CISO of ShapeShift here.
If our values speak to you, and you're a security researcher - WE ARE HIRING
https://shapeshift.com/careers
In liberty,
--Michael
If our values speak to you, and you're a security researcher - WE ARE HIRING
https://shapeshift.com/careers
In liberty,
--Michael
Monero doesn't enable privacy by default, but its known as a privacy coin. The first means that people could be unaware of the extra steps they need to take to get privacy, but the second is the risky one.
Monero is known as a privacy coin and this makes it the target of governments that indeed made ShapeShift start to to KYC a year or more ago.
Monero is unduly targeted for standard features because governments don't like perfect privacy...
The good news is that privacy does not have to be built in to a coin for it to be capable of giving privacy. If we reverse the Monero situation we might get something that is actually useful for the majority of us. A coin like Bitcoin that doesn't have more than semi-privacy can have mixing added to become private.
Now, mixing as historically done on BTC is both expensive and centralized, which has caused several servers to be confiscated and people arrested. Again, governments really don't like what you do with your money being private.
I'm personally a big fan of https://cashfusion.org ticks all these boxes. It is built on a semi-private (bitcoin-like) coin and it solves the other problems as well with a mix (sorry, fusion) costing you nearly nothing.
It does in fact enable privacy by default. If you want to show someone the details of a transaction or an address balance, you have to provide viewkeys.
> I'm personally a big fan of
Now your comment reads like an attempt to shill, which would explain the misinformation about Monero.
According to HN's rules, I have to assume you have better intentions than that. Please explain what you meant, since I must have misunderstood you.
Ok, my statement was maybe too black/white and you jumped on top of that. The point is that Monero has Privacy level / mixin settings, the default is not completely open, but certainly doesn't qualify as super private either.
> Now your comment reads like an attempt to shill
I shared a link to a product that I feel is very successful in reaching privacy. I have no ties to this product (though I have used it).
What are you even talking about?
I'm sorry but you clearly have no idea what you're talking about
>Monero doesn't enable privacy by default, but its known as a privacy coin. The first means that people could be unaware of the extra steps they need to take to get privacy
That is erroneous.
Absolutely, we are in agreement.
The point I was making is that the coin itself, the base protocols, adding these privacy options makes it the difference between a generic payment protocol and one specifically made to evade the governments controls.
There being a way to do great privacy while leaving the coin itself to be a generic payment coin gives you the best of both worlds.
The point you make is still true, it is required for privacy to be default on. And this can be included in one wallet that people use for this purpose. Now its the choice of wallet that makes the privacy, not the choice of coin.
Note that Banxa performs their own KYC for their own MSB services.
Once you have some crypto, you can then trade it for other crypto with a few taps on your smartphone, or clicks in your browser.
Search your smartphone's app store for ShapeShift and give it a whirl yourself :)
Ok and so does Coinbase. So at any point I, an American citizen, must do some level of KYC.
Is the idea that I can simply buy Crypto from another exchange and then send the hash to another wallet on your platform (where KYC isn't performed)?
> Search your smartphone's app store for ShapeShift and give it a whirl yourself :)
No offense, but I won't. It's hard for me to trust a wallet that clearly (or technically unclearly) is operating in a grey area of the law.
If the Bitcoin network is charging 0.00066 BTC for a transaction, ShapeShift passes this charge through to users transparently.
We do!
Every ShapeShift employee has equity and has opportunities to earn more. It is vitally important that our employees benefit from ShapeShift's successes and I'm proud to be a ShapeShift employee.
More important to me than equity is the feelings of accomplishment and camaraderie that we already feel for building such a great platform that holds user privacy and self-sovereignty above all else.
Broadly, where do you see the company in 5-10 years :) What makes you bullish about it!