• Broadfern@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    I fully admit in advance I know very little about crypto, so please someone correct me if I’m wrong.

    Isn’t part of crypto a detailed log of transactions?

    • HalfSalesman@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      My understanding is that even if that is the case purchases are still not easily trackable/traceable if that is your concern. I myself don’t know specifically why though.

    • blackstampede@sh.itjust.works
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      19 days ago

      Actually, you can think of all crypto as a log of transactions plus the infrastructure to create, manage, and provide information about those transactions. It is public, but the “accounts” are basically just blobs of numbers, so they can be hard to trace, depending on the platform.

    • green_copper@kbin.earth
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      19 days ago

      It depends on the project. Many cryptocurrencies (Like Bitcoin, Etherium, Litecoin) have a public ledger. So every transaction (participants + amount) is visible.
      Other Projects (where Monero is the most well known) use special cryptographic systems to hide all that. So the only thing which can be observed by 3th parties is that some transaction was successful somewhere. There are also projects which are private but prioritize efficiency (all the cryptographic hiding has a notable computation-cost) by sacrificing hidden amount or hidden participants.

    • kartoffelsaft@programming.dev
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      19 days ago

      Yes.

      But also, how can you make digital payment work without one? Not a rhetorical question by the way, legitimately don’t know. llmost seems impossible.

      My thought process:

      • You need to verify transactions aren’t fraudulent
        • source of trust on this can’t be centralized, thats what visa/mastercard are
      • You need to be able to calculate a balance
        • traditional currency does this by physically possessing things
          • you can’t “own” data; it’s fungible i.e. it can be copied trivially. If I copy my wallet onto your computer, who owns it?
        • digital currency gets around this with a ledger
          • that’s the detailed log of transactions
        • ???
    • Hawke@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      It is, but there is little or no detail of who exactly it was that made the transaction. Some cryptocurrencies are better than others about keeping that information hidden.