Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious, what are people purchasing with it?
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Any car dealer, grocery store and pharmacy accepts fiat. Does any accept Monero?
Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)
51–60 of 176 posts
Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ca…
Being able to wire $100 to your buddy across the world isn't so useful when you can't be sure if it'll be worth $90 or $100 or $110 by the time your buddy goes to use it.
Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
I can send money in minutes too from bank to bank, internationally and domestically. I could do it for years now.
Some very big sums require approval and are delayed. But guess what - it's not a technical limitation but a legal one. It not like some TCP packet can transmit wire transfer of 1000 dollars and unable to do so for 50000 dollars. And we as society do want to control large sum transfers, unless we want to end up like my home country, with funds funneled with close to no control to offshores.
Sure, if a person want to skirt the law and transfer millions without control then current token systems are perfect for him.
Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)
#54What's considered better these days: Monero or Zcash, and why?
The researchers involved in zcash are a combo of DJB acolytes (in a good way) and Tel Aviv infosec researchers. Plus Ed Snowden was one of the people that participated in their keygen ceremony. *
* Slightly off topic, wikipedia for zcash is terrible, it's written by people that don't understand that a 'ceremony' is part of any asymmetric cryptosystem from your Linux package manager to the CA that signed the cert for the website you're looking at.
Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)
#55Monero 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 hate to burst the bubble but strategies to break Monero's anonymity have been known since 2019. It turns out that the general strategy of mixing a subset of outputs together is insufficient to provide robust privacy, even if the mix set is large (like in Lelantus).
The only strategies that can provide strong anonymity for on-chain crypto are full anonymity set currencies like Zcash.
Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)
#56Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)
#57Earlier 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.
The problem with the cryptocurrency advocates is that they have zero clue about money. Neoclassical economics declares money irrelevant and not something to study, so there is hardly any research how money influences a society beyond central bank policy about how much money there should be.
Here is a tip. Money is a transaction cost reducing device. That is it's primary function. By transaction costs I don't mean just fees that a bank or payment service provider charges you, no I mean every economic cost that is involved in negotiating payments. You could think of transaction costs as friction and money as a lubricant. If you have to exchange currencies this causes friction, if you have to physically transport goods or meet in person to barter with them this causes friction. If the value of the goods you are trading is unknown this causes friction. The purpose of money is to be better than some alternative world without money and most cryptocurrencies are hardly better, they are worse or outright useless. The legitimate niches that cryptocurrencies occupy will barely even influence the real world.
Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)
#58Monero 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 be…
> I've come to value the finite supply of Bitcoin more than it's value/usefulness as an actual currency.
I think finite supply is overrated [1] ...
[1] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...
Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)
#59Monero 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 hate to burst the bubble but strategies to break Monero's anonymity have been known since 2019. It turns out that the general strategy of mixing a subset of outputs together is insufficient to provide robust privacy, even if the mix set is large (like in Lelantus). The only strategies that can provide strong anonymity for on-chain crypto are full anonymity set currencies like Zcash.
ZCash is insecure by default. It is a honeypot for people who wish to use the default privacy settings of Monero.
> On June 8, 2020, Chainalysis added support for Zcash to their Chainalysis Reactor and "Know Your Transaction" (KYT) technologies.[22] This permits Chainalysis to trace and provide transaction values and at least the sender or receiver address for over 99% of Zcash activity.[22] Chainalysis explains that it is able to accomplish this since most Zcash users do not use privacy-enhancing features.
Re: Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions [pdf] (2019)
#60Might 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 li…
> It is eye opening to realize 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.
Well, this is what the promise of Bitcoin was, but the lack of anonymity in BTC missed the mark by a few inches.
Monero (and it's competitors: ZCash, Grin, Beam, MWC, ...), which IIRC uses the Mimblewimble [1] principle to preserve anonymity) bridged that gap a few years after BTC was launched, but by that time, Bitcoin had already grown to a huge size.
What I would really like to see in terms of innovation in the crypto world is Mimblewimble being actually added to BTC or ETH. Things would get truly interesting.
OTHO, if BTC and ETH had Mimblewimble, they might become a much bigger targets for folks that stand to benefit from controlling free economic transactions between people (governments, etc ...), so who knows, the lack of ZKP in BTC/ ETH might be a blessing in disguise.