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POST Corrupting the blockchain

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"Since then, I’ve thought to myself that anyplace where there is the possibility of fraud and corruption – money laundering, investing in sharia-compliant products, moving funds offshore, giving to charities, paying taxes, managing government funds and more – could be assisted by DLT.  It could provide a fully transparent, tamperproof view of who paid what to whom. "

via Solving state corruption with technology - Chris Skinner's blog

But how? Suppose all of the bank accounts in the UK are on a shared ledger and anyone can look at that ledger to see all of the transactions. Oh dear. Something of a privacy problem - it’s none of my business if Chris has spent his money on… well… you get the point. So clearly a transparent ledger is not practical.

So we’d better encrypt it then. Now you can see that I paid Chris but not how much or what for. But that sounds like no-one’s business but ours, doesn’t it? In which case, he should be using anonymous digital cash like Z-cash or eMoney or Mondex. That’s better. Now no-one can see that Chris and are paying each other. Now I can get on and bribe him to award me a contract. Oh wait, I thought we were against that? My head hurts.

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