
The simple answer is no.
A hashing algorithm is ment to be a one-way function. If it is possible to recreate the public key from the hash, this means that the hashing algorithm is broken.
However ...
- 546
6
votes
Accepted
Are there any risks of publicizing a Lightning network invoice?
Does it affect -most importantly- the safety of the funds?
It does not. Funds are not affected by publishing a LN invoice.
Does it negatively affect the privacy or something else?
If a lightning ...
- 68.6k
6
votes
Accepted
How can I hide my bitcoin transactions to protect anonymity from others?
Your address is a classical 1 (Pay-to-public-key-hash) address. Your friend has a newer Bech32 Pay-to-Witness-public-key-hash-type address. The block explorer you referenced is partially compatible ...
- 10.1k
6
votes
Accepted
What is the rationale for the Lightning network's path length limit (20 hops)?
The onion routing in Lightning is based on the Sphinx Mix Format described in this paper. The situation is different from Tor
We don't have entry and exit nodes in Lightning as all nodes are inside ...
- 11.8k
6
votes
Why is it impossible to get a straight answer as to whether Bitcoin is anonymous or not?
Why is it impossible to get a straight answer as to whether Bitcoin is anonymous or not?
Because privacy is not binary in nature. It is not as if there is some moment at which your information flips ...
- 18k
5
votes
What is the most advanced technology for anonymous transactions?
CoinShuffle has improved upon CoinJoin, but active mixing it not advanced compared to the solutions below.
ZeroCash and CryptoNote have advanced significantly since you asked this question. ...
- 487
5
votes
Why is the ledger public?
The ledger has to be public in order for Bitcoin to be decentralized. The designers of Bitcoin didn't want to need anyone to play the role of a "bank" who keeps all the records, and whom everyone ...
- 23k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible