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Why Monero

benkaiser.dev

271–280 of 394 posts

Re: Why Monero

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fear with strongly anonymous DeFi is indirectly harming the environment and supporting crime. Sadly doesn't look like Monero resolve these concerns.

Oh no, it works like cash! People will do things with money that you're uncomfortable with. If it's criminal, then laws and enforcement and investigation will have to evolve. That doesn't mean "well, I guess we have to give up privacy now. " Not your money, not your business. Privacy is important, and it's a binary proposition. It's either part of the currency or it's not. You can't have any gray area because people…

Monero (and others) does make ransom collection much more convenient/safe to do.

Isn't it its main use case, with probably purchasing drugs and arms?

I'm not saying that in theory people wouldn't want to privately purchase their baguette (sorry I'm French), it's just that in practice they generally don't care, unless they are doing something illegal.

I'm curious, for those of you who do, what do you actually purchase with monero that's legal? (And why?)

Re: Why Monero

#272
post #18
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…

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…

Haven't had any issues on MacOS using monero-wallet-gui.app and a Ledger Nano X.

Re: Why Monero

#273
post #50

When you develop a value exchange that is perfectly designed for facilitating human kidnappings and subverting international sanctions, you should not be surprised when other humans decide they value institutions over this level of personal privacy. The narrative that this type of value exchange will protect people is as easily argued that it will put others at risk. We have institutions for a reason, and nobody livi…

These are good points, but they all go away if the crimes you're most worried about are the ones being committed by the people who run your institutions.

>Monero seems much better suited as a weapon against real totalitarian regimes. If it is illegal in both a free and unfree society, then it will only have a practical purpose in the unfree society, whereas the free society will have plentiful alternatives.

Re: Why Monero

#274
Monero is bad because it democratizes offshore accounting. Only us rich people should have this privilege. Is this the gist of anti monero sentiment?

Re: Why Monero

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

which they are, of course, statistically more likely to be in this instance. https://www.amazon.com/Police-Wife-Epidemic-Domestic-Violenc...

I was opting for heavy subtext, I completely agree :)

Re: Why Monero

#276
post #262
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how it could resolve the "supporting crime" concern, really. When something is anonymous/private, it's going to be used for things you don't like. It's then all about whether you think the tradeoff is worth it. Personally, I think it is, but I understand how others can have different viewpoints. I think the logical conclusion if you take the opposite stance is that you're against anonymity and/or privacy…

> I think the logical conclusion if you take the opposite stance is that you're against anonymity and/or privacy, though. People are all for anonymity until law enforcement can no longer catch criminals. There's a balance there your statement is lacking. It's kinda like saying if you support anonymity, you must be clearly pro-crime, which I don't think you are. E.g. Banking regulations don't allow banks to publish de…

> It's kinda like saying if you support anonymity, you must be clearly pro-crime, which I don't think you are.

I think it's that, if you are pro-catching-crime, you're against anonymity, because that's a prerequisite. If you're for anonymity, you don't have to be pro-crime, because crime isn't a prerequisite for anonymity.

> People are all for anonymity until law enforcement can no longer catch criminals.

That is certainly true. I just think that it's used against morally-good causes much more often than it's used against morally-bad, or at least that the benefit we get for the latter doesn't justify the former. One salient example is the security theater we have to go through in airports since 9/11, which have eroded the liberty of millions of people and have probably caught (or even deterred) zero people.

Re: Why Monero

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fear with strongly anonymous DeFi is indirectly harming the environment and supporting crime. Sadly doesn't look like Monero resolve these concerns.

There's lots of things that an order of magnitude more folks do that harm the environment than DeFi/cryptocurrency/shitcoin gambling. I'd love to revisit the environmental impacts of cryptocurrency after we've moved to electric cars, decreased car usage, decreased HVAC waste, made our toilets/sinks/showers more efficient, made our factories run on hydrogen instead of coal, and clean up shipping emissions. Once we're…

Relative privation is still a fallacy, though, isn't it?

Re: Why Monero

#278
post #236
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. Crypto largely removes the need for institutions, and with anonymous wallets it would be very difficult to link a specific person to one.

Edit: I am again talking about capital gains. Yes, the money has to come from somewhere, but you can break the traceability easily by using non-kyc means of getting crypto. E.g. bitcoin ATMs.

Re: Why Monero

#279
post #230
post #8

Still has 21 minute transaction time: https://www.monero.how/how-long-do-monero-transactions-take

The block time is 2 minutes. You can choose to wait for 0 blocks or 100. The longer you wait the better the security of your transaction, because there's more PoW behind it. All crypto work like this. You also get more security behind your tx by waiting in a PoS system. If you're buying a coffee the vendor is likely to let you leave the shop after no confirmations (as soon as their node hears about the transaction) b…

> but if you're buying a car the same is unlikely to be true.

I don't see why not, it's not like you can buy a car anonymously. If anything there's more security there than with the coffee, and no one is going to attack the Monero network to create a double spend for the price of a car.

Re: Why Monero

#280
post #246

Waaaay down at the bottom you see something like this: > Personal Speculation > Disclosure: I own a small amount of Monero, Bitcoin and Nano. How small? $1M might be small to a billionaire. To others $50k is a large amount. Otherwise it seems like yet another blog post shilling crypto.

How will you find and maintain experts who are convinced of the greatness of some investments, but refuse to invest, because they want to remain impartial? I think your demands are unrealistic.

Also, you could just as well consider it a positive signal (putting money where their mouth is).

I guess even better would be posting a proof of ownership. Not sure if that would be possible with Monero, but it would be possible with Bitcoin.

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