Topic: [XMR] Monero - A secure, private, untraceable cryptocurrency - page 1358. (Read 4670630 times)

###Oh wait!!!### there IS an attack, an attack of FUD is hitting the community, take full cover and surrender your XMR to the enemy right now.

BCX still seems to think that his "exploit" will hit in under a week's time. Are we confident that it's not going to do anything? I expect some of the price decline is due to this. Would dropping a few checkpoints now not help mitigate whatever the attack will turn out to be?

People will run from any coin anyway, if the coin cant be used in "daily life". Hashrate drops doesnt matter that much. From my point of view, emission curve, hashrate, transaction fees, etc are not the pressing problem. The real problem is the acceptance of Monero by "the guy on the street". Without mobil wallet, more exchanges (xmr <-> fiat) and so on, there is no future for any coin. XMR (and, e.g., BBR too) must aim for the user experience now -- which includes not to cause another level of uncertainty by changing the already running system.

I like to think of the current state of cryptocurrency as the late 1980s of the internet.

I don't think we do ourselves any favors by tinkering with the money supply and going from scarcity to abundance. Isn't monero already abundant enough? Just look at the chart, the price has been down most of the time so nobody can complain about early adopters buying cheap.

I like to think of the current state of cryptocurrency as the late 1980s of the internet. It's impossible to know or even guess the future utility or impact something like this will have on the world even 10 years from now. But the current state of bitcoin adoption isn't a developmental issue but a fundamental one in that there's little incentive for non-acarchists/freedom fighters/goldbugs to give a shit.

Regular people already use rewards and points and miles and all kinds of virtual currencies. If we can get coins to as many people as possible and make them easy enough to spend, the utility will take care of itself. But I don't think we do ourselves any favors by creating scarcity with declining block rewards and limited money supplies.

Absolutely true. In the early years there was no value, and while some people thought it might become very valuable, skepticism was rampant. It was almost similar to DOGE in being viewed as something of an inside joke and trying to force it to have some sort of value (aka the 10K BTC pizzas).  


It would have to be one of two things:

1. Potential of future utility, since the early network would be too small to have actual utility. Who do you transact with, and for what (pizzas? tacos?)? That is ultimately speculative, but perhaps there is a subtle psychological difference I don't dismiss.

2. Actual (present) utility achieved with high adoption, initially, in a small subculture. A historical example here was eBay, which started as a site for trading Beanie Babies and other collectables. Since it was focused, it was possible for a small site to achieve some degree of network effect in that subculture where the buyers and sellers could transact in the same network. Otherwise buyers would avoid for lack of sellers and sellers would avoid for lack of buyers. Obviously, from there the site was able to grow into a larger marketplace incrementally.

Ideas for how to target one or the other or both or something else are certainly welcome.

It seems that a lot of folks here got into bitcoin/crypto (at least at first) not for the investment opportunities but for the idea of decentralized money that could change the world.

I agree that the cool factor is probably not a strong enough motivator, but that doesn't mean early adoption can't be achieved by superior utility, as opposed to investment potential in the coins themselves.

It is very hard to imagine a lot of (EDIT: early) adoption that is not inherently speculative or greed-based in some manner, because of the bootstrapping problem. Without much of a network there is no reason to be interested. "It seems cool" is somewhat of a motivator (in fact that's why I'm here), but I'm not sure how much we can expect to get from that. The later adopters can be pulled in by the network (thus we don't need to be concerned about giving them a direct incentive), but the early ones can't.

Paypal, for example, gave 10 USD away to everyone who signed up for an account in the early years, obviously a financial incentive, but a small one along the lines I suggesed (going to 15-50% of the potential users), as opposed to giving 10 million USD or 100 million USD to the first person to sign up, and 0 USD to the rest. They also waived processing fees for a long time, again a small financial incentive that got spread out among a lot of early adopters."

People will run from any coin anyway, if the coin cant be used in "daily" life. Hashrate drops doesnt matter that much. From my point of view, emission curve, hashrate, transaction fees, etc are not the pressing problem. The real problem is the acceptance of Monero by "the guy on the street". Without mobil wallet, more exchanges (xmr <-> fiat) and so on, there is no future for any coin. XMR (and, e.g., BBR too) must aim for the user experience now -- which includes not to cause another level of uncertainty by changing the already running system.

Miners certainly will run for the hills if the price of the coin does not go up a lot over the next 2 years or so. Already the reward is down from around 17 in the first weeks to around 14 today. That translates directly into about 18% less hash rate, assuming constant XMR and BTC prices relative to mining costs. How many more 20% reductions in hash rate can we accept?

So my answer would be that we have a very narrow window of time for the coin to appreciate a lot before very low rewards become a big mining problem. Historically crypto goes through long periods of down markets and relatively little growth, followed up periods of renewed interest after some unknown period of time. So introducing what amounts to a deadline into the mix may be a bad idea.

Another argument would be that if the coin does appreciate a lot (alleviating the mining issue), it hurts adoption because people are drawn to coins with more upside. That is somewhat more speculative as it relies on various assumptions about human behavior and markets. That is not to say incorrect, but less obviously correct than saying insufficient mining rewards translated directly to an insecure network. But if this view is correct, then too fast a curve is almost a no win scenario. If the price goes up too fast, you lose new users, and if it goes up too slow you lose miners.

So the easy (and common) assumption is that the early adopters are investors, which I would say is currently the case in this community. I'm arguing that early adopters don't have to be investors, only enthusiasts who see the utility in the project. Thus we shouldn't feel obligated to cater to investors when designing a currency, because they may not be the "early adopters" we wish to attract.

My answer would be "early adopters" and that term can be somewhat broad, but according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle it is about 15%. Or possibly some of the "early mainstream" (they are greedy too), which takes the share to something in the 15%-50%.

Which people are we talking about about? Bitcointalk investors? Grandma?

Preface: I operate at about 1/10 the speed of smooth with <1/10 of his knowledge and what follows was written before his post.  It is another side I have seen discussed and I wasn't even thinking of the mining aspect.  Since smooth believes the value must increase in order to keep miners then what follows should be taken with that in mind.  Also realize that I am not in anyway qualified to speak on the subject especially considering the talent in Monero.  OK so why is this idiot doing so?  Selfishly to help me understand it.  Also I don't presume I'm the only idiot here so maybe they can learn something from the perspective of one of their own.



I'll give my observations although I believe you know more than your question suggests.

It seems the non selfish argument is along the lines of a) people don't want to buy a coin that is mostly mined.  If that is the case almost every coin will have this problem at some point.  What does slowing emissions so it takes another year or two really accomplish?  I guess a better distribution but that comes from adoption because it is useful.

therefore b) they believe the time it will take for adoption to occur will happen at a time when most coins are already mined.  This is due in part to the time needed to develop Monero to the point where it can be used by the infrastructure that also needs to be built.  

I have no idea if the central premise is correct.  For the people that will find Monero useful, will they really care if it is mostly mined?  I understand Risto's concerns about this but I wonder if this is because he is looking at it from an investment perspective more so than the perspective of a Monero economy.

a) people don't want to buy a coin that is mostly mined.

If that is the case almost every coin will have this problem at some point.  What does slowing emissions so it takes another year or two really accomplish?  I guess a better distribution but that comes from adoption because it is useful.