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

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

masteringmonero.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 176 posts

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

#61

Post by jrm4 »

Yizahi wrote: post #35
jrm4 wrote: 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…

Not daily and I think that's the thing. I suppose when one says "cryptocurrency," there are a lot of possible ways one might use it. I agree that for a daily driver, very unlikely.

But "store of value" is still very much in play.

Crypto as a competitor to the 401k or "money in the mattress" strikes me as damn near inevitable.

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

#62

Post by kossTKR »

Taek wrote: post #55
EscapeFromNY wrote: post #19

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 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.

I don't think you're bursting his bubble. The post is 100% sinister marketing especially when it's a huge lie, and has been for 4+ years.

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

#63

Post by zirgs »

jrm4 wrote: post #11
birdyrooster wrote: post #5

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.

It's been almost 15 years. There's still no valid crypto use case outside of speculation and crime.

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

#64

Post by renata »

forty wrote: post #45
EscapeFromNY wrote: post #19

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?

Mullvad accepts VPN payments in Monero.

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

#65

Post by suslik »

Yizahi wrote: post #53
suslik wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 e…

> I can send money in minutes too from bank to bank, internationally

To any country of your choosing? I doubt that.

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

#66

Post by ur-whale »

capableweb wrote: post #21
qzx_pierri wrote: post #12

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…

The feature set of Monero is strictly larger than Bitcoin's.

In other words: everything you can do with Bitcoin can be done with Monero while the converse isn't true.

Strikes me as a pretty decent definition of "Better".

(unless of course, you consider the lack of anonymity a "feature". I'd bet most people don't unless they work in law enforcement or for the IRS).

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

#67

Post by lordofgibbons »

forty wrote: post #45
EscapeFromNY wrote: post #19

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?

The whole point of monero is that it's none of other people's business what I buy with my money.

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

#68

Post by imtringued »

peyton wrote: post #46
tedivm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The most obvious first step is to stop all initial coin offerings against money. If the cryptocurrency is a security, then that is ok, but there are some regulations that need to be followed. In the EU there are plenty of companies willing to manage a security token offering for your company. A security token is basically a cryptocurrency that acts as an informal stock.

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

#69

Post by mrangle »

Investing in a coin for the purpose of privacy is not a good investment. This is because the government has to criminalize every private currency and privatizing method with any significant use. If it hasn't been criminalized yet, it is just because they haven't yet gotten around to it.

I'm not saying that one can't hope for privacy. Only that the investment risk is extremely lopsided in this moment. Expect that the government can ramp up their criminalization efforts faster than a coin can reach escape velocity should its use become more common.

Private coins may be inevitable, but it is going to be a bumpy road to get there.

Bitcoin has absolutely capitalized on giving the impression of privacy, to those (most) not paying full attention, while offering the opposite. Without privacy, DCs are worse than cash unless you feel that you are under threat of seizure or you have a plan to abscond across borders sometime soon.

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

#70

Post by ur-whale »

jrm4 wrote: post #61
Yizahi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not daily and I think that's the thing. I suppose when one says "cryptocurrency," there are a lot of possible ways one might use it. I agree that for a daily driver, very unlikely. But "store of value" is still very much in play. Crypto as a competitor to the 401k or "money in the mattress" strikes me as damn near inevitable.

> Crypto as a competitor to the 401k or "money in the mattress" strikes me as damn near inevitable.

Yes, agreed. If you can stomach the volatility over decade-long time spans, of course - which very many people can't.

Post reply on HN