I used to lump all “privacy” projects into one bucket. Same label, same fate: controversy, delistings, and the constant suspicion that if something is private, it must be hiding something. Then I watched how institutions talk about privacy when the cameras aren’t on. They don’t hate privacy. They rely on it. They just don’t call it privacy. They call it confidentiality, information controls, disclosure policy, and audit access. That’s when it clicked for me: the market didn’t reject privacy as a concept. It rejected a certain kind of privacy—privacy that can’t be reconciled with regulated oversight. And this is exactly why Dusk shouldn’t be framed as “another privacy coin.” If you try to sell Dusk with the Monero mental model, you’re not just marketing it badly—you’re pushing it into the wrong regulatory and institutional box.
Let’s address the elephant directly. Monero became the symbol of “opaque-by-default” privacy. The chain’s value proposition is that outsiders should not be able to see who paid whom, how much, and often even the balance flows in a way that’s directly legible. That design choice created a cultural identity: strong privacy, minimal visibility. It also created a regulatory reaction: if compliance teams cannot reliably prove lawful flows or support investigations within their frameworks, they consider it unmanageable risk. That’s the origin of the delisting pattern across multiple venues and jurisdictions. Whether you agree with it or not, that’s the reality: un-auditable privacy triggers policy resistance.
Now here’s the part most crypto debates never articulate cleanly: regulated markets don’t require universal transparency, but they do require enforceable oversight. Institutions don’t want anonymous markets. They want confidential markets where trades can happen without leaking strategy, counterparties, and positions to the entire world. But they also need auditability, supervision paths, and the ability to demonstrate compliance. That’s the real split. It’s not “privacy vs regulation.” It’s opaque privacy vs auditable privacy. And this is the lane Dusk is trying to occupy with selective disclosure.
Selective disclosure is a simple idea that gets misunderstood because people think privacy has to be absolute. It doesn’t. Selective disclosure means sensitive information stays confidential by default, but can be revealed—partially and under defined rules—to authorized parties. Think of it as role-based visibility baked into the market layer. A regulator doesn’t need the public internet to see everything you do. A regulator needs the ability to audit when required. An auditor needs evidence and trails. A venue needs surveillance signals. A counterparty needs enough information to settle and reconcile. None of those requirements imply that every stranger should be able to reconstruct your portfolio and relationships in real time.
That distinction matters because it changes the category Dusk belongs to. If you call Dusk a “privacy coin,” you automatically trigger the Monero narrative: “this is mainly for hiding transactions.” That narrative is a trap. The more accurate framing is that Dusk is aiming at compliance-grade confidentiality—privacy as market structure, not privacy as anonymity culture. That’s a very different pitch. It’s closer to how traditional capital markets function: verified participants, controlled information flows, and lawful access for oversight.
Here’s a concrete way to see the difference. Imagine a regulated fund trading a tokenized security or RWA position. If every move is transparent, competitors can watch accumulation, front-run settlement, or copy positioning. The fund becomes a signal generator. In real finance, that’s unacceptable. Confidentiality protects legitimate activity. But now imagine the opposite extreme: a system so opaque that the fund cannot prove it complied with eligibility rules, transfer restrictions, reporting obligations, or anti-money laundering controls when required. That becomes unacceptable too. Institutions need a middle structure: execute confidentially, prove compliance, and reveal information only under proper authorization. That’s the selective disclosure concept in action.
This is why “privacy coins got delisted” is not the right lesson for Dusk. The real lesson is: the market punishes systems where compliance cannot be demonstrated within institutional frameworks. Delistings are often about risk management and regulatory exposure, not about a philosophical rejection of privacy. Even institutions that support privacy as a principle won’t touch a system that makes their compliance obligations impossible. So if Dusk is designed around selective disclosure and confidential smart contract execution with verifiability, it belongs to a different conversation than Monero. It becomes about building rails for regulated markets, not about resisting oversight.
The mistake creators make is defending privacy in a moral tone instead of explaining privacy as a functional requirement. Privacy isn’t just about hiding; it’s about preventing exploitation and protecting market integrity. In adversarial markets, transparency during execution becomes a vulnerability. If intent is visible, someone can extract value from it. That’s why MEV exists. That’s why large orders get hunted. That’s why serious venues control what is visible and when. Institutions know this, which is why they rely on confidentiality even while being heavily regulated. So when Dusk emphasizes confidentiality with selective disclosure, it’s not trying to “escape regulation.” It’s trying to build something that regulated finance can actually use.
There’s another layer here that matters for narratives: reputational positioning. Monero became a symbol. Symbols attract simplistic narratives. Compliance teams don’t have time to nuance crypto culture; they categorize risk quickly. “Privacy coin” becomes an easy label, and easy labels drive conservative decisions. Dusk’s long-term adoption depends on avoiding that simplistic label and being consistently framed as a confidentiality and compliance infrastructure for regulated assets. Not in marketing language— in design language. The closer Dusk positions itself to institutional workflows (regulated venues, tokenized securities, controlled disclosure), the less it gets dragged into the “privacy coin” mental model.
This isn’t just theory. Regulated markets already operate with layered visibility. Participants don’t broadcast their inventory. Order books have rules. Post-trade reporting exists, but it’s scoped and timed. Regulators have access paths. Auditors have access paths. The public gets certain disclosures, but not a live feed of every trade’s sensitive context. When crypto assumes that trust requires universal observability, it imports a retail ideology into a domain that breaks under size. Dusk’s argument is that you can preserve the benefits of on-chain settlement and programmability while aligning with the reality of how regulated markets manage information.
The strongest way to express this is a blunt statement: privacy didn’t fail—un-auditable privacy failed. The market is increasingly comfortable with privacy-preserving systems when they can support compliance proofs, controlled disclosure, and lawful access. That’s the difference between “opaque by default” and “confidential by design with auditability.” Dusk wants to be in the second category. If it succeeds, the regulatory conversation looks different. It’s no longer “this asset hides everything.” It’s “this system protects market integrity while still allowing oversight.”
So no, Dusk shouldn’t be treated like Monero. Not because Monero is “bad,” but because they represent different design philosophies and different regulatory interfaces. Monero is an emblem of strong opacity. Dusk’s selective disclosure thesis is about building confidentiality that institutions can operationalize. That matters because the next wave of adoption—RWAs, regulated finance, tokenized securities—won’t run on rails that are either fully transparent or fully opaque. It will run on rails that can keep execution confidential while still proving compliance. That’s the only middle path that scales.
If you want a simple takeaway that doesn’t feel like marketing: Dusk isn’t betting against regulation. It’s betting that regulation and confidentiality can coexist when disclosure is selective and verifiable. That’s a more mature privacy narrative than crypto usually offers, and it’s exactly why it’s worth paying attention to.
