Trail gone cold: How private cryptos camouflage transactions for anonymity

The spotlight is firmly on the future of cryptocurrencies in India these days as the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021 comes up for discussion and debate in the winter session of Parliament, starting on November 29. The mention of private cryptocurrencies in the Bill has triggered speculation over their fate and their exact definition.

While you may be familiar with popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, there are a bunch of cryptos that ensure privacy of transactions – by privacy, we mean anonymity. These cryptos cannot be tracked. The route that any given transaction takes is meant to obfuscate means of tracing the source.