just curious, are anonymous transactions planned for NEM?
This is something i also wanted to see in NXT for a long time…
Not at the moment, anonymous transactions are really not practical for businesses, they have to follow laws and anonymous transactions fall under money laundering.
well businesses can choose not to use anonymous transactions.
also there is a difference between wanting anonymity and doing illegal stuff.
I think that itd make nem adaptation more difficult in the mainstream if we offered the possibility for money laundering in addition to normal payments. It could be bad pr for us
Actually i think wed just get different sorts of businesses interested 
look at darkcoin, bad pr seems to turn out pretty good.
I cant believe how people dont want to discuss this, in times where most of the internet traffic is monitored by 3+ countries, people gradually lose their freedom and privacy and nobody gives a shit. i couldnt even pay with paysafecard ( a service that was pretty anonymous a few years ago ) without beeing suspected for money laundering and they requested my id because i wanted to transfer 50
things like this would impress Average Dave.
who do you want your businesses to sell their goods to if average Dave is not around?
also how come " point of sale businesses can not accept anonymous txs"
if i buy something in cash thats pretty much the same, i give money away, i get product, seller dosn't really know who i am.
or am i missing something?
things like this would impress Average Dave.
who do you want your businesses to sell their goods to if average Dave is not around?
Disagree. When talking to people who dont know about cryptos the most usual question that i get is that "isnt btc a money for crimes, just look at silkroad". Many seem to negatively connect btc to criminal activities. Anonymity therefore doesnt appeal to average law abiding citizens that much.
things like this would impress Average Dave.
who do you want your businesses to sell their goods to if average Dave is not around?
Disagree. When talking to people who dont know about cryptos the most usual question that i get is that "isnt btc a money for crimes, just look at silkroad". Many seem to negatively connect btc to criminal activities. Anonymity therefore doesnt appeal to average law abiding citizens that much.
I agree and there are 7 Billion out there.
but this whole argument of "isn't btc used to buy drugs" or "isn't darkccoin used on silkroad" is nonsense.
cryptocurrences are currencies, every currency is used to to illegal things, nothing we can do about it.
We are coders, not cops, not the fbi, not the nsa.
But then to take this further and say "We are not implementing this because bad people could use it to to bad things" is bullshit.
1. They will do this anyway.
2. We are building a cryptocurrency and not a moral authority. Denying everone ( in my view important ) features just because some guys use it for illegal stuff is exactly the wrong way to go.
From the original NEM post:
"A currency is an expression of a political ideology and social attitude."
The social attitude i get from this conversation is that everyone is a criminal and thats why we cant give them privacy.
well done NEM, well done.
but this whole argument of "isn't btc used to buy drugs" or "isn't darkccoin used on silkroad" is nonsense.
cryptocurrences are currencies, every currency is used to to illegal things, nothing we can do about it.
We are coders, not cops, not the fbi, not the nsa.
But then to take this further and say "We are not implementing this because bad people could use it to to bad things" is bullshit.
1. They will do this anyway.
2. We are building a cryptocurrency and not a moral authority. Denying everone ( in my view important ) features just because some guys use it for illegal stuff is exactly the wrong way to go.
From the original NEM post:
"A currency is an expression of a political ideology and social attitude."
The social attitude i get from this conversation is that everyone is a criminal and thats why we cant give them privacy.
well done NEM, well done.
If we want to get to the mainstream rational arguments wont only do. It is not about bending because of criminals but creating the image that is trustworthy. We cannot afford bad branding since there are a lot of competing coins.
And might i ask you why would the average person use anonymous transactions since most people are not that scared of surveilance? I see anonymous transactions bringing very little value to average citizens and creating a possibility of nem having a long term pr fiasco. Remember that many people know btc from silkroad. We dont want nem to be remembered from easy money laundering, do we?
And might i ask you why would the average person use anonymous transactions since most people are not that scared of surveilance?
Most people aren't scared of surveilance because they dont know much about it, or never thought about, most people just dont care. But I see more and more people who get aware of that and start using VPN services or Tor, the number of those people will only rise in the future.
And for use cases:
Maybe I am a normal law abiding citizen working for Shell and dont want my boss to know i just donated money to Greenpeace.
Maybe I am a normal law abiding citizen in a family of Obama freaks and dont want anyone to know i just send money to Ron Pauls campaign.
Maybe I am a normal law abiding citizen and dont want my wife to know i payed for flowers she never recieved.
Maybe I am a normal law abiding citizen and want to donate to a site like Wikileaks. http://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html
Maybe I am a normal law abiding citizen and dont want anyone to know i just donated money to a LGBT campaign.
Maybe I am a normal law abiding citizen and dont want my son to know i just bought a PS4 for his birthday.
Maybe I am a normal law abiding citizen and dont want anyone to know i just bought something from a sex shop. ( but of course nobody here has ever done this - invalid argument )
enough for now?
I've been telling people about the necessity of anonymous payment for quite a bit now and it's not completely out of the picture. It's just not a priority FOR NOW.
There so much else to implement and noone stops anyone from providing mixins for NEM.
Also what about stolen coins? There have already been cases of people's computers getting hacked and their wallets stolen. The stolen coins have been traced to a exchange and the account on the exchange has been frozen. With anonymous txs this couldn't happen or at the very least make it extremely hard to do.
I dont really care, when someone comes up saying they got hacked or stolen, I have always been the guy laughing about them.
The klee incident was probably the best so far, millions of NXT in an online wallet, he almost deserved it, well no, he deserved it. So much money and no idea about security, that's natural selection 2.0, I bet he also has the pin code of his mastercard on the backside of it.
Sorry but no mercy for stupidity.
There will always be idiots, but if you give people freedom, sooner or later they will learn how to responsibly use it.
At least thats what we should strive for, remember social attitude and stuff?
And might i ask you why would the average person use anonymous transactions since most people are not that scared of surveilance?
Most people aren't scared of surveilance because they dont know much about it, or never thought about, most people just dont care. But I see more and more people who get aware of that and start using VPN services or Tor, the number of those people will only rise in the future.
And for use cases:
Maybe I am a normal law abiding citizen working for Shell and dont want my boss to know i just donated money to Greenpeace.
Maybe I am a normal law abiding citizen in a family of Obama freaks and dont want anyone to know i just send money to Ron Pauls campaign.
Maybe I am a normal law abiding citizen and dont want my wife to know i payed for flowers she never recieved.
Maybe I am a normal law abiding citizen and want to donate to a site like Wikileaks. http://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html
Maybe I am a normal law abiding citizen and dont want anyone to know i just donated money to a LGBT campaign.
Maybe I am a normal law abiding citizen and dont want my son to know i just bought a PS4 for his birthday.
Maybe I am a normal law abiding citizen and dont want anyone to know i just bought something from a sex shop. ( but of course nobody here has ever done this - invalid argument )
enough for now?
And how exactly would your boss or son find out where you have sent your nem. If i recall correctly nem addresses are not your names like in fiat. Just go ahead and make a new wallet if you'd like to be anonymous.
The examples you gave can be anonymously executed by the average joe with the current nem model. Thus, it is not worth to take the risk.
Regarding your post on the stolen coins situation reveals that youre an ignorant jerk. You dont speak for the average user but look down on them because they are not as tech-savvy as you claim to be. That is just the attitude that will prevent nem from taking the steps that will drive for mainstream adaptation.
And how exactly would your boss or son find out where you have sent your nem. If i recall correctly nem addresses are not your names like in fiat. Just go ahead and make a new wallet if you'd like to be anonymous.
The examples you gave can be anonymously executed by the average joe with the current nem model. Thus, it is not worth to take the risk.
Regarding your post on the stolen coins situation reveals that youre an ignorant jerk. You dont speak for the average user but look down on them because they are not as tech-savvy as you claim to be. That is just the attitude that will prevent nem from taking the steps that will drive for mainstream adaptation.
Someone kept over $1 million USD in cryptos, saved the privkey for it in a plaintext file, backed up on a dropbox account that was not repassworded after heartbleed and all the news around it on major news sites, and was using public wifi.
and i am the ignorant jerk.
well that jerk part maybe true, but i am not the only one who is ignorant.
Back to topic:
True nem addresses are not names, just like in bitcoin, but its also possible to connect names to payments if you know just a little bit about them, yes it does make it harder to figure out specific transactions, but not impossible.
As NEM is a decentralized system I think there will probably be someone who will love this so much to develop something like this for NEM. However, as patmast3r said, this is not a priority for NEM at the moment.