• dhork@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    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…)

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 months ago

      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 🙄

      • dhork@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        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.

          • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            5 months ago

            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.

            • Victoria Antoinette @lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              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.