after analyzing the report, i think 21 is going to be big.
Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 347. (Read 2032265 times)
Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.
Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.
Fully agree. But as HeliKopterBen and dEBRUYNE pointed out a few posts ago, a fully private currency such as Monero could just as easily be outlawed in it's entirety. Which puts Monero in the same position as a Bitcoin where blacklist coins are outlawed.
Legally yes, but in terms of fungibility no. If I'm a fully compliant Bitcoin user I may -- purely as a practical matter -- have to check on coins I'm receiving to see if they are "bad", and because coins may be added to a blacklist (or removed from a whitelist) after I receive them, it means I'm left with performing my own KYC to convince myself that the counterparty is unlikely to be passing off "bad" coins.
I'm not doing this because the law requires it but because I'm worried about being left holding the bag with "bad" coins, even if the transaction itself is entirely legal. This is fundamentally incompatible with the concept of fungibility (again, which is distinct from legality).
The risk of this is fungibility concerns is far less to nonexistent with a private coin, where tagging coins as "good" or "bad" is technologically less feasible or impossible (Monero is not as private as say zerocash, so some issues remain there, but far less so than Bitcoin).
Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.
Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.
Fully agree. But as HeliKopterBen and dEBRUYNE pointed out a few posts ago, a fully private currency such as Monero could just as easily be outlawed in it's entirety. Which puts Monero in the same position as a Bitcoin where blacklist coins are outlawed.
The government can attack the fungibility of both by either outlawing the currency or outlawing blacklist transactions, so the fungibility of both rest to a certain extent on the ability of individuals to interact with the currency outside of the law. This is true for gold or any other money in existence.
For an example, the privacy of gold was broken when they outlawed direct possession and forced everyone into bank notes. Gold used to be able to be used privately (direct transfer) but now it wasn't (no direct transfer legally allowed). The innate properties of Gold and Money did not change, gold was still fungible. What changed was the legal framework around them that prevented that fungibility from being used to gain privacy. This leads me to believe again that privacy is NOT an innate property of money, but is determined by how it is used.
Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.
Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.
i think privacy is an important aspect of money.
at least if you want it to be adopted by the broadest swaths of the population which you should. and that even means adoption by druglords and money launderers who absolutely need their privacy. not that i advocate those sorts of activities but that's unrelated to my point.
i also don't think Coinbase is a privacy destroyer except if you try to do something illegal with coins one hop away from them. as the coins spread out through the economy though it's extremely difficult to link illegal activity with those original coins.
Guys, even if you think buying Monero is a terrible decision (perfectly reasonable stance) I highly recommend this excellent and fascinating technical interview with the Monero core dev:
https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/ltb-e202-understanding-monero
Explains viewkeys and ring signatures. Also very briefly touches of fungibility... but the discussion mostly revolves around the cryptography.
https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/ltb-e202-understanding-monero
Explains viewkeys and ring signatures. Also very briefly touches of fungibility... but the discussion mostly revolves around the cryptography.
Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.
Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.
Nice find!
I was surprised to see a quote from this individual:
seems to me that at the very least we will see companies like Qualcomm opening their own mining pools at which all these devices will be pointed. this would be fantastic in further decentralizing mining in terms of increasing pool choices. especially here in the US. and if Qualcomm opens a pool, others are sure to follow. like Whirlpool, GE, Subzero, etc.
i think 21 is seriously going to mess with credit card companies.
Not debating any of that, agree that Monero is more private.
Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption. The subset of people who need privacy can use both in a manner that achieves it. Regarding "better mining algo", again this is not a property of money I think people who are resorting to these types of arguments to convince themselves that altcoin x is better are kidding themselves. On the six properties I care about Monero is either the same or worse than Bitcoin.
Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption. The subset of people who need privacy can use both in a manner that achieves it. Regarding "better mining algo", again this is not a property of money I think people who are resorting to these types of arguments to convince themselves that altcoin x is better are kidding themselves. On the six properties I care about Monero is either the same or worse than Bitcoin.
I can convince myself of whatever I want, including that Bitcoin as money sucks is a NWO tracking tool waiting to happen.
BTW would you use a metal as money that has only 3 or 4 large groups mining 80% of all deposits of it or one that has better qualities of money and can be found in your backyard yet as rare as the first one.
Very valuable work coming from Andrew Miller (@socrate1024): a way to test bitcoin at scale using shadow (1) and a custom made shadow multi-thread plugin. Applying this framework they even found out a novel denial-of-service attack against the Bitcoin software.
The paper: "Shadow-Bitcoin: Scalable Simulation via Direct Execution of Multi-threaded Applications"
https://cs.umd.edu/~amiller/shadow-bitcoin.pdf
And here the link to the plugin code: https://github.com/shadow/shadow-plugin-bitcoin
(1) https://shadow.github.io
The paper: "Shadow-Bitcoin: Scalable Simulation via Direct Execution of Multi-threaded Applications"
https://cs.umd.edu/~amiller/shadow-bitcoin.pdf
And here the link to the plugin code: https://github.com/shadow/shadow-plugin-bitcoin
(1) https://shadow.github.io
Which puts Monero in the exact same position as Bitcoin then. Bitcoin would have certain transaction types outlawed and Monero would be entirely outlawed. Yet both Monero and Bitcoin would still function and processed the outlawed transactions for people who choose to ignore the (illegal) rules.
And so both maintain fungibility through the exact same mechanism, which is people ignoring governments. This is why I'll maintain privacy is a matter of usage, but is not a property of money.
And so both maintain fungibility through the exact same mechanism, which is people ignoring governments. This is why I'll maintain privacy is a matter of usage, but is not a property of money.
I dont think anyone said money needs to be private to be money, Monero is a private form of electronic money from blockchain perspective, Bitcoin is not truly one because all separating anyone from tracing you is them not knowing you own the addresses, create one single exit or entry point with KYC and your entire history of transactions is compromised and you'll never know whos watching and why, think credit card, thats is what Bitcoin is more like, Monero on other hand is setup so that traceability of funds is limited within the scope of a certain organization or government, basically a database of view keys, Bitcoin was setup to be traceable by anyone including their doge. Monero also has better mining algo to difficult ASICS and can SCALE.
Not debating any of that, agree that Monero is more private.
Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption. The subset of people who need privacy can use both in a manner that achieves it. Regarding "better mining algo", again this is not a property of money I think people who are resorting to these types of arguments to convince themselves that altcoin x is better are kidding themselves.
On the six properties I care about Monero is either the same or worse than Bitcoin. Explain to me how Monero is better on any of those six properties, otherwise you don't have a solid argument that it is better.
There is a "viewkey" in Monero that allows people to track your transactions... so I wouldn't say that Monero "forces" privacy on its users. (Maybe I'm splitting hairs though).
Thanks for the correction, Chris. What's your take on Monero and ring-signature technology, BTW?
what's this about a viewkey?
Which puts Monero in the exact same position as Bitcoin then. Bitcoin would have certain transaction types outlawed and Monero would be entirely outlawed. Yet both Monero and Bitcoin would still function and processed the outlawed transactions for people who choose to ignore the (illegal) rules.
And so both maintain fungibility through the exact same mechanism, which is people ignoring governments. This is why I'll maintain privacy is a matter of usage, but is not a property of money.
And so both maintain fungibility through the exact same mechanism, which is people ignoring governments. This is why I'll maintain privacy is a matter of usage, but is not a property of money.
I dont think anyone said money needs to be private to be money, Monero is a private form of electronic money from blockchain perspective, Bitcoin is not truly one because all separating anyone from tracing you is them not knowing you own the addresses, create one single exit or entry point with KYC and your entire history of transactions is compromised and you'll never know whos watching and why, think credit card, thats is what Bitcoin is more like, Monero on other hand is setup so that traceability of funds is limited within the scope of a certain organization or government, basically a database of view keys, Bitcoin was setup to be traceable by anyone including their doge. Monero also has better mining algo to difficult ASICS and can SCALE.
It is not clear how uniformity/fungibility is any different from Bitcoin.
Most likely if an entity (company, government, individual, ect) decided to censor bitcoin transactions based on tx history, then that entity would not accept a currency like XMR at all because tx history cannot be completely known. In this sense, XMR could be LESS FUNGIBLE than bitcoin, or at least less accepted as fungibility may be the wrong term to use in that case.
In that case you still can't differentiate units, which is the premise of fungibility. It would simply be outlawed.
Which puts Monero in the exact same position as Bitcoin then. Bitcoin would have certain transaction types outlawed and Monero would be entirely outlawed. Yet both Monero and Bitcoin would still function and processed the outlawed transactions for people who choose to ignore the (illegal) rules.
And so both maintain fungibility through the exact same mechanism, which is people ignoring governments. This is why I'll maintain privacy is a matter of usage, but is not a property of money.
There is a "viewkey" in Monero that allows people to track your transactions... so I wouldn't say that Monero "forces" privacy on its users. (Maybe I'm splitting hairs though).
Thanks for the correction, Chris. What's your take on Monero and ring-signature technology, BTW?
Hey Zangelbert,
I kind of suspect that a lot of people don't really grok the spin off idea. I think there would be a lot of value to a dumb proof-of-concept altcoin that spun off the Bitcoin ledger (with some trivial changes like a confirmation rate of 5 minutes). It would be really interesting to see people's reactions to it... first the usual disdain, and then perhaps a kind of curiosity once they realize that they "automatically" have a chunk of this new coin. Anyway, it would help spread the concept, which is what I think would be the most valuable.
I kind of suspect that a lot of people don't really grok the spin off idea. I think there would be a lot of value to a dumb proof-of-concept altcoin that spun off the Bitcoin ledger (with some trivial changes like a confirmation rate of 5 minutes). It would be really interesting to see people's reactions to it... first the usual disdain, and then perhaps a kind of curiosity once they realize that they "automatically" have a chunk of this new coin. Anyway, it would help spread the concept, which is what I think would be the most valuable.
Altcoin investment has always come across to me as pure financial speculation
Yeah, same with me. In dealing with altcoin people, saying that all altcoins are unadulterated shit (which I do regardless) is not popular. Here at least it is ok to confess that.
Monero is not an altcoin in that sense. It is what Bitcoin was promised to be (but is not, and likely cannot be) - private cash, and nothing more.
I will never buy bitcoins with the gains from my XMR; Bitcoin is legacy to me, as well as silver, gold, and bank accounts.
(I will answer to the main points by Z.B. later, they seem strong, the debate is just getting interesting!
)OK, so I'm genuinely curious to understand in what ways you think Monero as money is superior to Bitcoin as money.
To me the six properties of money are:
- Portable - Easily transported - Check, Bitcoin is perfectly portable and easy to conceal (pw in head) (much better than gold)
- Scarce - Fixed supply - Check, Bitcoin is perfectly scarce (much better than gold)
- Divisible - Can be split into any useful amount without losing value - Check, Bitcoin is as divisible as needed (easier to do than gold)
- Uniform - Each unit is valued the same - Check, Bitcoin is perfectly uniform (same/better than gold)
- Durable - Will not degrade over time - Check, Bitcoin private keys are perfectly durable (better than gold)
- Accepted - Widely used and valued by the population - Not yet, Bitcoin misses here for now (gold is better)
Bitcoin has always been interesting to me because it beats gold handily in 1) Portability, 2) Scarcity and to a lesser extent 3) Divisibility and 4) Uniformity. Bitcoin still loses in Acceptability but that is to be expected for 6 year old currency vs a 5000 year old one. This one follows the other 5.
In what manner is Monero better along these dimensions?
+1
- monero transaction is 5-10 times bigger
- this snake oil salesmen (shitcoin proponents) absolutely have no clue what is bitcoin as "programmable money" with SC.
Nice find!
I was surprised to see a quote from this individual:
seems to me that at the very least we will see companies like Qualcomm opening their own mining pools at which all these devices will be pointed. this would be fantastic in further decentralizing mining in terms of increasing pool choices. especially here in the US. and if Qualcomm opens a pool, others are sure to follow. like Whirlpool, GE, Subzero, etc.
Monero is...what Bitcoin was promised to be (but is not, and likely cannot be) - private cash, and nothing more.
What was Bitcoin "promised to be"? How does the Bitcoin of today not fulfil the description from the Satoshi white paper? Bitcoin is more useful than Monero because it does not force privacy upon its users. It gives its users the freedom to choose their privacy requirements. Cryddit (Ray Dillinger) made a series of insightful posts beginning here arguing against all but niche adoption of strong-privacy coins.
Furthermore, even if you assume that protocol-enforced privacy is a positive (which I don't), the trade-offs made to get that privacy have real costs. But we won't fully know what these costs are until something like Monero is trading at a much higher market cap and transaction volume.
That being said, I like Monero because (a) it had a fair launch, and (b) it offers something unique. I would love to see it overtake Dash (Darkcoin) and then Litecoin. But I think best-case scenario for Monero is a few % of the bitcoin market cap.
There is a "viewkey" in Monero that allows people to track your transactions... so I wouldn't say that Monero "forces" privacy on its users. (Maybe I'm splitting hairs though).
It is not clear how uniformity/fungibility is any different from Bitcoin.
Most likely if an entity (company, government, individual, ect) decided to censor bitcoin transactions based on tx history, then that entity would not accept a currency like XMR at all because tx history cannot be completely known. In this sense, XMR could be LESS FUNGIBLE than bitcoin, or at least less accepted as fungibility may be the wrong term to use in that case.
In that case you still can't differentiate units, which is the premise of fungibility. It would simply be outlawed.
As I said, fungibility may be the wrong term, but the outcome would be similar to non-fungibility (actually worse) because the currency would be banned completely.
It is not clear how uniformity/fungibility is any different from Bitcoin.
Most likely if an entity (company, government, individual, ect) decided to censor bitcoin transactions based on tx history, then that entity would not accept a currency like XMR at all because tx history cannot be completely known. In this sense, XMR could be LESS FUNGIBLE than bitcoin, or at least less accepted as fungibility may be the wrong term to use in that case.
In that case you still can't differentiate units, which is the premise of fungibility. It would simply be outlawed.
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