@ demgains So is seems to me that you have something against other people buying illegal substances using XC, but you are perfectly fine if they only use it for tax evasion, bribes and other illegal financial shit....maybe not but at least that's what I understand.
Here is what I think:
The most important feature of XCurrency is privacy there is no doubt about this and getting it done is surely the number 1 priority.
Second priority is, at least in my mind, creating an environment that would enable spending XCurrency. I understand that introducing xc on the currency cards and ATMs will make it possible to spend it anywhere or exchange it for fiat, but people can do this just as well with bitcoin. For XC there needs to be a different application, specific for anon coins, like an online market.
By market I refer to a completely decentralized online market that would use xc. For such a market to have success a true anon coin is necessary and xc is perfect for that. Otherwise there are little applications that would absolutely require the use of an anon coin. I mean using it to sponsor political parties is great but still...not enough. Also what point is there to keep the records of a online company private (using xc) if the actual business can not be conducted also in a private way (using a decentralized anon market based on xc).
I consider cloak coin as the most important competitor. They are currently working on implementing a decentralized anon feature that might work out just as well as Dan's implementation. If they do achieve this then I belive in a very short time xc will be losing its advantage because cloak will also have their Onemarket service, maybe you have read their whitepaper.
I feel that in the future most commerce will move on the online medium and next logical step after getting rid of financial middlemen, and thus liberating money (as bitcoin and all the other cryptocurrencies have done), is eliminating the ecommerce middlemen (like ebay, amazon and many others).
There is a great deal of bitcoin being transactioned on the dark markets. Those users will most definitely migrate over to the first good implementation of a decentralized market as they are aware that their weak spot is the fact that the markets they transact on are centralized.
Now don't get me wrong, I do not advertise the sale of drugs, child porn, weapons and what not. All of these issues can be resolved through peer reviews or other methods. But the fact still stands: there is a need for such a free market open to anyone and sooner or later someone will make it happen. I only wish that XC will be the one.
So in conclusion I belive that developing such a application should be first priority after anonymity problem is fully done.
I see what your saying, I spend alot of time on the cloak thread too. Cloak, like DRK, appears to be specifically aimed at deepweb. I dont see why anyone outside of that would want Cloak or even understand why they need it. I may be wrong but Cloak is targeting a niche while XC is targeting the masses. Assuming they both hit their potential, why would a garbage man want any amount of cloakcoin? XCurrency will be built on the foundation of mass usage, and real world applications and will also be used for deepweb transactions. People will also understand that it is a currency right away, unlike Cloakcoin which many will have to investigate to understand that is is a currency as well. XCurrency is simply more straightforward and professional with its name, and Cloakcoin is just another altcoin name.
As for the privacy, just an example is alot of people have invested in VPN technology to remain hidden and maintain their privacy from social media websites and search engines that collect information...I am one of those people. I dont condone to bribery or tax evasion, but privacy is becoming a bigger and bigger issue nowadways with government spying technologies becoming more of a problem.