I know that for privacy purposes, Monero is the best crypto currency, but Monero is also harder to get and harder to use for payments.
What do you people think about the methods listed below of spending Bitcoin privatly?
Using the Lightning network: If you running your own node (could also be a prune node) then you have great privacy with Lightning, especially on outgoing transactions, because every lightning node only knows the before and the next lightning node.
The only threat here would be if your first and you last node in the chain work together to deanonymize you.
Using Coinjoin: you can just use Coinjoin for multiple rounds to get a very big anonymity set.
You can use a custodial crypto service as a mixer for coins. I would recommend coinos.io, cause they have very low fees and are accessible through the Tor Browser (they even offer onion links).
This should be combinned with a coinjoin or with multiple hops across different custodial services.
If you want to spend on lightning, coinjoin and then use the resulting outputs to open lightning channels.
If you want to spend on-chain, Wasabi Wallet has a new spending-friendly feature that lets you spend from inside of a coinjoin. That way you don’t have to pull the coin out, spend it and then start mixing the change, which adds an unnecessary transaction. The transaction that spends the coin is itself a coinjoin. I believe this feature is currently only available in the CLI but presumably it will be coming to the GUI soon.
This also gets into usability I would be shocked if we get monero to be accessible as a payment method in every day life without having to pay for a custom payment processor and going to a place that explicitly except menero with that payment provider. On the other hand I think their is a high probability we will get to the point where you can pay for every day item like clothes with bitcoin using paypal
Monero(XMR) is delisted from most exchanges and is also a harder to pay with cash in person then Bitcoin.
The eassierst way to obtain XMR is to buy BTC or anohter widespread crypto and then exchanging it for XMR on a DEX.
Bitcoin is eassier to get and its also easier to send because there a lot more merchants that accept BTC then their are merchants that accept XMR.
If you have coinjoined it enough, its anonymous.
If you spend it over self hosted lightning, its (probably) anonymous.
If you spend it over Ecash, its anoymous
@jerm you put a thumb down but unfortunately, didn’t answer my arguments.
Bitcoin Ecash is nearly as anonymous as XMR + you can’t be de anonymized by a bad node.
I would just say everything you have said deserves a massive asterisks.
Each of those methods can enhance your privacy, but none provide absolute anonymity. The effectiveness largely depends on the implementation, usage patterns, and the specific measures taken to protect identity in transactions.
It is much more likely that users will end up outing themselves and would be better off to think of the measures you listed as improving their privacy but not as effective measures for anonymous spending.
Any thoughts on Litecoin with MWEB? Not as great as the “privacy by default” that Monero offers, but maybe the next best thing considering how widespread Litecoin acceptance is?
This depends on the method used.
Coinjoin has weak privacy, cause it needs multiple rounds and coins from the same coinjoin can still be linked.
The privacy of Lightning is complicated (I maybe add more explanation later).
But if you obtain Cashu Tokens and then spend them via Cashu or via Lightning then its very private and you can’t fuck it up by accident.
The main problem with Cashu is that the anonymity set of a Mint, even a big one, is not as big as Monero.
But the “Bitcoin can’t be private” statement, is false.
Prevents balance analysis and spending pattern tracking
Native CoinJoin Mixing
Combines multiple transactions into single batches
Obscures transaction origins and makes correlation difficult
Stealth Addresses (ltcmweb1)
Creates unique addresses for each transaction
Eliminates address reuse and recipient identification
My first question is, how big is the coinjoin anonymity set?
edit: It seems like the anonymity set is the entire block, so this is a lot better then most coinjoins.