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The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

bloomberg.com

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Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#81

Post by aoeusnth1 »

apo wrote: post #78
vadimberman wrote: post #45

A question to the experts: why don't the criminals use smart contract platforms like Ethereum? My amateurish take is that, for instance, a smart contract could work as an untraceable distributed Silk Road with escrow and everything else. Because there is no one machine where everything runs, it's impossible to shut down the server; there is nothing that links these transactions together, except for the commonly used…

It's sad to see the "Bitcoin doesn't do smart contracts" line repeated so faithfully - even implicitly as in your question. It's rubbish. Bitcoin supports smart contracts, and has done so since launched in 2009. Even the simplest Alice-pays-Bob transaction is actually running a smart contract written in Script, a Forth-like language custom built for Bitcoin. Bitcoin also supports metacoin protocols that create tradea…

> And, the majority of the interesting use cases for smart contracts require extrinsic (non-blockchain) state to operate. The price per barrel of Brent. Whether it rained over a piece of farmland. Randomness. Notice of the publication of a death certificate. All of these applications rely on a trusted server (or a federated system of them) for input. And they can be corrupted or shut down by a powerful adversary. Ethereum might be able to free itself from oracles to a small degree, but the difference will be negligible for many practical purposes.

Interesting point, but can't randomness be read from hash of the next block? I'm not familiar with Ethereum's VM - does it not have access to that?

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#82

Post by jacobush »

ifdefdebug wrote: post #77
the_stc wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that miners cost in USD but Monero fee is set in XMR, fixed. If fee goes down 80% but XMR/USD goes up again 5 times then the problem persists. Not an easy thing to fix! If Bulletproofs and the new CT format come in and the mandatory ringsize is increased to a level providing some privacy, the fees would be very worthwhile. But with ringsize 5 they are certainly excessive! We should hope they increase t…

wtf is an "extrajursidictional company"? Do you mean you are running a tax evasion scheme?

Newspeak for illegal.

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#83

Post by nu-world-odor »

the_stc wrote: post #79
ifdefdebug wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wtf is an "extrajursidictional company"? Do you mean you are running a tax evasion scheme?

An extrajurisdictional company operates outside of existing jurisdictions. It might be helpful to think of us as being headquartered in space...if our opsec is correct, we might as well be! (Otherwise I'll be arrested and our contingency procedures will kick in to work with the successor.) It is not for tax evasion: we fully intend to comply with tax law everywhere we offer service, though there are some practical is…

you mean you're a pimp then

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#84

Post by arethuza »

the_stc wrote: post #79
ifdefdebug wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wtf is an "extrajursidictional company"? Do you mean you are running a tax evasion scheme?

An extrajurisdictional company operates outside of existing jurisdictions. It might be helpful to think of us as being headquartered in space...if our opsec is correct, we might as well be! (Otherwise I'll be arrested and our contingency procedures will kick in to work with the successor.) It is not for tax evasion: we fully intend to comply with tax law everywhere we offer service, though there are some practical is…

"extrajursidictional company" sounds like an oxymoron to me - companies are legal constructs (at least by any definition that I have heard) so having a company "outside" a legal jurisdiction would appear to be impossible?

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#85

Post by corey_moncure »

sametmax wrote: post #57

Thank you, bloomberg.com, for giving us news from 6 months ago. I'm glad I have serious traditional media with professionals working to provide me with fresh information and insight. Tomorrow, they will tell us the amazing discovery on about how the economy of crypto is now influenced by massive master nodes holdings. Next month: the impact of Macafee tweeting. Seriouly, how are they still doing money when bloggers g…

Knowing that the general media and public are six months behind us is, itself, priceless information.

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#86

Post by indescions_2018 »

jatsign wrote: post #56

Monero's big problem, right now, is that the fees are high - around $3. They're working on "Bulletproofs" that will reduce the size of transactions, and hopefully fees, by 80%. Zcash has more advanced crypto, but it takes nearly a minute to generate a private transaction on a normal computer. My favorite "privacy" coin is PIVX. It uses the zerocoin protocol and is fast with low fees. Die-hard privacy advocates don't…

The other competitor being mentioned on dark markets is XVG:

https://vergecurrency.com/

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#87

Post by kylek »

ifdefdebug wrote: post #77
the_stc wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that miners cost in USD but Monero fee is set in XMR, fixed. If fee goes down 80% but XMR/USD goes up again 5 times then the problem persists. Not an easy thing to fix! If Bulletproofs and the new CT format come in and the mandatory ringsize is increased to a level providing some privacy, the fees would be very worthwhile. But with ringsize 5 they are certainly excessive! We should hope they increase t…

wtf is an "extrajursidictional company"? Do you mean you are running a tax evasion scheme?

Been seeing this a lot lately. I can't picture anyone saying it with a straight face.

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#88

Post by 45h34jh53k4j »

indescions_2018 wrote: post #86
jatsign wrote: post #56

Monero's big problem, right now, is that the fees are high - around $3. They're working on "Bulletproofs" that will reduce the size of transactions, and hopefully fees, by 80%. Zcash has more advanced crypto, but it takes nearly a minute to generate a private transaction on a normal computer. My favorite "privacy" coin is PIVX. It uses the zerocoin protocol and is fast with low fees. Die-hard privacy advocates don't…

The other competitor being mentioned on dark markets is XVG: https://vergecurrency.com/

good luck with that: http://xvg.keff.org/

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#89

Post by deadmetheny »

nu-world-odor wrote: post #83
the_stc wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An extrajurisdictional company operates outside of existing jurisdictions. It might be helpful to think of us as being headquartered in space...if our opsec is correct, we might as well be! (Otherwise I'll be arrested and our contingency procedures will kick in to work with the successor.) It is not for tax evasion: we fully intend to comply with tax law everywhere we offer service, though there are some practical is…

you mean you're a pimp then

"Short-term relationship facilitator" is a far more marketable term, though

Re: The Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Monero

#90

Post by Avshalom »

nu-world-odor wrote: post #83
the_stc wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An extrajurisdictional company operates outside of existing jurisdictions. It might be helpful to think of us as being headquartered in space...if our opsec is correct, we might as well be! (Otherwise I'll be arrested and our contingency procedures will kick in to work with the successor.) It is not for tax evasion: we fully intend to comply with tax law everywhere we offer service, though there are some practical is…

you mean you're a pimp then

Well if they're worried about international sex laws they're presumably more of a sex trafficker.
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