With the rise of cryptocurrency has come increased governmental scrutiny and regulatory action.
For some users who do not like being thoroughly monitored with a spiked Roto-Rooter the market has begun to develop solutions with anonymous cryptocurrencies like DASH, PIVX, ZCash and Monero.
Currently, the best option for privacy and anonymity along with price appreciation is probably PIVX.
The coins, current price each and market capitalization.
- DASH - $141.28 - $1.036B
- Monero - $42.49 - $619m
- ZCash - $233.80 - $339m
- PIVX - $1.66 - $89m
DASH
DASH is the largest of the 'private' coins. Many people are lulled into a sense of anonymity security with the Private Send feature.
Private Send is a PrivateSend is an improved version of CoinJoin which includes features like decentralization and a chaining approach.
This decentralized coin mixing service built within DASH's protocol enables fungibility of the currency.
However, in October 2016 the DASH masternodes partnered with Coinfirm to produce Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer support into the DASH blockchain. This is one downside to a masternode structure instead of something like Bitcoin mining with a Bitcoin miner.
Thus, many users many be unaware of this change and would be surprised to know their transactions and identities are linked so thoroughly.
Monero
Significant privacy is provided with ring confidential transactions at the protocol level.
Coupled with stealth addresses for both sender and receiver and significant privacy is attained.
A large problem is the blocksize resulting from the increased sizes of transactions. But the rules do enable an adaptive block size.
Another cool feature will be the Kovri router which will enable the ability to conceal the origin node for transactions within I2P.
ZCash
Zero-knowledge proofs are used to provide anonymity for users.
A zero-knowledge proof enables verification of and privacy of data. Here, transaction amounts, sender and recipient addresses are all encrypted.
Sure, blockchain analysts can correlate information through public transactions on the blockchain and users need to obfuscated their IP addresses when sending transactions.
Finally, the protocol does not hide public data that may be linked to personal identifiers.
PIVX
The ecosystem has an very interesting blend of governance. Like DASH it has masternodes but it also implements Proof of Stake.
Optimized PIVX Staking
When staking, the larger the address balance the more will be earned.
For example, an address with about 15,000 PIVX will earn about 50% more per PIVX than an address with about 1,000 PIVX.
Masternodes may earn more but there is a lot of hassle setting up and running them.
You can estimate earnings with Cryptonode.
The wallet needs to be opened and unlocked while connected to the Internet; so be careful with security.
Addresses need to have at least 100 confirmations.
Crazy Pro Tip - After an address gets 100 confirmations then restart the wallet and unlock it. Then the staking should be active for that balance.
I'd have to go with monero besides the harder to use terminal based wallet.
Monero because of obvious reasons. I only can find problem in Fluffypony, he is bigger troll than me :)
I'm a huge fan of Dash for investment purposes. Extremely talented and widespread dev team, huge community, and an unmatched business, PR, and marketing strategy in the crypto space. I also am very impressed by PIVX and their team.
In my opinion, Monero is the best of these coins. The only problem with it is the largest block size, but the allowance of an adaptive block size makes this an issue that is unlikely to be problematic.
The Coinfirm partnership is being completely misrepresented here. Partnering with Coinfirm has nothing to do with "producing KYC/AML into the blockchain". Nothing in Dash's software is being changed to pander to Coinfirm in any way. Every transparent blockchain can be analyzed by anyone. The privacy feature PrivateSend remains entirely unaffected by a 3rd party doing blockchain analysis. Dash is merely being proactive on something that will eventually happen to every successful cryptocurrency.
Oh and PIVX has a strongly centralized distribution
Come on, the Instamine Saga is getting old, the trolls need some new legend :-)
All jokes aside, thanks for the clarification. Strange to see an industry legend like Trace spreading those rumours. Maybe his "sell Dash, buy PIVX" trade did not work how he was hoping so far ;-)
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
Best for anonymity...I would say PIVX with the addition of obusification. As a long term investment I choose DASH especially with the anticipation of Evolution's release. Glad to come across you Trace love your interviews I've heard.
This appraisal appears draw its principal conclusions from only 2 aspects of each asset:
• what technology does the most obfuscation (maximise privacy)
• what has the lowest marketcap (maximise upside)
The problem I have with it is that neither of these are optimally responsible for supporting value in an unbacked asset. In such a context, blockchain transparency supports value far more reliably than blockchain obfuscation and a low marketcap is only significant if the asset is undervalued.
That would suggest that the ideal monetary asset is one which can decouple the conflict between supporting maximum anonymity and maximum transparency.
That is Dash. It’s the only one who’s archetypal monetary model is based on a real asset rather than an encrypted payment system and it’s also the reason that it has specifically avoided implementing an encryption based privacy solution.
Remember, encryption is generally a property of the trading environment, not the asset itself. You find it - ten a penny - all over the place outside of the blockchain world. In banks, on eCommerce systems, in messaging systems and in cash tills. It supports privacy by hiding the trade, not by radically altering the actual traded asset itself. That’s because encryption is basically a destructive transformation that mitigates value by creating ambiguity. (Witness the recent worldwide malware attack).
So I’d say the flaw in this appraisal is that it’s valuing a digital asset using criteria that are more appropriate to a trading platform. That doesn’t mean encrypted blockchains are’nt useful, but if we remind ourselves of the three fundamental tenets of money, they’re useful in the least investible way (i.e. the last one) since hiding value is far easier & cheaper than creating it and making it transparently fungible ;)
• store of value
• unit of measure
• means of exchange
What do you think about the future of these coins? Lightning on BTC will also give anonymous transactions almost for free. Aren't these alts absolute by then? The network effect of BTC is way bigger.
I think there is a very large market demand for a privacy coin. PIVX probably has the most upside potential given the risk/reward ratio. Monero with a good GUI could really some increased usage. DASH seems to have jumped the shark.
Jumped the shark? Are you aware of what Dash's Evolution is promising to bring? If Evolution's promises become reality, that proverbial shark is far away indeed, let alone in the past.
Cool to have you posting here @tracemayer. I am a huge believer in privacy... Personally I prefer XMR. I need to look into PIVIX more and will do that. ZEC is cool crypto but has a trusted set up so not a huge fan. It will be nice to have privacy features baked into Steem one day. Ring CT is on the roadmap here: https://steem.io/roadmap/confidential/
I agree on the ZEC trusted setup. Did you catch the interview I did with Peter Todd about it?
Ring CT on Steem would be awesome.
No I have not seen it, could you link it brother?...I tried searching. - yes I think it would be a great way to give a diverse range of people around the world fair access to a private and safe place for their money. So many different types of people are on Steem already and its cool to see it changing lives.
Peter Todd about ZCash.
Appreciate it. @tracemayer // - this one slipped by me. Some very interesting stuff in this @bitcoinknowledgepodcast
This is interesting in light of coinfirm
https://steemit.com/dash/@ender/anonymous-coin-paying-users-to-reveal-themselves
nice post.
Nice post, thanks for all the info. Hopefully cryptos can continue to stay anonymous, i believe privacy is a very important aspect of cryptos in order for the world to believe and adopt as global borderless currencies. Im following!
Didn't know that about DASH tracking, I have always liked PIVX except the name is awful.
There is no "tracking" anymore than what is possible with every other transparent blockchain in existence.
I liked it once I knew it's an acronym for Private Instant-Verified Transactions.
Originally this coin was called "darknet", I think PIVX is much better...
Digitalnote. XDN.
PIVX for the large community and value they stand for. Only 1 year but growing slowly. They also got very talented team.
That's for posting this. Great info.
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Hi Trace!
I just wanna give a brief feedback!
There are two people in Bitcoin-World I follow constantly.
The 1st one is Andreas Antonopoulos, one of the greatest and smartest guys I ever listened to.
The 2nd one is you. I just wanna say "Thank you" for sharing and spreading your knowledge what will cause an upswing in cryptoworld so that it will once replace the FIAT monetary system, of which no one really knows what this system is all about - except stealing our money due inflation and keeping us since 1913 as the FED was created in the dark!
I've listened to many interviews and podcast you gave but the last one is on the top three list of my all time best! Absolutely BRILLIANT!
Appreciate any new comment, interview, blog you post!
Cheers! - and keep on going the relaxed, calm down world passionate style!
P.s.: followed your advice by taking a close look into PIVX and after recognizing its great possibilities I put some eggs in the basket... -
This one has been around for a while but has recently started to garner some attention. CloakCoin looks to join the pack of Anonymous crypto-currencies you listed here. What do you think?: https://steemit.com/cloak/@jeffjagoe/cloak-continues-it-s-meteoric-rise-up-the-charts
Very good, I like learning something new and I has never heard of PIVX before, it may be a new one for me to have
I'm quite inquisitive, why is ZCash so much more expensive than Monero? is it because of the JPMorgan partnership. If so, its a huge risk, they could dump it tomorrow
Good post. Really appreciate you bring this to our attention. The quality coins are here to stay and it's like buying in at the S&P 500 50 years ago. Cryptos will fall and rise at a more rapit phase any investment market has ever seen. Just hold (literaly) and enjoy the ride. We do need more indept investment analysis. An interesting website I found: https://www.coincheckup.com Every single coin can be analysed here based on: the team, the product, advisors, community, the business and the business model and much more. Go to: https://www.coincheckup.com/coins/PIVX#analysis To watch PIVX Analysis.