To be frank:
A public forever storage of all transactions is not good but bad for privacy.
Send money to someone and they can see your wallet and all transactions.
Identifying wallet owners may require different levels of effort. But that's kinda besides the point.
I thought Monero solves this issue, with a level of effort large enough that it's almost impossible to crack.
and here lies the issue with asking about crypto in non-crypto circles… everyone thinks they completely understand blockchain in its entirely. what they actually have is a rudimentary understanding of a single blockchain as it was literally 15 years ago
of course the problem with asking in crypto circles is that they’re all trying to sell you their new big thing which is probably total trash
so really there’s no good way to ask and get reasonable answers about crypto
Much like the claim that it improves privacy cryptocurrency has not really achieved any of its claimed advantages and its successes are mainly in the field of scamming people out of their money.
Not true for Privacy Coins
I dislike it being misused for gambling on it's value, but see the importance of currencies like Monero.
i think it's really cool in theory, but only the anonymous ones. i don't use crypto personally, but it's important that something like it exists.
cryptobros and capitalism have ruined what little reputation the name had, and it's obviously not going to replace "normal" money any time soon.
i feel like it's kind of similar to the cashless systems that most banks use, but you're trading lots of electricity for "not having the economy be owned by a couple of massive corporations". obviously it has it's flaws, but i see that as a worthwhile trade.
edit: oh yeah, i didn't mention it, but this is another vote for monero (it's private and it's an esperanto word :P)
bringing back cash anonymity
Most cryptocurrencies do not have this. It is trivial to tie bitcoin to an identity. Given the nature of publicly posting the transactional records, all it takes is tying any given purchase to someone one time, to identify them and view their entire purchase history.
Monero being an exception.
They're called Privacy Coins for a reason. Monero is just one.
I use Monero for private transactions and I am thankful for the existence of a private, untraceable currency (like most cash transactions IRL). I am concerned by the amount of energy expended on crypto-mining... it is a dreadful use of energy that could be used for far more productive purposes.
Honest question, since the goal of cryptocurrencies is to illuminate the banking system. Roughly how much energy does the banking system use? Because if mining uses less than that, it would be a net improvement.
The banking system uses magnitudes more.
The big banks pushed a huge misinformation campaign to convince people that cryptocurrency was using lots of energy, but its negligible next to the banks.
Its like tobacco companies trying to convince us that smoking is healthy. You need experts to disprove the well-funded misinformation
It's possible to see an estimate of how much electricity is being used for bitcoin (obviously not the only currency being mined). Higher prices results in more mining so the amount of electricity varies all the time. Here's a graph showing estimates of energy consumption. I guess you can come up with an estimate because you could have an idea of how much it costs to mine a bitcoin and you would see them entering circulation on the blockchain.
During its peak in 2021 it was using about the same amount of electricity as Norway or Argentina uses in a year (according to a University of Cambridge analysis).
Compared to these amounts the banking system would be using a tiny proportion given that fiat currencies don't need to be mined they are just created by the banks when they issue loans.
Don't forget the other things that go into the banking system though. You've got the mining for minerals to make their buildings. You've got the gas that it takes to get employees to and from work, the electricity to power those buildings, the electricity to make and distribute coins and physical money, The presses and machines to make physical currency, etc. And there's probably a ton I am missing.
Nice tech surrounded by scams.
The initial idea and the aspect of "fuck the banks" intrigued me. Of course now the space is filled with scams and weird crypto dudes (srsly, why so many dudes?) and I have lost faith that the money schemes of the world will ever change.
There's lots of people who use the dollar and other currencies I don't like. But I still use the currency. Bitcoin has faithfully kept its fiscal policies and promises for 15 years. It's money whose supply can't be diluted through inflation. You can be your own bank. That has never changed. Whatever it originally promised, it's still doing.
I think we can all agree on this at least, Monero is Love, Monero is Life
The original idea was to take back control of our money from greedy and corrupt banks and politicians. Very very very few people use it as that now though. Most just see it as a get rich quick scheme.
As we are in the privacy sublemmy: All of the privacy issues have already been solved, those that keep saying that it is a log of everyone you ever paid kept forever have no idea what they are talking about. Just simple thing like that you should (almost) never use an address twice removes a lot of the privacy concerns. There are also other ways to obfuscate and stay anonymous.
It's not real currency, it's a token.
I can't use it to pay my taxes to the US federal government and it must be traded in for actual currency to do so.
Just like a token at an arcade.
They are also vehicles of wild speculation... And unlike stocks (where I gain partial ownership of a company) and bonds (where I gain a claim on their monetary inflows and primacy if the venture crumbles), crypto gives me... What exactly?
I don't get to be an owner or a creditor. I become... Holder of a mining incentive?
I'm sorry it's not what a lot of people seem to think it is.
You can also not use euro to pay for your federal taxes in USA. You can however convert your euros to USD in order to pay for them. If you think euros are more trustworthy and give you full self custody, then it's a good reason to hold your money in euros . Plenty of people do that in the world; they store their money in USD rather than their inflated less reliable national currency.
Victim to speculation? Unfortunately yes, but same thing goes for stocks, even basic foods and raw materials nowadays. What do they give you? Whatever matters to you: full privacy? Full ownership? Freedom of movement for your money? Not one central entity deciding on the amount that's printed? Voting power in the tech that's being built? Most stocks nowadays don't give you anything as well, but the fake belief on how much it's worth and a lot of people agree nowadays they don't represent true value of the company in many cases (Apple, Facebook, Tesla, etc.). You don't get voting rights, you don't get dividends. A lot of Cryptos do give those.
Having said those counter-arguments, of course there's flaws too and frankly more with the majority of them. It's those select few that could matter on long-term
I'm for it in theory. I explored it for a while, since at least March 2010, cf https://fabien.benetou.fr/Tools/Bitcoin
But, sadly, I'm against it in practice. You can see that the same page hasn't been updated since 2016. This is because even though is does work, technically speaking (which is in itself a feat!), socially speaking the impact is IMHO negative. The main use case is speculation about itself and it comes at a huge side effect, namely energy usage (cf IEA's https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/bitcoin-energy-use-estimates ). This isn't even about taking into consideration much worst usages, e.g money laundering. Another difference since the early days is that traditional institutions have started to use or sell them. This is very positive in terms of trust, namely that such institutions do a lot of checks because they are legally required too. This is though quite negative from my own ideological standpoint on the very raise d'etre of cryptocurrency because I was initially seeing it through the lens of anarchy, where participants in a system rely on each other and manage their own structure. Few interesting projects happened along those lines, both physically and digitally, but in practice those are, in terms of volume of transactions (and thus energy consumption) marginal. They are mere demonstrations.
So yes I was excited by the prospect, both socially and technologically, but since I've became disillusioned. Cool idea, even cool implementation, boring usage, literally life threatening effect to our one single planet. Not worth it.
I will add this retrospective to my Bitcoin page to reflect that soon.
PS: I understand that Bitcoin is not all cryptocurrencies. I also dabbled (and by that I mean code, including making my own transactions to explore smart contract before it was in the main blockchain) with other cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum. I also had few assets which I liquidated a little while ago from at least 4 different cryptocurrencies. I'm using Bitcoin as a simplification for others because that's where the value literally is today. I'd also argue, which is just me speculating here, that if Bitcoin falls, all other follows even if they'd be technically viable.
It's a nice technology that should exist as an alternative to personally identifyable and government-ID-connected transactions. It's not perfect in any way though
I use it on a regular basis. I also run a non-profit that funds open source tools for scientists, it makes accepting donations a lot easier for us among other benefits for our donors (they don't have to pay capital gains on the coins they donate, just like stocks).
Bitcoin is pretty incredible and offers decent anonymity which continues to improve, Monero offers more. Lots of scams in the "crypto world", but Bitcoin has faithfully kept its fiscal policy promises for 15 years:
Monero's privacy features can be absorbed into the Bitcoin protocol whenever Bitcoin decides it wants to, that is the biggest long-term risk to Monero IMO. That and centralization of block production due to increased block size. Bitcoin worked around this block size problem with L2s like lightning, Monero chose bigger blocks though of course it could always add an L2 if it wants to.
Use Monero. Since the amount you send is private, who you send to is private, you are private when you send. Unless you are targeted specifically, it's unlikely that your transactions will be figured out.I use Monero a lot and I don't really care about the fiat value of it because I'm using it as a currency to buy my food, pay my insurance, pay for my phone bill, etc.So what happens is since I have to pay bills in it, I end up buying it every single month and then spending what I need on bills and saving the rest.I am not it for number go up like the rest of these crypto bros are. I want to ditch the manipulative government fiat system entirely, and that's the end I hope to achieve by opting out.
I'm using it as a currency to buy my food, pay my insurance, pay for my phone bill, etc.So what happens is since I have to pay bills in it, I end up buying it every single month and then spending
how do you do all them things, if it's not too much trouble?
For my food I buy an Instacart gift card and then just go pick it up when it's ready. My insurance is through a friend who pays dollars and I pay them back in Monero and the phone bill is another gift card.
Edit: I am very seriously thinking about launching a phone service that accepts Monero only and would be a stable price in Monero.You can get some pretty decent deals from the carriers if you have more than a few lines on a business account.
No as it pretty much a scam
BTC, ETH, and XMR are the only ones that matter. Some stable coins (USDC, GUSD) are okay, too.
BTC (Bitcoin) is good because it's the most widespread. If a vendor accepts crypto, odds are they accept BTC. However, the blockchain is easily traceable.
ETH (Ethereum) is good because its blockchain is far more versatile, so it can be used for other things than just crypto payments. However, it's less widely used for payments than BTC and is also easily traceable.
XMR (Monero) is excellent. It's extremely difficult to track an individual user. Your transactions are private. There are some possible attack vectors for the future, but they'd require that you be an actual target to be worthwhile. Someone that's going to track you is going to find a different way than XMR to do it. XMR isn't as widely used as the others, though, and it's also not on as many crypto exchanges. Kraken has it.
However, crypto as an investment is not a good idea. Spend your crypto.
I think a lot of us first heard about bitcoin when Paypal shut down donations to Occupy Wall Street and later WikiLeaks.
Both of them turned to bitcoin to accept permissionless donations.
Bitcoin was just the first majorly successful coin. I think most orgs should accept Monero these days, for Privacy reasons.
It's really useful for committing crimes on the Internet but as a daily cash replacement I remain unconvinced mostly do to the woeful speed of confirming transactions in most currencies I'm aware of.
Its awesome if you have some, its basically all time high price these days 😉
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
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