Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Monero

benkaiser.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 394 posts

Re: Why Monero

#311

Post by lawn »

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. That's because Bitcoin as a whole is uniquely hard to change.

This is the kind of crap Bitcoin maximalists love to push, but there's nothing unique about Bitcoin.

Re: Why Monero

#312

Post by kibbleble »

forty wrote: post #271
robbedpeter wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Monero (and others) does make ransom collection much more convenient/safe to do. Isn't it its main use case, with probably purchasing drugs and arms? I'm not saying that in theory people wouldn't want to privately purchase their baguette (sorry I'm French), it's just that in practice they generally don't care, unless they are doing something illegal. I'm curious, for those of you who do, what do you actually purchase…

You want to tip people on Twitter with BTC and have your address exposed to everyone? You want people to be able to trace how much you have in that wallet? Why not let people see the transactions going through your checking account? You got nothing to hide, right?

Re: Why Monero

#313

Post by New_California »

lawn wrote: post #311
New_California wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. That's because Bitcoin as a whole is uniquely hard to change. This is the kind of crap Bitcoin maximalists love to push, but there's nothing unique about Bitcoin.

Community is unique. You can't clone the community.

Re: Why Monero

#314

Post by pjc50 »

robbedpeter wrote: post #81
paulryanrogers wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Privacy is important, and it's a binary proposition.

It never used to be a binary proposition, it used to be somewhat proportionate because (a) there was a cost to surveillance and (b) there was a cost to acting covertly - crime was inherently local and hard to scale.

So you wouldn't have the police surveilling everyone unless that was critical to the stability of the state (Stasi etc), and it was infeasible to track cash transactions so a certain amount of crime and evasion was tolerated. But it was limited because cash is inherently bulky. Even a few million dollars is hard to carry around.

Now the internet has falsified both of those. Both crime and surveillance can be scaled up and globalized. So it has become binarized, with one of two outcomes: anonymous transactions + frictionless crime, including evasion of tax and currency controls; OR omnipresent surveillance of everyone and every transaction.

Cryptocurrency is accelerating towards one of those two outcomes. I just don't think it'll be the first one.

Re: Why Monero

#315

Post by New_California »

UncleMeat wrote: post #310
New_California wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

BTC is monetary policy.

People can hard-fork away with any monetary policy but that simply won't be Bitcoin.

Would Bitcoin remain dominant over altcoin with changed monetary policy - that is another matter - and indeed not 100% certain.

Re: Why Monero

#316

Post by Forbo »

forty wrote: post #271
robbedpeter wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Monero (and others) does make ransom collection much more convenient/safe to do. Isn't it its main use case, with probably purchasing drugs and arms? I'm not saying that in theory people wouldn't want to privately purchase their baguette (sorry I'm French), it's just that in practice they generally don't care, unless they are doing something illegal. I'm curious, for those of you who do, what do you actually purchase…

I have paid for splitting a ride share, tipping open source projects, donating to development funds, etc. I use it because I hate the trend of surveillance capitalism you see with crap like Venmo and even credit cards.

Re: Why Monero

#317

Post by lawn »

New_California wrote: post #313
lawn wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is the kind of crap Bitcoin maximalists love to push, but there's nothing unique about Bitcoin.

Community is unique. You can't clone the community.

Said community changed the focus from digital cash to speculation first, and celebrate it as a success because "it makes it hard to change". And it's now celebrating centralized solutions as some sort of progress.

Some community.

Re: Why Monero

#318

Post by jimmydorry »

ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #99
jimmydorry wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I’m glad to hear that Monero is still on the right track.

Re: Why Monero

#319

Post by lawn »

tromp wrote: post #242
stavros wrote: post #2

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…

It's hard to have a light Monero client, because it has to have some data indexed about all past transactions, whereas a Bitcoin client only needs to maintain the MUCH smaller UTXO set, i.e. the unspent transaction outputs. This is one of the ways in which Monero scales poorly. Another problem is that Monero's PoW is expensive to verify where a good PoW should be instantly verifiable. In fact, it's considered so expe…

Monero's PoW being "expensive" is not an actual scaling concern, and checkpoints makes sense for all blockchains.

Re: Why Monero

#320

Post by ddtaylor »

sdze wrote: post #178

GNU Taler is (for Europeans at least) the most promising system, because it is controllable (at least on the merchant side). The users themself are anonymous, just like when using cash! That is a good system because it enables governments to still being able to tax businesses and control illegal activities. Such system will also gain more acceptance among the common folks. https://taler.net/en/index.html

GNU Taler is not a real cryptocurrency.
Post reply on HN