According to Karen Hsu of BlockchainIntel, Bitcoin remains the most-used cryptocurrency for private transactions, outpacing all major privacy-focused cryptocurrencies combined.
To achieve greater privacy, traditionally relatively transparent Bitcoin transactions are run through mixers/tumblers, such as Wasabi Wallet, an additional third party service now on the Bitcoin blockchain. According to Hsu, mixed transactions account for around 4% of total Bitcoin transactions:
“For Bitcoin, when I last checked, I think 4% was mixers and tumblers, [that is] mixed or tumbled transactions.”
She went on to confirm that even though it is still a small amount, Bitcoin is used more in darkweb and illicit transactions than other coins that regulators often blame for being used by alleged law-breakers, though not in significant amounts:
“You look at Bitcoin, people aren’t using CoinJoins and tumblers as much as you’d like to think or as much as some of the people would make it [seem]”
Formerly painted frequently as a dark web currency for illegal activity, Bitcoin has since become a popular investment and speculative asset, available on a wide range of well-regulated exchanges.
Privacy transaction vary across coins, but still relatively small
While various top coins employ advanced privacy features as key selling points, their usage remains low. Data from Zcash block explorer Zchain Explorer indicate that within the past day there were 5,787 transparent transactions, 529 shielded (private) transaction, and 35 fully shielded transactions. Then within the past month there were 142,075 transparent transactions, 17,428 shielded transactions, and 1,644 fully shielded transactions. Within the past day, shielded transactions were roughly 8.9% of all Zcash transactions and around 11.8% of all Zcash transactions within the past month were shielded. Another coin that is heavily geared towards those that seek privacy in every transaction, Monero, has had 5,526 transactions within the past day and 176,575 transactions within the past month or about 1.7% of Bitcoin’s daily transaction and 1.9% of Bitcoin’s monthly transaction numbers. These coins had a much higher usage split in favor of privacy features, but are still in the single digits of total their total transactions or when compared to other coins. For Dash, based on data from Dash Radar and Bitinfocharts, there were 74 PrivateSend transaction of a total of 15,868 Dash transactions within the past day and 2,317 PrivateSend transactions of a total of 1,649,296 Dash transactions within the past month. This amounts to 0.5% of transactions being PrivateSend within the past day and 0.14% of total transactions.
Taking Bitcoin’s daily transaction count within the past 24 hours of 315,932 transactions, according to bitinfocharts, roughly 12,637 or those are reportedly sent through a mixer on a daily basis. Compared with the combined private transactions of Dash, Zcash, and Monero or 6,129 in a single day, Bitcoin’s private transaction count is more than double every single major coin with advanced privacy features combined.
Dash focusing on refining public view of PrivateSend
I just published “Dash’s Privacy Features And Compliance” on the Dash Blog https://t.co/qNqcq4Bhjn
— Ryan Taylor (@RTaylor05) August 8, 2019
Despite the fact that overall PrivateSend transactions are relatively infrequent compared to the wider Dash network, Dash has continued to develop the optional service for consumers, and its latest update makes it feasible on mobile devices with plans to develop it further. However, Ryan Taylor, CEO of Dash Core Group, has also spoken in detail about how Dash PrivateSend is not any different from mixed Bitcoin transactions in terms of regulation and should be treated as such, especially since privacy will become increasingly important for cryptocurrencies as it becomes adopted by individuals and businesses more. Dash Core Group is focusing on educating exchanges and regulators in order to make PrivateSend more available and not be a reason for individuals to discriminate against Dash. Dash has also recently formed a partnership with BlockchainIntel to help open up even more partnerships with companies that need to maintain strict compliance laws and do not have the bandwidth to do it themselves.
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