If you don't think running Monero is worth 0.18-1.80 USD (a one time cost that you can recover by uninstalling it) to you then I guess its kind of a waste of time to even discuss.
Monero is worth, to me, whatever it is I can afford to pay. My hard drive space is nothing compared to the bandwidth it takes to both utilize my own hard-drive space as well as share the blockchain with as many people as possible, which may will be worth much more than $.18. Again, this is under the idea that the price of hard drive space will trend toward zero because legitimate pruning is a possibility and not just size reduction.[/quote]
When assessing a cost, I use three dimensions:
- time
- money
- emotional energy (a.k.a. stress or attention - I hardly have to consider physiological energy in my costs)
I believe a large amount of people are using money considerations to hide the real cost they are paying: emotional energy, in the form of frustration.
(this may cognitive dissonance at work, but not sure yet)
I think monero is a niche coin (anonymity).
Allow me to disagree and to invite you to read carefully
The value of privacy (especially the first part, "something to protect").
As an individual, you may not want to be targeted based on your spending habits or your location. Perhaps you don't want your family (or ex-family!) to know with whom or at what you are spending your money, especially some sensitive things. There are many reasons, (not comfortable with it, spoiling relationships, blackmailing/kidnapping-magnets...), you may prefer people to ignore how much you earn. You'd rather avoid "neighbours gossipping that you don't give enough to your church or that you spend too much on porn" (Gregory Maxwell). Your landlord should not be able to scan the blockchain to discover you got a raise and so decide to increase the rent, nor should your employer know which NGO you support.
As a company, you don't want competition to know that you signed a contract or to be able to discover trade secrets just by analysing the block chain (customers, supplies purchases, payroll, margins...).
For anyone, there is the risk of accidentally stumbling on tainted money (like what happened to this coinbase user). Go explain to a judge that "you didn't know". After all, if anyone can trace the money, this means that you should have traced it too, right?
And finally, for the cryptocurrency itself, lack of privacy means giving more power to miners than they are supposed to have. If they can identify via the chain, they may "start to impose blacklists, whitelists, redlists, and other intrusive requirements on transactions. [...] Too much mixing? No "SafeChain approved" tag? Etc. Sorry, your transaction never gets into a block." (smooth, who also explains here why we have a tail emission). Remember: evil bit doesn’t exist.
Countless studies have proved that people behave differently when they know they might be watched. Sure, it means they will think twice before committing heinous acts, but it also means they will think twice before acting freely.
Privacy is a foundation, like decentralisation. Frankly, at first sight, one could not care less about "decentralisation". This Bitcoin thing is decentralised so what? Blockchain is just the new toy for geeks, money works for millenia very well, and if you don't like it, you just create your own, WIR did it.
"Bittorrent also has no use. I just go to a website and download my binaries." Etc. Remember Napster, centralised?
(sorry, I would prefer to have examples not mostly about illegal downloads, but I could not find any convincing one on the top of my head - and yes, I know that Bittorent is much more than illegal downloads)
The thing with foundations is that their necessity is not immediately obvious. It took time for decentralisation to make sense.
Satoshi wrote in January 2009:
You know, I think there were a lot more people interested in the 90's, but after more than a decade of failed Trusted Third Party based systems (Digicash, etc), they see it as a lost cause. I hope they can make the distinction that this is the first time I know of that we're trying a non-trust-based system.
Why do I quote this? Because, exactly like for privacy, decentralisation was not obvious. A large difficulty without an equvalent necessity. It was required for centralisation to fail for decentralisation to blossom.
Foundations are not sexy. One turns to them only when the rest have failed. Before that, foundations are called gadget or niches.
..including and mostly limited to: a dice betting site, an irc dice bot, a "massively multiplayer" bitcointalk forum game, and a NYC based shrink. 