Monero has done well from the autistic viewpoint of technical accomplishment and crushes most of the competition at meeting the technical goals of Satoshi.
They've failed horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges of being tradeable on central exchanges and as a result has met weak acceptance from crypto-friendly legal vendors making it harder to use as actual digital cash.
A key feature of cash is its ability to pass through and into the KYC/AML panopticon where (edit: to make it clear what the "KYC/AML panopticon" meant -- after being deposited in a bank) you can buy things like real estate and heavy capital equipment. If you can't prove chain of custody of source of funds and source of wealth, you're effectively shut off from a wide amount of transactions.
At least in the West. If you go to someplace like Dubai it is no problem.
No my argument is Monero fails in practice relatively worse than similar 'weight class' crypto currency assets at actually spending 'digital cash' (presumably a desirable quality of 'cash') to make legal purchases from crypto accepting sellers. This is quite evident if you survey available offerings -- vendors are far more likely to accept even the lower cap litecoin than monero (even the 'cryptwerk' website advertised by getmonero shows 2x as many vedors accepting LTC).
I do postulate that the fact it is easier to show chain of custody to the point it satisfies banks and regulated entities as part of this (even if through chain-analysis mumbo jumbo), thus other crypto currencies have lent more towards accessing more purchases in a way cash idealizes to do.
At no point was my argument simply monero fails at the same thing a pile of cash dropped through the sky might fail at and that's the end of it. I think that's a pretty silly portrayal of what I've said, made in bad faith. Although in reality I've had my cex account frozen almost every single time I've tried depositing very low, 3 digit amounts of XMR (including frozen for years) whereas you can somewhat reliably put $200-$1000 in a bank in place like USA and then use that as part of purchase that goes through KYC/AML channels.
Now if you do want to compare, say, a pile of cash falling out of the sky, vs a pile of bitcoin, vs a pile of monero and you wanted to spend it on something big that went through KYC/AML compliance. In order of what would be easiest to spend, assuming the money actually came from a legal source. Bitcoin would be the easiest to spend because you have some chance at showing it came straight from a KYC'd source because of the plaintext blockchain, next would be cash (largely for historical reasons), the hardest to actually spend would be the monero. Now if we presume matheusmoreira point about banks was just a red herring, then your follow on is just one too, since the bit regarding KYC/AML compliance purchases/transactions was a response to that.
> A key feature of cash is its ability to pass through and into the KYC/AML panopticon where you can buy things like real estate and heavy capital equipment.
My country is in the process of criminalizing the purchase of real estate with cash. Laws have been proposed to that end. Politicians have also proposed restricting the amount of "unexplained" physical cash the population is "allowed" to hold.
This is your future if you don't resist.
> If you can't prove chain of custody of source of funds and source of wealth
You shouldn't have to "prove" anything. What a bunch of nonsense.
For business acceptance, I see how it would be hard if it is impossible to use on a CEX. I think that Haveno/RetoSwap will eventually become the preferred and more convenient Fiat-->Monero method instead of CEXs for the avg user.
Overall though I would even prefer to use a stable than a bank or fiat p2p app to send money.
>They've failed horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges of being tradeable on central exchanges and as a result has met weak acceptance from crypto-friendly legal vendors making it harder to use as actual digital cash.
Despite this, everywhere it is accepted, it becomes the largest marketshare crypto payment method, excluding whales.
Cash would "fail horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges challenges today". And some countries are trying to make it harder to use.
Yes but fortunately we have other points of comparison and I was making a relative analysis. Legal vendors who take crypto are more likely to accept even the lower market cap LTC in most cases than XMR. XMR is one of the weakest performers as spending cash on legal goods and service amongst crypto assets of similar financial "weight class."
The technical superiority and features on many points seem to be unable to overcome this.
In this case, I mean a narrowed focus (in this case, on technical qualities) to the point it is maladaptive for the underlying stated goal ("digital cash").
A survey of cryptocurrencies showed monero has failed to achieve this goal of being a superior form of digital cash, relative to most other crypto currencies in similar 'weight class' of market cap and years available. This failure isn't technical, it's due to relative weaknesses in the realms of politics and soft social influence. Even the lower market cap LTC is more accepted as 'cash' by most legal vendors.
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re: below muh sources
getmonero.org, OPs referenced website, advertises cryptwerk as a good directory.
There are ~twice as many for LTC for example, and that's being charitable with something with a lower market cap rather than BTC which is like 3+ times as many.
I had not paid any attention to Monero amid the storm of cryptocurrencies and related scams, but thanks to your recommendation here, I will be checking it outmn
That's a good signal that the privacy guarantees are real, no? It's no secret that the main use-case for crypto is skirting the legal system; I'm not sure I understand this desire to make it anything bigger than that. For example, it's extremely hard to Be Your Own Bank because one mistake means you've just lost all your funds whether it's from a scam, malware, or losing your wallet seed phrase. Large amounts of people "being their own bank" by putting their life savings into crypto would be a disaster.
That's the wrong question. Nobody cares how the elites in the government feel. They exist to serve us. That is the only reason they have any power at all.
The right question is: how can we make it mathematically impossible for the government to oppress us in any way, regardless of how much they seethe and rage about it? Their happiness does not matter. In fact their anger is probably a good sign that the technology is working as intended. The angrier they get, the freer you are.
Monero needs to step up for quantum safety, not by replacing the existing encryption, but by adding a quantum safety encryption layer on top. Google's recent paper on quantum risks to cryptocurrencies had identified Monero as being at risk. This is not tomorrow's problem; it requires initiating action today, so these efforts can bear fruit by the time the quantum hardware is ready, perhaps by 2029.
Privacy tools will be used in ethical and non-ethical ways. I get that it is annoying that crypto facilitates cybercrime, but that is the cost of privacy for everyone. Everyone gets those rights, because there is no other way. I will say that Monero is vastly used for ethical purposes[1].
I guess encryption shouldn't exist because cybercriminals use it to communicate privately. Privacy is a human right, and payments are essential to modern life.
Also, good luck on "crash and burn", Monero has been going steady, being the most freedom protecting crypto, for 12 years, celebrating its 12th birthday two days ago.
> Privacy tools will be used in ethical and non-ethical ways.
Monero is not a privacy tool. It's a criminal money laundering tool.
So far, the *coin ecosystem has given us nothing _but_ negatives. It's kinda unique in that regard.
> I guess encryption shouldn't exist because cybercriminals use it to communicate privately. Privacy is a human right, and payments are essential to modern life.
A tool should not be regulated based on what it can do. Regulating tools rather than the action or intention of a person or group is inherently backwards and wrong imo.
Please look into the benefits. Consider the upsides. I have considered the downsides. Try to understand the importance of Cash and private money and its role in a free society.
I get that you were swept up in that period when crypto got bashed left and right. I agree, there are a lot of problems with crypto and 99% of cryptos are scams, but Monero has a huge use case for internet money. Monero is creating whole new parallel economies[1] and protecting activists and everyday people that value privacy.
Visiting those linked websites, they feel sketchy. It seems they are offering gift cards and different pirated digital goods in exchange for Monero. Red flags all around.
FCMP++ upgrade will be huge for sender privacy bringing Monero's technical strength in line with ZCash.
The new site[1] looks great as well; it was funded by the CCS.
[1] https://getmonero-redesign-impl.vercel.app/
I will be buying some Monero for the first time because of this thread.
They've failed horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges of being tradeable on central exchanges and as a result has met weak acceptance from crypto-friendly legal vendors making it harder to use as actual digital cash.
Not bending down to the financial arm of warrantless global mass surveillance is a feature, not a bug.
> being tradeable on central exchanges
Central exchanges are banks in disguise. They should not exist.
At least in the West. If you go to someplace like Dubai it is no problem.
your argument is that Monero fails at doing a thing that cash also fails at, which is making large purchases without chain of custody/source of funds?
I do postulate that the fact it is easier to show chain of custody to the point it satisfies banks and regulated entities as part of this (even if through chain-analysis mumbo jumbo), thus other crypto currencies have lent more towards accessing more purchases in a way cash idealizes to do.
At no point was my argument simply monero fails at the same thing a pile of cash dropped through the sky might fail at and that's the end of it. I think that's a pretty silly portrayal of what I've said, made in bad faith. Although in reality I've had my cex account frozen almost every single time I've tried depositing very low, 3 digit amounts of XMR (including frozen for years) whereas you can somewhat reliably put $200-$1000 in a bank in place like USA and then use that as part of purchase that goes through KYC/AML channels.
Now if you do want to compare, say, a pile of cash falling out of the sky, vs a pile of bitcoin, vs a pile of monero and you wanted to spend it on something big that went through KYC/AML compliance. In order of what would be easiest to spend, assuming the money actually came from a legal source. Bitcoin would be the easiest to spend because you have some chance at showing it came straight from a KYC'd source because of the plaintext blockchain, next would be cash (largely for historical reasons), the hardest to actually spend would be the monero. Now if we presume matheusmoreira point about banks was just a red herring, then your follow on is just one too, since the bit regarding KYC/AML compliance purchases/transactions was a response to that.
My country is in the process of criminalizing the purchase of real estate with cash. Laws have been proposed to that end. Politicians have also proposed restricting the amount of "unexplained" physical cash the population is "allowed" to hold.
This is your future if you don't resist.
> If you can't prove chain of custody of source of funds and source of wealth
You shouldn't have to "prove" anything. What a bunch of nonsense.
Overall though I would even prefer to use a stable than a bank or fiat p2p app to send money.
>They've failed horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges of being tradeable on central exchanges and as a result has met weak acceptance from crypto-friendly legal vendors making it harder to use as actual digital cash.
Despite this, everywhere it is accepted, it becomes the largest marketshare crypto payment method, excluding whales.
The technical superiority and features on many points seem to be unable to overcome this.
A survey of cryptocurrencies showed monero has failed to achieve this goal of being a superior form of digital cash, relative to most other crypto currencies in similar 'weight class' of market cap and years available. This failure isn't technical, it's due to relative weaknesses in the realms of politics and soft social influence. Even the lower market cap LTC is more accepted as 'cash' by most legal vendors.
-----------
re: below muh sources
getmonero.org, OPs referenced website, advertises cryptwerk as a good directory.
Go to https://cryptwerk.com/pay-with/xmr/ and compare it to https://cryptwerk.com/pay-with/ltc/.
There are ~twice as many for LTC for example, and that's being charitable with something with a lower market cap rather than BTC which is like 3+ times as many.
[1] https://monerica.com, https://kycnot.me
That's a good signal that the privacy guarantees are real, no? It's no secret that the main use-case for crypto is skirting the legal system; I'm not sure I understand this desire to make it anything bigger than that. For example, it's extremely hard to Be Your Own Bank because one mistake means you've just lost all your funds whether it's from a scam, malware, or losing your wallet seed phrase. Large amounts of people "being their own bank" by putting their life savings into crypto would be a disaster.
That's the wrong question. Nobody cares how the elites in the government feel. They exist to serve us. That is the only reason they have any power at all.
The right question is: how can we make it mathematically impossible for the government to oppress us in any way, regardless of how much they seethe and rage about it? Their happiness does not matter. In fact their anger is probably a good sign that the technology is working as intended. The angrier they get, the freer you are.
I guess encryption shouldn't exist because cybercriminals use it to communicate privately. Privacy is a human right, and payments are essential to modern life.
Also, good luck on "crash and burn", Monero has been going steady, being the most freedom protecting crypto, for 12 years, celebrating its 12th birthday two days ago.
[1] My emotional reaction to your comment, https://xmrbazaar.com/, https://monerica.com/
Monero is not a privacy tool. It's a criminal money laundering tool.
So far, the *coin ecosystem has given us nothing _but_ negatives. It's kinda unique in that regard.
> I guess encryption shouldn't exist because cybercriminals use it to communicate privately. Privacy is a human right, and payments are essential to modern life.
Privacy is, money laundering isn't.
Please look into the benefits. Consider the upsides. I have considered the downsides. Try to understand the importance of Cash and private money and its role in a free society.
I get that you were swept up in that period when crypto got bashed left and right. I agree, there are a lot of problems with crypto and 99% of cryptos are scams, but Monero has a huge use case for internet money. Monero is creating whole new parallel economies[1] and protecting activists and everyday people that value privacy.
[1] https://xmrbazaar.com/, https://monerica.com/