Privacy and financial sovereignty is a game of cloak and dagger. Bitcoin does not have to 'win'; it has already been co-opted by the powers that be. Bitcoin has to send a message. Bitcoiners who refuse to see the value and use case of a privacy coin like Monero, do not understand this message.

#cybersecgirl

https://i.nostr.build/J6M7P.jpg


Bitcoiners really need to start building privacy tools


:RedHeart:


They're working on it. Though, it seems becoming widely used and adopted took precedence over privacy after Satoshi bounced. You can not have freedom without privacy.

https://i.nostr.build/KGjyW.jpg


Snowden is great and a hero but he doesn’t understand how this network runs. You can’t add privacy at the protocol level. It has to be done with services or second layer solutions. Even if someone proposed to make all Bitcoin transactions anonymous, people wouldn’t switch to that hard fork of Bitcoin because confidential transactions on the main chain will make it impossible to audit the supply and catch inflation bugs. Privacy is and always will be something that the individual must practice.


McAfee Chan poster 😂🤣💀💀💀


Bitcoiners build privacy tools for well over a decade. It's called Monero.

What most newer Bitcoiners dismiss is that Monero has been founded by earliest Bitcoiners and cypherpunks.


I agree. And willingly or unwillingly you perfectly described why there will be a duopoly.

Black and white. Yin and yang. Transparent and obscured.


In other words
yall are morons who don't understand you are ALREADY trusting cryptographic primitives and you dont need to be able to sum the utxo set on a napkin to have supply assurances.

Snowden is absolutely correct.


You could not be further from the truth.


Care to explain?


Okay so you want the blockchain to have completely confidential transactions with no way of verifying the supply. Just trust the “cryptographic primitives” are correct bro. They will never have an inflation bug. Makes sense 🤡


For one, Im willing to bet you have NEVER personally verified the BTC supply and just trust someone elses code to do it

And two, it's possible to mathematically prove that something is so, WITHOUT actually revealing what the factors are.
Like we can prove that the sum of the inputs and outputs of a tx are zero. Without showing the amounts.


How do you prove that the sum of the inputs and outputs of a tx are zero?


Monero supply is auditable. Every time you make a transaction, you have to mathematically prove you have the amount you spent. All you have to do is verify every proofs.

Sure, the maths involved is more complex than a simple summation, but it's still maths at the end of the day. The robustness of bulletproof (the proving scheme used) has been proven mathematically, the likelyhood of crafting fake proofs is metaphorically the same as being able to mine bitcoin blocks without having to do proof of work.

(the metaphor is somewhat accurate, bulletproof literally relies on the robustness of hash functions to be safe)

With that knowledge, let's imagine how an inflation bug would look like. A bug means there's something wrong in the verification process. On bitcoin, the code would not detect an invalid transaction (because it's buggy) but anyone who knows how to sum numbers will spot that something wrong is going on.

On monero, the code would not detect it, but anyone who knows how to verify proofs will spot something wrong is going on. It's pretty much the same.

It's a bit scary because we all know how to sum stuffs (but really there isn't as many people who know how to write code that sums all UTXO), while we don't necessarily know how to verify these proofs, but there are multiple implementation of verifiers, audited and well tested.

If you're not scared of maths, I highly encourrage reading Zero To Monero, it's not that hard and really demystifies the protocol. It's not a magic black box, it's just good old maths.

And finally, I believe there's still plenty of stuffs to improve bitcoin privacy without having to go as far as obfuscating transaction amounts. If we manage to improve anonymity sets, amounts will be obfuscated by being distributed into multiple uncorrelable UTXOs (the uncorrelable is the hard part).


Do you have a link for zero to monero?

Also what do you think about pay joins and ecash/fedi?


This all seems like nonsense. I like Monero, but I don't trust the supply to be verifiably limited. You basically have to trust the protocol itself in order to trust the "proofs" you describe, as I understand it; they're not actual proof, you're relying on an assumption.


bitcoin-cli gettxoutsetinfo is so challenging, sometimes I forget the shortcuts for copypasta


I’m trying to keep an open mind but this is basically how it sounds to me. Relies on a lot of trust.


you audit the gettxoutsetinfo code yourself?

or do you *trust* the community to do it for you?


cryptographic primitives
in this case, range proofs.

https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/430


Yall are incorrect that there is significantly more trust than you already put in bitcoin.

Range proofs have been around for a looong time and are well understood.


Privacy and financial sovereignty is a game of cloak and dagger. Bitcoin does not have to 'win'; it has already been co-opted by the powers that be. Bitcoin has to send a message. Bitcoiners who refuse to see the value and use case of a privacy coin like Monero, do not understand this message.

#cybersecgirl

https://i.nostr.build/J6M7P.jpg


He is precisely correct.
A monero transaction must prove no its inputs and output equal zero to meet consensus agreements.
We can prove that without knowing the amounts involved because of zero knowledge proofs.

This isn't rocket science,you are already trusting more complicated maths using bitcoin.


How do you know the Monero network rejects malicious nodes like you know with the Bitcoin network?

For me as a Monero user, the answer is "blind hope."


Replied to this already but can't see my reply now so saying it again:

I don't know if it's true that the maths I trust in Bitcoin are more complicated.

I do know the maths I trust in Bitcoin have been tested and proven by the smartest people on earth with very high stakes beyond anything we've seen with "zero knowledge proofs."


Give a simpler explanation. If you want people to adopt monero or if you want bitcoin to add this to the base layer, you’re going to have to convince the nodes in a simpler way. https://video.nostr.build/95ccace291ed11b0cfa946bd3b4d6cd1ec8d33c9b38417f442ccad19110f5c46.mp4


https://www.getmonero.org/library/

Ecash/fedimint are a great invention and used under the right circumstances they are a wonderful thing.

The community is about to finish a Nostr client and there is already a bounty to implement ecash on top of Monero.

Because from a pure privacy perfect ecash is a great extension (if also pairs with other privacy tech like i2p) where custody is already given up and is limited in reach and time.

Think gift cards, in conference/festival tokens to buy food and drinks, casinos,....


I'm not sure what you mean by "there is no proof". Proving you own the private key that can spend a UTXO without revealing that private key (asymetric cryptography) is also complex math, but pretty much everyone is trusting this math and has likely never tried to do it by hand. That's also a mathematical proof, although the assumption being made that it cannot be faked are vastly different.

Maybe I should have mentioned, "bulletproof" is a proving scheme that comes from academic cryptographers, just like SHA256, ECDSA and Schnorr signatures used by Bitcoin, it's not a Monero-specific protocol, although it's likely its biggest user. It follows the same scrutiny from bright and smart people.

At best we could argue zero knowledge proofs are younger than the other cryptographic primitives I mentioned, and we might want to wait to see if new schemes can offer different speed or proof size. But I believe the fear against them is largely unfounded now.

Anyway, as I said, I'm not a zero-knowledge maximalist, they are a means to an end, and the end is large anonymity sets, make multiple users indistinguishable from one another. Maybe we could manage to reach that end differently. But in our search for solutions, it would be a shame to not take into consideration the track record that some of them already have.


Dude let's not pretend you or any bitcoiner combed thru a billion+ bitcoin transactions and made sure all input/outputs were good. You don't do that to all new transactions every ten minutes either.

You just run a node and pay zero attention like any Monero user

"But bro three people on the planet actually do that" So now you're trusting others to do it for you and be honest if they find it and not exploit it? What was the point of running a node then?

Yall make no sense


Unless you've gone thru every single line of Bitcoin and understand it (no single dev does), then you are "trusting the protocol". Have you gone thru all billion+ transaction inputs/outputs? How about all new transactions every ten minutes? Ok, then you're trusting software that you don't fully understand. Completely different from merely running a node.

Bitcoin relies on cryptographic assumptions too. All cryptocurrencies do.


With Bitcoin, the trust in the protocol is all based on proven understanding. It's not "blind" trust. I don't know how to sign a Bitcoin transaction, but I know Satoshi Nakamoto knew how to sign a Bitcoin transaction.

With Monero, my little trust in the protocol is based purely on blind hope.


You pretty much get it. It's the fact that zero knowledge proofs are younger.

I also do think a lot about how a privacy token could work while having verifiable supply. The best option I've thought of so far would work like this:

There are no UTXOs, every unit of the currency has a keypair.

Every time there's a new block, every keypair changes based on seeds.

To send a transaction, you say to a network node "here's an encrypted message with moneys in it for a certain pubkey"

To confirm a transaction, the recipient says to the network "here are some moneys and their old keys and some new keys for them to change to"

To retain anonymity, the sender and recipient can also listen for other network nodes sending the same kind of messages, and they can all mix in fake spam messages without blocking each other for it, within reason. You can also just pay a transaction fee to manually cycle your seeds now and then, or to cycle additional seeds other than the ones you're sending or receiving every time you send or receive any.

I'm kinda retarded and sometimes miss obvious flaws in my ideas but I'm pretty sure this would work or is close to something that would


I should clarify: this should result in the network easily knowing what units of currency there are, with chainalysis being much more difficult to perform / easier to evade compared to Bitcoin - anonymity still wouldn't be a blanket guarantee, if I'm wrapping my head around my own idea correctly


This is also my first time writing it all down so I might be missing parts of my thoughts. Like I just realized I'm pretty sure the point of having keypairs cycle based on seeds was to let partial chunks of the network operate in isolation e.g. your home server saying "leave verifying these keys up to me and those I transact with" and then staying connected to the network constantly cycling all its seeds without transaction fees and without the network knowing which ones are for new transactions and which ones aren't.


Also to be clear this wouldn't be a free lunch, the constant connection to the network would be used for the network's functionality instead of paying fees.


then just use monero.. what's the point


yup


Actual personal responsibility and self sovereignty requires effort.


Ill see if I can find a braindead explanation of rangeproofs or Pedersen commitments.
In the meantime here's the wikipedia on commitment schemes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commitment_scheme


It is not plausible to suggest zero knowledge proofs are unreliable because "they are younger"
They've been around since the 80s and are well understood.

People have been talking about adding them to bitcoin since forever. I'm not aware of *anyone* who is opposed because they're skeptical of their mathematical properties.

Here Hal discussing them back in the day.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-pioneer-hal-finney-talks-zero-knowledge-proofs-newly-surfaced-video


In the beginning I’ve done that with my own transactions and looked through random ones in the mempool. After seeing it reliable, I stopped. However. I can’t do that with monero and the fact that the monero website itself claims that supply soundness is compromised in order to provide better privacy says a lot.


Effort is one thing. But
 an engineering background is something totally different. Especially when others with engineering backgrounds are also not convinced


If only maxis were so demanding when it comes to auditing the gettxsetoutinfo function.... 😥

It is good to be intellectually consistent.


Zero knowledge proofs in the context of cryptocurrency have been much less tested than the cryptographic signatures and other complex components of Bitcoin. I don't know why I keep having to explain this in different words here. Both Bitcoin and Monero have complex components that most users can't be expected to understand directly, but with Bitcoin those components were broken and fixed in world war 2 and with Monero those components are being tested for the first time.


Yes it’s good to be intellectually consistent. Supply soundness was the tradeoff bitcoin went with and is the reason bitcoin is winning. The monero team clearly knows they have supply soundness risks. https://image.nostr.build/330d0930ddc837e108141f42adfe562f289912b1c186acc88fceec1470846117.jpg


Nobody is arguing that napkin math isnt a sounder guarantee.

But it is intellectually inconsistent to bitch about ZK proofs when you are ALREADY trusting cryptographic primitives that are more complex.


By the way, I think most users can and should read about the basic premises of public-key cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs. But most users might not ever have any idea how to sign a Bitcoin transaction or verify a Monero wallet amount by hand without having software handle it for them.


This is just incorrect.
ECDSA was not standardized until 2005.

Relying on ECDSA without question but being suspicious of Pedersen committments is weird and arbitrary.


I have zero logical room for doubt that if the cryptography in Bitcoin can be broken by human efforts, it will be. I'd bet the network could survive by freezing and reverting to a previous block and continuing under an updated version of the protocol with different cryptographic standards.

In the mean time, Bitcoin supply is verifiable. A layman can access overwhelming proof that Bitcoin's available on-chain supply is what it's supposed to be, instead of relying on blind hope that the experts know what they're doing.

I don't know why you're refusing to recognize this.

If Monero's supply is perfectly verifiable to the experts out there, I am still waiting for an understandable explanation of how, and so are many other Monero users.


That would be intellectually inconsistent except I never complained about zk proofs. I don’t even know what that is lmao all I’ve said so far is that I’ve seen my tx inputs and outputs balance out. I have firsthand experience of supply soundness in Bitcoin with my transactions. Anyone could also just do a simple sum of all the addresses in bitcoin at any time. I can’t do that with monero. There is no need to check every single transaction when you can just sum the total supply at any given moment.

So nostr:npub1wamvxt2tr50ghu4fdw47ksadnt0p277nv0vfhplmv0n0z3243zyq26u3l2 is not technically wrong when he says that monero zero proofs or whatever requires you to trust that it works. And you can argue that other cryptographic properties in bitcoin require trust too. And that’s correct but that trust is not built on my understanding of complex software. It’s built on time and actual firsthand experience. I understand how they work and trust it because it has earned my trust. No amount of firsthand experience can change the supply soundness flaw in monero. And average sheeple are not going to magically start giving a shit about their privacy anytime soon. So I’ll take the supply soundness and practice privacy using tools like pay join and ecash.


Their own website says that they can’t guarantee supply soundness so https://image.nostr.build/02a38bdb827adaa58098d3b48f9b5d3087cf5725be91be02028c249effc61e4b.jpg


Adding this to my wiki page on Monero 🤙


you're proving my point

nostr:nevent1qqsp00g66jame0tgt4tl30f0l8apsmsd6vceh2k34kplp3ajqepfjwcpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qgs0npwnpyvheqz7zuvuwvv9k460c0hyqlturds40hhfn34vufvehwcrqsqqqqqp2gasdm


Moving the goalposts.

Neither you nor monero devs can guarantee supply soundness. That makes monero a shitcoin HFSP 🫡


Again, that is incorrect.

You trust ECDSA to secure your utxos and ensure only your private key can reassign them.
There is no plausible reason to trust ECDSA but mistrust Pedersen commitments.


By the EXACT same logic
you cant trust ECDSA to ensure that only your private keys can spend your utxos.

But you do.

Your whole argument is just
"I trust Team Bitcoin when they say ECDSA is secure.
But I don't trust Team Monero when they say range proofs are secure.
I don't DYOR.
I don't verify.
I just follow the prevalent groupthink of the team I like."

Frankly, you're a sorryass Bitcoiner.


"I trust bitcoin because it's transparent and don't understand math"

i think we can safely disregard your opinion.


WRONG.

I trust that private keys work because I’ve literally used them to spend. But you keep moving the goalposts lmao prove that the monero supply is sound first.

Frankly you can HFSP 🫡


🥱 the opinion that matters most https://image.nostr.build/80e5082c7ae61d99e99db85a29b351df75faac6dbce83a475e431f5297499178.jpg


<sigh>
lol ok

You have no evidence your private key is the only key that can spend a utxo.

This property of bitcoin depends on the ECDSA encryption it uses being mathematically sound and the implementation being correctly coded

YOU *TRUST* THE BITCOIN COMMUNITY WHEN THEY TELL YOU THIS IS SO.

YOU ARE ALREADY RELYING ON CRYPTOGRAPHIC PRIMITIVES YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND.
YOU JUST REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE IT.


You can always tell when a maxi has lost all actual fact-based argument.

Because they pull out a fiat chart of relative speculative value as if it was meaningful.


Do you have any evidence that a different private key can spend my utxos? All you’re doing is talking in abstract theoretical “what ifs.” But it’s just unproductive mental masturbation.

Provide evidence that monero’s supply is sound. If you can’t, then that is the main reason why bitcoin is winning against monero. Adding zero proofs or whatever you call it to bitcoin would jeopardize supply soundness.


If you’re going to commit logical fallacies (e.g. move the goalposts and straw man) then I’m just going to share the objective math that matters most.


if you dont have the ability to actually reflect on your fundamental assumptions you are a waste of time.

point is
you demand proof from me,
but trust other "maxis."
WITHOUT understanding or DYOR on *either* of the cryptographic primitives involved.

it is intellectually inconsistent and you arent a cypherpunk or a true bitcoiner.
just a team player unwilling to make the effort of critical thinking.

have a nice day.


I have not moved any goalposts.
Just continued to call out your obvious inconsistencies.

You are the one changing the subject, not I.


You’re a clown. The original post was about Snowden asking for more privacy on the base layer. I said that this won’t happen because a transparent blockchain allows for supply soundness. You argued something about zero proofs and other cryptographic shit. It’s irrelevant. You either disprove my claim or drop it. And since monero can’t even guarantee supply soundness with this same technology that you’d like to have on Bitcoin, then your arguments are pointless.

All that’s left for you to do is hard fork of Bitcoin with these zero proof concepts or stfu.


You're too much of a moron to understand what either I or Snowden are talking about.

Or how moneros cryptographic security is *at-least* as reliable as cryptographic assumptions you are ALREADY trusting.

have fun staying ignorant.


Why don’t you fork bitcoin then? Talk is cheap


You have no clue what you are talking about.

Everything Monero uses is based on proven and understood math and crypto from the 80s it's about as old as Bitcoins tech. Which funny enough you probably don't understand so are trusting too.


You can't revert without screwing over all the users who just gave away products/services for fake Bitcoin that would go poof. That happens to your blockchain even if it's transparent anyway.

Bitcoin is verifiable with "napkin math" but we both know you are never going to do that for billions of transactions.
You simply run a node like any Monero users would (If you are the tiny fraction that even runs a node) and "blindly trust"

For that "advantage" that almost no one takes advantage of (no pun intended) you lose fungibility, privacy, targeted-censorship resistance, etc. Cool.

Here you go. Should take all of five minutes for you to understand what pedersen commitments are and the math behind them. Can't dumb it down more than this and we're not going to spoonfeed you just because you're too lazy to learn high school level math.

https://docs.grin.mw/wiki/miscellaneous/switch-commitments/


In other words you havent made sure all Bitcoin transactions work out and that it's supply is sound

An advantage you don't take advantage of is hardly an advantage


MAHDOOD the type of guy that praises Bitcoins decentralized ledger, then constantly posts centralized ledger price charts

MAHDOOD the type of guy that says he loves Bitcoins simple transparent auditability, but never takes advantage of it

MAHDOOD the type of guy that says things like "the market is always right" and "network effects" when referring to Bitcoin, but then tells you why it's wrong and can't explain Monero Darknet adoption

MAHDOOD the type of guy that talks about anonymity sets and hiding in large crowds, but then uses a transparent and pseudonymous blockchain

MAHDOOD the type of guy that talks about Bitcoin being permissionless digital cash, but then brings up permissioned white market transactions and CEX volume


Got better things to do than expect that link to have useful information, sorry. If you have an explanation, you're free to explain it.


And if you can't explain it, I won't believe you're lying, I will just continue to operate on the assumption that you could be. If that upsets you, you basically just need to chill.


Do you have evidence that the Bitcoin supply isn’t 21 million?


The onus is on you to prove it does because you are claiming it does (you want us to prove a negative)

This is logic 101


You got better things to do...that's why you're replying to anons on Nostr for the past few days but can't skim a brief introduction on commitments for a couple minutes. Suuuuure lol.

No one is upset. You didn't address anything else I said because you cant.

If you can't click a link that's your own willful ignorance. I really don't care if you do or don't.


No actually the onus is on them to prove that their zero proof shit actually guarantees supply soundness. Since they’re proposing that Bitcoin should change the base layer.


You don't take advantage of "amounts in the clear" to verify the billion+ txns anyway. No Bitcoiner does. You just run a node and pay no mind like any Monero user would.

I fail to see your advantage if you never do it in practice.

"Can, but doesn't" is essentially the same thing as "Can't"

It's larping


You just got very confused very quickly. Sorry about your brain issues, good luck.


Not sure where you're getting this stuff but no, what you're saying is not correct.


If you want more privacy in Bitcoin you might be interested in Silent Payments - https://bips.dev/352/