2016 is said to be the year of virtual and augmented reality as these technologies come to market.
As these technologies are stuffed with a lot of sensors, how do you see a way for us to make payments to, for example, Pokemon Go (trading fluffymon) and remain "private"?
Wow, that is a phenomenal question, and I'm sure others will chime in as well. It's a difficult question to attack since crypto-related legislation is evolving at an increasing pace.
However, the first thing that comes to mind is if biometric scanning were to ever become a requirement for accessing certain forms of VR. As far as I am aware that is not yet a requirement, but if it ever comes to be then the only advice I could offer at this point would be to steer clear of those particular services. This is why some forms of crypto ATM's are immediately discounted by Monero community members, and I see the same attitude carrying over to any other theoretical implantation of such identification methods.
Additionally, if future services employ a know your customer (KYC) approach to identifying users, then that too would be up to each user's level of comfort. A relevant case would be the crypto exchange Poloniex's sudden statement last year, requiring that all customers provide several tiers of personal information, thus cutting off their fund withdrawal ability to whatever tier they had reached (I believe the first was to provide just a first and last name, which could conceivably be faked). Should this come up in the future, again, this would depend on each unique user's preferences, but it may still be possible to use a false alias and retain access to the service as is possible with Poloniex's first layer of identification.
This is just what's popped into my mind, and I'd be delighted of others had additional input.
Monero is unlinkable. If you pay to Pokemon go, they have no idea where you got the monero from. If you request payment from someone, the payer has no idea what you'll spend it on.
The trick is keeping your private spend key and view key secure. I expect hardware wallets to become popular.
