From the time I got started in cryptocurrencies and even now, the rhetoric has been that only use for bitcoin is criminal activity. Well once they realize that it wasn't as private as they thought, and privacy coins gained traction they said the same about them. Well I am here to tell you this, the value of privacy coins is derived from more than just those who may use it in a nefarious manner.
A majority of the cryptocurrency transaction are transparent as they use a open ledger and anyone can view transactions whenever they want. This is all well and good until you realize that on top of viewing transactions they can also see balances in the sending and receiving accounts. Well guess what that almighty adoption people are clamoring for, now can create a one stop shopping list for criminals to pick their target from.
For example, when the lightning network goes live and we are able to pay in store with bitoin for common things like a coffee at mcdonalds or a pair for shoes from the mall, we now have exposed both our Identity and our wallets. All it takes is one crooked employee to go go back and match customers to wallets and you now have a database of where these wallets are located who they belong to and where they frequent.
These lists could in turn be sold to criminals that can execute either digital or physical attacks to said person. This sounds far-fetched until you think about the legnths people are already going through to scam others of their crypto.
The use of privacy coins sure as Monero and Zcoin could help alleviate this issue as they can mask and or scrub the history with the coins involved. So no address attached and no balances revealed.
This is an issue that is still a ways off but one to be considered no less.
