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Why Monero

benkaiser.dev

231–240 of 394 posts

Re: Why Monero

#231
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will never fly because corporations will not adopt something that helps them pay more taxes.

Corporations don‘t evade taxes by hiding consumer payment transactions.

That’s certainly true. However, making up transactions is almost core to money laundering, and laundromats don’t like to pay taxes for obvious reasons.

Re: Why Monero

#232
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want to like Monero but I've had one of the worst crypto experience using the official desktop client. The app crashes randomly, hangs, and worst of all, refuses to send transactions using a hardware wallet when running as a full node. The hardware wallet is only able to sign transactions when connected to a remote node, which is much worse privacy wise. Monero needs much more developers & funding to succeed…

If you're "running as a full node" then your full node is the remote node for a hardware wallet, isn't it?. I'm confused. I've only ever used the CLI which provides separate applications for wallet and node, and I connect the CLI wallet over RPC to my local (full) node. My understanding is the GUI works the same way while only presenting the one interface to the end user. But you should have a monerod running under t…

No the hardware wallet is only used to sign the transaction that's broadcasted by my local node. The failing case was with monerod in the background.

Maybe I should look into the CLI. Does it support Ledger?

Re: Why Monero

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof of stake isn’t a good thing actually. Especially in a private cryptocurrency. Monero will remain PoW for its censorship resistance. We can’t have stake oligopolies taking control.

How are mining oligopolies better than staking oligopolies?

It's harder for mining oligopolies to exclude new entrants.

Re: Why Monero

#234
post #136
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Monero supports crime as much as cash supports crime. Cash has serial numbers which means it needs to be laundered, since banks work with the FBI to trace where bills with serial numbers show up.

Money laundering just make it more expensive for criminals to get the profits. So does crypto due to ever moving exchange rates, comissions, etc. Also just want to remind you that the world doesn't end on US soil and once you moved cash to a different country this kind of tracking becomes more and more complicated.

> Money laundering just make it more expensive for criminals to get the profits.

Every anti-crime measure only makes crime more expensive, that's the whole mechanism by which they work.

Re: Why Monero

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Remember" what? Nobody ever thought that. That is just the kind of thing bitcoiners keeps saying that has no basis in actual history.

Yes plenty of people thought that, well into 2000-2005. Maybe you hang out too much in tech circles?

This really, really did not happen.

Re: Why Monero

#236
post #216
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shows how little cryptocurrency users know about how governments collect taxes. The government doesn't go around checking people's bank accounts in order to get tax information. This would be terribly inefficient. What they do instead is pass laws that require employers to disclose how much they pay their employees and to collect taxes on their behalf, before the taxpayer even receives the money. Therefore priva…

You are talking about income tax. There are other taxes, e.g. capital gains tax, that most crypto makes much more difficult for governments to collect.

All income that you receive from or is routed through an institution will be handled in the same way. This likely includes interest, dividends and capital gains as well. Then there's VAT which is also collected by businesses on behalf of the government.

Re: Why Monero

#237
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shows how little cryptocurrency users know about how governments collect taxes. The government doesn't go around checking people's bank accounts in order to get tax information. This would be terribly inefficient. What they do instead is pass laws that require employers to disclose how much they pay their employees and to collect taxes on their behalf, before the taxpayer even receives the money. Therefore priva…

That’s an edge case for payroll taxes/income tax of employees. All other forms of taxation can be avoided by the common man.

> All other forms of taxation can be avoided by the common man.

Lol, the common man isn’t really subjected to other forms of taxation.

Most people pay two kinds of taxes: income tax, and sales/use taxes (with property tax being a distant third).

The most common taxes are difficult to dodge.

Re: Why Monero

#238
post #2

I'm not really happy promoting a cryptocurrency these days, given that most of them are get-rich-quick schemes, but Monero has been solid for the past 5-6 years that I've been using it. It's completely anonymous, sends quickly, has minimal fees, and it hasn't been as full of cultists as some of the other coins I've seen. I use it to pay for some things and it's always a pleasant experience. I recommend it. The only d…

Monero is one of the truly useful coins and perversely one of the worst performing coins price-wise. There is a horrible lesson in there somewhere about hype and endless promises and markets. https://cryptorank.io/performance

This just proves that the crypto markets' idea of "utility" is not "being useful as digital currency", but "be useful as a get-rich-quick scheme". Other coins serve the latter much better than Monero, while Monero serves the first much better in comparison.

When evaluating the potential of coins (in terms of price gains), I nowadays pretty much only look at whether they can serve as enablers for whatever is the currently trending thing whose purpose is to extend the leverage factor of fiat money in crypto. At the moment this is "DeFi", especially crypto lending, and NFTs (although the NFT thing is already tapering off again). Because that's what crypto investors ACTUALLY want: vehicles that increase the leverage factor between fiat money invested in crypto and the total crypto market cap.

Re: Why Monero

#239
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial anonymity is important — just because the panic of the day is “secret Nazis” doesn’t make this untrue. Consider a woman trying to escape domestic abuse, who has been financially trapped. If all transactions are untraceable, a $20 to “a grocery store” here and there can very well be her escape route. Same goes for oppressed individuals attempting to escape abusive families, neighborhoods, countries. Realisti…

Just because the government knows about my bank account doesn't mean my wife/neighbor/rando does. No one is talking about radically public bank accounts; the surveillance is only for the government.

So what happens when your abusive boyfriend is a cop or a government worker?

Re: Why Monero

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, you just have to let go. Every possible action you take in your life could be taken advantage by criminals. Do you want to let that restrict you ability to lead your life? I don’t.

Indeed it is a trade-off. And leaks revealing the dirty tricks of the rich and powerful make me wonder how effective KYC and similar controls are in practice. Yet it's that very visibility that motives people to act. So perhaps the ideal is a sliding scale. The more powerful you are then the less anonymity/privacy you should be allowed, at least in financial or political matters.

Careful what you wish for, it's a double-edged sword: do you really want anti-abortion activists abusing funders of Planned Parenthood...? Or anti-immigration extremists harassing funders of NGOs who help Afghan refugees...?
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