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Why Monero

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Re: Why Monero

#91

Post by darksaints »

scoofy wrote: post #75
darksaints wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those institutions that are supposed to protect us are systematically stealing from us without due process via civil forfeiture, and they're doing it on a scale that outweighs all burglaries nationwide. You shouldn't be surprised when Americans value privacy over institutions. Our institutions are more criminal than our criminals.

>While there are some merits, this type of value exchange is a dangerous vehicle for facilitating human exploitation. We need to start talking about that fact more, instead of the fever dreams that those of us in the free world somehow live in some faux-totalitarian state, simply because you can't legally purchase MDMA or cocaine. >stealing from us without due process via civil forfeiture Yea, this is exactly the typ…

Well that's the problem. We don't live in a free society. And there is virtually nothing we can do to change the laws, as the status quo invariably benefits the people in power.

So I'll tell you what. You can work on fixing those institutions if you want. I'll take the privacy while we wait.

Re: Why Monero

#92

Post by dp115 »

scoofy wrote: post #50

When you develop a value exchange that is perfectly designed for facilitating human kidnappings and subverting international sanctions, you should not be surprised when other humans decide they value institutions over this level of personal privacy. The narrative that this type of value exchange will protect people is as easily argued that it will put others at risk. We have institutions for a reason, and nobody livi…

Not everybody lives in a free country, as a venezuelan I can tell you that tyranny can start with the control of money.

Re: Why Monero

#93

Post by ajkdhcb2 »

cowpig wrote: post #57

How can anyone think this is a good thing? At least other crypto projects have a degree of transparency going for them. I don't understand how people can possibly think that identity obfuscation at scale is a good thing for a financial system. The rule of law and democracy are far from perfect, but it is unquestionably the safest, cushiest time to be alive in human history right now for the average human being. Let's…

It is not safe to use Bitcoin and other traceable cryptocurrencies. I for one don't want to be tortured with a drill and there is a long list of such events: https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks

Some people say the same things about encryption, but it is a very accurate parallel that it actually makes society safer, and the technology can't be taken from "criminals" so you just have to deal with its existence.

Re: Why Monero

#94

Post by jimmydorry »

ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #84
ianmiers wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reddit user someone else linked to pretty clearly explained the Monero side. Zcash has a bad reputation with darknet markets and the like that use Monero. Some of it deserved. ( I say this as someone who wrote original Zerocash protocol) https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/oui6zj/zcash_vs_mon... Also, Zcash has optional privacy. On the other hand, the decoy based privacy protocols Monero uses are not…

> the decoy based privacy protocols Monero uses are not really private at all. This is simply not true, otherwise you should present real evidence. It is not perfect, but nothing ever will be, and Monero continues to move forward and use the best technology available. Research continues, and they hope to move away from "decoy based protocols" altogether eventually, but the tradeoffs have so far been too great. Unlike…

>Unlike bitcoin, it is able to do large changes, since there is a completely different development culture

Can be read as: a 'relatively' small group of people control the protocol to such a level that arbitrary changes can be enacted with relative ease.

An example that comes to mind is Ethereum, which is essentially controlled by a single developer aided by a few others. When a bug in a contract would have cost many people a significant amount, the lead developer lead the charge (to the applause of almost all) in forking the chain.

I haven't looked at Monero in enough detail to confirm this, but your statement is not exactly a selling point. Having decentralization to the point that it becomes hard for developers to force through changes, should be a feature... not a bug.

Re: Why Monero

#95

Post by scoofy »

nine_k wrote: post #85
scoofy wrote: post #50

When you develop a value exchange that is perfectly designed for facilitating human kidnappings and subverting international sanctions, you should not be surprised when other humans decide they value institutions over this level of personal privacy. The narrative that this type of value exchange will protect people is as easily argued that it will put others at risk. We have institutions for a reason, and nobody livi…

There is one problem: freedom is necessarily also freedom for people you don't like. There's no way to make living free for good guys, and limited for bad guys. Limiting things for bad guys, you also limit them for everyone — hopefully to a lesser extent. By putting a lock on your door so that a burglar won't enter, you also prevent your friends from entering. There is a certain balance of downsides and upsides of li…

You're arguing that you aren't free unless you're free to drive a fully armed and operational tank to work, and not be bothered by the authorities. You can value privacy and rule of law, by building in limits to both. Physical currencies do that.

Yes, I think an effectively anonymized digital value exchange is problematic. I prefer physical currency for anonymized transactions because it provides certain physical barriers that make a non-consensual exchange of goods and services difficult, while perfectly facilitating, though often de-anonymizing large exchanges of value.

Something that's perfectly sensible in a state that values both privacy and rule of law. We don't put cameras in your home, we do put cameras in airports and nuclear energy facilities.

Re: Why Monero

#96

Post by ajkdhcb2 »

wheresmycraisin wrote: post #25

I've tried using Monero because of it's supposed privacy features, and found that the official desktop gui clients is completely unusable. I'm not just talking usability and design issues -- I'm talking random crashes and freezes, if it manages to launch at all. When I brought these issues to the dev team, I was basically told to fuck off.

> was basically told to fuck off.

Provide information about your issues and they would be grateful.

> official desktop gui clients is completely unusable

It has improved significantly over time, perhaps this was a long time ago?

Re: Why Monero

#97

Post by scoofy »

dp115 wrote: post #92
scoofy wrote: post #50

When you develop a value exchange that is perfectly designed for facilitating human kidnappings and subverting international sanctions, you should not be surprised when other humans decide they value institutions over this level of personal privacy. The narrative that this type of value exchange will protect people is as easily argued that it will put others at risk. We have institutions for a reason, and nobody livi…

Not everybody lives in a free country, as a venezuelan I can tell you that tyranny can start with the control of money.

I don't disagree.

>Monero seems much better suited as a weapon against real totalitarian regimes. If it is illegal in both a free and unfree society, then it will only have a practical purpose in the unfree society, whereas the free society will have plentiful alternatives.

From another thread. I think the something like Monero can exist, but also be illegal, and that would facilitate making it's practical use only valuable in truly unfree societies.

Re: Why Monero

#98

Post by pseudo0 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #72
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's lots of things that an order of magnitude more folks do that harm the environment than DeFi/cryptocurrency/shitcoin gambling. I'd love to revisit the environmental impacts of cryptocurrency after we've moved to electric cars, decreased car usage, decreased HVAC waste, made our toilets/sinks/showers more efficient, made our factories run on hydrogen instead of coal, and clean up shipping emissions. Once we're…

That's one approach. Another is to tackle low hanging fruit. What is lost if DeFi were more heavily regulated or outlawed? What is lost if shipping were more more heavily regulated / outlawed? Ultimately we have to do many things, and solutions aren't mutually exclusive.

Just put a constant tax on carbon and let people choose between their shitcoins, vacation flights, and sirloin steaks.

Re: Why Monero

#99

Post by ajkdhcb2 »

jimmydorry wrote: post #94
ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the decoy based privacy protocols Monero uses are not really private at all. This is simply not true, otherwise you should present real evidence. It is not perfect, but nothing ever will be, and Monero continues to move forward and use the best technology available. Research continues, and they hope to move away from "decoy based protocols" altogether eventually, but the tradeoffs have so far been too great. Unlike…

>Unlike bitcoin, it is able to do large changes, since there is a completely different development culture Can be read as: a 'relatively' small group of people control the protocol to such a level that arbitrary changes can be enacted with relative ease. An example that comes to mind is Ethereum, which is essentially controlled by a single developer aided by a few others. When a bug in a contract would have cost many…

You have a great point and for this reason Monero should be viewed differently. It is not bitcoin. However, the technology is just not at the point where you can have a protocol that is fixed in stone, and bitcoin is not something that I think is good for the world because it is a dangerous tool of mass surveillance which you can't fix without fundamental changes.

>Having decentralization to the point that it becomes hard for developers to force through changes

This is happening to Monero too over time, as the community grows. I expect it will continue to become more difficult to gain consensus over time. There is, at least, many developers and no 'leader' figure like Vitalik

Re: Why Monero

#100

Post by bgibson »

cowpig wrote: post #57

How can anyone think this is a good thing? At least other crypto projects have a degree of transparency going for them. I don't understand how people can possibly think that identity obfuscation at scale is a good thing for a financial system. The rule of law and democracy are far from perfect, but it is unquestionably the safest, cushiest time to be alive in human history right now for the average human being. Let's…

> I don't understand how people can possibly think that identity obfuscation at scale is a good thing for a financial system.

There's an important side-effect to an anonymous financial system which doesn't get much attention, but is worth noting.

An anonymous financial system is a debt-less financial system, since without identity you can't do credit ratings or other means of enforcement of repayment. Everything is either a commodity or equity/security, not a debt instrument. And there is no debt-financing, only equity-financing (similar to the VC industry).

No debt means no leverage, or in the case of the Global Financial Crisis, no over-leverage [1]. Without debt and leverage you can't have a systemic credit collapse, the most destructive type of financial crisis (GFC, Great Depression).

I've seen one estimate that if central banks and govts hadn't bailed out the financial system in 2007/2008 GFC, there was so much leverage that the collapse would have lost the banking system more money than it had cumulatively made over its entire ~300yr modern history. That would have been Mad Max time for sure, and why the bailouts were the lesser evil.

By eliminating identity from the financial system you've deterministically eliminated the worst possible outcome that system could incur, and materially changed the expectation value for the system (and society) over time.

In the short-term, a highly leveraged, debt-based financial system will likely outperform an equity/commodity-only financial system. But over the medium to long term, when periodic credit collapses are factored in to the former, probably not.

In blockchain financial systems, any activity that requires collateral must be over-collateralized [2], resulting in significantly increased systemic robustness and reliability. If we care about deterministically eliminating the most destructive type of financial crisis from the table of possible outcomes, then we must acknowledge this is a useful side-effect of an anonymous financial system.

Finally, the comparative damage to society of a GFC-style collapse is greater than things that are enabled by untraceable money, like money laundering and sex-trafficking. The latter can be horrible, but the former is potentially a different order of magnitude, if bailouts are not possible (which may be the case next time).

* Notes & Clarifications:

1. High volatility due to price discovery activities is not the same as systemic collapse. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are highly volatile, losing and gaining ~80% of their value multiple times over their first decade of existence. But such volatility is not the same as a systemic collapse.

2. Atomic debt like flash loans are still possible, where the loan is atomically made, invested, liquidated, and repaid all in the same smart contract. If any part of that contract fails, or the loan can't be repaid, then the entire thing is rolled back and the loan never even happened. But that can't result in a collapse in the same way the traditional banking system can.

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80...

[2]:https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/overcollateralization.a...

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