Oddbean

Not completely true, but you're right in a sense. Double edged sword though. That same thing is what makes it actually private and fungible vs something like Bitcoin. If this worries you don't save with it. Use it like cash. https://sethforprivacy.com/posts/dispelling-monero-fud/#you-cant-audit-the-monero-supply

There are better ways to have both privacy and a simple way to audit the supply like Bitcoin. My idea of a privacy coin would work something like this: 1. Have a network of relay nodes constantly running symmetric data streams for uniformity, randomly routing data through the network in broken-up chunks 2. Have every minimum unit of the currency (every "Satoshi" equivalent) be its own keypair. When a user signs a transaction, it tells the network to generate new keypairs for each one in the transaction and give the recipient the new private keys 3. The public can see the pubkeys for every unit of the currency, but can't see which ones were and weren't transacted together in each block, because of each node in the network transmitting data in separate split-up chunks along random paths

Again tho, I love Monero because the feds might not nostr:nevent1qqs879pmct3s23m2frlg2w6jwlrj9syrp5uyqy38jmyfwmdf3ahcfjcprpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezucn0denkymmwvuhxxmmdqgsvcs0qqy6epuus8r586uksfqufkq38g8uentshnyxry372nf8hpzcrqsqqqqqpvdf3xs

Would this really get around that problem or it it just "shifting" it over? Is there any crypto already existing that does something similar? Split up in chunks part kind of sounds like sharding. Trying to fully understand what you're describing, but sounds like a cool idea

It should fix the supply auditing problem, automated tools should be able to track the supply and transaction volume and stuff like with other cryptocurrencies, just not have "wallet addresses" to associate transactions and amounts with Your wallet becomes a manager for a million little tiny wallets (if you have a million Satoshi equivalents) However the aspect you say is like "sharding" may not be enough for privacy on its own. I'm thinking of it as basically something like Tor, but with each node always connecting to 2 others to transmit random data to each other at a constant bitrate for uniformity. This would solve issues Tor has with eavesdroppers being able to track traffic, but still would have Tor's issue of there being potential for anonymity to be compromised by malicious relay nodes. I'm sure another layer of anonymity could and should be added to my design. I think Monero has something to offer there, conceptually. Pushing anonymity tech forward takes a lot of math, need more brain power than mine.