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Getting The Message Right - Dash Offers Privacy - Not Anonymity

DeepBlue

Active member
Dash is a cryptocurrency that takes an individual's financial privacy seriously for the reasons given below. However, Dash is not an anonymous coin. There is a huge difference between the two. We need to ensure regulators, exchanges and governments understand the difference.

Getting the message right from the start about Dash and its optional privacy feature is crucially important for the Dash project at this time. In my opinion we should not be using statements in the press such as "Dash is not a privacy coin". Instead the message I feel we should be getting out is:

"Dash offers enhanced privacy not anonymity"

Why is this distinction important to get across in our communications? The reason is that currently the words "Privacy Coin" also include coins which offer either privacy (such as Dash) or anonymity, (such as Monero). It is clearly not right to group privacy coins with anonymity coins and then refer to both of them as "Privacy coins".

The very definition of the words "Privacy Coin" is therefore damaging to Dash because this general term does not distinguish between privacy coins and anonymity coins.

Privacy protects people and empowers them but it does not prevent law enforcement. Anonymity coins provide privacy but also block law enforcement.

Therefore not all coins offering privacy are in fact just privacy coins, some should be accurately categorized as anonymity coins, not privacy coins.

Dash definitely offers optional enhanced privacy over open blockchains like Bitcoin but Dash does this for many important reasons to protect the security of the users from crime.

Regulators and authorities are confusing the word "Privacy" with the word "Anonymity". Privacy is beneficial for everyone, anonymity however is not. It is of crucial importance right now with the unfair delisting's of Dash that the difference be highlighted in our PR communications.

Privacy is an extremely important feature to protect users against crime, especially when it comes to finances. Privacy is a characteristic where an individual or organization cannot determine the balance of cryptocurrency in a wallet and can not easily determine the source of funds. However, it is still possible for law enforcement or financial institutions with the correct technology to track and trace Dash transactions, even with PrivateSend.

Using Dash PrivateSend is no different from paying bills with a conventional bank account. The account details are kept private from the recipient. However, if a financial institutions or authorities need to see your bank balance they could do it. The resources necessary to track and identify Dash transactions are only available to specialist firms such as Cointracking services such as Chainanalysis - a service which can be used by financial institutions or law enforcement when required to track transactions made with Dash and PrivateSend.

Anonymity, on the other hand, with coins such as Monero, make it impossible to track any activity of a cryptocurrency holder. Anonymity is potentially dangerous to society because it opens the door for funds to be used by criminal organizations with little to no chance of law enforcement tracing funds. Therefore the clear message I feel we need to get out is as follows.

Privacy therefore protects people against crime whereas anonymity can encourage crime. Dash provides privacy only.

" Dash offers optional advanced privacy to protect our users from crime. Dash does not offer Anonymity and with the right resources, such as Chainanalysis or other cointracking services, Dash transactions can be tracked and identified if required by law enforcement agencies, exchanges or other regulatory bodies"

In the EU privacy is an absolute requirement under the GDPR regulations. Therefore cryptocurrencies that don't offer sufficient privacy features could actually be breaking GDPR EU law. I am sure there are other such privacy requirements in the US.

Privacy of individual's financial information is even more important than information such as email addresses and contact details etc to ensure the physical safety of individuals holding crypto. Not only for individuals but also for businesses. It is crucially important that individuals with cryptocurrency keep their true wallet balances private to prevent possible extortions or raids and other crime against that individual. Unlike a bank, an individual is responsible for the security and protection of their own funds, without privacy they could be the target of criminals who can look up their crypto balances and know exactly how much they have. This is a serious security risk to crypto holders. Never before in history have individuals been put in a situation where they are responsible for the security of their own funds. It is therefore crucially important that enhanced privacy be available to individuals, especially those with large quantities of cryptocurrency holdings.

Businesses and organizations also must maintain their privacy when it comes to financial transactions. Therefore privacy is essential for the safety of individuals and the integrity of businesses.

As governments and organizations become more familiar with cryptocurrency, and nightmare stories come out about theft and extortion of people holding crypto, they will realize that privacy is an important feature that needs to be at the heart of every cryptocurrency project. We need to make sure regulators understand what the difference is between anonymity and privacy.

So far on all the press releases I've seen about Dash I have not once seen Dash distinguishing between anonymity and privacy in a clear manner. I also have not seen Dash explaining why privacy is important and should be a compulsory aspect of all cryptocurrency.

Do we really want to get the message out that "Dash is not a privacy coin" then when regulators figure out later on that privacy is an important feature. Then we would have to change our message back again to "Dash IS a privacy coin"?

Privacy = protects users safety. Crime related transactions can still be tracked. Dash offers this.
Anonymity = is potentially dangerous to society because law enforcement cannot track crime related transactions. Anonymity is not offered by Dash.

I feel it very important to explain the importance of financial privacy in our PR releases and to also clearly distinguish the major differences between privacy from anonymity. I feel we are not doing this clearly enough at the moment. We should also give clear examples so that it is understood and we should distinguish between Privacy Coins, such as Dash and Anonymity coins such as Monero.

I'm also concerned that if we incorrectly establish ourselves as " not a non privacy coin" that later, when Regulators and government are educated about crypto, and realize the importance of privacy, we would have back peddle to convince everyone all over again that Dash actually does offer privacy!


It it clear to me that the regulators, exchanges and governments do not yet understand crypto and do not understand the difference between privacy and anonymity. We need to educate them in our PR communications about the differences.

Everyone should have the right to financial privacy for their own physical security, peace of mind and as a basic human right. Regulators will start to realize this with time and we need to be prepared for them becoming educated and hopefully, Dash could actively strive to have some part in that education process when it comes to the importance of privacy in crypto.

Privacy will also prove important for Governments themselves. They will actually want and need privacy. Right now they are not even thinking about this yet - but mark my words they will, and they will want it! Dash should be positioned to take advantage of the realisation of the importance of privacy in financial transactions that will occur as the market becomes more educated on crypto.

Recently a privacy leak from Ledger has caused tens of thousands of people come under the phishing attack by hackers attempting to get their crypto funds. This demonstrate the tremendous damage that privacy leaks can cause to people in real terms. Blockchain technology can become very dangerous to high net worth individuals if they make a transaction where it can be easily tracked back to find their full wallet balance by using a block explorer. With Dash PrivateSent people are protected because their wallet balance is not clearly known without specialist software made available by Chaintraking services.

We should be using this opportunity to educate the World on why Dash is superior to other coins such as Bitcoin by providing essential privacy to protect users.

I have previously written about the importance of privacy in crypto and outlined some examples why in a post I made in the following thread:

 
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This is a very good explanation about the difference between privacy and anonimity. I completely agree with you, many confuse the two, and because of the existence of coins that are completely untrackable, many people seem to think that cryptos in general are untrackable. It would be a shame if Dash didn't get the reputation it deserves for its privacy features.
 
How we can use delistings as an opportunity for great PR for DASH.

We could actually turn the situation of Dash being delisted to our advantage. Dash could become a industry leader in Privacy in crypto and be a consulting body for the regulators, authorities and exchanges and provide free educational programs on the importance of privacy, not anonymity and how to know the difference.

I would suggest that DCG get together with Dashnews and Amanda B. Johnson and create an education presentation to explain the differences. Dash could then send out an invitation to the regulators and exchanges for a talk entitled. "Dash presentation: How to Protect cryptocurrency users from crime. Privacy not anonymity"

The very fact that regulators need educating could be used as a marketing strategy for Dash. In my past I have worked in an field associated with a very technical instrumentation that had to pass environmental regulations on one site and be installed in industrial plants. Because there was a lot of legislation associated with this area it was difficult for organizations to keep up to date but also difficult for regulators to understand the industrial applications. Therefore we wrote papers and newsletters and gave presentations on the subject which established ourselves as leaders in the area and acted as a kind of liaison between industry and the regulators. This helped us tremendously build our reputation as leaders in the field.

I feel Dash should be doing something similar for crypto. To have a person in DCG that provides educational material and presentations to exchanges, authorities and regulators and provides free presentations in their towns. This is the way that Dash can get its name established and use this situation to create an excellent PR opportunity for DASH.

The presentation could cover the difference between privacy coins and anonymity coins and explore the different scales of privacy. We could also cover examples of why privacy is essential to secure the safety of individuals, quoting examples of people that had been the victims of attack due to criminals and hackers knowing their crypto balances. The concept of a block explorer should be demonstrated and to do a live demonstration of how sending crypto without private send exposes the users balance to the recipient. Then we could demonstrate how using private send protects individuals. All of this could be done live. We could then have a presentation from Chain Analysis - perhaps a recorded video which explains how their tech works and how Dash can be tracked for compliance purposes even with using PrivateSend features.

We could then conclude stating that enhanced privacy such as what Dash has should be an essential part of all cryptocurrency.

We can use this opportunity to build Dash's reputation by becoming an authority advisor to regulators and posting regular newsletters and giving free presentations to key decision makers. This is some of the best possible PR and marketing that Dash could do. This should be done in the USA first - the rest of the world then tends to follow.
 
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Respectfully, I don't like trying to serve both masters. Lindsey Graham's "EARN IT" Act...is that what we have here? A back door is a back door, if DASH is traceable for some it is traceable for all and if that's the case? Out with it.
 
Getting The Message Right - Dash Offers Privacy - Not Anonymity

Dash offers optional privacy - not anonymity
Just like Bitcoin offers optional privacy - not anonymity

Keyword being optional.
 
Dash offers optional privacy - not anonymity
Just like Bitcoin offers optional privacy - not anonymity

What you have written is not strictly accurate.

Both Dash and Bitcoin are psydo-anonomous coins by default and therefore offer privacy by default .

Dash's PrivateSend feature only offers optional enhanced privacy. The keyword being "enhanced".

The mistake the regulators are making with respect to PrivateSend are two fold:

1.
Regulators are categorizing Dash's optional enhanced privacy (PrivateSend) as tech that is creating anonymity. This conclusion and categorization is inaccurate. Dash's PrivateSend is only offering enhanced privacy - not anonymity and Dash transactions are all visible on the blockchain with Dash's PrivateSend.

2. Regulators are using the phrase "Privacy coins" to include coins that can offer enhanced psydo-anonymity (whether optional or not) , such as Dash's PrivateSend, with coins that are offering anonymity such as Monero. The regulators and grouping both types of coins together under the label of "privacy coins".

Coins that offer enhanced psydo-anonymity (whether optional or not) should not be classified as anonymity coins because their transactions are still visible on the blockchain when using the right software tracking services such as Chainanalysis.

The error is in using the phrase "Privacy Coins" as an all embracing term that includes enhanced psydo-anonymous coins like Dash, and anonymous coins such as Monero.

In reality, both privacy and enhanced privacy are valuable, and required for the safety of users and should not be grouped with anonymity coins.
 
One major problem with what you're saying is we use the wording anonymity on the website.
I only saw it used one time for sure and that was under Community -> Masternodes , but it's probably found other places if someone looks for it..
 
Respectfully, I don't like trying to serve both masters. Lindsey Graham's "EARN IT" Act...is that what we have here? A back door is a back door, if DASH is traceable for some it is traceable for all and if that's the case? Out with it.

It's not "serving both masters" there is a distinction here that is actually important. completely untraceable, easily traceable, and hard to trace are different things.

a quick example would be; hiding something from non authoritative sources.
This could be done with privatesend because they are much less likely to be able to do the things required to find out where the dash went/came from.
without a feature like private send companies can keep logs of peoples current capital/buying trends and things like this easily pulled from the blockchain.

while authoritative sources like law enforcement might be able to do the things required to collect that information, its not the same thing as the easily traceable normal methods of payment.

I would argue that the dash private send feature is a good middle ground form of privacy that takes care of most normal law abiding citizens privacy needs.
 
"Privacy is the ability to keep some things to yourself, regardless of their impact to society. ... So privacy is a concept describing activities that you keep entirely to yourself, or to a limited group of people. In contrast, anonymity is when you want people to see what you do, just not that it's you doing it."


It's complicated. You might choose to mix your coins before donating to a public address for a controversial project, and in that case you would be using Dash to anonymize the transaction. If you use mixing to send funds to people you already know, then I suppose you are using Dash for the purpose of privacy..

The only thing we can say is that Coinjoin allows one to send Dash such that the originating address cannot be known, but is one of a finite set.
 
I completely agree with you, many confuse the two, and because of the existence of coins that are completely untrackable, many people seem to think that cryptos in general are untrackable. It would be a shame if Dash didn't get the reputation it deserves for its privacy features.
 
One of the main reasons I've been looking into cryptocurrency is because of the enhanced privacy, especially since the president has an agenda to spy on our bank accounts. Of course, I'm sure it's trackable and will keep this in mind. Thanks for the post.
 
yes, this is similar in real world. Privacy pretects people "physical security, peace of mind and as a basic human right", and let people have self space. It also applies to Organization.
 
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