hmmm, so cryptonote = monero? Seems like a lot of trolling back and forth
I've read your coffee table material, I have some questions:
The real value is not so much in its technology, but in how it deploys it to create 'perfect asset-based money'.
I think technology is important. I don't like the "fiat banking model" like Ripple.
I don't know enough about monero at the moment to fully understand why you think that it's like fiat, still need to read a lot...
But anyway, I wanted to respond to some bits from your post:
The thing is, unlike fiat, in cryptocurrency there are 2 gearwheels (or ‘slabs’) each of which operates very independently of the other but in complimentary roles. One (the public part) attracts value and engenders confidence. The other supports privacy and anonymity (the global set of private keys). If the former is to perform well as money and have a high value then you can't mess with it. It needs to have as perfect as possible monetary properties
With stealth/cryptonote the mistake that’s made in defining money is to assume that the value comes from the privacy [...] Then another one is made in assuming that in turn,
privacy derives from obscurity of the asset. There's no base money in existence that I can think of where this is the case though. Monetary value derives from intrinsic
monetary properties whereas privacy is an
extrinsic one.
First thing I want to say that I checked the monero blockchain explorer and I see that every transaction has a coinbase transaction. For example this is the
first block, you can clearly see the number of new coins (17.5922). So I don't think that the asset is obscured. Fiat has an obscured ledger, that is what makes fractional reserve banking possible... So I don't agree this "monero" is in the fiat category.
I also want to add that a lot of gold in the world is private, meaning that we don't exactly know how much gold there is in the world. Gold has an "obscure" ledger making it vulnerable for "fiat games" like we see at the COMEX. But in the end, if you can't hold you gold, you don't own it. Even if the cryptonote ledger is obscure, if you hold your coins yourself, there is no problem.
Old Fiat Banking Model vs New Crypto Asset Model
(...)
The fiat system doesn’t have this asset-like dual nature because it deploys a trusted counterparty to manage accounts, not assets. In other words it’s a bookkeeping job. As far as “the people” are concerned it is therefore all-private which is why I say Cryptonote/Stealth technology is a fiat business model since it’s trying to make crypto “all-private” as well and what that does is turn it from a base asset in it’s own right into no more than a “bookkeeping job” like banking (Albeit on a clumsy, piecemeal, “you-can-see-this-but-not-that”, censoring kind of basis).
As more evidence of this “personalised account, fiat perspective”, note that CN proponents overwhelmingly tend to use personal pronouns when alluding to blockchain addresses which is a misunderstanding of the their nature and a ‘loaded’ form of vocabulary. Even cryptonote wallets actually encourage us to revert to the old fiat way of thinking where accounts “are” synonymous with people, by making it difficult to create and use new addresses on the fly - thereby diminishing their fungibility.
I just read a few things in the
annotated whitepaper you linked. I didn't had time to read it all, but the idea of having only one "personalised account" isn't bad in my opinion, as long as the address has a private balance. I already pointed out that I don't see any issues with having more privacy build into the ledger.
I need to read about this technology some more though, I don't really understand it completely.
And if it's not usable, slow or has a bloated blockchain, well, than it will not be possible for this cryptonote coin to gain any traction.
Still, I think it would be cool to have "private balances" in DASH. I don't know if this is possible? It seems like this cryptonote thing and dash have a different approach to privacy. need to research more now...