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

masteringmonero.com

41–50 of 176 posts

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

#41

Monero is perhaps the only cryptocurrency that both works as advertised, and has gathered a self-sustaining userbase. No $20 transaction fees. No influencer pump and dumps. No VCs who need to extract value. No fork drama. No unrealistic roadmap. No charismatic leader boiling the frog with scope creep. It's not trying to be an investment. It's actually private. It's actually anonymous. This is all a lot of us ever wan…

> No charismatic leader boiling the frog with scope creep.

LOL

> It's actually private. It's actually anonymous. This is all a lot of us ever wanted from a cryptocurrency.

Yes indeed. I sometimes daydream Satoshi knew about ZKP's early enough to integrate it into Bitcoin ... we would have had the perfect storm.

> No $20 transaction fees.

This one isn't a structural guarantee of Monero, but rather a side-effects of being a late-comer to the game. In other words, it might come to pass that tx fees get in the $20 range.

EDIT:

> This is all a lot of us ever wanted from a cryptocurrency.

Agreed, except maybe for this: I've come to value the finite supply of Bitcoin more than it's value/usefulness as an actual currency.

I initially loved the idea of cryptocurrencies as a currency that would be used in everyday life.

I've changed my stance on this completely: I think that Bitcoin (or something like Monero, with indeed a neat advantage over BTC) is way more valuable as a financial instrument with is own unique characteristics and super-sharp edges than it would ever be as a currency

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

#43
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.)

I don't see cryptocurrencies as something to be killed. I think the vast majority of them are illogical, based on wishful thinking and severe ignorance or outright scams. People will point out one among twenty thousand without realizing that the exception proves the rule. Yeah sure keep speculating on your "digital gold" I don't care. Unlike holding dollars as demand deposits or cash, you can't hijack the economy. Yo…

> People will point out one among twenty thousand without realizing that the exception proves the rule.

This argument doesn't hold well. Creating huge amounts of value is expected to be the exception rather than the rule - one of the powerful mechanisms at play here is this is an unusually free market where failure is cheap and all the money clusters to success.

It is reasonable to ignore the thousands of failures. They failed because they were easy to ignore.

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

#44
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.

You hear about "scam stories" because they're usually interesting and they get clicks so media will naturally put them on the spotlight. You don't hear about thoudands of people in third world countries who are able to get capital for their projects, start up their business by avoid sanctions put on their countries banking systems, NGOs who are able to collect donations while in autocratic regimes, sick people who can order their medication on the darknet which for whatever reason is not available to them in their country, and so on and so on. The fact that you can just wire $100 to your buddy across the world for a 50 cent fee without caring about banks or IBANs or SWIFT codes or whatever else just blows my mind to this day, it creates so many opportunities one cannot just brush the whole crypto concept off as some nft scam shit.

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

#45

Monero is perhaps the only cryptocurrency that both works as advertised, and has gathered a self-sustaining userbase. No $20 transaction fees. No influencer pump and dumps. No VCs who need to extract value. No fork drama. No unrealistic roadmap. No charismatic leader boiling the frog with scope creep. It's not trying to be an investment. It's actually private. It's actually anonymous. This is all a lot of us ever wan…

I'm curious, what are people purchasing with it?

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

#46
post #28
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lik…

What progress do you want cryptocurrency to make? They’re bearer assets. You can go pay people with them today.

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

#47
post #45

Monero is perhaps the only cryptocurrency that both works as advertised, and has gathered a self-sustaining userbase. No $20 transaction fees. No influencer pump and dumps. No VCs who need to extract value. No fork drama. No unrealistic roadmap. No charismatic leader boiling the frog with scope creep. It's not trying to be an investment. It's actually private. It's actually anonymous. This is all a lot of us ever wan…

I'm curious, what are people purchasing with it?

[flagged]

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

#48
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

Indeed. But not provable to others, which is the point.

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

#49
post #35
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.)

Inevitable for law avoidance? Sure. We know quite well that humans like very much systems which allow them to avoid laws of any kind, so of course such a system will survive for a long time. Inevitable for lawful daily usage? Nope. Fundamental problems and lack of benefits will prevent blockchain based ledgers to be deployed in any useful scalable way. Actually not "will" but rather "did". Token proposals had a decad…

> Anything else I've forgot?

Going by the claims I have encountered:

* Inflation proof/Store of value/Stock market hedge

* Bringing banking to the poor

* Web3

* Play-and-get-paid gaming

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

#50
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what are people purchasing with it?

[flagged]

My car seller and my grocery store accept cash and credit card but not Monero, that's why I wondered what people do with it.
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