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Ask HN: Why are privacy coins like Monero not seeing wide adoption?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are privacy coins like Monero not seeing wide adoption?

#21

Post by woodruffw »

edent wrote: post #16

As with anything - what's the user need? The vast majority of people don't seem fazed about their credit card company knowing they've bought a sex toy. Hell, if Amex offered double-cashback at PornHub I expect they'd be inundated. For those which do want a bit more privacy, it's dead easy to buy a single-use gift card or cash card. Will that stop the police from tracing you? No, but it makes it harder for a company t…

It’s no small irony that the simplest answer is the right answer here: you can’t force consumers to use your product. They need a reason to use it, and none of the current ones are sufficiently compelling.

Re: Ask HN: Why are privacy coins like Monero not seeing wide adoption?

#22

Post by anonymoushn »

rvz wrote: post #4

> I consider Web3/NFTs to be a scam Not all NFTs are the same or even JPEGs. 90% of them are useless though. The blockchain domains are the only valid NFTs that cannot be right-click saved and are useful. > the only utility I see in cryptocurrency is the anonymous and decentralized transfer of value. > However interestingly the coins that do this well like Monero are not seeing wide adoption. The regulators would lik…

broadly agree.

Weirdly you can trade mobilecoin on a major centralized exchange, but is "proof of intel" really a good consensus mechanism lol

Re: Ask HN: Why are privacy coins like Monero not seeing wide adoption?

#23

Post by washbrain »

Because there's no need for them. Your average person, even your average tech savvy person gets by comfortably with a credit card, checks, cash, and Venmo.

Why would anyone use a less well understood, harder to use, less ubiquitous, and unstable currency?

Re: Ask HN: Why are privacy coins like Monero not seeing wide adoption?

#24

Post by nikivi »

Is there any nice DEX that lets you trade Solana for Monero and vice versa?

I want to do some commerce in Monero but since Monero is banned on most/all marketplaces, it'd be nice to get it easily via decentralized exchange swapping it for Solana. Doing commerce with Monero and then swapping it back to Solana and later FIAT.

I assume the issue with this setup even if one builds it, you still have to tell the government what happened and how exactly you earned your coins? Or maybe you can build another DEX converting Monero to FIAT 'cash' avoiding such questions?

Re: Ask HN: Why are privacy coins like Monero not seeing wide adoption?

#25

Post by chaostheory »

HN is notoriously very anti-crypto as a community for valid reasons. While asking this question to crypto maximalists isn’t going to get an ideal answer, you’re not likely to get it here either for different reasons. Too much bias.

To answer your question, as others have mentioned very few people actually care about privacy vs finding another hedge against inflation.

Re: Ask HN: Why are privacy coins like Monero not seeing wide adoption?

#26

Post by wolongong942 »

bergenty wrote: post #6

I watched as Monero was gradually dropped from a lot of the major exchanges over time with no real reason being provided. Same with zcash. My conspiracy theory is that there is a coordinated effort to make truly anonymous coins unusable.

Thats not a conspiracy theory, they're about to implement mandatory flagging of non-exchange addresses. If you want to send or receive from one you'll need to provide the name/address of the counterparty.

Re: Ask HN: Why are privacy coins like Monero not seeing wide adoption?

#27

Post by wnevets »

lawn wrote: post #17

So I agree that transferring of value and for payments is where the usefulness is, but I think there are two reasons why the adoption is lagging: 1. Most people only care about speculation, and don't care at all what cryptocurrencies are or what they can do. And Monero doesn't do much for these people. 2. Monero is more inconvenient to use than Bitcoin is. SPV wallets aren't possible, so you need to rescan all output…

> Most people only care about speculation

You probably just described 99% of the crypto market. If the buyers of crypto actually cared about the features and usage you wouldn't have so many random shit coins getting pumped then dumped.

Re: Ask HN: Why are privacy coins like Monero not seeing wide adoption?

#29

Post by criddell »

wmf wrote: post #12

Digital cash needs several features to even start getting adoption: Stable value Fast finality, low fees, high throughput Privacy/anonymity/fungibility Usability No cryptocurrencies meet these requirements so far.

They have to do all of that and do it better than physical currency. I can hand you an envelope with $10 in it and I don't have to record it in a centralized ledger that everybody can see. I'm waiting for a cryptocurrency that is decentralized to that extent.
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