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According to an agent for the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Bitcoin is used more than its more private competitors because of its greater liquidity.
Speaking of the change in the most common purpose of cryptocurrency transactions, special DEA agent Lilita Infante said that the cryptocurrency has shifted from the use primarily to illicit ends for speculative purposes. Moreover, according to Infante, the vast majority of illicit transactions are still made in Bitcoin, rather than coins like Monero and Zcash with advanced privacy features. This is reported due to the significantly lower liquidity for these coins.
The current 24-hour trading volume for Bitcoin is $ 5.26 billion, significantly higher than the current highest-volume coin with improved privacy features, Dash, which currently holds about $ 181 24 million – the trading volume. Zcash, meanwhile, is positioned at $ 116 million in the last 24 hours, while Monero's volume drops significantly to $ 32 million. Of all these coins, the main Coinbase brokerage service only supports Bitcoin at the moment, while other popular brokerage services Uphold supports Bitcoin and Dash.
Privacy in cryptocurrency is stuck in a constant technological arms race
the struggle between technologies that seek to improve user privacy, and those looking for ways to violate that privacy, remains constant and constantly evolving. For example, research on Monero found that transactions prior to 2017 were easily linked to past transactions, a vulnerability that was largely resolved with the introduction of RingCT. In addition, a chain split from MoneroV and additional forks has caused a new privacy threat for users attempting to claim coins on new chains and the ecosystem in general. It was discovered that Dash's PrivateSend has a theoretical limit case advantage against large transactions transferred to an empty, mixed and sent address in the same unit, which can be mitigated through best practices.
In particular, all private currencies suffer from a similar problem, as it is currently impossible to preserve near-perfect privacy on anything other than full-block, full blockchain portfolios. In order for a lightweight client to communicate with a complete node, some data must be visible to that node and therefore not completely private. This means that most portfolios, including mobile devices, the Web, hardware and most desktops, must trust their privacy on the full node used by the wallet provider, potentially creating a honeypot situation in most of the private transactions are channeled through some entities that can then be compromised, thus compromising the privacy of most users. A temporary solution for this is to run a complete node at home and point a mobile wallet (when possible) on that node, then trust its node and in practice offer a privacy configuration without trust bootstrap.
Dash continues to improve its privacy functions, market penetration
One of the first major cryptocurrencies offering advanced privacy, Dash has a number of improvements to PrivateSend. The recent 12.3 update revised the network, including optimizations on mixing speed, and a correction to a potential privacy vulnerability discovered through Dash's bug bugs program. In addition, MyDashWallet offers an easy and reliable PrivateSend option for mobile and web environments, and is currently working on iOS and Android apps, as well as the ability for a user to select their own node, providing an alternative solution to a configuration without problems. Finally, the next scheduled Dash update, 12.4, will include a comprehensive review of the network, including deterministic masternode lists, which allow lightweight clients, including mobile devices, to use PrivateSend without relying on a complete node. This could make Dash the first cryptocurrency with advanced privacy features completely reliant on mobile devices.
Finally, dash has reached new historical highs in terms of masternode counts and merchant counts. According to the latest DiscoverDash data, 2,163 merchants currently accept Dash worldwide, 865 of which are only in Venezuela, a country that has seen a sharp increase in Dash adoption. This growth of Dash's ecosystem will significantly improve its liquidity compared to lesser-used competitors.
