CoinJoin Developer Marks 10th Anniversary in Style, Makes Biggest-Ever Private Bitcoin Transaction

CoinJoin Developer Marks 10th Anniversary in Style, Makes Largest Anonymous Bitcoin Transaction

Anonymity in Bitcoin transactions is getting more and more limited as authorities seek to regulate cryptocurrencies. However, there are still some ways to ensure anonymity and overcome related problems.

Gregory Maxwell, a Blockchain developer, foresaw these problems one year before Bitcoin launched and came up with a viable solution: CoinJoin.

What Is CoinJoin?

CoinJoin is not a program but rather an idea that works all too well. The idea is to have two or more users make transactions simultaneously to hide their details. This does not necessarily blot the information out altogether – instead, it acts as a sort of high-end encryption that makes the information hard to discern, thus deterring eavesdroppers.

CoinJoin was proposed 10 years ago, 1 year before Bitcoin was launched. Its tenth anniversary was celebrated this year with the largest-ever anonymous transaction.

Making History

The transaction in question was facilitated by several participants under the guidance of Wasabi Wallet, the brainchild of Adam Fiscor. The transaction was worth over $200,000 worth of Bitcoin – 14.8 BTC to be precise. The BTC was moved to an anonymous address and all the participants’ details – except that of Wasabi Wallet – remain anonymous as testimony to the method’s efficacy.

Wasabi Wallet itself is designed with the main goal of improving anonymity and security for its customers and has partnered with Gregory Maxwell and associates to make this happen.

Improving Fungibility

Anonymity is not the only issue troubling Bitcoin developers. Fungibility is a growing cause of concern that, albeit real, can be avoided.

It helps to think about “clean” and “dirty” money to understand fungibility. Digital coins such as Bitcoin can be easily traced with every transaction. This means that authorities can limit the use of “dirty” coins used for illegal transactions. This is not the case with cash paper money that changes hands freely without questions asked.

BTC and other cryptocurrencies should be just as fungible as fiat money otherwise their viability and stability will be compromised. CoinJoin can help with this by making transactions difficult to trace and thus upholding the integrity of every digital coin.

The threat posed to digital currencies’ fungibility is so concerning that other notable players in the industry are also taking note. For instance, Monero and zCash are also taking measures to safeguard fungibility by making transactions on their platforms more anonymous.

A Convenient Way to CoinJoin

As mentioned earlier, Wasabi Wallet has a primary goal to improve anonymity in cryptocurrency transactions. To this end, it has partnered with CoinJoin by offering the concept as a built-in feature on its platform. To this end, two users can transact anonymously with the simple click of a button. However, there are some limitations.

For starters, the minimum transaction amount to unlock this transaction is 0.1 BTC. What’s more, this feature is available only to Wasabi Wallet users. However, there are plans to expand this concept and overcome these limitations.

Conclusion

There is hope for anonymity in BTC and cryptocurrency transactions in general following the successful use of CoinJoin, a simple but effective concept. CoinJoin’s developers are currently working on ways to expand this concept and make it applicable by everyone.