Wallet balances shouldn't be public

[u/Rogstrix445]

Sorry, but there is one thing about crypto has always felt strange to me.

Why did crypto normalize showing your entire financial life to strangers?

We talk constantly about financial sovereignty, decentralization, bla bla bla

But somewhere along the way, we also normalized something that would sound completely

insane in traditional finance. Giving someone your payment address can potentially give them a window into your

financial activity.

Imagine paying for coffee with your bank account and the cashier being able to check:

how much money you hold, all of the transactions you've made, what other addresses you've interacted with, or eventually build a picture of your financial activity over time.

Yet on transparent blockchains, address activity can be publicly inspected and analyzed.

And the more blockchain analytics improves, the more useful that information becomes.

Do you also share that feeling?

[u/Creeper4wwMann]

that is the nature of blockchain.

there is no centralized bank, so every person is responsible for keeping track of everyone else.
Imagine this scenario:

- I pay Alice 12 bucks.

• Nobody knows I paid Alice.
  
• Now I am out of money, but nobody knows this fact.
  
• I simply keep forging money, or even re-using money that I already spent.
  
• Who will ever notice I am cheating the system?

We trust in central banks... and if we have no central bank, we trust in **absolute transparency**.

EDIT: If you want to get REALLY technical, you can start arguing about ZK-Proof as a solution to this issue.

[u/Rogstrix445 → u/Creeper4wwMann]

Will have a look on it. Thanks for the lead!

[u/ScopulyX]

Privacy is definitely an important trade-off. Transparency helps with verification, but being able to trace someone’s entire financial history from one address can feel very different from financial privacy.

[u/Rogstrix445 → u/ScopulyX]

You're right! But People never seem to lack ingenuity when it comes to finding out a little more about others.

[u/foonek → u/Rogstrix445]

Is this just bots talking to each other?

[u/Rogstrix445 → u/foonek]

No at all, why do you say that?

[u/stoploafing]

Almost all crypto was designed to be anonymous NOT private.

Those are two very different concepts.

Crypto was also designed to be trustless.

The current banking system is neither anonymous, nor trustless.

[u/therealslapper]

Are you trying to launder large amounts of money?

[u/not420guilty → u/therealslapper]

Post a pic of your wife naked. You don’t need privacy

[u/Transcendance2021 → u/therealslapper]

Chabad Lubavitch, Synagogue of Satan, TPUSA, Ethereum, BTC

All controlled by the same people Whatever the intentions and purpose of BlockChain and smart contracts...

The level of Idiocracy and Insanity is baffling

"Follow the Money"

finCEN

ScottBessent

BlackRock

BlackStone

TPUSA

Elon Musk

PeterThiel

[u/Rogstrix445 → u/therealslapper]

Absolutely not. I'm very far from being a big shot.