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Why Monero

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Re: Why Monero

#301

Post by sumedh »

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…

> make it impossible to enforce laws.

Rich people already have that advantage, why not give the same advantage to the little guy?

Re: Why Monero

#302

Post by loughnane »

Monero shines bright in a world where privacy is constantly being eroded.

I very much want to live in a future where there is a digital payment method that’s as anonymous as cash. As far as I can tell Monero is the front runner

Re: Why Monero

#303

Post by around_here »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #30
stavros wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. The issue I have is that anonymity exists, it's just expensive, so only rich people have it. This makes the choice from "financial privacy or no financial privacy" to "financial privacy for the rich or for everyone".

Good point. And if it's truly a binary choice of only-the-rich or everyone then I'm more inclined to side with anonymity for everyone.

Disagree because you’re already getting screwed by the rich. Being anonymous doesn’t divorce from the “getting screwed” class, but it continues to aid the rich.

Re: Why Monero

#304

Post by 0des »

gojomo wrote: post #185
0des wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what fungible means though. When you start printing numbers on them, they're no longer fungible.

Perhaps pedantically from a particular viewpoint, & if banks used a blacklist of certain bill numbers. But to financial economists, cash is a textbook example of a ‘fungible’ thing. So a statement like – “Monero is fungible, cash is not.” – implies you’re using peculiar definitions.

Fungibility means that two things are mutually interchangeable on all levels.

I cannot take cash into a bank that came from a heist or a covert drug buy from the authorities for example, I'd go to jail. The term 'marked bills' exist because cash is not fungible, not all bills are equal.

This is the binary quality of fungibility. There are no shades of fungibility, there is no "well this is X's definition of it".

Re: Why Monero

#305

Post by lxgr »

quantumBerry wrote: post #208
csh0 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same qualities that make a stock or asset desirable (appreciation) make for a bad currency. The expectation of wild appreciation discourages transaction and encourages hoarding. This is one of the the reasons why (low) target inflation rates exist. The (slight) devaluation of the currency encourages consumption or investment with the currency and discourages mattress stuffing. You wouldn't buy goods with stocks.

Monero has infinite (but low rate) tail emission, meaning the unlike bitcoin the supply approaches infinity. Unless the basket of goods Monero can purchase also goes to infinity, Monero at some point will have inflation.

In most economic models, inflation is not defined as being equivalent to the growth of the monetary base (although that does not stop many Bitcoin and other crypto proponents to claim it is).

In fact, a currency with a constant rate of issuance is actually highly deflationary in a growing economy.

Re: Why Monero

#306

Post by pskiba »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #52
galangalalgol wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the algorithm poorly suited to GPUs or fpgas, or are we just not to that point yet? Proof of stake seems like a good thing.

Proof of stake isn’t a good thing actually. Especially in a private cryptocurrency. Monero will remain PoW for its censorship resistance. We can’t have stake oligopolies taking control.

I'm not sure I get your argument, staking takes significantly less powerful hardware so its very accessible.

Staking pools also have a "saturation point" to encourage decentralization. That way not all 80 Billion dollars worth of ADA goes to one staking pool.

Very hard to see how oligopolies can arise in this scenario when compared to mining operations that are unprofitable to most users (and of course bad for the environment).

Re: Why Monero

#307

Post by doomroot »

robot_no_419 wrote: post #160
wyager wrote: post #58

“Scalability” by constantly increasing the block size isn’t really scalability. If monero ever sees high network usage, expanding blocks will push node storage requirements so high that only a small number of nodes will continue to run, destroying decentralization.

I don't have the math at hand but I'm pretty sure at the rate the blockchain is growing and the rate that disk space cost is decreasing, this should not be an issue for quite a few years. I do agree that it will eventually be a problem; at some point, all blockchains will have to move to layer 2 solutions for real scaling.

Bandwidth is the bottleneck not disk space. I fear that a lot of projects are moving to layer 2 too late. Layer 2 makes bitcoin so much more usable that as a result more hobbyists are running L1 nodes.

Re: Why Monero

#308

Post by around_here »

ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #194
ryan_lane wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those intermediaries replace your money if it's fraudulently stolen, and have protections in place from allowing your accounts to be fully drained (and have ways to let you control those protections). For the vast majority of people, banks do more good in their lives than harm. Cryptocurrency isn't a bank. It's a virtual mattress to stuff your money into, and one that lends itself very well to torturing you until you…

All of those points seem invalid to me when you consider that people have the option for custodial multi-signature systems and time-delays etc. If you want certain behaviour you can do it, often without giving a corrupt organisation complete control over your money Further, many people live in countries where the people simply cannot trust their institutions or the value of their currencies, to the point where they a…

You’re just inviting bad actors to work on “probably has a lot of crypto” to beat you silly with a wrench until you give it up. They’ll just go with less certainty.

Re: Why Monero

#309

Post by moosebear847 »

scoofy wrote: post #95
nine_k wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bar…

Well expressed on cash applying barriers.

Re: Why Monero

#310

Post by UncleMeat »

New_California wrote: post #241
habosa wrote: post #223

Bitcoin is totally useless as a currency because it’s slow, has high transaction fees, and easy to trace. So it’s bad for both regular consumers and criminals alike. Monero is a solid improvement because it has low fees (so far) and is very hard to trace. So it’s popular for criminals or intense privacy types. It’s still far too slow and hard to use to ever be accepted in your local grocery store. It’s also hard to b…

You are correct on the Bitcoin-is-easy-to-trace point but transactions in the Bitcoin Lightning Network are instant and very cheap. Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency with guaranteed-not-to-change monetary policy and supply cap. That's because Bitcoin as a whole is uniquely hard to change. Monero is great but easy to change and so not a reliable store of value. Bitcoin and Monero need each other badly.

> Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency with guaranteed-not-to-change monetary policy and supply cap.

BCH didn't win, but it could have. It is not clear to me that BTC will never change monetary policy.

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