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Bitcoin [BTC] is as vulnerable as Monero [XMR], claims Monero Talk’s Douglas Tuman

source-logo  ambcrypto.com 01 June 2019 23:30, UTC

Bitcoin [BTC] has always dominated the cryptocurrency market in terms of market cap, as well as trading volume [Despite USDT recently recording a higher 24-hour trading volume]. However, the king coin’s community and that of the privacy-centric Monero, have always been at loggerheads.

In Monero Talk‘s latest live stream hosted by Douglas Tuman, noted developer Jethro Grassie spoke about Bitcoin’s shortcomings and the privacy coin, Monero. Weighing the pros and cons of the two coins, this edition highlighted that Monero is vulnerable to undetected inflation, just as much as Bitcoin is susceptible to private keys being decoded from public keys. Tuman stated,

“If it’s about security then Bitcoin is really just as vulnerable as Monero is on those in those terms because they both rely on this discreet logarithm not being broken”

The talk featured Jethro Grassie, a Monero developer, who spoke about Bitcoin’s shortcomings, especially the transparent ledger, and claimed that early assumptions regarding the king coin tuned out to be a “load of crap.”

What triggered Grassie the most is one of Bitcoin’s community members ranting that Monero couldn’t audit the security of the commitments because there was no formal order, as they were perfectly hiding and ‘only’ computationally binding.

The developer clarified that computational binding is fundamental to elliptic curve cryptography, which is the hardness of the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem. Hence, saying “only computationally binding,” is kind of a misdirection, according to Grassie.

He added that anybody without a clear understanding of the hardness, who starts ranting about the weakness in Monero and hints at potential hidden inflation is basically spouting  “nonsense”.

Talking about Bitcoin core devs’ reluctance to add confidential transactions for the purpose of anonymity, Douglas Tuman pointed out that Bitcoin “maximalists” prioritize keeping the coin secure, over implementing tools like the one aforementioned. The host also argued the need for using the “security protocol,” if Bitcoin is not “digital cash” in the first place. He went on to say that Bitcoin had almost “given up the pursuit of being digital cash.”

ambcrypto.com