Great posts cAPSLOCK, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Online financial privacy should be as simple as using cash offline, else it will remain a minority (like myself) using it as unfortunately with most privacy focused projects. However there is a group of users that would normally not care, but now they have to. Not sure how many DNM’s and its users need to get busted before it becomes clear you can’t use a coin with a transparent ledger, but both ends have a clear incentive looking for alternatives. And currently there really is only one.
Online financial privacy should be as simple as using cash offline, else it will remain a minority (like myself) using it as unfortunately with most privacy focused projects. However there is a group of users that would normally not care, but now they have to. Not sure how many DNM’s and its users need to get busted before it becomes clear you can’t use a coin with a transparent ledger, but both ends have a clear incentive looking for alternatives. And currently there really is only one.
Absolutely.
But there has only ever been one. It's just that the penny has finally dropped. That, coupled with a lack of liquidity is a perfect storm.
But hey, this is Monero, of course it's leaping up again.
Unfortunately there were, and still are, some imposters/scams like dark and snark coin clouding the vision of new users. They have large advertising budgets and are actively being promoted by the gemini twins, shilbert and armstrong. It is a shame really but I have always believed that the market will eventually catch up and Monero will properly reflect the Achilles heel of Bitcoin in its price, whatever that price point may be.
The Zcash is still definitely a viable scam, and part of it was it was started by a cryptography OG who I have even heard praise about from Nick Szabo who having known him from the mailing list days probably saw him as family, so to speak, and the fact he was using cutting edge exotic cryptography to achieve privacy was exciting for many people. And I think Zooko (who blocked me on Twitter, lol) even fooled himself with his sweet little boy "How nice it is not to have to worry about groceries anymore" style. As you said they had an effective marketing budget to dump on the Gemini twins and the Cue Ball.
Oh and Dash, even scammer still has SO MUCH momentum, and I suspect it large transaction volume is most likely real. Goes to show what network effect does... amazing really. Our CLI wallet and odd codebase really hurt us in that regard, but I think we still catch up and pass Dash eventually.
Another thing often glossed aver about Monero is that as far as shitcoins go it has just about the best possible track record aside from the crippled miner, and the fact we made a change at the social contract level early on (tail emmision, which although possibly justified is, in my opinion almost a "guys can you stop trading now" moment of centralization). But past those things Monero is one of the most immaculate projects out there. And will continue to overcome those blips just as BTC overcame it's own inflation bug, and concentrated early mining. Although in BTC unlike Monero that last bit is still a specter hanging over the entire project like some giant guillotine. Let's just hope Satoshi hasn't developed a coke habit since 2011. And if he has hopefully he is using Monero, or XMR.TO and coins much later in his hoard.
). Just look at the size of the market now, and note the drastic and continuing squeeze on supply of fresh coins. Transaction count is up, transactoin fees are down, development seems never to slacken, and its just time.
