Privacy coins: Have the good coins gone bad?

Every year more and more people become crypto enthusiasts and believe in the future of blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies. But stereotypes are still alive. One of them says that to buy or use private cryptocurrencies is a lot of darknet users and frauds. And as we know – there is no smoke without fire. In fact, there is no fire anymore, but there is definitely a smouldering ember. The privacy of some coins makes them a preferred payment method for felons, illegal activities financing, and money laundering. But we always should remember that this level of privacy was created primarily to ensure the safety of ordinary users’ data. So we prepared a list of top privacy coins to prove or refute public opinion. 

Monero

  Monero (or XMR) appeared on April 18, 2014, as a fork of Bytecoin. The creator of this anonymous coin stayed anonymous as well. All that we know about him is a Bitcointalk nickname - “thankful_for_today”. XMR is by far the most famous anonymous cryptocurrency. The technology behind this digital currency is known as the CryptoNight Proof-of-Work protocol. Monero uses an enforced privacy system. This makes it impossible to identify any user. The third party is not sure to which address the transaction was sent. This is possible because of the signatures that mix the input from the sender with other information of this type. The XMR protocol implements the RingCT function, which hides the number of funds transferred. Monero's emphasis on anonymity and security gives users the ability to use it for all kinds of online activities. For this reason, XMR remains the most used coin in the darknet and hackers community. Monero is one of the few coins with which all transactions are confidential by default. Most other tokens require a certain feature or some kind of setup process to be enabled in order to make anonymous transactions. If you want to know how to buy monero coin, one of the possible options is Indacoin, where you can buy XMR and other cryptocurrencies from our list with your bank card in just 15 minutes.

Zcash 

     Zcash was created in 2016 as a consequence of Zerocoin and since then it has a reputation of one of the most private cryptocurrency. To ensure the anonymity of the transaction, Zcash uses the Zerocoin protocol and zero-knowledge. On the Bitcoin network, transactions are transparent, while ZEC provides the ability to generate a public and private address. As far as their work is concerned, the public address has the same function as the BTC address. A personal address is used to conceal the sender, recipient and the amount of the transaction. Business transactions are confirmed by a method called zk-SNARK. The deals themselves are available on the public network. Information about the parties and the amount of the transaction is encrypted. ZCash allows for “transparent transactions”. You can send such a ZEC trade to wallets or exchanges that do not support the ZCash privacy protection feature while remaining anonymous. 

The Zcash founders are trying to invest not only energy but their own capital in the development of crypto innovations. There is a unique foundation dedicated to the construction of internet payment and private infrastructure for everybody, where they donate 10% of their reward. As co-founder of the Ethereum project, Vitalik Buterin said: "If I wanted real privacy, I would most likely use Zcash."

Beam

  Beam is a relatively new coin based on WimbleMimble that was created in January 2019. Interesting to know that Mimblewimble was named after the Harry-Potter tongue-tying curse because of its ability to fuse transactions together such that they become indecipherable. The innovation represented in what algorithm is Beam working. All network data are hidden from prying eyes, and no additional conditions are required for this. There are no addresses and other private data in the blockchain, there is support for offline operations and the integration of hardware wallets. In addition, the developers did not conduct ICOs and pre-mines, so everything is fair and transparent. First of all, the user’s wallet creates a transaction in a secure channel and sends it to the Node. The purses of the sender and the recipient participate in the signature, the Schnorr protocol is used. The Node confirms the transaction and sends it to the miners, and the confirmed block with the transaction prolongs the longest chain. And the last step is synchronisation. 

Pirate Chain

  On 29 August 2018, Pirate Chain was launched by Komodo developers. Pirate chain has become the quintessence of the best technologies used in other top private cryptocurrencies. So the coin took its delayed Proof of Work (dPoW) from Komodo, zero-knowledge proof (zk-SNARKs) transactions from ZCash, and the rule of enforced private-only transactions by Monero. Pirate Chain supports the TOR network, and there are no public transactions to make the system as safe and private as possible. You can also get a PirateOS operating system that defends users with VPN and TOR by default and boasts pro-active defences such as MAC address spoofing which improves anonymity on local networks. Another advantage is that Pirate Chain is protected from 51% attacks because of Komodo's dPow security. The ARRR token is a pretty good choice of cryptocurrency to make private purchases.

Ghost by John McAfee

   Ghost coin was launched by famous computer programmer John McAfee, who founded the software company, McAfee, in April 2020. He decided to abandon the project because of the disagreements with the management team, but he still believes that GHOST token is the future. The naming of the token hints to us that there will be nothing but a “ghost” after operations with this private cryptocurrency. Ghost transactions all fully anonymous by Ring Confidential Transactions (Ring-CT), hiding the sender, receiver, and the amount. Transaction history is being erased immediately with the state of the art escrow pool technology. And also all Ghost transactions are verified using zero-knowledge proofs. The Ghost ecosystem can be really called privacy-focused, as it was the primary goal of John McAfee.

Aidos Kuneen (ADK)

  Since 2016 ADK remains a popular cryptocurrency to invest among the blockchain lovers community. The main advantages of the token are its security, privacy and untraceability. ADK is fully anonymous, and anyone can make safe and fast transactions with it. ADK’s Edge Over Others ADK has a new, innovative distributed ledger called IMesh based on a directed acrylic graph (DAG). An underlying network layer protects its users’ identities from being revealed during transactions. Its AKshuffle keeps users anonymous and transactions 100% invisible and untraceable. The main focus of this open-source project is privacy, decentralisation and scalability. So as transactions increase, the network becomes even more secure and efficient. When you decide to buy ADK, you make the security system even stronger!

  It all started with Bitcoin, and now we have so many solutions to hide transactions and increase privacy. But step by step regulation rules are tightening, and anonymity is gradually leaving the world of cryptocurrencies. Maybe in the near future, there will be no opportunity to stay anonymous when using cryptocurrency. Fear of negative aspects of private coins makes the development and innovations in this area come much slower. But we still believe that any innovation can be used as an instrument to improve living standards. For example, privacy coins are staying the best way to ensure confidentiality and speed of financial transactions in business. The moral of the story is - keep being on the light side of crypto and may the force of progress be with you.