Live data from Hacker News

Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)

masteringmonero.com

21–30 of 176 posts

Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)

#21

I think Monero is awesome because it's actually designed to be an anonymous payment system. Unlike Bitcoin, anonymity is built into each transaction. No need for washing your coins via sketchy "tumbler" services.

I think Bitcoin is awesome because unlike cash, digital transfers are built into the system.

Now, just like cash wasn't built with digital transfers in mind, neither was Bitcoin built with anonymity in mind, so not sure why Monero would be better/worse than Bitcoin for a thing Bitcoin was never made for in the first place.

The purpose of Bitcoin was never that all transactions were anonymous. Monero is great for this (or zCash), but it's a bit misleading to say Monero is "better" at something when what you are comparing it to, was never built for that "something" in the first place.

Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)

#22
Might also consider https://www.getmonero.org/library/ which has links for both both Mastering Monero and the more technical "Zero to Monero" [0] where they go through the maths in detail.

Monero really is quite something. It is eye opening to realise there has never been a situation where one person could simply transfer wealth to someone else without anyone in the middle being able to say No. A powerful tool for liberty.

[0] https://www.getmonero.org/library/Zero-to-Monero-2-0-0.pdf

Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)

#23
post #6

Monero is the only crypto I hold, really.

Why? Asking because I know nothing about crypto yet.

Monero is supposedly untraceable, or at least far harder to trace than Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other "traditional" cryptocoins. It's untraceability has made it receive even greater scrutiny and attempts to regulate it/ban it than other coins.

Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)

#24

I think Monero is awesome because it's actually designed to be an anonymous payment system. Unlike Bitcoin, anonymity is built into each transaction. No need for washing your coins via sketchy "tumbler" services.

I think Bitcoin is awesome because unlike cash, digital transfers are built into the system. Now, just like cash wasn't built with digital transfers in mind, neither was Bitcoin built with anonymity in mind, so not sure why Monero would be better/worse than Bitcoin for a thing Bitcoin was never made for in the first place. The purpose of Bitcoin was never that all transactions were anonymous. Monero is great for this…

Unlike cash, Bitcoin keeps a public log of everything you've bought though.

Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)

#25

I think Monero is awesome because it's actually designed to be an anonymous payment system. Unlike Bitcoin, anonymity is built into each transaction. No need for washing your coins via sketchy "tumbler" services.

I think Bitcoin is awesome because unlike cash, digital transfers are built into the system. Now, just like cash wasn't built with digital transfers in mind, neither was Bitcoin built with anonymity in mind, so not sure why Monero would be better/worse than Bitcoin for a thing Bitcoin was never made for in the first place. The purpose of Bitcoin was never that all transactions were anonymous. Monero is great for this…

Anonymity is absolutely an integral part to digital transfers.

Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)

#26
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. It's always felt like there's a disproportionate amount of hate for crypto -- not that people should like it or love it, but that I'm surprised that tech people here don't appear to understand its inevitability. So it seems like they treat it as something to be killed (impossible) as opposed to something to buckle up and get ready to manage (more or less like they correctly do with AI.)

No hate, but no interest either. After all these years, all scam stories apart, what crypto allow its users to do that they would not be able to do otherwise with less resources? Really I don’t know, and I admit I never wanted to dig the topic as there are many other topic I will never have the time to learn and yet doesn’t seem to have such an issue of what is at best a tremendous noise/signal ratio.

> what crypto allow its users to do that they would not be able to do otherwise with less resources

International money transfers, for instance. The traditional banking system was always slow and expensive, and, on top of that, countries cut each other out due to geopolitical reasons. Many third-world countries have a decent crypto adoption, you can send someone money in a matter of minutes (I do).

Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)

#27
post #8

Monero is cool - the ring signature mechanism is something i’d never heard of before. Its a way to be possibly, but not provably, be involved in a transaction. Ie plausible deniability. At real-world crypto recently the zcash people (MIT and Tel Aviv cryptographers) found a way to massively speed up the process of finding your balance (privacy chains are often very slow because they have to sum up all the transaction…

its provable, you have the keys to prove a tx is yours if you want

Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)

#28
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are so familiar with the technology we have actual informed opinions in either direction. The only dispassionate people are those who don’t know yet.

Not what I've seen here. This is one of the few topics here where I think emotion STRONGLY gets in the way of reason. Too few people are "first princpl-ing" this to understand that the crypto-train, to some extent, is happening whether any of us like it or not.

Honestly I hear this a lot from crypto advocates, but it just seems like wishful thinking on their part. There are a ton of legitimate complaints about cryptocurrency that come up, and the fact that after a decade the field still hasn't made any real progress is telling to me. At this point the "shitcoins" have mostly collapses, NFT has been devalued, and use cases seem to be disappearing. While I do think things like migrating away from proof of work have been helpful, I still don't believe that we're going to see larger adoption.

I do think you are right that this is a topic where emotion strongly gets in the way of reason, but I think the people lacking reason are the advocates and not the critics.

Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)

#30

I think Monero is awesome because it's actually designed to be an anonymous payment system. Unlike Bitcoin, anonymity is built into each transaction. No need for washing your coins via sketchy "tumbler" services.

I think Bitcoin is awesome because unlike cash, digital transfers are built into the system. Now, just like cash wasn't built with digital transfers in mind, neither was Bitcoin built with anonymity in mind, so not sure why Monero would be better/worse than Bitcoin for a thing Bitcoin was never made for in the first place. The purpose of Bitcoin was never that all transactions were anonymous. Monero is great for this…

Really not sure what you're trying to say here. People use Bitcoin for anonymous transactions and jump through various hoops to try and achieve this goal (for example using tumbling services). It seems perfectly valid to say Monero is better for anonymous transactions than Bitcoin. I'm not sure why it matters what it was "made for". All that matters is what it is used for in practice. This does not seem like a misleading statement.
Post reply on HN