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Comment by randomhodler84 | Hacker News Reader

It would be rad if Molly wrote about privacy cryptocurrencies like Monero and Zcash and how these can enable better protections for at risk folks.

The argument that transparency can lead to coercion can be quite convincing — privacy technologies can give power to victims.

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Monero and Zcash have been around for a while. Have they worked?

How would you know if they worked? By their virtue they are used for privacy

There's a very large unclaimed bounty for breaking Monero's privacy.

And those two are the tip of the iceberg. Check out Dero for one that's doing smart contracts with homomorphic encryption.

The future of privacy coins, based on these examples, is simply that they work, and will do so as long as the encryption mechanisms do. So we are presented with a question of which applications benefit from public vs private chains.

Another really interesting one is mina which is looking to do a constant sized state with smart contract abilities.

Dero is the worst name. What were they thinking. Dero/Derro is Australian slang for derelict, poor. It sounds cheap and nasty.

If Mina can rebrand from Corda, (much better name) Dero should think about it too.

> Have they worked?

By what metric?

The GP’s claim. Have they given power back to victims?

Most “Bitcoin” transactions happen off-chain, at sites like Coinbase. And they’re mostly price speculation.

Monero and Zcash probably do more actual business than non-private chains do. It’s all drugs and ransomeware, but it’s actually being used as money.

I've gotten paid in XMR for some quick anonymous coding. It was a great experience. I wish everybody did it.

But are they actually giving power to victims?

Yes? Monero, at least, has definitely worked and it's the currency of choice for anyone that wants privacy.

There's no better endorsement for Monero than the unclaimed bounty to crack its privacy and its usage by cybercriminals.

Monero is used more in "the real world" than any other cryptocurrency.

But have they given power back to victims?

What does this even mean?

I don't know, ask this guy. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30050367

I don't doubt that anonymous transactions are possible, I want to know if they're actually accomplishing what this person is claiming. They've had plenty of time to do so.

I think it's unquestionable that privacy is generally helpful to victims (or rather, the victimized.)

I think what he might be referring to in particular is that the traditional blockchain and even financial system at large is incapable of protecting at-risk individuals (eg activists), as the former is subject to chain analysis and the latter is subject to the whims of whichever regime has taken power.

My point is that people keep saying that crypto will do things when it has in fact had plenty of time to do those things.

There's at least some evidence that Monero is resistant to US government sanctions. They tried to sanction a wallet and ended up sanctioning a transaction hash.

https://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/sdnlist.txt

> Digital Currency Address - XMR 5be5543ff73456ab9f2d207887e2af87322c651ea1a873c5b25b7ffae456c320;

https://localmonero.co/blocks/search/5be5543ff73456ab9f2d207...

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