A few friends of mine usually send me some money as a birthday gift every year. This year they all got into crypto so I just told them to send me Monero instead 
@weltsnake good call to go with a #privacy coin :)
@joshbdoc of course! And I’m glad they also caught on with it for privacy reasons after I told them how Bitcoin transactions can be traced.
I also decided to put a Monero address on my mastodon profile during my birthday month in case anyone feels generous
@weltsnake true a lot of people aren't aware of how transparent BTC is, which is a double edged sword really, hah.
@joshbdoc yeah, but at least there are ways to anonymize btc. However when you compre all you have to do to anonymize it, Monero is a no-brainer
@weltsnake yeah, I guess there are coin mixers but chainalysis companies will catch up as BTC was not designed to have privacy. Also have to watch out for other coins out there (other than Monero) that claim to have privacy, which is "true". An example is Zcash: it has great privacy-tech but their user base doesn't use it, the company behind it does not encourage the users to use it and they actively work with law enforcement & chainalysis companies to profit off their users.
@joshbdoc yeah i learned about zcash recently (I’m new into crypto) and was kinda sad that they don’t have those private features on by default. I guess it’s still better than btc in that sense. But people need to be better informed. I’m all for having a diverse portfolio especially when you are in it to invest and profit but when it comes to giving a utility to coins, privacy should be a main concern and Monero stand as an example to follow
@weltsnake agreed but I won't involve myself with any company claiming to have "privacy" while actively profiting off of their users and working with law enforcement (government) and chainalysis companies. That's some BS :) Check out the Zcash Wikipedia article to see that their company did a shady restructure recently...
@joshbdoc damn those do seem fishy, thanks for the heads up! Lucky i haven’t bought zcash and wasn’t planning to