Litecoin delisted from exchanges: Are privacy coins dead?

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Litecoin delisted from exchanges: Are privacy coins dead?

Direct from the desk of Dane Williams.




No, privacy coins are not dead. Let's talk about why.

Ah, here we are back again questioning whether privacy coins are dead in 2022.

The answer of course being that no, privacy coins are not dead and the fact they are being delisted from centralised exchanges mean that they’re doing their job as intended.

Crypto exchanges delist Litecoin because of privacy features

This discussion comes on the back of today’s news that two prominent South Korean crypto exchanges have said they will delist Litecoin (LTC) because of new privacy features enabled by the protocol.

Bithumb and Upbit have taken a stand and stated that Litecoin’s newly activated Mimblewimble Extension Blocks (MWEB) network upgrade, conflicts with anti-money laundering (AML) regulations in South Korea.

Yes, Upbit.

The exchange that our Korean friends use to pump and dump HIVE without having the faintest idea of the decentralised project we’re building here.

But that’s one for another day…

Getting back to Litecoin and while these South Korean exchanges may not see the volume pass through them required to really trash the market, it does mean that it’s only a matter of time before the major US exchanges follow suit.

Cue the crypto Twitter meltdowns…

But before the inevitable crypto Twitter meltdown, I’m here to offer a voice of reason around privacy coins.

Privacy coins being delisted is good

That’s right, delisting privacy coins from centralised exchanges is a good thing.

Remember, the end goal here is to still build decentralised, permissionless money.

Of which, the fungibility advantages that privacy coins have over their counterparts running on open blockchains, will play a key role in reaching.

The fact that governments and major regulatory agencies are putting pressure on centralised exchanges to delist privacy coins simply shows that the tech has passed them by.

The cat has been let out of the bag so to speak and there’s no stuffing it back in.

So relax, there is no need to have that meltdown after all.

Privacy coins like Monero (XMR) and Litecoin post Mimblewimble are still untraceable in 2022 and will continue to be as the network effect takes hold and more and more transactions are done using coins with these features.

But what about the price of privacy coins?

Everyone is looking at privacy coins from the point of view that number go up.

When people talk about price, 99% of the time they’re not talking about a sustainable equilibrium price.

They’re talking about exchange volume driven pump and dump price, built on nothing more than hype.

I know that this is going to hurt your head, but…

In the case of privacy coins, price doesn’t matter.

What matters is that the network is decentralised and secure so your transactions and wallet addresses that you use to transact, stay private.

That is all.

The future of privacy coins in the wake of Litecoin’s delisting

In my opinion, the future of privacy coins is extremely bright.

They are and will continue to play one of the most important roles within the parallel running crypto ecosystems that continue to form.

While the fact that they are essentially going to be excluded from centralised exchanges and thus the Web2 connected, regulated parallel means that their price isn’t going to go parabolic.

This doesn’t affect their base use case of secure, private transactions which will ensure the network will always incentivised to be securely run and thus maintain some value.

No, that equilibrium price may not be a moonshot, but once again, that’s not the point here.

In terms of network security, checking back on the XMR mining pools, it seems Monero has minimised the risk of being 51% attacked.

As long as Monero is safe and secure, it will maintain value and be used.

The tech has passed regulators by and at this point it literally doesn’t matter what they do surrounding privacy coins.

At this point, regulators are just wasting time and taxpayer dollars.

Privacy coins are here to stay and people are free to choose whether to interact with them or not..

Final thoughts on the death of privacy coins

With a major part of most country’s financial laws based around the concept of anti money laundering, obvious the fact privacy coins allow you to conceal the identity of wallets and transitions just doesn’t fit.

But ultimately, this renewed push for the regulation of privacy coins will simply force innovation to move faster and ensure their full integration with DEXs where regulators are unable to touch them.

Remember the UniSwap debacle?

UniSwap the decentralised protocol is different to the front-end website that the company UniSwap Labs owns and operates.

Even though the US government doesn’t want their citizens using the UniSwap Labs’ front-end to swap tokens they consider dangerous, the decentralised nature of the protocol itself ensures that the capability remains.

The concept is exactly the same with stablecoins and once THORChain (RUNE) integrates Monero into their platform, it’s essentially game over.

Permissionless, cross chain swaps without the need to use an intermediary such as a wrapped token like you see on most DeFi platforms.

With access to what may as well be unlimited liquidity.

Privacy coins are far from dead.

They are going to not only change crypto, but the entire financial system structure as we know it.

Best of probabilities to you.

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30 comments
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Well said. Privacy is important also from a safety perspective.

No one should use a non-privacy coin to make purchases in the real world.

Imagine sending $10 to buy something and they trace back and discover you have a whole BTC. Not so safe for individuals.

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Well for some it doesn't really matter.

But there are definitely situations, especially for businesses, where the privacy of transactions is imperative.

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Ultra rich people like Saylor don't care.

Risk of getting robbed for average people.

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I still think there is a use case for the privacy coins and I am sure if they want that utility, they don't mind going to some DEX somewhere to swap. So I think it's not really going to change too much.

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Exactly, the tech has already passed regulators by.

But in saying that, we see that it doesn't stop the mainstream media publishing content that shows not only a distinct lack of education, but obviously agenda driven.

Frustrating.

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Should we buy LTC then? or jut stick to BTC?

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If we're around for the day the 21M BTC limit is reached, then we will want to go with LTC. Like HIVE, LTC is criminally undervalued, and LTC even addresses a need BTC won't.

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The main difference is PoW vs PoS though? Its less secure?

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I was going to say "no"; then I discovered something called LTCP (Litecoin Proof of Stake). Rather than being a hard fork of Litecoin, it is based on the code base for Bitcoin. So LTCP is different from LTC, and LTC itself uses Scrypt rather than SHA-256 for its hashing algorithm. LTC remains PoW, while LTCP is PoS by definition.

Privacy is the need Litecoin addresses which Bitcoin hand't address or won't address.

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Thanks, thats helpful to know.

But people have chosen Bitcoin over LTC and BCH for adoption?

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By virtue of being first out of all, Bitcoin has (whether deserved or not) first-mover advantage. Bitcoin is what people know.

LTC is #20 and BCH is #32 in Market Cap on CoinGecko. At least on LeoFinance, I see LTC getting more respect than BCH.

LTC may be like a classic Volkwagen Beetle among leading cryptos; by virtue of its design as a "a classic Volkswagen Beettle," LTC great under certain conditions.

(I want to say the same about BCH, but I'm not familiar with it pro or con.)

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This is a sign lf fear coming from CEXs which also shows the need for DEXs. I don't believe that privacy coins are dead. There are still plenty who believe in their value. The churning process is nevertheless proof of how obedient and desperate about acceptance CEXs have become.

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Even though CEXs deal with crypto day to day, they are actually nothing more than normal businesses and therefore have to follow the same rules/regulations.

I don't think they're scared of regulations per se, it's just a normal part of doing business.

But the cool thing about the crypto infrastructure being built is that ultimately these legacy businesses will always be able to be bypassed.

In the grand scheme of things, they don't matter at all.

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As long as Litecoin is linked to Thorchain, Litecoin can easily be swapped to bitcoin, ethereum, rune, and the other native assets linked to Thorchain. I couldn't care less what upbit and bithump do.

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OOO. Nice! Didn't know LTC just got an upgrade. Privacy coins are the future! As you mentioned extremely bright 🌞

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You need to listen more to our man with his finger on the pulse - The great taskmaster4450!

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(Edited)

The future is decentralized with no single points of failure. Privacy coins are the two edged part of that future, a necessary component of the war against tyrany in the digital age. Somewhat like guns, we must protect our right to them, because the government can't be counted on to do the right thing.

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Lol Americans.

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Sorry, did that sound to violent?
I regret we are known for such attachment to guns...I think the attachment is a two edged sword. The right to msintsin a trained militia to resist Tyranny was the idea...it has devolved.

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The right to maintain a trained militia to resist Tyranny.

I just never know if you guys are serious or not.

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The serious people are not the ones you find in front of a camera.

Also, there was a time juuuuuuuuuust before I was born when high schools had gun clubs and students could leave their rifles in their lockers and no one would bat an eyelash. Culture was different back then, and that culture included a respect and healthy fear of firearms. When there were crimes committed, the criminals were seen as the problem, not the tools they used (which included firearms). Since then, things have been turned upside-down and inside out.

Even if mass-shootings took place in those days, the news mentioned it and that was that. Fast-forward to now, and one event dominates entire news cycles. And for what? To what end?

There's more I can say on this topic, but that's not why I signed up for Hive and joined LeoFinance. If you'll excuse me, I have more raw red meat on my plate to eat.

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I cant upvote the 7 day plus old post, but I can upvote your 6 day old comments.
valuable post, with which I agree.

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Suppose my goal is to buy 2.3 BTC. Then suppose I can make that purchase in 1 transaction (or as few as I am permitted by the excahnge or the jurisdiction).

There are at least 3 ways I can buy that 2.3 BTC:

  1. Buy 2.3 BTC directly;
  2. Buy stablecoins first, offload them to wallets I control, then use the stablecoins to buy 2.3 BTC;
  3. Buy privacy coins first, then use them to buy 2.3 BTC.

What's the difference between Methods 2 and 3 aside from the coins used? What's the proper way to use privacy coins to buy 2.3 BTC? Are privacy coins such as XMR and LTC-MWEB superior to those which are ERC20s/BEP20s/etc.?

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