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Comment by mintyDijon | Hacker News Reader

Monero is cryptocurrency, this article is just venting from someone who buys into scams. Crypto matters because privacy matters, and privacy needs decentralization.

-edit- Just to add clarity, decentralization is necessary becasue inevitably the people we need to hide from, are the same ones in control of the system.

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You're suggesting that, in order to hide from people, we use a financial system where every single transaction is publicly recorded and available for all to see?

You should google monero first because that's the opposite of what it does.

I am fully aware of what Monero sets out to do, but that's the important piece - they set out to do it, but that doesn't mean they will always succeed. It's perfectly possible to trace Monero using publicly available information[1] (I realize this is an older story, but you can still employ similar methods using public data), and the success of using Monero also depends on the competency of the individual[2] (in a similar sense to how successfully obscuring your browsing via Tor is dependent upon you making sure you've dotted your i's and crossed your t's and not just simply relying on Tor alone). There are also companies out there who claim to be able to track these transactions[3].

Monero may be stronger than others, but it's not foolproof and nobody should assume that it is.

[1]https://medium.com/@nbax/tracing-the-wannacry-2-0-monero-tra...

[2]https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-seizure-record-doj-crypt...

[3]https://ciphertrace.com/enhanced-monero-tracing/

Edit: I mean, hell, even just obtaining access to a key essentially eliminates anonymity. You may go above and beyond in your efforts to obscure your activities, but if someone else involved gets busted and officials get access to their account, well...

Your deviating from the point.

Anyone honestly working in cryptography will tell you that it will never be full proof, it's a game of delaying the inevitable. The NSA knew that DES was vulnerable when it was first created! It still lasted what? 20 years? I wouldn't be surprised to here that AES has an "expiration date" either. SHA 256 has a predicted end date aswell, hense why SHA3 was created. It's not a game of finding the "perfect cryptogram to protect my message forever", that game will never be achieved.

But that fact does not mean that privacy is unimportant.

Block-chain is the only way to decentralize a ledger afaik. All those alt-coins out there just have a different way of doing the same thing. It's not that I think it's the best way to do things, but besides decentralizing the the banks themselves, is there any other way?

Aren't there lots of ways to decentralize a ledger? For example, create a collective of 30 independent organizations all over the globe - each audited separately - and have them create a shared ledger based on consensus?

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