131–140 of 394 posts
I'm not really happy promoting a cryptocurrency these days, given that most of them are get-rich-quick schemes, but Monero has been solid for the past 5-6 years that I've been using it. It's completely anonymous, sends quickly, has minimal fees, and it hasn't been as full of cultists as some of the other coins I've seen. I use it to pay for some things and it's always a pleasant experience. I recommend it. The only d…
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My fear with strongly anonymous DeFi is indirectly harming the environment and supporting crime. Sadly doesn't look like Monero resolve these concerns.
Oh no, it works like cash! People will do things with money that you're uncomfortable with. If it's criminal, then laws and enforcement and investigation will have to evolve. That doesn't mean "well, I guess we have to give up privacy now. " Not your money, not your business. Privacy is important, and it's a binary proposition. It's either part of the currency or it's not. You can't have any gray area because people…
The privacy argument has more to stand on though. Although I will say "not your money, not our business" is a pretty controversial take.
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Because Bitcoin is twitter for your bank account. It exposes everything you do to anyone who can download the blockchain. You can argue that some gov/regulator should have access, though good luck finding one country everyone trusts. More realistically, and practically, you could require that, as many jurisdictions do with cash, we should have reporting requirements for when a merchant sells something for large amoun…
Right? The whole "I don't understand how people can possibly think that identity obfuscation at scale is a good thing for a financial system" can be answered by, "Will you share your entire transaction history and account balances with the entire world? Why not?"
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…
> How can anyone think this is a good thing? Easily - I value my ability to remain private more than I do your ability to enforce laws.
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Rule of law & democracy began when people had far more privacy than today. The founding motivations for the USA included resisting privacy abuses like 'general warrants' – the state peeking into everyone's business, without specific suspicion, to find criminals. The modern level of financial surveillance – KYC, etc – is only a few decades old, and collects more info for the state than any 'general warrant' could. Eve…
I don't quite follow your logic. The parent comment pointed out that obfuscating financial transactions makes it hard to enforce laws. You responded by saying Monero improves privacy. That might be true, but it doesn't really address the concern about illegal/harmful activity that a current like Monero would enable. I do agree that financial surveillance is an issue, but I'm not sure Monero is the best way to curtail…
I get your point here, but once someone has already lost trust in the government, having the government regulate itself isn't really a viable counter to that person's concerns.
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Monero supports crime as much as cash supports crime. Doors and curtains also support crime, but somehow some basic privacy is fundamental human right. For now... Also in some countries police still don't just scan all your bank transactions 24/7 and there is presumption of innocence in criminal law.
> Monero supports crime as much as cash supports crime. Cash has serial numbers which means it needs to be laundered, since banks work with the FBI to trace where bills with serial numbers show up.
Also just want to remind you that the world doesn't end on US soil and once you moved cash to a different country this kind of tracking becomes more and more complicated.
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My fear with strongly anonymous DeFi is indirectly harming the environment and supporting crime. Sadly doesn't look like Monero resolve these concerns.
Monero supports crime as much as cash supports crime. Doors and curtains also support crime, but somehow some basic privacy is fundamental human right. For now... Also in some countries police still don't just scan all your bank transactions 24/7 and there is presumption of innocence in criminal law.
Converting it back into something digital, anonymously/untraceably requires laundering it where you end up losing 20-70% of the value.
Cash sucks for any meaningful crime.
Cash is designed to be traceable and to move millions of it would be truly a feat. On the other hand you can move billions of crypto for the fuck of it.
Crypto is good for crime.
> Also in some countries police still don't just scan all your bank transactions 24/7 and there is presumption of innocence in criminal law.
The US draws the right balance: your transactions are private until the court authorizes the police obtain them on the basis of probable cause. Now it may not be executed perfectly every time but that's advocating for reforming that system, not throwing it out.
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…
Monero as a financial system is not as you say "completely opaque" - that's laughable. All the code that runs every Monero client is completely open source.
Now some more savvy people will still complain: "If we can't see any of the balances then how do we know """they""" aren't minting coins out of thin air or defrauding other users?"
The truth is that you can simply read the code and determine that that is impossible. Or more accurately, someone very smart can (I for example can't give that guarantee first hand). But that's why open source software is beautiful - the code is not obfuscated or unclear, if there were any flaws in the system a single white hat could easily sound the alarm.
Long story short, you are confusing transaction privacy with protocol obscurity, the genius of Monero is that its protocol is completely in the open but it retains privacy for its users - that's the genius your ignorance is taking for granted.
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> Monero supports crime as much as cash supports crime. Cash has serial numbers which means it needs to be laundered, since banks work with the FBI to trace where bills with serial numbers show up.
Money laundering just make it more expensive for criminals to get the profits. So does crypto due to ever moving exchange rates, comissions, etc. Also just want to remind you that the world doesn't end on US soil and once you moved cash to a different country this kind of tracking becomes more and more complicated.
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.