Topic: [XMR] Monero Speculation - page 2080. (Read 3314316 times)

Actually I prefer to asses the regulatory risk of a crypto currency based on the actual rulings and statements provided by relevant government agencies rather than based on third party comments that are more often than not misleading if not outright wrong. It is fair to say that the US Government has been a leader in this area and relevant rulings from FinCEN can be found here. http://fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2013-G001.html and http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/rp/rulings/pdf/FIN-2014-R001.pdf. I would urge the reader to carefully read the guidance before reaching conclusions.   This is from FIN-2013-G001. The key point is that Bitcoin miners are deemed "users" this was further clarified in FIN-2014-R001. So of course would be someone running a Bitcoin node since they are not engaging in a "business". I fail to find anything in this guidance that is specific to Bitcoin that would not also apply to Monero. Now compare this to the situation of the Darkcoin Masternodes. Are they MSBs and subject to FinCEN regulations? I suspect that a very good case could be made since 1) They are operating as a business and compensated for their efforts and  2) Their primary function is to exchange unmixed Darkcoins for mixed Darkcoins. This could make them an exchanger under the regulations. There is an interesting discussion in the Darkcoin thread on this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.45000. The implications of a FinCEN ruling on the Darkcoin masternodes as MSBs could have a significant impact not only on the Darkcoin price but also on the Monero price. All it takes is for someone to approach FinCEN and request a ruling.

The key here is that while both Monero and Darkcoin may be aiming to achieve a similar objective, how this objective is achieved can have profound and very different legal and regulatory implications.

Edit: Assessing this kind of risk is a significant reason why I have chosen Monero over Darkcoin. I may of course be proven wrong, but that is what the free market is all about.

It depends on if XMR is useful to us or not. There are too many junk coins out there. I hope XMR prosper.

If bitcoin's price goes down to, say, 100 and XMR goes down to .001 and the emission is around 17000 to 18000 per day, that's $1700 to $1800 to buy every coin mined. A .001 floor becomes pretty trivial to maintain.

Most trade of those things are in fiat, especially USD.

You mean it works kinds like fiat?

real usage and not just speculation:

hacked wallets -> anonymous cryptocurrencies

we need p2p exchange markets with enough volume to enable such transactions.

Agree, another way is that they could opt to use the viewkey so the transaction is visible. In the same way as the current dev donation adress. If I am wrong about this, please correct me.

From your previous postings, I think we're in agreement that 99%+ of XMR use will be for speculative purposes. Bitcoin has non-speculative use, but even there, almost no merchants hold their bitcoin for any extended period of time. Many never even see the bitcoin. The non-speculative use is a joke. Non-speculative use of XMR will mainly serve as a marketing tool. In  my mind, the development of a coin is theoretically characterized by three phases:

Overwhelmingly Speculative Phase -> Store Of Value Phase -> Store of Value  + Dressings Phase

In other words, commerce, remittances, etc. are not even their own phase. They remain ancillary, even at the very end.

It's not the direct/immediate economic input that matters; it's the signaling. I don't know how many business leaders and HNW people you talk to from the mainstream economy, but the "legitimization" of Bitcoin provided by these high-profile merchant-acceptance announcements is material. It directly leads to people with money taking investment positions in the currency itself (among other things).



Agreed (and I say this as a startup founder). A big part of the current gloomy sentiment is due to entrepreneurs' expectations getting wayyy ahead of reality. This isn't Facebook. It's not going to be a ballistic exponential curve ending in >1B users in 5 years. I'd guess crypto becoming mainstream (and/or high market-cap) is going to take ~20years, with long drawn out flat periods, punctuated by some short hyper-growth every now and then. At least in the early half of the process, which we're in, and which is bootstrapped by the investors, eventually leading to fertile ground for the entrepreneurs.

My thinking is that Dell and Overstock are just so tiny compared to the overall economy, which makes it not really transactional as much as Dell and Overstock wanting to grab a little piece of early adopters' wealth. Yes you have to start somewhere but really its like 0.01%. You can't just walk around and spend bitcoin wherever you go, most online doesn't take it.

Every little bit helps maybe, but I'm not sure this idea of a small number of high profile merchants is really worth a lot.

Western Union-type services seem like a more significant opportunity to me than nameplate retail. I don't know what that really looks like though, in terms of adoption vs. disruption.

On the whole investor vs. entrepreneur debate I guess I'm leaning toward the investor side these days. The entrepreneur's time will come, but I'm not sure it will come soon.

I believe it does as even if the price goes down because of it...there is more awareness of bitcoin.

There is transactional demand for moving funds long distances in short amounts of time with low fees.

That has not changed and companies like Western Union will be gone in a few years from now if they do not incorporate bitcoin into their business model some how some way.

It isn't really clear that Dell, Overstock, etc. have done anything good for BTC. Yes there are some headlines and a tiny amount of transactions, but ultimately does any of that really matter?

Anyone who believes that Monero wouldn't be treated much harsher than Bitcoin by governments is delusional.

For instance: Dell, Overstock et al won't be accepting XMR as a payment method. At best it will be used to purchase illegal stuff.

Lawmakers and regulators will just legislate and regulate the on and off ramps and the service providers as they are currently doing with Bitcoin, and have done with cash for years.

The biggest reason why Monero cannot and will not be the #1 crypto is because it is developed to be 100% anonymous and untraceable. Lawmakers and regulators will not allow something like that to have widespread mainstream use.

When it comes to passive investing, this kind of analysis is beneficial.
However, if Monero will die or live depends on the community if we decide to let it live or die.
Tech problems are challenges. Challenges need to be overcome.
Financial problems (finding merchants, creating economy etc) are challenges. Challenges need to be overcome.
Your project Crypto Kingdom is something that has benefitted the community. I would encourage all those who are able to perform such projects, to perform them.
Not to focus much on probabilities of loosing (which has also its place in prudent way of investing).

Economically also the more coins are stored in cold storages "for ever", the more there is scarcity. If there is demand, the scarcity drives the price to extreme highs.
In case of bitcoin, roughly 99,5 % of the coins are deep frozen, this can be seen in exchanges: The marketcap is 4 billion usd and the daily trading volume is "only" around 20 million usd.

The only way Monero can achieve success is to have people willing to buy and store 99,5 of the emission. The rest is for using it "in real life". Services makes a coin a bit more attractive than a coin that do not pay anything what so ever, and the hoarding gives the high marketcap for the coin.

IMO, Monero has basically 2 alternatives:

1) It will have parties that are willing to sink money and hoard the coin and therefore give for Her high marketcap and value. Estimated pricing in this scenario > 1 btc
2) Monero will not have people hoarding the most coins and it will eventually get dumped and the estimated pricing in this case is ~ 0.00 BTC.

For me it is hard to see a scenario that is somewhere between. I am not saying it doesn't exist but for me it is hard to see. The between-scenario perhaps is based on thought of Monero getting some share of world trade being a niche coin.

I have following questions:
What are the issues that makes Monero not to be # 1 Crypto? How can we solve those issues?

Bitcoin is not that good. IMO opinion the only advantage bitcoin has is a community consisting even billionaires/millionaires who are able to hold coins - and they do not even care the price of bitcoin since they have so awfully lot of money from other sources.

High marketcap also means people do not need to sell many Moneros for satisfying their basic needs and therefore it will suck the dumping pressure.

My 0.02 XMR.

DOH! how did I forget China!

It is more like when the bulls are in a buying frenzy they will buy anything. The alt-coin become a "more affordable" version of Bitcoin. This phenomenon is best seen with alt-coins that have already being through more than one XBT/USD boom and you need an alt-coin that has some merit. In effect the alt-coin behaves as a leveraged play on Bitcoin. This phenomenon is not unique to crypto-currency. It also happens with gold stocks where the juniors appreciate in value with respect to the seniors in a gold boom. I have also seen it in real estate markets.

Willie, Doge, and China

This is indeed what happened (though not the part about BTC up). We can't really say that 5-10% was inaccurate. Only a prediction of 0% would be inaccurate.