
On the linkability of Zcash transactions - icey
http://jeffq.com/blog/on-the-linkability-of-zcash-transactions/
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thisisit
> Since no exchanges or web wallets support z-addrs, users are forced to
> operate mainly through t-addrs if they want to use their coins.

This lines puts the whole thing in perspective.

The other privacy oriented coin - Monero didn't have a web or GUI based wallet
for a long time.

This whole privacy aspect provides an interesting problem - most of the
exchange volumes are off chain to allow faster movement. So you send coins to
the exchange, it gets added to the larger pool ie cold/hot wallet, you trade
and if you cash out exchange deducts money and then you see your coins on the
wallet.

Now the only way you are sure that exchange has the coins is by looking at the
cold/hot wallet address. If not, the coins can simply be "numbers" on an
exchange.

Privacy focused coins means there is no provable way to see if the exchanges
have the coins.

Sure, exchanges can engage in some form of "auditing" but for that access to
the whole system is required.

------
eberkund
Interesting article, I remember reading about the different anonymous
cryptocurrencies and ZCash was apparently the strongest from the reading I had
done. This makes me want to look more into it, perhaps there is still more
work to be done in this space or maybe the pipe dream is not actually
possible.

~~~
wyldfire
The low transaction volume of the private/fungible coins means that time-of-
transaction analysis like this should probably always be a concern.

The weird was-it-or-wasn't-it-surveillance during The Ceremony [1] is terribly
odd IMO. But none of it could have ever occurred if ZCash were designed to be
trustless.

I seriously wonder whether the algorithms used for ZCash or Monero or your-
favorite-altcoin-with-a-new-signing-alg have enough runtime/experience to be
trusted with their market cap. I'm optimistic about Monero at least, but TBH I
don't have much research or evidence on my side.

[1]
[http://www.radiolab.org/story/ceremony/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/ceremony/)

