Anonymous Cryptocurrency

Anonymous and Cryptocurrency has been in the news a lot lately. I decided to dust off an old article and update it. Since written more coins have been in the spotlight only to see their star fade as the cruel mistress of time deemed them unimportant. Bytecoin, Monero, Dashcoin are a couple such anon coins that have faded into the background while amazingly still cracking the top 20 in market capitalization. In the world where information is trading power, the trickle of communication from these coins out to the hungry altcoin public have resulted in their fading glory and sagging values.

The new new thing in altcoins is ‘anonymous cryptocurrency‘. Recently, it was country coins, proof of stake and KGW but our attention has since turned into protecting the holders of vast tracts of virtual wealth. Many new entrants are following in the wise footsteps of Blackcoin and Darkcoin, who have strong devoted communities and development teams.

With any good idea, many pop up to offer the same TV dinner entree but with a different desert option. They are proof of stake coins with tech specs I won’t get into but they are further delving into the art of masking transactions and sender identities. This is a far cry from the Bitcoin mainstreamers who tout the transparency of the block chain. It is an interesting fact to consider that some crypto enthusiasts don’t want any governing bodies prying into their digital finances. Sounds like an idea for a future article.

Cryptcoin

A new altcoin (barely 4 weeks old) that absolutely went berserk on Mintpal yesterday. The coin promises, through Cryptcast, completely anonymous transactions. There is a white paper floating around the details of the grand plan. Per the white paper, they are still in testing mode but this sounds vaguely like Darkcoin’s Darksend (albiet the tech is different but same end goal). I feel this coin is highly speculative at the moment and it’s been an upward trajectory for about 24 hours and I am holding off investing until it cools down or there is news about Cryptcast’s legitimacy. I have been burned by too many pump and dump schemes (Faircoin, die a slow death!) over the last 3 months and will risk losing some gains in order to maintain my Bitcoin investment portfolio. UPDATE: This coin is DEAD as of February 2015.

Vericoin

This coin which I only heard about yesterday has been added to this list for it’s VeriSend feature. VeriSend tries to cloak the sender and transaction altogether like Darksend. This coin also has some other cool features such as VeriSMS (sending Vericoin via SMS) and VeriBit.VeriBit is very interesting as from what I can tell, it is trying to take a Vericoin transaction and convert it to Bitcoin without the user having to go to an exchange and do it. This coin had a nice run yesterday but as of writing (8 am EST) has been holding steady around 13k satoshi. UPDATE: Coin is still alive and the dev team has been actively working on features and wallets. Value is about half of where is was when this article was written, 6500.

It utilizes ring nodes, random transaction send amounts, and various other techniques to hide the send/receive connection from the world.

Cloakcoin

Not included in this post originally, Cloakcoin is another new anonymous cryptocurrency. It’s so new, doing a google search yields next to no results. Cloakcoin is working on Cloaksend, an anon feature of disguising the sender and receiver of Cloakcoin. They have it already in Beta and available for downloads as of this morning (June 20, 2014). The coin just got listed on Mintpal and Cryptsy within the last 24 hours, so any interested parties, should wait for the dips to buy in. UPDATE: Coin appears to be dying a slow death. Volume is low but the developers are working on a decentralized stealth mixing system, so you never know, this coin could be resurrected.

Darkcoin

I put this altcoin on the list even though Altcoin Fever has written about it before simply because I feel this is the coin that started it all. has been around for a while (in Altcoin terms) and those that caught the train early, saw some huge gains. There was a 2 day period in May where the coin gained 218% and made many (including myself) a lot of money. Darkcoin’s big differentiator is Darksend. Darksend is a coin mixing feature allowing any sender to ‘mix’ their coins with other coins during a transaction thereby disguising the original transaction and protecting the anonymity of the sender. You can read more about that on the Darkcoin white paper but the feature is still in testing and slated for a late June release. Darkcoin’s meteoric rise cooled somewhat from the cowboy days of May and now it is languishing around 1,660,000 satoshi from a high of 2,700,000 on May 22. This coin has strong development and I am waiting for Darksend’s release before I decide what I will do with my several hundred coins. UPDATE: With the release of InstantX, instant transactions for Darkcoin, the stock in this coin went to crazy heights. Still 2 days later the coin shows no signs of slowing and has already doubled in value. It’s #5 on Coin Market Cap.