I know Monero is a fork of ByteCoin. Does this means ByteCoin also provides untraceabilty? Does this mean all currencies using CryptoNote is untraceable?
PS: By untraceability I meant, no one can trace ByteCoin transaction by just knowing a wallet address.
Thank you.
Kind of.
All CryptoNote coins use stealth addresses. This helps make it difficult to know what accounts receive money. Monero also uses stealth addresses. However, there are large differences with ring signatures and RingCT.
Ring signatures mask the source of funds being used to send a transaction. Monero mandates that at least 5 possible inputs must be used (including the real one) when sending a transaction. Few other cryptocurrencies have this same mandate. Bytecoin, for instance, allows people to send transactions without masking the source used. This means certain transactions are partially traceable, and this traceability even negatively impacts other transactions that try to mask this information. To substantially mitigate these concerns, Monero made this masking mandatory.
Furthermore, Monero includes RingCT, which hides the amount sent in a transaction. Most CryptoNote projects (especially old ones) do not include this, which means people can try to analyze the amounts being transacted.
