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

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

#131

Post by jrm4 »

gota wrote: post #81
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 to mention that in that same decade crypto coins have failed at everything but item 1 the instant payment systems solved the problem of digital money transfer beautifully (and legally) Yours is a great way to explain it. I'd say - bitcoin and siblings are 'inevitable' like drug trafficking, not like breathing air

I really like this analogy, especially if you go deep on "drug trafficking," -- a corrupted, but not "wholly corrupt" activity that has potential to be legitimized and thus there may be a need to consider something other than "legal annihilation."

(as in bootlegging was also once drug-trafficking)

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

#132

Post by kinakomochidayo »

once_inc wrote: post #10

I feel like Monero is in a tough spot. Not enough network effect to compete with Bitcoin, and new scaling layers like Arc and Lightning actively building out to provide privacy.

Well, except Lightning UX is horrible.

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

#133

Post by alphanullmeric »

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…

Keeping your hands off of other people’s money - success.

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

#134

Post by alphanullmeric »

HideousKojima wrote: post #16
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.)

>inevitability I think it's the crypto bros who misunderstand it's "inevitability." Crypto has far, far fewer practical applications than the people pushing for it it claim. There are two useful situations for crypto: 1) Where you need a trustless distributed consensus method or database (and where the Oracle Problem doesn't get in your way). Trustless is the key word here, 99% of the time that someone proposes a pot…

Bypassing financial regulations is indeed a great thing. It’s none of your business whether someone wants to trade derivatives or earn interest on their own money. Love it when supposed investor protections aren’t opt out, and then the surveillance infrastructure they put in place get used for tax enforcement or state sponsored looting of political enemies.

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

#135

Post by jahr »

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…

There are several thing you have missed

1) International transfers: crypto is the best here. No stupid regulations, fast and cheap unlike SWIFT or something like it.

I've used to work as international freelance programmer since 2003 or about and payments were the pain all time before 2015 or about when I have moved to crypto. Lost transfers, compliance investigations without any real reason with blocking funds for many months, failed transfers because of some stupid errors like missed letter in the receiver name, etc. And even in the best case you should wait for day or two without any info about the transfer progress. Instant card payments are illusion only, it works only in some cases until it fails (for example, my country currency exchange rate is very volatile sometimes, and some people used to buy with card payments smth nominated in US dollars during this periods, hosting for example, and they thought they have saved their money with this buys, but they were really surprised when their accounts were decreased in several days after that, because real transfer takes several days, and it is executed with the exchange rate actual at that time). There is nothing comparable with crypto in international transfers.

2) Distributed storage. I can't believe you don't know about IPFS. When I've tried to download the book I've failed to buy last time I've found that pirate sites use IPFS links more often than torrents now.)

3) Smart contracts allows amazing things sometimes. Do you know about the flashloans for example? You can loan a millions without any credentials, use it for exchange arbitrage for example and if you fail to get your profit and can't return loan plus interest it suddenly becomes like you didn't loan it at all.) Looks like some kind of magic for me.)

4) NFT is misused tech. It really guarantees the ownership, but not for associated media.) Best cases for NFT are tickets or license keys. But this cases can't give you millions in a minute that's why nobody knows about them.

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

#136

Post by lawn »

ponymontana wrote: post #78

When someone try to hardfork bitcoin, bitcoin remain the same and the new fork is just a fork of bitcoin. Network effect and convergence over the open standard in action; the edge that protects bitcoin. When someone forks monero, the new fork is called "monero" and all the small userbase moves over it. The old chain simply dies. No network-effect to resist changes because theres no network at all compared to bitcoin.…

This betrays a complete lack of understanding of hardforks in Monero.

Whenever Monero upgrades to new consensus rules they indeed do so via a hardfork, but that only works because there's social consensus (both economic and mining wise). If the consensus would be to stay with the original rules, people would (and it has happened before).

Even in Bitcoin this works, and Bitcoin has even hardforked before! The difference is that in Bitcoin people want to stay on the original chain.

Keeping money in Monero is safe because you'll still keep the money after the hardfork, that's just how they work.

This is just Bitcoin maxi nonsense scary talk.

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

#137

Post by lawn »

once_inc wrote: post #10

I feel like Monero is in a tough spot. Not enough network effect to compete with Bitcoin, and new scaling layers like Arc and Lightning actively building out to provide privacy.

Lightning isn't a real threat because:

- The UX is horrible.

- To be user friendly, you need to reintroduce trust into the system, defeating the point.

- It's still more expensive to lock up Bitcoin in Lightning than to use Monero.

- The privacy of Lightning is poor compared to Monero.

The only thing Monero lacks compared to Bitcoin is the amount of speculative network effect it has, which is indeed what's holding back Monero's popularity.

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

#138

Post by lawn »

tromp wrote: post #117
ur-whale wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Monero just makes different trade-offs than Bitcoin [1]... [1] https://phyro.github.io/grinvestigation/why_grin.html It's missing several of Bitcoin's features, such as an identifiable UTXO set, relative time locks, a fully auditable supply, instantly verifiable PoW...

> a fully auditable supply

You can audit Monero's supply as well. The only difference with Bitcoin is that it uses more advanced math, making it much harder for regular Joe.

Best take criticism from a self-proclaimed Monero competitor with some skepticism.

You're right though that technically Monero doesn't do everything that Bitcoin does.

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

#139

Post by lawn »

diegoholiveira wrote: post #13
helsinki wrote: post #6

Monero is the only crypto I hold, really.

Why? Asking because I know nothing about crypto yet.

My main reasons:

- Private by default. With most other cryptos you can see all transactions on the blockchain (although you'll only see address hashes instead of names).

- ASIC resistant POW. Meaning you don't need specialized hardware to mine it but can do it with your PC (assuming it's fairly powerful).

- Transactions are cheap and fairly fast.

- Development is focused on the primary use-case of making transactions for payments, instead of making a "decentralized computing network" or similar.

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

#140

Post by tromp »

lawn wrote: post #138
tromp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monero just makes different trade-offs than Bitcoin [1]... [1] https://phyro.github.io/grinvestigation/why_grin.html It's missing several of Bitcoin's features, such as an identifiable UTXO set, relative time locks, a fully auditable supply, instantly verifiable PoW...

> a fully auditable supply You can audit Monero's supply as well. The only difference with Bitcoin is that it uses more advanced math, making it much harder for regular Joe. Best take criticism from a self-proclaimed Monero competitor with some skepticism. You're right though that technically Monero doesn't do everything that Bitcoin does.

> You can audit Monero's supply as well.

Not to the same degree. If anyone knows or learns the discrete log of H, then they can create Monero out of thin air undetectably.

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