MasterCard suspends all services in Russia

Already knows what? The exchange knows how much crypto I buy from that exchange, but with Monero they don't know anything beyond the first address it is sent to. There is no evidence they're able to find anything beyond that, including where I donate to.

>The ramps that allow these purchases to happen will be closed once tight regulation comes in and tanks the prices rendering the tokens useless.

As long as there is a ramp for you to obtain a pair that trades for your privacy coin, and reverse direction, there's little to no impediment to trading your privacy coin. In UK I would just buy litecoin or something, then trade it for XMR. If I wanted to cash out I would trade XMR for something else (goods, cash in another country, or another crypto that trades in my country).

>What is the point when you need to buy the crypto tokens using a card? Even then I am sure Kraken and other exchanges have a log of what coins your purchased and they already know you through KYC anyway.

Kraken knows how much XMR I buy and sell through them. Unlike with say BTC they have no idea where it goes after that. I know my bank knows I have money, so they aren't really getting any more useful information by looking at my purchases of XMR. If I donated with a card, my bank would see where that money actually went.

>And when this happens, how do Monero users cash out? By meeting in a dark alley trading worthless coins?

Explained earlier, Monero(XMR) can be cashed out by trading for something tradeable in your own country. Note Monero isn't illegal in the UK, there's nothing stopping someone in UK from owning Monero and buy goods or cash from out of the country or exchanging it for another coin.

> By meeting in a dark alley trading worthless coins?

The idea of it being worthless is certainly possible but at this point not reflective of reality.

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>Again, your will for this so called ‘privacy’ and all this hassle at the expense of the environment due to excessive Proof of Work (or Waste)

Can you quantify how much energy is acceptable to use when making a donation transaction to charity? If I were to drive to a charity and donate cash to Ukrainian refugees for example, would it be a sin to you?

>It is the privacy coins that will be banned first when regulations arrive.

But they aren't now, so I don't think you can say my charity donations are illegal, nor a 'terrorist' act.

>Monero has gotten even closer to zero from the start of this year and the trend is going down.

You can pick whatever arbitrary timeline you want. On a 5Y timeline Monero is down, on a 1Y timeline it is up. My transaction (from converting to fiat, to sending) usually take >So yes, it is getting worthless as a currency buy useful for people betting and gambling on the price.

OK but that's not the only use case, you can do other things than gamble.

>Thanks for playing.

Monero has worked fine for my legitimate uses. It's fine if you haven't found them. 'Playing' has been an imperfect but effective experience for many.

I’m sure you’re glad that you would prefer to burn the planet up with using Monero for some false sense of privacy knowing that the overwhelming majority that use it are criminals and terrorists.

Unfortunately this makes your anecdote not only irrelevant, but highly likely that Monero would be made illegal very quickly in the US, UK and other places.

It is the privacy coins that will be banned first when regulations arrive.

> The idea of it being worthless is certainly possible but at this point not reflective of reality.

Monero has gotten even closer to zero from the start of this year and the trend is going down.

So yes, it is getting worthless as a currency but useful for people betting and gambling on the price.

Thanks for playing.