Bitcoin Forum

Thanks everyone!

to get you started, fluffypony went on a european tour and did some talks. Checkout the podcast here:

https://forum.getmonero.org/1/news-announcements-and-editorials/319/monday-monero-missives-30-june-29th-2015

When he was at the bitcoinference, there was some academic guy that gave a presentation before fluffypony's about how bitcoin fails to be money due to fungibility. If you could find his presentation, I'm sure that would help a lot.

here's the page.

https://bitcoinference.com/2015/speakers-Spring.html

 mebbe fluffypony can tell yah which of the talks it is.

ah, but there links appear to be dead. yay.

Welcome to this long and exciting journey!

"In regards to anonymity, Bitcoin is anonymous by way of the fact that addresses cannot easily be linked to identity." This is called pseudonymity, not anonymity. It's very much like your nickname on this forum: once a link can be made with your real identity because of a single post, then your entire activity isn't anonymous anymore. There are degrees to anonymity, but in a nutshell it means none of your activity can be traced to you, and be traced one with another. Pseudonymity is much weaker. If you don't understand that point yet, you need to use Bitcoin, and read about it, and use it again and over again, until you get familiar with the way transactions work, with the information that you can see about them on different block explorers, with the use of different wallets, etc. Then this point will get much more clear.

Fungibility, and in particular the fact that Bitcoin is less fungible that what people think at the beginning of their crypto journey, is the next step to get. Many non-so-technical people don't really grasp it, and believe that with mixing you're good to go in all situations, or even that transfering your funds to another wallet of yours is sufficient.
It boils down to the fact that the Bitcoin blockchain is fully transparent, so even if you think you're so good to deceive the current analysis methods, you're in fact fighting against all methods that will be available in the future to analyze the blockchain. You're also vulnerable to a future mistake of yours, or a past one that you didn't notice, that would reveal your identity (real life one, or online one) and thus much or all of your Bitcoin activity would be traceable to that identity.

The Monero coins exist similarly to Bitcoin ones, they're introduced in each new block to the miner that produces it. But by the use of some clever cryptographic technics, Monero hides the source and the destination of the coins in every transaction. Practically speaking:
* If I pay you some coins, then I can't see if you spend them or what you're doing with them afterwards.
   With Bitcoin you can do both.
* If I pay you some coins, you can't see where they are coming from (from where did I receive them).
   With Bitcoin you can.
* If I give my Monero address to several people, or on my website, the transactions paying me will not look like they're going to the same destination.
   With Bitcoin, everybody paying me would know the others are paying ME too.
* If I give my Monero address to somebody, nobody can see how many coins I hold on this address.
   With Bitcoin, everybody knows it.

Now, the beauty of Monero is that if we give, voluntarily, some "view keys" to other people, then they are able to see things and the points above falls down to being (pretty much) like Bitcoin. It's useful if you're a non-profit and you wan't to be transparent about your funding for instance.
The reverse is not true: with Bitcoin you are transparent and there is no choice to be made about it. The best you can do then is obfuscation (mixing etc), while Monero does it intrinsically.

You do realise that Monero is a cryptonote cut & paste clone of Bytecoin, do you? Also, you should realise that the activities of Monero supporters and developers, here on Bitcointalk, have made it a pariah in the cryprocurrency world.

If you You are far better off directing your questions at the Cryptonote or Bytecoin developers if you want to be academically rigorous.

^^ yes, please, do that. I am interested to see the report generated by this approach.

That ego must be a pain to you man! Do some sports...

+1

Great answer. I think there is a space for both transparency and anonymity within the cryptospace. Both Monero and Bitcoin share strong grassroots communities defined by a fusion of political ideology along with financial gain. In some respects I believe both coins have equal merit, but it depends how things develop politically. If it came down to it though I would probably choose Monero.

How about: 80% premine = all coins in few hands = 0 anonymity

So STFU.

Monero is not like BTC but it inherit few traits from it.
Monero has skilled and very active devs.
Who cares about marketing. Coins that don't have active devs don't survive.
If you have good devs that are capable of innovating, then marketing will take care of itself.
It is the first fair launching of a CryptoNote coin, with a transparent dev team and successful deployment with constant improvement of a true anonymous cryptocurrency, just the code optimizations set it apart from Bytecoin with its 80% premine and unfriendly atmosphere.

Bitcoin in no way is anonymous.  It is like comparing apples to oranges.  There are even companies (I think three now) whose sole purpose is in gleaning data from the bitcoin blockchain and eventually individual identities.

It is also why there are "markets" to make your bitcoin more fungible.  Pay for fungibility?  Yeah, I don't think so.  Not when I can use Monero.

Hmm let me see...Bitcoin or Monero? I'll choose Monero as my favorite crypto.

Excellent choice.
Sounds you are a smart guy.  :)

Good choice.

Bitcoin's radical transparency limits its disruptive potential.

I don't know about darkweb - don't really deal with it.

Monero and mainstream aren't a thing yet. The "nefarious intent" component has not been explored by the mainstream. For whatever reasons, DASH (aka darkcoin) has more mainstream (well, at least cryptocurrency mainstream) exposure, so there might be some insights into "nefarious intent" with a cryptocurrency with privacy features.

> the implications of living under a Bitcoin dominated environment if pseudonymity is the only protection?

that was detailed in some of fluffypony's talk. But the implications are obvious and many - people tracking your money. Its big brothers / big marketing dream. I mean, its already done in our existing world, bitcoin just makes it unavoidable. Your company pays you in bitcoin and then they follow the money... the car dealer runs a "credit check" and can get a really really really really good estimate of how much money you actually have available. Its impossible to be pseudonymous in real life. You walk into a store and pay for something in bitcoin, owner now knows your address and face, etc.

The view key answers this by letting you have the option of working with law enforcement and tax agencies. Most people don't want to break the law, and many who will use Monero will be more interested in having private and secure transactions for their business or personal affairs than buying drugs on the dark market. Monero is like cash and cash is both bad and good money--you need a currency to be able to both to be considered fungible.

Or marketing can be seen to later, once the codebase is more-or-less stable. This approach limits the spread of an innovative cryptocurrency to the self-appointed early adopters, who have less reason to complain about hardforks et. al. than Joe Average does. It makes for a far less fractious community on the way up.

With regard to your last question: no, the libertarian argument is not sufficient but the "slag on DASH" method seems to work. ;D

I agree that is a good video

Either I hadn't seen that before, or have forgotten about it.  Either way, thanks for posting the link.

Creative Writing and Fiction were also one of my favorite classes in school.

Good luck!


~BCX~



Added: The fact that this is a blatant Monero spam thread wasn't missed. One of the better ones I might add.

Nothing wrong with a good infomercial. Just imagine what Tony Robins could do with XMR between 11pm and 1am on the TV.

Seriously, what newbie user of crypto is going to wade through hundreds of pages of old threads trying to find the good oil on all the alt coins available now? None, it's just too hard now so they all start from the latest posts and start trying to piece stuff together. There's just too many coins now to track, so these 'infomercial' threads are actually very useful.

Keep up the good work monerians :)

Just one problem.

Mprep tends to trashcan Infomercial threads.


~BCX~

A peculiar position to adopt.

Debating BTC against Monero is a valid argument which is neither an announcement nor speculation, thus is fair game for its own thread. I don't see how its any different from the smaller "LTC vs. DASH" thread that has since come into being, and no doubt in time there will probably be a "DOGE vs. XDN" conversation.

What's curious though is that you've chosen not to acknowledge that the majority of monero spam originated/originates from forces hostile to Monero - nefarious actors that appear at first glance to be pro-Monero, but who in reality have other intentions. In fact, it looks as though you're actively contributing to that illusion.

Why's that?

easy up there cowboy, don't you know that BitcoinEXpress is a confirmed  'coin killer'?

but I agree with you. these monero threads are basically like crypto blow-jobs now, pretty much the same every time, but who's ever gonna knock one back hey!

XMR is still the best game in town , so it gets all the love/hate

Just when you think you've heard it all.

That is the best nugget from a Monero thread I've seen in along time.




~BCX~

Your avatar remembers me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ofpaF5pkE8

How does it feel being part of XMR history ~forever~ ?

Cross-posting FYI (Monero and his official forum, some facts about the work they are doing):




Do not believe the Monero hype. Do your own research.

For more info please visit: http://forum.getmonero.org

Believe the Bytecoin BCN hype instead!  :D

https://i.imgur.com/36oW1Z7.png


I did my research, I'm not buying a coin that was 80% premined.

for more info please visit: https://bytecointalk.org/

Sorry, but in Europe BCN means Barcelona. I am a member of the Bitcoin Community in my city, thats the reason of the twitter in my sig.

I do not know anything about bytecoin.

Do a better research next time  ;)

Thats how retard you sound :)

Not buying into instamined DASH/Darkcoin scam neither.

Great. You redneck please don't try to leave the US  :-*

https://i.imgur.com/fHkOtZi.png

don't feel sad what you are saying has some half-value, always research, but the way you are saying implies Monero has something to hide like *coff coff* a massive instamine and non-features like "Dash"/Darkcoin :D that also tried to steal the name of another cryptonote coin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1020627.0).

https://i.imgur.com/9LEGLyM.png

How have I not seen this video?

because all talk of Monero is relegated to our ANN thread and the speculation thread, and we post so much in there that its easy to miss the bigger posts, so people try to make other Monero threads because they think something cool is happening and then people think its spam and then here we are.

https://i.imgur.com/xfub9am.png

I saw that within hours of it being posted.

About 20 people sent me the link in late March LOL


~BCX~

This is a contradiction in terms. Better worded -

Monero and other crypotonote coins have some clever obfuscation tricks intrinsically built in.
Bitcoin allows the users to choose between full transparency or obfuscation techniques to get similar privacy as others (arguably) -coinjoin, coinshuffle, darkwallet, stealth addresses, mixers, ect...

This makes Bitcoin more versatile as many people may want full transparency(charity or nonprofit) and Crypto-note coins slightly more user friendly at achieving privacy(while darkwallet remains in alpha)
 

 
  
Unless I can choose to mine specific dark bitcoins then bitcoin's privacy solutions fall far short of what is needed.  
  
As proof of what I'm saying, consider that merely using Tor and a proxy is enough to get you investigated by the NSA.  'Nuff said.  
  
Privacy can't be a Powerglove 32x Addon device.  
  
It has to be built in and fundamental to the currency.

This is why I used the term "arguably" . In one sense I agree with you and also why many BTC wallets are starting to incorporate privacy features by default. I would suggest crypto-note offers slightly superior privacy to the steathaddress/coinjoin combo found within darkwallet but the algo is only part of the privacy solution. The amount of users and transaction volume is critically important within a crypto-currency ecosystem to provide a high level of privacy and all alts have extremely small userbases. The fact that a user is using a "privacy focused" coin could also draw suspicion and extra focus vs bitcoin. The importance of a thriving market of local traders/ and non-KYC atms who will exchange BTC for cash is important. The diversity of wallets /implementations is also important in an ecosystem as it gives the users the ability to choose which one they feel is more secure and not backdoored.

I could go on at length about the complexity and nuances with security but you should get the picture....

I understand fan of monero but you must accept this reality Bitcoin is original idea an monero is 50% copy of it . there are so many coins that are better than monero ... like dash and lite .....

Hey now, stop making fun of poor old Dash and their silly "Now with 50% more Gimmicky Features!" marketing.

That's just mean.  LOL.   ;D

Wait. 
 
So your argument is that because bitcoin has more users and is more established, it is the winner by default?  And no one can ever overtake it because it is already bigger than the superior technology?  By this logic, bitcoin should give up because that same golden reasoning disproves the need for bitcoin entirely in favor of fiat. 
 
If a vastly superior technology can overcome an outdated system, then bitcoin can replaced fiat.  BUT, if you agree that a vastly superior technology can over an outdated system, then you have to either accept that Monero has a chance to overtake bitcoin or that Monero is not a vastly superior technology. 
 
You called it a slight improvement, but that's ridiculous.  Bitcoin offered us digital and trustless cash for the first time.  Many alts after that tried to offer privacy as well, but failed because privacy is really, really hard to do. 
 
But Monero is the first fairly launched blockchain to achieve the holy grail of cryptocurrency: digital, trustless, AND completely private.  In fact, it's so good that if you made it any more private (zerocash), you would risk creating security risks. 
 
Cryptonote isn't some gimmicky privacy trick like masternodes... it's a true decentralized way to handle crypto privacy, and we as humans have never done that before. 
 
Think about that: Monero represents a new paradigm for our entire species, and you would have me believe its just another alt coin?  No way.

Very odd comment that reflects a knee jerk reaction and projected assumptions. Please read my comments slowly this time and try not to respond to comments I did not make. When you are ready to rationally discuss the nuances of privacy and security let me know.

This makes no sense as bitcoin transactions that seek anonymity--mixers, coinjoin, ect.--would and are being tagged by bitcoin analytic software. The difference here is fungibility: 1 xmr = 1 xmr and 1 untainted btc = 1 untainted btc, but 1 tainted btc doesn't always equal 1 untainted btc--ask the guys who robbed evolution or ask block trail mint (they are selling freshly mined btc at a premium).

Monero has a viewkey if you want to be compliant, bitcoin has complicated measures to attempt to be non-compliant that may or may not be effective depending on who's watching.

The mere act of accepting and transacting in a privacy coin could draw greater attention and scrutiny to the users(unless it became more mainstream than other cryptocoins that aren't mainly focused on privacy) . You are surrounding yourself with people who really want additional privacy and using tools specific for privacy. With Bitcoin you can live in both worlds where some of your addresses are transparent and attached to your identity, others aren't attached to your identity and pseudonymous, and others are extremely private and near anonymous. This gives better plausible deniability and associates you with a crowd of mixed users with different interests.

Fungibility is an interesting and subtle difference and a unique feature of crypto-note coins where they "spread" taint quicker between all active users and therefore newly minted crypto-note cryptocoins wouldn't fetch as much of a premium when the market grows to a larger level. I believe the slight premium fetched by virgin BTC is temporary and will decrease/evaporate as better privacy tools come online and more btc is tainted with higher volume of txs , especially when decentralized marketplaces(OpenBazaar) grow and high amounts of BTC gets exchanged with both legal and illegal businesses.

 

Based on the current laws, Monero's viewkey allows you to be compliant--as for attention and scrutiny from a source you don't want looking at your finances (competitors, LEA, hackers, mobsters, your wife, husband, ect.) the whole point of a privacy coin is that extra scrutiny means extra time wasted by them. 

Cryptonote coins don't spread taint quicker, they erase it--that's the difference. I think it's chimerical that you think that the technology that exposes bitcoin's fungibility flaws wont keep pace with those that haven't yet fixed them--i guess the future is whatever you want it to be....

Fair point, I will concede that is better as more privacy is default and transparency is optional.



No, You fail to recognize that scrutiny of an individual can happen off the blockchain and likely would be the principle way to target very private individuals. Notice how I suggest this could merely be a temporary dilemma because if large parts of society start using Monero or other cryptonote coins than the userbase gets diluted with normal and boring transactions. In the interim this ironic problem is a real concern. 



It certainly isn't erasing the taint when an investigator has a group of possible addresses to investigate just like with coinjoin/coinshuffle, especially if your possible txs are coming from a group of individuals really concerned about privacy.

Unless a viewkey gives permissions, the addresses are stealth and have no link to a particular transaction or a user's balance information, so I'm not sure I get your point about possible addresses to investigate or how off-chain surveillance affects any user not involved....

You are conflating separate attack vectors. You currently talk about, invest in, and promote Monero. This makes you a bit more interesting to focus upon the average bitcoin user. Just like how I am more of a target than the average fiat only user.

Oh, like using richlists?

moneroblocks.eu/richlist (http://moneroblocks.eu/richlist)

Now you are just being disingenuous. I have given you a clear and a specific example that you refuse to acknowledge and are deflecting by discussing blockchain analysis more.

How many monero do I have? I guess someone can tie me up and beat me with a rubber hose, but they'll get my bank account info, cash, and precious metals, my wife, my dog..... There's no preventing this attack whatever coin you use. But as far as being a monero supporter marks me, who knows how many I have and if it would be worth the trouble to beat me? If you are worried, don't post on monero threads and that is that.

The amount of your assets can be determined off the blockchain as well and would likely be investigated just like with btc. The point I am trying to make is using a coin specifically intended for better privacy does place you in the camp of users who are likely interested in better privacy which may expose you to extra scrutiny.


Not a very useful currency if you cannot advertise that you accept it and don't ask to pay In it and don't discuss it openly.

It's an interesting point, but very dangerous to assume that Bitcoin offers you practical stealth through transactional chaos. In any event, privacy isn't just for criminals - it's a human need and has a powerful political energy. Being pro-privacy doesn't neccesarily equate to fear of exposure.

That is not the "holy grail" of cryptocurrency.

The "completely private" bit destroys a cryptocurrency's viability as an unbacked monetary medium as long as it uses obfuscation as its basis.

Obfuscated privacy is the domain of financial records, not the money itself. At best, Monero/Cryptonote is a decentralised record keeping tool, not a new form of money.

Oh jesus tok, your back on this? How many times?

Wait, where's the guy that said cryptocurrency has nothing to do with cryptography?

another thread comparing apple and horse poop

Simply check your own signature. You're singing the praises of a record keeping system - not of a form of "money".

They have very different characteristics, very different priorities. To liken a public blockchain address to a fiat bank account is to liken a shipload of coal to a delivery line.

Cryptonote uses the fiat bank account as its metaphorical template i.e. a record keeping system that places the highest priority on concealment of financial records. Bitcoin uses gold as its metaphorical template - a form of base monetary media that exhibits a high conformance to accepted monetary properties (http://contrarianinvestorsjournal.com/?p=391).

There is no way that a mere record keeping system - however private - is ever going to pass for money itself or remotely accede to its value.

I agree with you, but that might present a certain difficulty in re speed of adoption. We like to use "disruptive" as a buzzword, but like most buzzwords it does a fine job of obfuscating too. ;) Truly disruptive innovations take a long time before they become mainstreamed simply because the culture needs time to catch up with them.

Case in point: the video phone. The first vidphone didn't come from Skype: it came from AT&T's Bell Labs. A phone with a 7" CRT (in colour, too), it was ready-to-be-introduced as of the late 1960s. But it wasn't, because it was too ahead of its time - not technologically, but culturally.

On the consumer side, the prime client base for yakkin' on the phone was the housewife circuit - and that's where the cultural difficulties started. We're used to the casual and rumpled look, but that "cultural innovation" came via the Internet. During the dotcom bubble, a techy guy appearing unshaven and unkempt meant a workaholic: someone who got right on the Internet and started working in the then-new 24/7 cyberspace world. He looked the way he looked because he was so hard-working, he forgot to shower and groom himself. The same thing went for the female of the species, unkempt-wise.

People dressed down at home earlier, but they didn't show it in public. Back in the pre-Internet days, it was largely expected to groom yourself and see to your appearance before appearing in public. In the privacy of your home, it was okay to lounge around in a dirty undershirt or a housecoat. But in public, it was not: even taking out the garbage in your bathrobe or housecoat was iffy.

Note how the audiophone meshed well with this private/public grooming divide. And note how AT&T's vidphone clashed with it.

On the business side, the use case was: "Think of the advantages you'll have once you're able to see the fellow on the other end of the line! In the old days, you could only take his measure through his tone. But with this new vidphone, you can read his body language too! All from your good old chair! It's just like an insta-meeting that takes place right in your own office! All with AT&T's new marvel of high technology, the living-colour video phone!"

That little come-on was laconically shot down by this catch-22: "If it's important enough for me to gauge a man, I'd better see him in person. If it's not, why would I pay [a lot] extra for this whiz-bang gizmo?"

So...bye-bye videophone. Technologically, America was ready for it back in the Mad Men days. But culturally, it was in no way ready. That's why the innovation-ribbon went to Skype and not AT&T. It's an excellent case study on the fate of a truly disruptive innovation: one that disrupts our good old habits.

"The hell of it is", Monero adoption into the Joe-Average world would be a lot less difficult in the culture that shot down AT&T's vidphone. You could present the advantages of Monero simply by allegorizing the current fiat system as a gaggle of Peeping Toms. That would get the use-case through pretty durn swiftly.

But not in this culture. The sad part is, your prime adoption demographic has grown up in a post-9/11 and post-Internet-Bubble world. It's not going to be easy for them to get comfortable with the lost right of financial privacy, not in days when it's so easy to bad-guy someone like that. We really are living in a "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide" culture. Who wants to be compared to a pedophile, a drug dealer or a corporate fraudster?

But there is a way out: through history. Back in the 1920s, when bootleggers and illegal alcohol were the talk of many towns, the U.S. government issued $1000 bills - including $1000 gold certificates:


Five of these babies, and you had the price of a nice house in your wallet without any wallet bulge. You could buy a pretty fine homestead on the spot, and the worst that would happen is that you'd "cause talk." You could do it all on a whim, and every bank in the known universe would be completely cut out of the transaction. You could buy a house, a car, jewelry, all from money in your billfold and there was no need to let anyone know about anything. You could say "I don't trust banks!" and mean it. You could live your affluent life "unbanked" without any inconvenience. All you'd have to do is declare your income and fork over the taxes: if you declared and paid an amount that more-or-less squared with your lifestyle, a "reasonable" amount, you'd never, ever get audited.

Monero should appeal to the folks who find those long-ago times exotic and intriguing... 

Monero will go to 78,4$ according to MACD then back to 34$ and stabilize around 47,3$ if bitcoin stays above 290$

what kind of money is this?
is this like 0.784$usd and 0.34$usd?

Noob question, trying to understand, pls be gentle on me...

I think btc is here to stay, xmr (bought in half a year ago) has nice features...
Does ethereum fit in here?I feel it could become something sweet.
Any random thoughts?

ps nice topic

I'm not going to quote your entire essay Nxtblg, but that was beautiful.  I'm going to use that parable about the thousand dollar bills going forward; thank you.

Bitcoin Is Gold
Litecoin Is silver
MOnero Is :poop: ???  :D

you can continue discussion at reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/3eqk9s/question_about_monero_vs_bitcoin/

It's actually $0.000784 and $0.00034

Thanks a lot yourself!! Feel more than free to swipe whatever you like from it.

I agree with your first point--my point is that any currency can suffer this fate if it is viewed as "unwanted" by TPTB--it isn't a matter of group size as the Nazis proved with wealth seizures and the US government proved with gold bans. The only thing a privacy coin can do is be private on chain, the rest is up to you. In this case i can create an off-chain wallet and fill it with coins bought through I2p/tor using best practices (not revealing an IP) and no one will know the asset I hold or how much. Asking any more of a privacy coin is asking it to control the human actions involved too.

The second point misses that black market channels will still be available, and if we are living in this type of draconian control environment, many will only use monero as a wealth protecting asset. The fact that this kind of environment is being talked about as normal (even being taken for granted) should give some insight on how far we've come to the Orwellian idea of thought criminals--asset criminals isn't that big of a step towards the quicksand of full-fledged control systems.

There seems to be some xmr hedge against litecoin on poloniex for some reason I will never understand. A trader I am not, any good reason for a pump on the horizon? Just curious.

Provided you don't require much of a trading position in Monero, it is not unhealthy to notice certain trading patterns and act accordingly.

A 10% gain in litecoin this past week yields about a 7-7.5% gain in XMR for an individual, for which XMR would also gain immensely from an increased trading volume in turn.

Not sure about next week though, as I'm not feeling that ballsy ;D

Just caught my attention, may be a small opportunity here. I'll keep my eye on it. Peace.

Done.  Thanks for the inspiration; feel free to piggy back off my words as well.   :D 
 
https://i.imgur.com/shIWxWx.png 
 

---

 
 
You see this? This is a thousand dollar gold certificate. Back during the roaring 1920's you could take five of these and buy just about any property you wanted. No bank was involved, and besides stirring up some local chatter, no one even needed to know about it. Hell, five of them didn't even make a noticeable bulge in your wallet. You know what that was? Freedom, true freedom, of money.

What we have now? Every dollar of what we earn is tracked and scrutinized by governments and corporations, each step designed to make sure we only spend money in the ways they approve of... Living under the threat that at any moment if we are even *suspected* of a crime the powers that be can swoop in and confiscate every cent we own.

That's not freedom. That's not even close.

But technology is about to change all that. The Internet gave us back true freedom of information for the first time in centuries, and now cryptocurrency is about to give us back true freedom of money as well.

Banks, corporations, and governments know they stand to lose a lot of power with decentralized digital money like bitcoin and Monero, so you can expect they won't be thrilled about its rise.

But the most powerful thing on Earth isn't a corporation or government.

It's an idea whose time has come.

All righty! I hope that narrative works out for Monero and you.