Winklevoss twins say they each donated $1M in bitcoin to Trump
Winklevoss twins say they each donated $1M in bitcoin to Trump
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I follow crypto, and Biden's SEC has been inconsistent in its crypto policies. I think Gary Gensler thinks he's a crypto expert, but gets a lot of it wrong. Still, though, even the US crypto exchanges asking for regulatory clarity have been playing loose with the rules a bit. The article mentions New York State's beef with Coinbase, but that was in regards to its "Earn" products, which attempt to tie deposits with "rewards", and convince people those rewards are the same thing as interest on their savings accounts. They aren't really, even in Proof-of-Stake coins which are the closest thing.
But make no mistake, the only reason Trump now likes crypto is it allows foreign actors to contribute to his campaign while disguising the source of the funds. And since Trump has captured the RNC, any donation to his campaign is a donation directly to him and his legal fund. The Winklevii are US citizens, so they are not obligated to hide their contributions. They must realize that a good portion of that contribution goes directly into Trump's pocket. That's the only reasonable explanation for announcing this publically -- in case Trump wins, they want their transaction formally recorded, and they will expect Trump to deliver.
Does Trump then sell BTC for USD on an exchange and then pay tax on it? Why didn't the Winklevii just send USD?
I don't get this use-case for BTC, overbanking the overbanked.
The Winklevii sent BTC because they have a buttload of it, bought at a very low price. Their actual cost for that donation is basically the long-term capital gains tax (and maybe not even that if their accountants are creative).
And yes, Trump (or his campaign) have to convert that to fiat at an exchange. (Probably Gemini, owned by the Winklevii.) But the key thing is that with Crypto, they have no way of knowing where the donations are actually coming from. Someone in Saudi Arabia or Russia could be filling out donations forms through a VPN, and list their location as Branson, MO, and there would be no way for anyone to prove it wasn't really from Branson. (Maybe if they were careless and reused BTC addresses. Some Monero shill will probably reply and make sure everyone knows how Monero is even better at money laundering....)
I mean just because you say some pithy thing at the end doesn't make it wrong. Nobody should still think, in 2024, that Bitcoin is in any way anonymous. If you want privacy you don't use Bitcoin.
I guess that makes me a shill for Monero 🙄
Bitcoin is pseudonomynous. If you are careful it can be anonymous but that is not a guarantee.
Monero is anonymous, as anyone who uses it will remind you about, repeatly. Monero users are the vegans of crypto.
i thought monero's mixer was show to be susceptible to poisoning.
I'm not sure I understand the question... Monero doesn't need a "mixer," that's kind of the entire point. You swap your BTC (or literally anything, shoutout to godex.io) for XMR and poof, it's gone.
Unless someone gets physical access to your wallet keys, there is no way for anyone to know where that money went, where it came from, or where it will go in the future. For all intents and purposes, it's invisible.
I seem to recall that the anonymity of car is based on obscuring transactions through bundling, but that method was deanonymized by poisoning wallrts somehow. this was like 10 years ago so my memory is fuzzy.
I seem to recall that the anonymity of car is based on obscuring transactions through bundling
Car? Autocorrect maybe?
I'm not XMR fanboy or expert, and it is some beautiful mathematics, but wayyyyyy over my head. That said, you might be referring to "ring signatures" that I guess you could say "bundles" the transactions together but that would be far too reductive, it's way cooler and more complicated than that.
If I recall, there was talk of possible attack vectors, so they made it even more private. I'll let wiki explain:
The transaction outputs, or notes, of users sending Monero are obfuscated through ring signatures, which groups a sender's outputs with other decoy outputs.[14] Encryption of transaction amounts began in 2017 with the implementation of ring confidential transactions (RingCTs).[8][15] Developers also implemented a zero-knowledge proof method, "Bulletproofs", which guarantee a transaction occurred without revealing its value.[16] Monero recipients are protected through "stealth addresses", addresses generated by users to receive funds, but untraceable to an owner by a network observer.[8] These privacy features are enforced on the network by default.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monero#Privacy
So it looks like it was 2017 when they changed things. I know there was some discussion of switching from RingCTs to zk-SNARK (a form of "zero-knowledge proof") which, in and of itself, is an amazing cryptographic concept. I implore you to check out the wiki on it if you have any interest in cryptography or mathematics I think it's brilliant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof
So yeah, according to wiki, it seems as though they adopted zero-knowledge proofs... So not only ring signatures, but RingCTs (encrypted), plus ZKP, makes Monero pretty impenetrable. Which I think is cool af. As an engineer, I like seeing a typically abstract field/form of math be used in practical, real-world examples, as it doesn't happen often.