Meet Monero, the Currency Dark Net Dealers Hope Is More Anonymous Than Bitcoin

By August 23, 2016Bitcoin Business

Not even bitcoin is anonymous enough for some criminals on the dark net. For years, the cryptocurrency has been the payment method of choice for people buying and selling drugs and other illegal items on the dark net. But it presents a double bind: bitcoin is pseudonymous, allowing folks to buy meth with a degree of privacy, but it’s also set up so that every transaction is traceable on a public ledger called the blockchain—not exactly ideal if you never, ever, ever want anybody finding out about your online habit. Now, there’s an alternative. On Monday, AlphaBay—the largest online market for drugs and other unsavoury items like fraud tools— announced on Reddit that the platform is adding support for an ostensibly super-anonymous cryptocurrency called Monero starting on September 1st, citing its “security features.” So, what is Monero? The first thing to know is that unlike most other bitcoin rivals, Monero wasn’t built using bitcoin’s own code. Instead, it’s based on a protocol called CryptoNote that was first described in a 2012 whitepaper written by one “Nicolas van Saberhagen,” an assumed pseudonym not unlike the one adopted by bitcoin’s Satoshi Nakamoto . While Monero shares similarities with bitcoin, like mining and a blockchain as core mechanics, it has some big differences that help its users maintain their anonymity online, at least according to the currency’s advocates. Bitcoiners will often use a single wallet address, and all transactions connected to it are viewable by anyone. In contrast, Monero creates unique addresses for every transaction with a private “viewkey” that only lets the receiver, and whomever they give the viewkey to, access the full transaction information. In theory, that means no snooping by the feds. Monero also “mixes” coins automatically—basically jumbling one transaction with other similarly-sized ones—adding another layer of confusion for […]

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