XMR or Cash?

@nemesis
Makes perfect sense. Some people really think the war on drugs isn't about taking money. Gimme what they're smoking.
I never realized it was about supplying the prison system with convicts and supplying the financial system with dirty money to launder. Its a very elegant solution to so completely and so cheaply tax such a wild industry. Gotta hand it to em.
I imagine the country they avoided naming in those articles is the UK. I heard we were the money laundering capital of the world because you could anonymously register a company (officially it was illegal but not enforced) and get clean money after paying 20% corporation tax. I'm using past tense because I'm not sure if things have changed or not.

Most people are missing the fact that USD has traceable serial numbers on it, and bills can be marked to trace them even more easily. So, from a purely privacy-oriented perspective, XMR is more private than USD.

If "cash" is silver or gold coins, then the casg is more private because of the potential to exploit the new carrot view-keys.

@bulletbill22
OVK doesn't mark the coins so it wouldn't have the same consequence as marking bills. Hmm, I think you might have spawn the OVK trolls, any minute now...

If you can mark a bill you can mark a coin. Sure you could melt it down but you might not notice the mark. At least with monero+OVK, all marks are removed by default the moment it hits a private wallet. Its not as bad.

At the end of the day Monero relies of computer and networks which are never fully private, whereas cash and metal are vulnerable to myriad physical security exploits. Its impossible to tell which one is private. You really have to weigh up the context.

@bulletbill22 And if I give a bill to a random person at a garage sale, so what? Or buy something in a store, then the bill I used is given as change to someone an hour later. You really think every single merchant on the face of the earth has the ability to be a part of this alleged tracking? And yes, bills can be marked, but again, so what? Its literally impossible to keep track of so many bills being used in so many places and changing between so many hands. And if bills can be tracked, so can gold and silver. But the burden of proof of any of this actually happening is on those making the claims. And I have never seen anyone making these claims back it up with even a shred of proof.

@Nebuchadnezzar_II Perhaps the City of London aspect of the UK is why it was left out. As its said, all roads lead to London...

@Nebuchadnezzar_II

Yeah even with view keys its still more private than USD. However, with coins, they are valued by weight, so you can essentially launder it yourself by melting it.

@nemesis

At least in the US, banks and law enforcement are (on the record) tracking bills serial numbers and marking bills to track them. Even if most people don't track them, and those bills may not re-enter a bank for years at a time, its still less private than XMR because it is simply not possible to do that with XMR.

@bulletbill22 Of course they do, during things like undercover drug operations and other things like that. If they are doing it with every single bill in existence, and get a bill I have right now back a decade later, again, so what. It would have changed hands probably thousands of time by then. What would the point of that even be? And how would that affect anyone's privacy? Hell, I got a 23 year old bill as change recently. You really think anyone is going to know I had that briefly, or what I did with it? Or care? You will much sooner leak your IP or your keys than some random bill you got from a random store as change being traced to you. They got much better things to do, and much easier ways to keep tabs on people and what they spend money on. Like cards. Like GooglePay. ApplePay. And all those money apps. Or stablecoins. The logistics required to keep tabs on all physical money just would not be worth the cost, if even possible. And to think they are or can is simply paranoia for paranoia's sake, not based in reality. And then, what about about all the coins? Are you saying those are as well?

@nemesis

AFAIK USD coins are not marked or serialized. And all I'm saying is that XMR is more private because its impossible to do any marking or serializing. Tracking bills has been used by banks and law enforcement, even if its use is limited practically. Tracking or serializing XMR hasn't and cannot ever be done.

@bulletbill22 well, we both have our opinions on this. But when I get a visit over felony level drug transactions I did years ago, then I'll start believing all paper money is tracked and traced. In fact, if it were, I would have gotten that visit many years ago.