aminoche

tl;dr: Blackpass is a proposed tunnel between Bitcoin and Monero—fully atomic, trustless, and GUI-free. It has no token, no custody, and no middleman. It’s not an exchange. It’s a cryptographic handshake, invisible unless it fails.

It allows anyone to swap BTC ↔ XMR using HTLCs, adaptor signatures, and relayed offers over IPFS, Nostr, or Tor. No UI. No pooling. No compliance.

Bitcoin regains plausible deniability. Monero gets trustless liquidity. Surveillance becomes uncertain.

Not a mixer. Not an exchange. Just a tunnel.

> No token. No roadmap. No return address.

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If you're thinking about who benefits and who loses if something like Blackpass is deployed, it helps to look beyond the protocol itself and focus on how it reshapes the incentives around traceability and liquidity.

Who benefits?

Bitcoin users who acquired coins through KYC exchanges and want a trustless way to break on-chain surveillance without relying on mixers or custodial swaps.

Monero users who need liquidity or optional access to broader crypto infrastructure—but don’t want to expose themselves in the process.

Liquidity providers who want to earn yield passively without custody risk. They become sort of “stateless FX desks” for private capital.

Privacy-focused wallets that want to integrate trustless swap functionality without hosting anything custodial or regulated.

And, in a broader sense, the entire userbase of crypto: even if you never use Blackpass, its mere existence weakens the default assumption that "everyone is always traceable."

Who loses?

Chain surveillance firms, whose analytics pipelines depend on deterministic transaction history. Even low usage of Blackpass creates taint ambiguity and weakens risk models.

Centralized exchanges, especially those who rely on KYC containment and re-identification. If you can exit and re-enter with plausible deniability, control surfaces soften.

Regulatory systems that lean on compliance-by-design. Blackpass doesn’t break laws—it just sidesteps chokepoints. But that alone may draw scrutiny.

The point isn’t that Blackpass “breaks the system.” It doesn’t. It just forces the system to assume less. And once assumptions weaken, control strategies have to change.

Would love to hear from others: what do you see as the second-order effects if something like this were widely available?

Totally fair skepticism. To be clear: I’m not selling anything. This is a strategic framework for digital autonomy—nothing more.

In a world increasingly hostile to financial privacy, the worst-case scenario isn’t getting pitched. It’s not realizing you needed a fallback system until it’s illegal to build one.

That’s a fair point—Monero is superior for peer-to-peer payments in terms of latency, fungibility, and privacy. But I’d push back on the idea that Bitcoin is useless outside of L2s.

The post isn’t claiming Bitcoin is better for transactions. It’s saying Bitcoin anchors legitimacy in a world that increasingly demands auditability—whether we like it or not.

Think of Bitcoin as the externally visible proof-of-reserve layer, and Monero as the privacy-preserving execution layer. One gives you credibility. The other gives you cover.

The stack isn’t about outperforming each other. It’s about asymmetry across contexts.

I’ve been deep in the Bitcoin vs Monero debate for years—but the deeper I go, the more I see this isn’t a rivalry. It’s a false binary.

Bitcoin’s transparency made it credible—but also legible to power. Monero’s privacy made it resistant—but also institutionally sidelined.

The post argues that Bitcoin is the best vault humanity’s ever built—and Monero is the best disguise. One is how you store sovereignty. The other is how you move without being mapped.

Together, they form a complete personal monetary stack.

Would love to hear what HN thinks: can privacy and auditability coexist—or are we locked into choosing between legitimacy and liberty?

i didn’t name founder mode. but when i read PG’s essay, something cracked open.

this post isn’t from someone who’s made it. it’s from the middle—caught between vision and noise. trying to build something real without losing myself in the process.

i’ve felt the drift. when smart decisions start to feel off. when alignment leaves you out of your own company’s soul.

writing this was how i clawed back signal. not to sound wise. just to remember why i started.

What’s better: a bulletproof safe that nobody locks or a well-worn disguise that everyone wears?

Grin prioritizes scalability over privacy, which is fine if you don’t actually need strong privacy. But let’s not pretend optional CoinSwap is a real substitute for built-in, default anonymity. Privacy that depends on extra steps and high network usage is fragile by design.

Monero doesn’t need payjoins because every transaction is already private. And calling 4 effective decoys “deficient” ignores that Zcash’s superior privacy is irrelevant when 95% of transactions don’t even use it.

If privacy is optional, it’s just a feature. Monero makes it the foundation.

Grin stays small by sacrificing privacy. Hiding amounts and addresses isn’t enough if transaction linkability depends on network conditions. If privacy weakens when volume drops, that’s a design flaw, not a feature.

The extra step isn’t robustness, it’s friction. Payments should be fire and forget, not a back and forth process. Monero works because it just sends, no hassle.

And Zcash? Please. Over 95 percent of its transactions aren’t shielded. What good is stronger privacy if almost nobody uses it? Monero may have only four effective decoys, but every single transaction is private by default. A privacy coin that relies on opt in privacy isn’t a privacy coin, it’s a compliance coin.

Grin adds friction. You need extra steps to finalize a transaction, which makes it clunky compared to Monero’s simple send-and-forget model.

Its privacy isn’t default—linkability depends on high network usage. If volume drops, transactions become easier to trace. Monero doesn’t have this issue because every transaction is private by design, no matter what.

Yes, Monero’s blockchain is bigger, but that’s the price of real privacy. Grin stays lightweight by cutting corners on privacy guarantees. If privacy actually matters, Monero is the clear winner.

Grin is like a private chat where both people have to be online. Monero is like sending a sealed letter that’s always private. Grin’s privacy depends on network activity, while Monero makes every transaction private by default. If privacy is the goal, Monero is still the best choice.

You’re absolutely right—Monero XMR is arguably the closest thing to Satoshi’s original vision in terms of actually delivering private, censorship-resistant transactions. But that’s also exactly why it’s under fire. Governments don’t need to ban privacy coins outright—they just have to make them inconvenient, illiquid, and unprofitable to use at scale.

Your hesitation is understandable: betting on XMR feels like betting against the trend of ever-increasing surveillance. And right now, surveillance is winning.

But here’s the thing. Privacy isn’t just for criminals—it’s for everyone. And yet, it’s being pushed into the fringe by design. If we accept that surveillance is inevitable, we lose by default. Governments thrive on inertia—on people shrugging and saying, well, that’s just how things are.

Monero doesn’t have to win completely to be necessary. It just has to exist—as an option, as a hedge, as a last line of defense against a world where every financial move is monitored.

Maybe XMR never goes mainstream. But what happens if it’s erased entirely? That’s the real nightmare scenario.

You're absolutely right—it’s dystopian overreach, but it's happening in slow motion. The real concern isn’t just "black markets will always exist"—it’s that the window for lawful, private transactions is closing faster than most people realize.

Governments aren’t just tracking major criminal activity; they’re normalizing total financial surveillance under the guise of “anti-money laundering” and “counter-terrorism.” But let’s be real—this isn’t about crime. It’s about control.

- Europe’s AML rules are already targeting self-hosted wallets. - Canada blacklisted Bitcoin donations for protests, freezing accounts without due process. - The U.S. Treasury treats every crypto transaction as a taxable event, requiring constant disclosure.

The endgame? A financial panopticon where every transaction is linked, traced, and scored—making cash obsolete and forcing people into fully permissioned, state-approved transactions.

Yes, grey/black markets will always exist, but the bigger question is: Will there be any legal, mainstream way to transact privately? Right now, privacy is being framed as a “red flag,” and once that stigma is fully ingrained, opting out won’t just be difficult—it’ll be criminalized.

The time to push back isn’t when financial privacy is illegal. It’s now.

Followed up here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43296129

I’ve been a Bitcoin believer for years. But belief without scrutiny is dogma. Bitcoin’s greatest strength—its radical transparency—has now become its biggest existential threat.

Today, governments, surveillance firms, and regulated chokepoints co-opt Bitcoin without ever needing to ban it.

KYC exchanges, chain surveillance, and permissioned off-ramps are turning Bitcoin into the most easily trackable financial system in history—a dream come true for compliance hawks and authoritarian regimes.

This is not an anti-Bitcoin argument.

It’s a wake-up call: If Bitcoiners don’t demand privacy at the protocol level, Bitcoin won’t be outlawed—it will be assimilated.

The idea that financial privacy will “work itself out later” is dangerously naive.

This piece explores:

-Why Bitcoin’s transparency is its Achilles’ heel (and how chain surveillance firms exploit it).

-The Lightning Network myth—why it doesn’t fix Bitcoin’s privacy problem (and might make it worse).

-Why Bitcoin risks becoming a de facto CBDC if privacy isn’t fixed now.

-The path forward: How Bitcoiners can fight back with privacy tools before it’s too late.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Is Bitcoin still “freedom money,” or has financial surveillance already won?

You’re right…nobody crafts TCP packets manually, and Lightning can absolutely offer similar abstraction.

But here’s the twist: TCP/IP was built open and insecure by default, forcing us into decades-long battles (SSL, VPNs, Tor) to claw back privacy.

Bitcoin risks repeating history if we treat transparency as a minor inconvenience rather than a systemic flaw.

The point isn’t whether Lightning is easy (or hard) to use. It’s whether privacy should ever be optional at all.

Privacy, like security, isn’t a feature you bolt on later; it must be foundational, invisible, and unavoidable from day one.

Otherwise, we’re just building a prettier front-end on a fundamentally flawed architecture.

Bitcoin’s transparency isn't just an oversight; it's strategic necessity. Yes, it enables surveillance but that same visibility is precisely what allowed Bitcoin to become a mainstream financial powerhouse rather than a fringe curiosity.

The uncomfortable truth? Absolute privacy sounds appealing until it hits the cold, political reality: total anonymity is kryptonite to regulators, institutions, and mass adoption.

What I didn't fully acknowledge earlier is that transparency, despite its risks, is Bitcoin’s Trojan horse, its necessary concession to widespread legitimacy.

Monero might promise a purer dream, but purity without pragmatism risks relegating cryptocurrency to irrelevance.

The solution isn't blind faith in either extreme but a strategic synthesis: Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Taproot, and advanced mixing technologies layered onto Bitcoin’s transparent base.

Privacy shouldn't replace transparency…it should refine it.

Navigating this paradox is where the real genius lies, and that's what's needed to push my argument from compelling to undeniable.

> "Would you mind explaining how I might do a full audit of the total Monero supply using range proofs?"

You’re assuming that auditability prevents fraud. But let’s be real—Bitcoin’s transparency didn’t stop Mt. Gox, QuadrigaCX, or FTX from losing billions. It didn’t prevent wash trading, exchange manipulation, or fractional reserves.

The only entities that have truly benefited from Bitcoin’s transparency? Government agencies (who use chain analysis to track transactions). Surveillance firms (who monetize the data).

Monero’s cryptographic approach ensures users can verify the supply without exposing transaction details. That’s privacy done right. You don’t need the entire world to verify a global balance sheet—just a mechanism to ensure nobody is inflating the supply. Bitcoiners accept this principle for Lightning, but somehow reject it when Monero applies it natively.

> "Bitcoin is optimized for storing large amounts of value over long durations. The transaction fees are independent of size, and it has a capped supply with a predefined issuance curve."

A store of value is only as good as its security model.

Bitcoin’s security relies on mining incentives, which depend on: Block rewards (shrinking over time) Transaction fees (which must rise dramatically to compensate)

If mining incentives collapse, what happens? Attackers buy up cheap hashrate and reorganize the chain. If that happens, Bitcoin’s “store of value” narrative dies instantly. The argument that “fees will just rise” assumes demand remains constant, but history shows that rising fees reduce adoption.

> "The difference between gold and Bitcoin is that gold doesn’t require a constant value transfer to miners (in the form of inflation or fees) in order to be secure, gold can just sit in a vault."

Gold doesn’t have an ongoing security budget, but it also isn’t programmable money. The analogy breaks down the moment you realize Bitcoin needs continuous incentives for miners to secure the network. Bitcoin's security becomes fragile if transaction fees alone don’t sustain mining, especially in a state-level attack scenario.

> "If more people use Bitcoin, the fees go up, making self-custody impractical. But that doesn’t matter—Bitcoin will still win as a savings tool for the wealthy, corporations, and countries."

What was the point if Bitcoin’s final form is just a savings tool for the rich? If most users can’t afford on-chain transactions and have to rely on intermediaries, we’ve just recreated the banking system with extra steps. And since Bitcoin’s ledger is public forever, it’s not just a savings tool—it’s a perfect surveillance database.

Will Bitcoin actually stay decentralized and usable? Or is it just becoming the world’s best compliance-friendly, trackable savings account?

Because right now, the trend isn’t looking great.

Thanks for sharing!

Every pushback here assumes privacy is something you ‘add’ rather than something you ‘enforce’ at the protocol level. That’s exactly how we ended up with a mass-surveillance internet. TCP/IP wasn’t built for privacy, so privacy became a niche concern, not a default. Encryption, Tor, VPNs—these are defensive patches against a system that was never designed for them. Now Bitcoin is making the same mistake.

People assume Lightning fixes this, but that’s just history repeating itself. Lightning is the financial equivalent of a VPN. It improves individual privacy for those who use it, but it doesn’t change the fact that the underlying system remains transparent and traceable. Chain analysis still works. State surveillance still works. Just like ISPs can fingerprint VPN traffic, financial surveillance firms can (and already do) identify Lightning channel activity.

What’s happening here is more than a technical debate. It’s a battle over whether financial privacy will follow the same path as internet privacy—something theoretically possible, but practically abandoned by 99% of users. Bitcoin is TCP/IP. Monero is I2P. One is dominant because it was first. The other is superior for privacy but struggles because mass adoption cements early design choices. If you think Bitcoin’s privacy can be solved later, look at the internet. The window for embedding privacy at the base layer always closes faster than expected. If Monero doesn’t win this battle soon, it will follow I2P—technically superior, ideologically correct, but too late to matter.

Bitcoin’s biggest flaw isn’t scalability—it’s surveillance baked into the protocol. The transparency that once made it revolutionary is now its Achilles' heel, setting the stage for financial panopticons controlled by governments and corporations. The Lightning Network? A band-aid on a bullet wound. It adds a layer of obfuscation, but at its core, Bitcoin remains an open ledger ripe for tracking and control. It’s like using a VPN on an unencrypted connection—marginally better, but still fundamentally exposed.

Monero gets privacy right, but it’s stuck in the shadows, largely ignored by the mainstream. And here’s the real problem: the world is sleepwalking into a future where every financial move is monitored, logged, and controlled. If privacy isn’t embedded at the protocol level now, it never will be.

Bitcoin changed the game, but if it doesn’t evolve, it risks becoming the trojan horse for financial surveillance. The cypherpunk dream isn’t about “number go up”—it’s about financial freedom.

And without privacy, there is no freedom.

Bitcoin was supposed to be the financial revolution that freed us from banks and governments. Instead, it’s becoming the most powerful surveillance tool in history. Every transaction is public. Every wallet is trackable. Chain-analysis firms are mapping financial behavior with surgical precision. And regulators love it.

Monero is the last stand. If privacy doesn’t become the default in digital finance, it will soon be criminalized and erased.

The internet made the same mistake: TCP/IP was built for openness, not privacy. Now, decades later, Tor and I2P are playing catch-up against mass surveillance. Monero is trying to fix Bitcoin’s mistakes before history repeats itself.

We are at a crossroads. If Bitcoin remains transparent by design, financial surveillance will become irreversible. If Monero gets crushed, there is no Plan B.

I wrote a deep dive into this issue—how we got here, what happens next, and why this moment is critical. Would love to hear your thoughts.