Bitcoin Forum

Monero seems like one of the few altcoins that isn't gettin completely destroyed by the rise of the great king bitcoin, grandpa of all coins. Seems like Monero managed to stay on the green numbers or have small red numbers a couple of days... the problem is... all of Monero's trading is happening in Poloniex. Sure other trading happens in other exchanges, but we are talking about 95% aproximate trading happening in Poloniex.

In case Poloniex goes MtGox... well we know what happened in 2013 when MtGox was the only exchange.

Well? This and the scaling problem (I have my doubts about how Monero is going to scale) don't convince me to take a serious long term investment in the coin. Will it have a Lightning Network solution? it will keep scaling all onchain? and when we can expect more exchanges? 95% on a single exchange is a big point of failure.

If Poloniex goes out of course, there will be more important to worry about than whatever quantity of Monero you will buy. Poloniex is the king of the altcoins exchange, storing incredible amounts of money. If Poloniex gets taken down by an attack, I think you can say that all altcoins of the platform except maybe Litecoin or Ethereum will be deceased with the platform. I am not a Monero specialist and I do not have an opinion on it so talking about Monero's problems preciously can not be done with me.

i moved all my coins out off poloniex a few months ago. during the phase of altcoin-bingo when one coin after the other got pumped. this is just a feeling and nothing more. but i think that polo will be the next exchange with troubles.

and the connection with monero is so obvious. a lot of topics about fakes with ETH volume on polo. but what about the XRM pumps...

It's more like 85% last day. I think kraken and bitfinex will help spread volume, especially when one or both implement margin trading.

Why does Polo collect your picture ID ?

Only if you want to withdrawal more than $2k per day. Pretty sure coinbase does all the time, and bitfinex and kraken do as well to withdraw more than a thousand or two USD equivalent. Btc-e doesn't for BTC, but if you want to deposit or withdraw cash I think they do as well.

Tl;dr because laws, specifically banking secrecy and anti-money laundering regulations.

Monero is on quite a few exchanges - see the following:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#markets

But yeah - it's worth spreading the trading around to make sure too much isn't concentrated on one exchange.

We definitely need Monero to be on more exchanges, preferably in multiple countries.
Decentralization is very important, and to be truly anonymous, we need ways to buy XMR without being forced to tie a government ID to your account.
Since being anonymous is one of the strong selling points of  the coin, its doubly important, in this case.

With all that being said, I think its worth noting that we have had a lot of growth and strong support while being only listed on one exchange until very recently.
Thats a great sign for long-term investors. Imagine what the price could be if you were able to buy on Chinese exchanges, for example...  8)

Is this an attempt to scare us? If it is, you are massively failing. Exchanges are free to list Monero if they want. The reason why most of the volume is in Poloniex is because it is the most popular altcoin exchange. If Poloniex goes down another exchange like Bittrex will take over is the exchange to go to. All proof of work coins will always have scaling problems. Consensus takes time, we have to accept this. Look at where bitcoin is now even if it also has a scaling problem.

Exchanges are designed to make fees from trading, not to augment a coin's security. If you care about decentralization, mine--this thread smacks of concern trolling.

Kraken announced XMR trading.

Spoetnik announces you're all still idiots.  ;D

You guys are pathetic.
You make stupid fucking excuses for a coin DESIGNED to be traded on handful of centralized government exchanges.
Exchanges that should not even exist in the first place.

You Monero idiots have 0 retorts and no defense what so ever.

It i simply fucking retarded beyond comprehension that all the fucking trading is done on a centralized point that collects your ID or cripples your trading ability.

Even funnier it's been this way all along going on 3 god damn fucking years.

I'd say it's a bit late idiots.  :D

So..
NO sorry adding some other exchange that will realistically made no damn difference anyway is well.. retarded.
AKA: Yet again playing the "exception" card and failing at it miserably.

I just have to laugh at the Monero retards year in and year out.  :D
There is so many things wrong with it and it's so called "Community" i never know where to even start.

What next ?
Big hype about uber super duper mega important Dark Market usage ?
ohhh la la some fucking terrorist Pedo can buy crack online on Alpha Bay.
OCCASIONALLY (it will still end up being Bitcoin used MOST OF THE TIME)
AKA: an exception to the rule.

With your moronic fuck head mentality you guys might as well call every person that plays the lottery..
"The Big Winner"
Because that is what you are saying when you harp on the exception card retort.

And by the way when it gets exploited eventually you can call it a day..
Take it out back and shoot it because it will be game over.
Or when King Risto / Leader of Monero living in his mentally ill castle decides to dump ?
Either scenario your coin prices on CENTRALIZED exchanges will be decimated in seconds.
So..
Good luck running to Polo to dump ahead of the staff & friends who beat you to it..
Uhhh ohhh sooooooooooorrrrrry we have Technical Issues "Network Problems"
They will say as the exchange cleans house on your dumb fuck naive little ass's.
Not like i have seen that play out all over crypto like a broken record.  ::)

You guys AND your bags are fucking pathetic.
Good luck with your centralized "Free market" *mostly* ANON Dark market currency used on 1 exchanges with your picture ID.................. for profits  :D

Sad but all of you idiots combined are STILL not as smart as me  ;D  8)

For 2017 you fuckers should work on your shit.
And learn to do your homework and make better decisions.

If any of you fucking dope head kidiot profiteers crypto-pundits think seeing the "Monero French Police Fraud" topic i made ? ...and STILL want to get involved supporting Monero then you deserve what ever the hell you get.

When you look at a coin project and see problems.. lots of them.
AND STILL scream Take My Money Now.. then you are in fact a fucking idiot.


Happy trading "Smashing pumpkins Coin" on polo Investards.


http://i67.tinypic.com/2dllugw.jpg

Risto's Coin is decentralized !!!!!!! hahahahha  :D

I don't see this as a Monero problem in particular. There's no point in trading if you don't plan on taking profits at some point, and if you take profit you're going to have to convert the crypto to cash, and it's going to be hard to do this without the involvement of an exchange and a bank. If you do manage to sell tons of crypto to some guy on local bitcoins, you're still going to have a problem when you buy a condo. The IRS will notice and ask you where the money came from. A circular economy where everything is done in crypto will help but won't definitely solve the problem, because the government will know that a title deed changed hands, and if you don't want to involve title deeds changing hands (or legal documentation indicating ownership changes), you risk forfeiting protection of the law.

Your Polo profits have to be claimed with the tax man or you are going to potentially get caught and go to jail.
So.. smart fuckers tell me what happens when they have *some* of the info including your picture ID and an admission of profit / proof from Polo via request.
What then smart ass's ?
You go to fucking jail that's what crypto-contrarians. (*baggies)

Your ANON coin faggotry is the Titanic and it' slipping beneath the waves.
Not even Billy Corgan / rpietila / Risto can save you now  :D

..don't they look an awful lot a like ? LOL Conspiracy ?  :o
I wonder when the next Monero album drops ?

By the way that is the guy who said BTC will be 1 million per coin.
So.. according to hid divine wisdom you should be buying it at anything below 1 mill per coin right ?

Ahhh the sheer brilliance of Monero Logic® :D

PS:
In Canada you are required by law to claim any profits you make with virtual currencies.

As you are implying, anonyminity built into a coin (any coin) is presently insufficient to protect would be tax evaders. However, most people already acknowledge this. I don't honestly know if I would pay income/capital gains tax if I thought i could successfully evade them, but, since I have made a more or less good faith effort to report and pay my crypto profits, I consider this to be in the realm of the hypothetical. Monero doesn't pretend to help you dodge the taxman. Just what is your point?

That's because crypto is not made for trading.  Trading is just a parasitic phenomenon that overtook crypto, and has pushed true crypto adoption as a means of exchange for goods and services in the dustbin.

You don't need any block chain to trade on centralized exchanges, btw.  It just sounds good to pretend to have one attached to the web IOU that you're trading.

That's the goal of crypto, isn't it ?  To forfeit "protection of the law" so that in the end, we can do away with law and state.
Anything else one does with crypto, begs the question.  Essentially, trading stuff and being able to live off it, without depending on a public extortion system called taxes, and being able to enjoy economic freedom.
You buy your protection then also with crypto (that is to say, with smart contracts tying armed groups to your bought rights).

I don't know if that was Satoshi's goal or not since I haven't actually read the original white paper. For me it's sufficient to do be rid of perpetual inflation. I'd also lilke to see income and capital gains taxes eliminated and if crypto ends up giving people a weapon to fight against this kind of demoralizing taxation then that's a good thing.

He never said that, but then, Satoshi is not a god.  A "free money" is not compatible with an economically non-free society like ours, and as long as there are taxes in relationship to economic activity (production of value - income tax / consumption - VAT) economic activity is not free.  The concept itself of a freely usable means of economic exchange, which IS the goal of crypto, is orthogonal to our current tax-states.
Of course, we will not get rid of the tax-state institution that we're living in since about 5000 years overnight.  My hope is/was that crypto was going to be to the tax-state and the non-freedom of economic interaction, what the internet is to free speech: something that by its sheer adoption forces states to comply in the end.  That said, free speech is as of now also still a far-away goal, but less so than before the internet.  Mainly thanks to anonymization, decentralisation of communication.

Getting rid of inflation in itself is not really the important point (although I think that for Satoshi, it was).

The only Monero economy, which is still reliant on Poloniex and other exchanges for $Fiat value, seems to be CP and hard drugs.  What exactly is everyone's end game behind Monero?  Move to Colombia and become Crypto-Escobars? 

The end game is to create a fully fungible digital cash equivalent which can be used for legal or illegal activities. You might say that no one has any need of such a thing, but continuous government monitoring only happens because encryption isn't built into everything by default and the monitoring is therefore possible. With technology like Monero governments will have to return to honest law enforcement. Furthermore, sometimes you might have good cause to do something illegal. What if a pain medication that you need has been banned by the government but the only way you can get it is to buy it on a dnm? Just look at all the new efforts by governments to ban opiates. Chronic pain sufferers must be in a state of horror witnessing this. What if you support an illegal cause (Monero development might be illegal in the future)? You could donate with Monero, otherwise you might find it impossible to contribute.

I think you're mistaking "fungibility" for "obscurity". They are not the same thing.

Fungibility doesn't come at the expense of transparency (unless you're talking about fungibility of 'transaction IDs' ;) )

I see some very funny logical contradictions here - you guys are concerned of supposedly fully anonymous coin while trading on a exchange which collect your personal information?
You do realize that Monero was not created for exchange trading at all? If you use this coin to trade in this way then you don't care about coin roots, you just want to profit.

Fungibility and privacy are inexorably bound.  As Adam Back succinctly stated, "fungibility provides privacy as a side effect."

A coin cannot be partially fungible.  It's a binary property, and Dash cannot be half fungible any more than a woman can be half pregnant.

While Bitcoin certainly has important uses (super-money for institutional settlements, central bank forex reserve), its radical transparency is exactly what prevents it from being fungible/private.

Dash is a fork of Bitcoin, so it inherits that limitation.

Even worse, Dash has far fewer users and much less transaction volume so its smaller anonymity set is vastly more susceptible to blockchain analysis.

Worst of all, Dash's relative lack of devs makes it impossible for it to keep up with Bitcoin advancements such as RBF, CPFP, SEGWIT, tree signatures, Rootstock, side chains, Confidential Transactions, mimblewimble, tumblebit, and Lightning Network.

Dash is a shitty instamined scam coin.  That's why it was banned from Apple (https://cointelegraph.com/news/apple-sets-a-deadline-for-removing-dash-from-jaxx-wallet) and will never be on Kraken, much less Coinbase.

munoro exchance centralicadion... an duncher!

oh boy, here you are again with your inane theories about money...

in bitcoin, fungibility is broken because of transaction history, in xmr, fungibility works because of no transaction history aka what you call obscurity...

it's just that simple...

Except something can be fungible AND public which, in terms of unbacked monetary properties is far more optimal than being fungible and obscure.

In bitcoin, every coin address is visible, its balance auditable and its continuity with every other address explicit. That transparency is UNIVERSAL and SYMMETRICAL. i.e. it isn't restricted to keyholders, everyone has the same view whether you're a payer, payee, network participant or non-participant.

That's fungibility.

Dash further enhances this almost-perfect monetary token so that the coin supply is highly resistant to regular pattern detection, thereby optimising transaction anonymity WITHOUT recourse to torpedoing the blockchain's transparency.

no, it's not... how else do you explain coinbase deleting accounts because 'shade transactions'... aka, your coins are tainted, so we close your account... aka, the coin used in shade transaction != newly minted coin

I don't know my neighbours bank balance either, I don't get your fetish with transparancy and then building optimised anonimity on top of that because muh same view wether payer, ....

no no no, I won't be dragged into this again... good luck with your dash-fantasy

this topic is about exchange centralisation

bye

By virtue of the fact that hiding blockchain properties is not the same thing as making monetary tokens "indistinguishable", no matter how much Monero shills try to conflate these two concepts.

Coinbase have a problem with the former, not the latter.

Fungibility doesn't mean that *everyone* can see that coin 1 is different from coin 2.  Fungibility means that YOU cannot make the difference between someone offering you coin 1 or coin 2.

For instance, if ever some of Satoshi's bitcoins start to move, they may have "unique collector properties" which render them 20 times more expensive and valuable than your every-day Chinese mined coin.  The same way that a handkerchief used by Napoleon may be valued much, much more than your cousin's handkerchief.

monetary tokens can only be indistinguishable, if, well, we cannot distinguish one from another.  Now, monetary tokens that have a traceable history to them, will of course be distinguishable from tokens that have a different history to them.  Napoleon's handkerchief is different from another handkerchief, because once it belonged to Napoleon.  That sheer fact distinguishes this particular handkerchief from all other, similar, handkerchiefs.

Please explain again how crypto doesn't have anything to do with cryptocurrencies. It probably makes as much sense as this one does.

I think you're engaging in your preferred pastime of philosophical indulgence again.

A gold coin looks, weighs and feels like a gold coin regardless of whether you happen to be the owner or not.

You guys need a dedicated topic on Monero + Fungibility me thinks ;)

GO GO GO hahaha  :D

More like a topic for pedantic pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Monero has a thread for Monero+fungibility, it's the ANN thread.

@jwinterm
Fair enough and i liked your choice of words  :D
We got's plenty of backyard existentialist's in our midst.  :o  :o  :o


On this topic i think it is what it is.. RIGHT NOW it *IS* heavily centralized on 1 exchange.
It WAS designed that way too because NOTHING was done early on to solve this INEVITABLE and PREDICTABLE problem.

Now ask yourselves did i just LIE ?
Did i just make that up to be a jerk ?
OR ?
Am i just saying the things no one wants to hear ?

Jeez people you act like i am hanging around trying to take down crypto.
I want to see it improved.
It won't be if we stuff our head in the sand forever.

You all have to agree with me the traditional exchanges we have used for years were never a good solution for long term success.
They served their purpose but eventually they need to go.
A decentralized replacement NEEDS to be put in place.
And if these guys running a BUSINESS making profit from shitcoins do not have the fore sight to go and invest in getting that created ahead of time then tough fucking titty.. drown assholes.
What is it you all think they do with their shitcoin BUSINESS profits ?
Invest in the advancement of Crypto ? or crack & hookers ?

Well the end game for most Monero supporters and holders is to sell and hold everything back in bitcoins. I said this before and I will say it again now. All of the altcoiners are really bitcoiners but they do not know it yet. Why do I say this? Because there will be a time that they will convert their coins back to bitcoin. Welcome back!

I think i am in agreement with you sir.

I have tried to lecture the people behind coins that the supporters they attract etc
..are no good for them.

THEY PLAN ON DUMPING .

And i missed TaunSew's comment :(
No matter what side your on you have to admit that was some top-shelf FUD right there !
I tip my Crypto-Troll-Hat to you sir.. well played.. well played indeed !

And what is everyone's end game behind bitcoin ?   As it is now, it is also to sell and hold everything back in fiat.  Although there IS for the moment a small amount of transactions (as compared to total volume) and HENCE a small part of the bitcoin market cap that is sustained from "buying goods and services", it is also quite minuscule, so this is NOT the finality of most bitcoin holders.  Most bitcoin holders are, probably like many monero holders, just speculating on "higher fiat value to cash out one day", NOT to "buy server time services with bitcoin".
As such, one can also say that "all of the bitcoin holders are really fiat holders, but they don't know it yet.  Why ?  Because there will be a time that they will convert their bitcoins back to fiat".

This is really true,Poloniex doesnt only a somehow storage for monero coin trading but most of all alts that exist on the market especially on the most potential coins and which means not only monero would be affected but all those alts which are being traded their.We all know polo is one of the biggest exchange as far as i know because of its volumes and if it is hacked then many coins will surely suffer.

@dinofelis
Is 90% of Bitcoin trading done on 1 exchange like Monero ?
I think you missed the point of the guys reply to this topic title.

I think you made a fair point but it's not what we're talking about here.

I have several answers to this:

1) In 2013, 90% of bitcoin trading was done on MtGox.  That was 4 years after bitcoin came into existence.
Monero is 3 years in existence, and 1 year ago, it was still a minor crypto.

2) In any case, "trading" is a parasite onto crypto which doesn't even need a block chain.  You could have a "SWIFT-like" transmitter service between the few "big" exchanges in the world, and just have exchange IOU, allowing you to have your "wobblecoin" IOU tokens on exchange A to be transferred to wobblecoin IOU tokens on exchange B, trade like crazy with it, and never ever have a block chain or any code attached to "wobblecoin".  If block chains are simply transfer mechanisms between the few exchanges where you have accounts to trade, it is a ridiculous enterprise.  Unfortunately, 90% or more of crypto is now this ridiculous enterprise.  But that's not any judgement of the underlying crypto.

3) Monero is starting to be available on several exchanges.

4) the nice thing about an obfuscated block chain like monero is that the exchange information is not propagated on the block chain.  So in as  much as you want to USE monero (and not just "trade" monero IOU tokens on exchanges), you can easily buy monero on an exchange, transfer it once or twice to another account of your ownings, and whatever you are going to do now with that monero as a currency, whatever you are going to buy with it, is not "contaminated" with the information that was given out by buying it on an exchange.  That is a bit like buying petrol in a gas station, but not letting this information propagate to tell where you're driving. 
If you buy coins of a transparent ledger, like bitcoin, then the information that you got it from an exchange (where it is attached to your identity) is propagated to whatever you are going to do with those coins, and you need to do special things to get that information away (like using tumblers).  But again, if the only game is to trade with exchange IOU that have the same name as a crypto currency, all this doesn't matter of course.

*Starting* ?  :D

That can not be controlled now can it.. if users flock to 1 point then ?

And 2 wrongs don't make a right though even if BTC was like that.
Don't forget the price and rep tanked on BTC when GOX went down.

I see you making excuses trying to defend Monero.
It's not about Monero so much as it is about exchanges.

I don't like them and i never have and i made it no secret.. ask Cryptsy staff ;)
I said what they did was useful and appreciated and i did not envy their jobs.
Running a crypto-busines with our Crypto philosophies would be hard.
And having to be the "Chooser" of what coins get added and what don't is not a position i envy.

But look at the topic title carefully.
Be honest.. a danger ?
Yes, i think that goes with out saying.

It's rarely mentioned that centralized exchanges were only suppose to be temporary.
So what did we do ? keep making more of them LOL
While chanting "Decentralization" ..then we get into putting 100's of centralized ICO's on them
..while chanting still LOL

I see a whole lot of hypocrisy.

Free Market & decentraliztion.. ANON etc yaddaa yaddaa ..but only when it pads my fucking wallet.  :D

If you all supported the ideals you parade around the reality of what goes on around here would be FAR different.
Your actions betray your words people.

Baggy Fear runs deep.. you will never see these bag holders admit negative points.
They are scared shitless it will devalue their coins they are clutching.
Sad really..
Admitting the problem and fixing it would actually be a constructive asset.
Embrace the FUD people it's there for a reason.
Denying a problem is different than saying hey yeah there is an issue so we need to work on it.

You all need to work on being more honest about all this.
After all it would benefit you and your bags.
We are being watched and stupid retorts don't sell coins.

I agree with you: exchanges as they are now, actually "nullify" crypto's reason of existence.   You don't own crypto tokens on an exchange, you own exchange IOU, in the same way that you don't own FED dollars when you have a bank account, but you own bank IOU.  That is, your entitlement to the "promised backing" is just as good as the honesty and the solidity of the entity that made you believe so (the exchange, or the bank).  If you own bitcoin IOU on an exchange, the only thing you own is a promise, you don't own bitcoin.

Now, a priori, exchanges are a necessary evil to "link" to fiat.  But the idea was that you only went to an exchange *temporarily* to buy some coin IOU, and withdraw them immediately to use them on the block chain for goods and services.  At some points, it might have been necessary to do the inverse, and sell bitcoins on an exchange to get, and withdraw immediately, some fiat, because the economy in crypto isn't closed.

But all this went to hell when people started trading, and when this trading became the essence of the crypto volume and market cap.  At that point, most "transactions" were trading transactions of *exchange IOU* and not of *crypto tokens*.  When that point is reached, we are actually having a new "banking system" we wanted to get rid off, but which are called "exchanges" and which are much less regulated, much more scammy, and just as prone to investigations and privacy breaks as the old banking system, except that you kill the original idea of crypto with it.

If there are only a few points where you can BUY a crypto to withdraw it and to USE it, that's not much of a problem.  And if this is a centralized TRADING point, then you're in any case out of the spirit of crypto.

This is one of the reasons I have been backing Gulden since 2014. They going for usage and not begging to get onto the largest volume exchanges to increase trading value. It turns out they have a shit hot development team but this only became evident 2nd half of last year.

It seems things will solve by itself. No need to worry to much. I am 99% sure there will not be in 2018 any exchange having more then 40% Monero volume.

https://s30.postimg.org/jdkunrwsx/1dda315048c44c269e550402f5e7baff.png

You are reaching again.. to make comparisons.

FED dollars at the bank are essentially backed.
Why did the US gov and the FED reserve hand out bail out's to banks ?
And when will they do that for Crypto exchanges ?
Before or after they add stock market style financial regulations to crypto ?

And you said this.. "exchanges are a necessary evil to "link" to fiat."
nope.
I can go buy BTC at LocalBitcoins.
Altcoins ? who cares.. why would i want to buy them ?
LocalBitcoins could add LTC or XMR.
There is lots of options.. ever heard of snapcard ?

I will admit we ARE linked to FIAT especially when buying ETH ICO "Fuel Tokens" so it can "replace" Bitcoin.

Exchanges = greedy ROI systems.. lawless penny-stocks trading platforms.
They are no "Bank"

Anyway.. "Danger" ?

Well, go hand over your picture ID to Poloniex..
Then setup your own version of Alpha Bay and lets see how long you go before you are arrested.

@Febo
mmmm hhhhmmmm the whale manipulators seen this complaint / topic and are making plans ROFL
They should have done that 2 years ago..
Oh and by the way, do other exchanges collect your ID and / or hand over your data to US govt requests ?
Spreading out the traffic does not solve problems.. it diversifies them  :D

No they aren't.  About 4% of dollars are FED dollars.  All the rest are bank IOU.   But we call bank IOU (bank accounts) also "dollars" because those few times that we want to "withdraw" actual dollars (say, at an ATM) it works out.  So for the very small amount of withdrawals, the 4% backing is sufficient to keep parity.

However, ask the Greeks what they thought of the very very limited backing that the European Central Bank wanted to give to their banking system when their politicians didn't agree to the dictate of Europe.  Their withdrawals were limited to 60 Euros per person per day.  They could play with bank IOU Euros as much as they wanted.  But not with ECB Euros, which were in short supply.


Because FED dollars are in unlimited supplies.


You fundamentally can't, not any more than that they could invent gold.  Crypto is in limited supply, so you cannot "bail out" exchanges.  They could, if ever they wanted to, bail them out in fiat as much as they wanted to.  But they cannot bail them out in bitcoin of course.

The bailing out of banks is a ticking time bomb that is placed under the seat of the fiat financial system, though.  The whole idea of crypto is that such a thing is not possible.  Read the coinbase message of the very first block of bitcoin if you want a reminder.


Yeah.  Sure.  You will find your chinese miner selling you BTC on the corner of the street.


For exactly the same reasons you would want to buy bitcoins: to use them.  There is no difference between an altcoin and bitcoin, except that bitcoin was the first altcoin.


Well, that would surely be easier with monero than with bitcoin, wouldn't it.  But alphabay is also a centralised system.  I would simply prefer that they add monero to openbazaar.

I heard xrm trusted setup compromised.

Is this true?

@Dino
You are ALWAYS reaching here acting like a contrarian.. i have dealt with you a million times before and nothing changes.

Honesty bud, i don't think you won anything over on me here.
Most importantly all the others here can be the judge.

Not sure what the fuck you are trying to say when you keep reaching all over the place.
Re-Read the topic title.

Danger ?

Well want to tell stories ?
Here is one for you.. and if you don't believe me i have the guy on video right now.

A stock market trader was on CNN talking about the bail-out's (from years ago)
He said over night he made something like 1.6 BILLION dollars in profit.
He said it was stupid easy and laughed his ass off loudly and obnoxiously on TV.
And he went on to say he wasn't the only one either.
He said lots of other trading groups etc did the same exact thing.

What did he do you might wonder ?

Fuck all really.. it was deadly simple.
He knew the Fed's would back the banks and by association the whole entire economy.
INCLUDING EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR IN EVERY BANK *IOU* <-- what you said earlier ;)
So..
He crashed the markets.. in unison with all the other greedy dipshits.

Greenspan created the problem and Bernanke was more than happy to provide Bush them Bail-Out's
His little band-aid that magically fixed the worlds financial problems forever.. albeit with massive inflation they all admitted. (look around inflation did happen)

They all crashed the markets Greenspan swore up & down the traders would not let collapse.
So they could collect the bail-out money.

Want to talk about Greek's ?
The economy in Greece collapse during the recession because of housing derivative bundles.
Sort of like a worthless ICO coin "Exchanges IOU" me thinks ROFL  :D

Sucks for you idiots there is no bail-outs coming and Mark & Paul are enjoying your money RIGHT NOW.
Laughing like the guy on CNN. (and Alex Green from Mintpal or RealSolid from McxNOW or others)

Exchange Danger ?
Jeezuz where do i start ?

You guys than "think" what ever you want.. reality is a bit different than crypto-philosophies and idealistic rabble.

Don't forget i am the mother fucker who warned you all of regulations coming
while you all 99.99% mouthed me off and laughed and said we don't need ties to FIAT
and that they CAN NOT regulate us etc.

Then.. uhh lippy dipshits look around idiots i was 100% right and when too !

My track record and perception on all this is on the record and proven 100% accurate on the money.. endlessly.

I have proven a Million lippy idiots wrong in crypto a million times over again on a million different topics.
I AM in fact always right.
Verbal gymnastics won't save you guys LOL

I stuck around to make sure i tell you idiots I TOLD YOU SO as you get arrested and hand over your PICTURE IDENTIFICATION to Exchanges.. while you all still chant Free Market Greed is good NO LAWS Decentralization etc.
Cryptsy class-action lawsuit anyone ? hahahhaha
Amusing i was mouthed off saying above on the Cryptsy-Troll box.. and now ?
They are chanting CALL THE COPS LIEK OMGBBQ!!!1111
..same dipshits who cried free market.. they can't regulate us and we don't need them.
NOW in line with a Cryptsy class action lawsuit ROFL

Bitcointalk = bullshit spinners for profit.

Monero Tard's are no exception.

Yes, so what ?  You are saying that the FED will always produce enough FED-dollars out of thin air to sustain the parity with bank-dollars.  Sure, very well probable.  But that doesn't change the fact that bank dollars are NOT FED dollars.  They are different entities.  Bank dollars are bank IOU, between you and the bank.  FED dollars are FED IOU between the FED and a bank, OR they are dollar bills if you keep them physically in your hands (and these dollar bills are the only FED dollars YOU will ever see if you are not a commercial bank).  A bank can invent as much bank dollars as she wants.  When you take a loan, she invents new bank IOU which she calls dollars, and which she puts on an account for you, against your promise.  No FED dollar sees the light when a bank gives out a loan.  I'm not criticising this, I'm just explaining to you that bank dollars are NOT FED dollars, except when you withdraw them at an ATM, but that we consider them *equivalent* because they are on 1-1 parity as long as we can withdraw them.   
Why can the FED do this now, and why couldn't she do that when the dollar was standing for an amount of gold ?  Because in as much as the FED can invent new dollars, she cannot invent gold.  For about 60 years (from 1914 to 1972) the FED has been lying, because it was claimed that a dollar was standing for gold, (I think it was 38 grams) but as you couldn't withdraw that gold, that parity didn't hold.  There was a TRUE DIFFERENCE between actual physical gold, and the dollar which was to be "equivalent", but wasn't because you couldn't redeem the equivalence.

With crypto and exchanges, you are in exactly the same situation: one cannot "print" crypto at will (that was the whole idea), but exchange IOU are like bank money.  As long as you can withdraw true crypto from an exchange, it is like you can redeem physical gold from the FED, or like you can withdraw dollar bills at an ATM from your bank account.  But exchange IOU are NOT crypto, not more than bank dollars are FED dollars.  There is an act of withdrawal that keeps the parity to 1-1 *as long as it works*.  However, like the FED couldn't "bail out" with gold as she can't print extra gold and one had to declare the official end of the parity in 1972 (which was already factual when you couldn't redeem your actual gold for decades at that moment), an exchange cannot be "bailed out" with crypto, as one cannot invent extra crypto.

So no, of course the FED will never bail out an exchange: nobody can.  Because you cannot "print extra crypto" to do so.


The fact that the *economy* collapsed shouldn't have had any effect on the CLAIMED PARITY of ECB euro's and Greek bank Euros.  What happened in fact is that the ECB, contrary to the FED, refused to bail out *totally* the Greek banks.  In other words, the claimed parity of Greek bank Euros and ECB Euros was a bit like the FED gold and dollar bills before 1972: one claimed that they were equivalent, but the withdrawal was not made possible freely.


That's the problem when you are part of the privileged which can enjoy the seigniorage of arbitrarily freshly printed money.  And it is exactly one of the problems bitcoin wanted to tackle.  And what we observe now, is that people are building EXACTLY THE SAME KIND OF BULLSHIT on top of bitcoin and other crypto, namely "IOU tokens" as what was done with gold dollars, in order to be able to "trade quickly" and not be annoyed with the limits of crypto, like block chains, settling times, and block periods.
 
This is why I'm pretty sad when I look at the state of crypto.  It is denying the very reasons why it was made, when most of the volume and hence most of the support of the market cap comes from trading, not crypto, but their "exchange IOU".  And when "an exchange gets hacked" the only thing that you get at that point is that the parity between those exchange IOU and the actual crypto tokens gets broken.


So what is the "exchange danger" ?  Well, as I said, as long as an exchange is just an entry point to crypto to buy crypto with fiat, and eventually to get fiat for crypto when you need to get out, there's no more "danger" to an exchange than there is danger to milk because you have to buy it at the supermarket.  The day the supermarket closes, someone else will probably open a store where you can buy milk.  That is, when you buy milk to DRINK IT. 
However, when most of the milky business consists in "taking options" on bottles that are supposed to be stored in the supermarket, to trade those options, then yes, having all those bottles stored in one supermarket is of course very dangerous for *those holding a lot of those options*.  If the essence of the milk business is about holding options on bottles in a supermarket, and is not about drinking milk, well, my point is then that it doesn't matter that this is "dangerous".   There's nothing worth of my attention in people holding options on milk bottles, if the idea was to bring milk to the people for them to drink it but they don't.

@Dino
How many Monero coins do you own ?

I think between 5 and 6 coins or so.  I run a miner on my laptop when it is idle, and I think I must have accumulated between 5 and 6 coins but that's quite a while that I didn't check.  I run a full monero node for fun, but that node doesn't have the wallet that corresponds to it.   A very long time ago, I also mined some, I think even 10 or so, but I think I've lost the wallet that corresponds to it ; although I'm pretty sure it must be on one of my old backups.  But I didn't look. Why do you ask ?

@Dino
Point being was you are a supporter who in my view is reaching hard to try and discount "the danger"

Re: Monero exchange centralization... a danger?
Yes or no guys. LOL

I'd say yes but what concerns me even more is when you COMBINE that with the Exchange collecting the Identification of it's users together with the potential of handing that and your trade history etc off to various govt agencies etc.

And they CAN and they DO !

Cryptsy said they did that and Coinbase did too.
Any of these guys that ask for your info would comply with a USA govt related "request"

Danger ? Uhh yeah.. duh  :D

Do i expect a Monero shill to admit it ? Of course not.
The motif of Monero has been deny deny deny here for years.

Well, OF COURSE that information you provide to an exchange is potentially given to authorities, to agencies, and to lucrative business, what did you expect ?  What does this have to do with monero per se ?  At least, monero doesn't *propagate* that information on its chain.

I'm not a monero shill, but at the moment, I like monero because it has quite successfully tackled a fundamental problem with bitcoin and several like coins: the privacy/anonymity nightmare of transparent block chains.  On top of that, monero has a few other nice properties, but it also lacks an important aspect: scriptability and (hence) multisig stuff.
Dash (formerly darkcoin) has the historical honour of being the first coin trying to do something about this privacy horror, but lacked the technology to do so.  Bytecoin was invented with brilliant tech, but was such a terrible scam, that it failed, and monero came in its place.  Zcash has fundamental problems, even though potentially the technology is better.  So indeed, I like monero, because by far most other coins are privacy nightmares.

Again, what some may *claim* falsely or correctly about a technology has no influence on the actual properties of that technology, no more than what people may claim falsely or correctly about the number Pi would change its digits, right ?

I quoted the essence in red.  *that*'s the monero part.  The fact that you talk to centralized entities and give out your information has nothing to do with monero.  What has to do with monero is that that information is not (much) propagated with its block chain, contrary to bitcoin for instance.   If you have the most secure safe in the world, but you go and give the codes of that safe to your local vendor, then OF COURSE that guy, and potentially everyone he talks to, can get into your safe.  But that doesn't say anything about the safety of the technology.   It is not because the vendor's friend is a burglar that came into your house and got (of course) into the safe, that there's something wrong with the safe.  It is the fact that you gave your codes to the vendor that was the culprit.  That's monero, when you give out your information to an exchange.
However, if your safe is constructed in such a way that whatever you put inside and take out again, now has the information of how to open your safe, then *that* concerns the (bad safety) technology.  Imagine for instance that the safe is based upon nano particles: you have a spray of specific nano particles that the safe can detect and open when present.  However, it is unavoidable that these particles get onto the stuff you put inside.  That means that whatever you put inside, and take out again, and give to someone, has traces of your safe, and has the stuff needed to open it.  That's bitcoin.  It propagates your information.

To add to this:

a monetary asset is always supposed to be exchanged against something else during the execution of an agreement.  In most cases, making an agreement implies somehow that the two parties agreeing, know something about one another.  If you want to buy milk with dollars, it is somehow unavoidable that the one selling milk has an identifiable place where you can get to the milk.  Also, most of the time, you don't mind the milk seller to know something about you.
If you want to buy coins with fiat, it is unavoidable that the entity that accepts your fiat and sells you some coins, knows something about you (in order to get your fiat for instance).

So the very fact that a TRADE cannot be entirely anonymous in most cases, and that identity information is given out to the trading partner, is entirely normal.  As a monetary asset is made to do trades against other stuff, it is entirely normal that the identity of ownership of that monetary asset is given out to the trading partner.

However, it is a property, or not, of the monetary asset to propagate that knowledge BEYOND what the trading partner can know.  With fiat, that knowledge can be propagated only when law enforcement, tax collectors and/or your financial institutions desire to propagate it: its propagation depends on their desire to do so or not.  But most of the time, they do not propagate that knowledge, and that is part of their service.  With transparent ledgers, that knowledge is propagated publicly.  With monero, that knowledge is almost NOT propagated and there isn't even a centralized authority that can do so.    The only one who can, is yourself, with your view key, if you decide so. 

But that has nothing to do with ALL OTHER identity information that is given out.  What monero does, is simply not CONTRIBUTE to that propagation of knowledge (or almost not) with its block chain.  But that your trading partners know who you are, because you told them, has nothing to do with it.  At least, the block chain of monero is not a propagator of that knowledge.

In other words, a "monetary asset" that is *never associated with any giving out of identity information* is an oxymoron, because you couldn't even do any trade with it where you have to identify with your partner.  And hence accusing a monetary asset of not being like that is a straw man.  This is like complaining about a messenger system that someone can read what you are sending.  Of course, if you are sending a message, the idea is that someone will read it.  A messenger system where a message is never read is an oxymoron, and accusing a messenger system that messages can be read is a straw man.

Dino "The Contrarian" please do read the topic title then look at the picture i posted then the part cirlced in red.

Good day sir  8)

---

EDIT:

Oh and when you have completed that task i have for you..
Please feel free to head on over to Poloniex and hand them your Picture ID
..then over to AlphaBay to buy crack & guns.

Both are not in contradiction, that's what I'm telling you.  When you go to an exchange, then you are giving out your ID, which is normal.  You have a trading interaction, your trading partner knows in most cases who you are.  You also know that you were trading with an exchange, do you ?  So you know about them, and they know about you, and both of you know that you and them were trading coins for fiat.   What has this voluntary act of giving away ID information to do with the fact that the MONETARY ASSET is not going to propagate your information ?



That's a perfectly good illustration.  Go to Poloniex and buy monero and withdraw them.  Next, do a few transactions to yourself with different addresses on the monero chain.  (this is because monero is still leaking SOME information, it isn't perfect like zero knowledge proofs can be).  Now, wait for a year or so.

Then, use those monero to go over to Alphabay to buy crack and guns.  The link with your ID on poloniex is totally lost.  Of course, one can try to trace you using opsec failures, IP addresses and so on *when you were buying on alphabay*, but whereever these coins came from (via poloniex) has become essentially untraceable through the monero chain, and that's all monero is concerned with: not propagating earlier transaction information.

Now, do the same exercise with bitcoin.  See the difference ?

Why did I say that you had to wait for a year and that you had to transact a few times yourself ?  This is because the monero anonymity mechanism isn't total.  Poloniex knows what transaction it used to send you the monero you withdrew.  If immediately afterwards, you do a next transaction to alphabay, then this transaction will only be mixed with a few other potential transactions, and if this transaction is found out because the FBI got into alphabay's computers and found all their transactions, they know this transaction too, so the "number of potential guilty persons" is limited (the anonymity set is restricted).  However, the longer you wait, the more your Poloniex transaction is going to mix up with other transactions you have nothing to do with.  If you have done a few intermediate transactions, you raise the anonymity set size essentially to the power of the number of intermediate transactions.  After a year or so, this web of potential people is so large that this information is essentially useless for law enforcement.

However, what remains of course is all contact you take with alphabay, the delivery of the goods and so on.  All this has nothing to do with the monetary asset used to pay for the stuff.  It is not because you use a monetary asset that doesn't propagate your ID, that you don't leak your ID in another way.  If you put your postal address to Alpha bay so that they send you the package to your home, of course that has nothing to do with monero.  You'll get caught just as well.  It is very difficult to do anonymous business.  That's not the point.  The point is that the payment system doesn't propagate information.  Monero, in the example you asked for, doesn't do so. Bitcoin does.  Unless you use bitcoin tumblers (you trust), and you do a lot of bitcoin transactions in between.

But if you do the same thing with bitcoin, that is, you buy bitcoin on coinbase, you do 3 transactions to yourself, you wait for a year, and then you buy a gun on Alphabay, and alphabay gets compromised by the FBI, then the link between your coinbase ID and the transaction is in fact very obvious.  Bitcoin propagates it like a bush fire.

I think Coinbase will also take your DNK that is why they wanted to see fluffypony in person : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTgadb7M47E

Oh an  in a mean time when all this bla bla is happening here on Monero exchanges:

https://i.gyazo.com/bf3e207c8f5d7d94bb0a9aa0c15f0f00.png

Will Monero dip when the hard fork happens? I heard that there is going to be a hard fork in order to implement ringCT or some sort of new feature that can only be added throught a hardfork apparently, and some investors were eager to buy because they expected a dip soon... I try to keep track of so many alts and stuff at once that I can't keep up so excuse me if I make stupid questions, I just don't want to be the idiot that buys in between a pump. I want to old a Monero position but I want to get in at the right time.

Still not seeing how Monero isn't going to have problems long term with the bigger blockchain tho... dynamic blocksize has that tradeoff and is a dangerous one.

Should this ever happen it will hurt thousands of legitimate traders all over this space, and monero along with its faked volume will be the least of our problems. Trading means that u store a part of ur personal stash in a centralized vault. There's no way to hedge against money loss if a platform where u trade something goes gox unless u quit trading.


Monero has no hardcoded limit, which means it doesn't have a 1 MB block size limitation preventing scalability. However, a block reward penalty mechanism is built into the protocol to avoid a too excessive block size increase: The new block's size NBS is compared to the median size M100 of the last 100 blocks. If NBS>M100, the block reward gets reduced in quadratic dependency of how much NBS exceeds M100. E.g. if NBS is [10%, 50%, 80%, 100%] greater than M100, the nominal block reward gets reduced by [1%, 25%, 64%, 100%]. Generally, blocks greater than 2*M100 are not allowed, and blocks <= 60kB are always free of any block reward penalties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monero_%28cryptocurrency%29#Scalability


On-chain scaling carried out via biyearly hardforks which are first introduced on a sandbox chain, tweaked if necessary and after a bit of tuning merged into mainnet. It allows for as more adjustments to the code as is needed to keep up with the transaction load.

What if there were serveral monero chains, all using the same code base? Monero A, Monero B, C, Z etc?

Assuming security was similar, maybe from merge mining, if transactions were routed to various chains on the backend the user would never know the difference.

I think jl777 is doing something like this with his Iguana, scalling through mult chains.

Finding an exception means fuck all.
Read the writing printed on the Hoody merch.

It is a "danger" when even 1 person gets busted.
Secure ? nope.
Private ? yeah well for that *ONE* guy who jumps through extra creative hoops.. maybe.
All the others who BELIEVE the marketing slogans will potentially get arrested.

All Dino and a couple other guys do is defend Monero with random "straw man" scenarios.
It does not say *mostly* private and "sort of secure" on the hoody now does it ?  :D

Monero is in a lot of trouble..
The drama has not even started yet.. you just wait & see guys.  ;)

I agree with you that p2p is much more of a resource-hog than centralization, but I think people are over-estimating the difficulty.  We look at it from the current technological stance.  But in the 1990-ies, it wasn't really thinkable to watch TV over your home internet link, was it ?
In the 1990ies, I worked in a big scientific center, and we worked with more than 100 persons on a "big machine" having 2GB of RAM.  If we needed HUGE datasets of the order of 200MB, we needed to load them from a tape driver robot.

The number of monetary transactions in the world is large, but it is not immensely large.   There's no reason why, what seems now as immense storage and network burden, is not going to look quite reasonable in a few decades from now.  I have the feeling when I hear about hard limits "because of ressources" that we have Bill Gates' 640KB limit again (you know, that amount of RAM that would never be built in a home PC, 10 times what could be addressed on a 16 bit bus).

That's more or less the summary of the privacy on bitcoin, no ?

There are no "extra creative hoops" to jump through on monero if you want *normal* privacy, you know, the kind of privacy that you have now with your fiat money, but that is lacking on bitcoin.

I mentioned extra creative hoops if you want to *totally limit the usability of the monero block chain for law enforcement in the case the FBI is after you* because that was the "exercise" you gave me.


If you do illegal things that piss off so much the FBI that they will put a lot of effort in finding you, of course they will find you.  But not because of the block chain.  That's the point.  That block chain is not going to be of any help in itself, that's the point.  Of course, the postal address you sent to the server of Alpha Bay may get you arrested, yes.

But the point is not (only) about doing illegal things.  It is about getting back the privacy of transactions, perfectly legal transactions included, that got lost with bitcoin.

If poloniex close, another exchangue rise from internet. Centralization of cryptocoin like Monero seems impossible.

You guys are trying to deny the reality of the situation.
Simply to defend the coin you support.
That has been a key problem with Monero for years.
No matter what happens Monero is a golden child that is perfect and does no wrong.

For example long ago there were topics on exploits.
One guy said hey i could dig some up if i wanted to just to prove a point.
He also had PWNED some coins before.. what did these cocky Monero shill's ?
They got REAL fucking mouthy and called him a liar etc.

The guy here PROVED his point by privately disclosing the problem to Monero coders so they could patch it.

It was not "secure" nor will it ever be.

2nd of all the the kidiots that surround it spewing lies to lure in bag-holders
..are obnoxious little bag holders.

AFTER that a another guy showed up going down the same path and did these cocky Investards learn anything from last time ?
FUCK NO !
They called out the guy etc and went into Monero-Denial-Mode™
That is all these dumb-ass's have done here for years.. deny deny deny

Shill's.. cut the fucking crap already !
I am thoroughly sick and god damn tired of raining down a monolithic amount of FUD on deaf ears.
You are morons and act like children chanting NO NO NO like a brat.
I have posted what 1.2 million lines of forum text FUD'ing Monero ?
Which one of you idiots was listening and why does it have to be repeated 14,000 different ways 24/7 permanently ?

You are greedy morons hell bent on pushing your shit coin bags.. period /.

EVEN AT THE EXPENSE OF GETTING PEOPLE ARRESTED

How many times can i say who cares if BTC is not as secure ?
What the fuck difference does that make ?
Is all BTC trading done on Poloniex ? (Where they collect your ID etc)
Fuck no like me you can go to BTCe and trade them.
Further more There is no Monero merch flogged EVERYWHERE at all times constantly touting BTC as the "Secure, Private and Untraceable" currency.

THAT my corrupt irritating bullshitting shitcoin peddlers is the problem.
Which is heavily linked to this topic..

It's called deceit.
You shills are full of shit.

You have an Altcoin that is and always has been sitting on Poloniex for some inexplicable reason.
Why again did they add markets for it years ago ?
Explain that to me shills..

Then you have retards who actively tried to get Monero used by Dark Markets then ran around here hyping it up coordinated with a pump by someone with money.... guess who ?
And you act like that is a GOOD THING.
Supporting that and aiming for it is pure stupidity.
Then what else does it have going for it ?
NOTHING.. that is all it has ever accomplished.

Then you guys pull the "one day" card over & over.. all year round .... year after year.
For what ? Mass adoption ?
Are you idiots for real ? Like holy fuck !  :o

You guys made a god damn coin deliberately to defy the anti-money laundering laws then you had the fucking god damn balls to have all the trading done on 1 fucking exchange ... that collects ID why now ?
NEWS FLASH: that would be a conflict of interest.

Bottom Line:
I am getting really sick & tired of the usual suspects around here playing dumb and trying to out post me by simply ignoring the FUD or smothering it with noob account retard rabble.
..to cover up the glaring obvious serious problems associated with Monero.
I will of course have to re-post all of this again & again & again & again & again & again & again  ::)
Why ? If i told you all a trade tip that paid large money i would not have to repeat myself even once !

2017 is here shills and i plan on pounding your ass's into submission with even more FUD.

By the way.. the topic title ? ...DUH of course it's a danger.  ::)

The whole point is that monero is, technically and conceptually, an improvement over some SERIOUS FLAWS in bitcoin.  That's not to attack bitcoin: after all, it was the first crypto, and it was an amazingly well-done thing for a first trial.  But it is normal that a first try at something is less good than the thing you can make with hindsight.  Now, in normal software development, you can simply give out a new version ; but with crypto, by definition, you cannot touch at the fundamentals, because the whole point of crypto is to be immutable.   This is why in bitcoin they are still having silly discussions over block size.   This is one thing that wasn't foreseen.  A more flexible setup, with a regular hard fork, has the advantage of not crystalizing over when a technical improvement needs to be done.   Another problem with bitcoin is the too simple PoW algorithm, that led prematurely to ASIC mining.  And the most glaring problem with bitcoin is of course the total lack of anonymity and fungibility.

Monero has improved on these issues.  I'm not saying that there can't be better stuff.  ZCASH had the potential to be better, but significantly fucked up.

So it is glaringly obvious that monero is a significant improvement over bitcoin, tackling IMO the most important no-go with bitcoin: its lack of privacy.

Now, claiming that monero is shit because on the test net there were bugs ?
Because in bitcoin there weren't bugs in the beginning either ? 


The idea itself to be a bag holder of a crypto is in my view ridiculous.  A crypto needs to be used, that means, you need to obtain it to buy stuff with.  If you hold it, you're missing the essence, and you're contributing to the big bubble that the greater fooll game that crypto has become.  There's no point in HOLDING crypto.  There's a point in obtaining it for goods and services, and in using it to acquire goods and services.  Of course, you can hold some because you want to delay your expenses, like you hold some fiat too.  But "holding to see it rise" is contributing to the bubble on which crypto is thriving now.  Sure, you can make money out of other people's pockets that way.  But sooner or later, that is going to crash down if it isn't used.

Monero is not the ultimate and best crypto, but for sure it is way way better than bitcoin concerning privacy.  Bitcoin is a privacy nightmare.


How does having a private centric crypto currency get people arrested ?  People get arrested because they do things against the law.  They may be right or wrong in doing so (after all, the law is just the dictate of the maffia that's called the state, but it is a powerful maffia nevertheless).


Again, the idea of crypto is NOT to "trade on an exchange". You don't need a block chain to trade on an exchange.  So monero, bitcoin, bubblecoin, zabalalacoin, it doesn't matter.  The only thing you need to trade on an exchange is an exchange IOU.  Not even a block chain or code.


Dark markets are important: they defy the silly laws that maffia states impose upon us.  But given the power of the state maffia, it is also dangerous, and of course, there's no way to do that in a "secure" way.  But doing dark markets with an information leaking thing like bitcoin is PURE STUPIDITY.  At least monero like coins don't HELP law enforcement in cracking down on freedom markets (which is what dark markets are in fact).  But all attempts of freedom will always be a dangerous affair, so thinking that BECAUSE you use monero, you don't run any risk defending your freedom is silly.  Of course you run a risk.  Everything that touches upon freedom, and denies the state maffia their privileges and taxes, is a dangerous thing to do.  So in as much as monero is not perfect, at least it is not as dangerous as silly transparent bitcoin.

To come back to this, I have a few points to make.  First of all, testing a privacy-related crypto on dark markets is a very good thing as a test bed.  After all, given the implicit risks of handling money in freedom markets, being tested there will reveal a lot of holes and security problems so that they can be patched.  It is one of the more severe tests a payment system can hope for.  If it works there, it works everywhere.

The "pump" that resulted was on one hand not good, in as much as it was speculative, and not driven by genuine usage demand.  On the other hand, monero's market cap was somewhat low to even be able to sustain real usage, so the fact that the market cap increased by itself was good (you could do a few million dollar deals without shaking too much the market cap, which is the minimum to be able to do anything else than buying pizza), but the speculative part is bad.  As with most crypto, bitcoin included.

Most new technology is first used by freedom seeking people with "borderline" freedom and privacy seeking activities.  Video was about porn, internet is about downloading "illegal" software, crypto is about paying "illegal" transactions.

I'm pretty happy that there is now at least a privacy centric alternative that is viable to bitcoin, which is, as I said, a privacy nightmare.  If I had ambitions to become a world dictator, I would have invented a money like bitcoin and impose it to everyone, where nothing can hide and your every transaction is visible and graved in stone for ever.

I'd say you have that the wrong way around.

Monero added some SERIOUS FLAWS to what is a fully transparent, symmetrical, unbacked electronic token by tanking its transparency.

Obscurity is acceptable in the domain of BACKED asset trading systems such as credit accounts or exchanges where you can operate all day without knowing who your trading with. But the base monetary asset doesn't benefit from obscurity, it benefits from transparency. (Nobody values your privacy except you anyway).

What's needed in unbacked blockchains to maximise confidence, value and anonymity all at once is "transparent fungibility (https://s29.postimg.org/6u23df3kn/fungible_Transparent.png)", not blockchain obscurity.

"Technically and conceptually", Monero's design priorities owe their origins to an encrypted transfers facility (http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm#2) that was backed.

In other words it's a payment system with some particular technical characteristics, not a monetary reserve. Think "Visa", not "Silver".


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

BTC & Gift Cards are better at anon, than Monero.
At least according to the current criminal preferences.   ;)

http://www.fraud-magazine.com/article.aspx?id=4294967696

 8)

You'd also say that cryptocurrency doesn't depend on cryptography and instamines don't matter, but that's because you're a moron--could you get back on the topic instead of peddling your ridiculous notion that (despite the market saying otherwise) somehow we can't trust privacy coins that actually work at keeping your transactions private--this is a perception argument you lost a long time ago, and has no base in the mathematical world of cryptocurrencies, and no matter how many info-graphs you throw at the wall, will not fool a savvy investor or miner or crypto-enthusiast.  

As far as the topic goes...it's pretty simple, for those holding their coins on Polo-- yes -- Polo going under is a risk; for those who don't hold their coins on Polo, the potential risk is a sell-off by thieves which dips the price--this isn't complex, unknown, or the developer's fault: people seem to trust Polo and they want to trade on margin. So to fix the perceived problem, sputz and the op should stop playing mom and create another place to trade on margin that is as trusted as Polo or get Monero added on more exchanges that offer margin trading, because trying to convince people to take their funds off Polo isn't working, and do to the risk/reward of trading on Polo, will likely never be effective. The idea that somehow the Developers can somehow order more exchanges to margin trade XMR or that the community can be bullied into keeping their coins safe in their wallets and never risk them on an exchange, smacks of the control measures cryptocurrencies were designed to fight, and sounds about as idiotic as trying to convince people to not go to the roulette table because they might lose some money.

There is something to say for this, related to the thread subject.  The problem with Gift Cards is that you have to buy them and that, of course, when you use a gift card, it is traceable to where it was bought in principle.  That said, for "normal privacy" that's good enough: gift cards are then nothing else but something like paper cash money, only somewhat more clumsy.

If Joe buys a gift card, we can suppose that Joe's act of buying can be registered, and "attached" to the gift card.  If that gift card is later "cashed out" to buy something, then the buyer will make himself known to whoever he was buying stuff from with the gift card.  The link between the act of using the gift card, and the act of buying it, can be obtained if the seller of the gift card and the seller of the stuff that was bought with the gift card, cooperate.

Now, in as much as it is possible to buy gift cards that are not "traced" (for instance, if you buy them with cash in the supermarket), indeed, they become anonymous money you can use to pay people with.  But in as much as the act of buying gift cards is registered, this is not the case, and gift cards are then just as traceable as bitcoin bought on an exchange.

Do the same with monero, and the link between the act of using monero, and the act of obtaining it, is hidden.  But buying monero on an exchange to LAUNDER MONEY is not a good idea of course, because an exchange has a trace of the fiat money that you wanted to launder in the first place.  

Amen.

Again: if you are trading "monero" on exchanges, then you are not using the monero block chain and code, but exchange IOU which are just promised to be 1-1 parity with the monero tokens on the block chain in as far as you believe the exchange owner.

Of course those exchange IOU do not have the privacy properties of the monero tokens on the block chain: they are different entities, held by a centralized exchange.  Whatever information that is leaked about you concerning your buying these exchange IOU is simply totally independent of whatever information is propagated by using something different: the monero token on its block chain.

Whining about the lack of privacy of an exchange IOU and accusing the block chain token that has not much to do with that for that, is simply comparing apples and oranges.  This is like complaining that cash money isn't private, because bank account movements are known to the bank.

Yes, of course you take a risk if you buy exchange IOU and yes of course you give out ID information when you buy exchange IOU.  What this has to do with that other entity, namely a block chain token, is a mystery to me.

Please stop creating straw men that I am somehow arguing about "trust". You're alluding to a different debate which was that trusting in "theory" was not the same as trusting in the "implementors of theory". (See here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1446996.msg14645300#msg14645300)).

This point was about value, not trust. It was also pointing out the fact that in an unbacked token, transparency enhances value and that pushing a monetary design that tries to be both transparently accountable AND obscure is a fundamentally flawed approach due to coupling of conflicting priorities.

Thats why Monero has needed such a mountain of bloat code and army of bloat coders to do something that doesn't even add an ounce of usability while other coins are forgeing ahead with monetary oriented objectives rather than "payment system" ones. It's because one design priority (obscurity) is fighting the other (transparency) - often referred to in systems analysis terms as a "nasty coupling".

For the decoupled approach see transparent fungibility (https://s29.postimg.org/6u23df3kn/fungible_Transparent.png).

And still a market that depends on privacy (Alphabay in this case) valued Monero over dash. Your inane hand waving and your deluded attempt at economic theory can't change that fact--you're like a poor-man's professor Bitcorn.

Looks like (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/alphabay-comments-on-bitcoin-congestion-monero-adoption-and-zcash-possibilities-1482345512) their customers actually value bitcoin (a transparent blockchain) and the $USD (a non-anonymous fiat currency) over Monero (an obscure blockchain) by 98:2.

Seems to favour my argument I think  ;)

Any adoption is good and Monero is to be congratulated on its success. But it doesn't invalidate basic principles of what combination of properties optimise a monetary token's ability to store value sustainably.

The problem is that Monero is being used as a payments system-not a store of value, just as its original conceptual design intended as described above in my previous posts. Thats why Alphabay are open to supporting Zcash also in the future - because it meets the same user requirements as Monero does. (As do all of these (https://i.imgur.com/VR4qt49.png).)

Bitcoin has had darkmarkets to itself for a long time, and that 2% is better 0%, but keep grasping--I'm sure one of these days you'll grab a valid argument.

Are you ready to get back on topic?

Delighted as always  :)

To add to the topic discussion:


talking about "danger", is it MUCH MORE dangerous to use bitcoin on dark markets than it is to use monero, because bitcoin is traceable as hell.   Referring to Spoetniks complaint about putting people at danger, if one crypto did that, it was bitcoin !

The fact that there is only one or a few exchanges that offer monero is hence a "danger" in the following sense only:

- people thinking that exchange IOU are the same as the crypto token, and hence can lose every IOU they have on an exchange when that exchange decides not to honour that IOU.

- people using an exchange to obtain exchange IOU, and think that it is the same as the crypto token, *paying others directly from their exchange account* (doing "withdrawals" to their trading partner's address directly).

- people thinking that exchange IOU are the same as the crypto token, and do "trading" to get rich, ripping their peers playing the same game.

- people buying and withdrawing monero and use it directly to do VERY SENSITIVE stuff.  The monero anonymity system is not 100% opaque (like zero knowledge proofs would be), and so there is limited traceability if the transactions succeed themselves quickly, which can help law enforcement somewhat in limiting the list of potential infractors.

For most "normal" use of crypto, where you put up some fiat to an exchange, and withdraw it immediately, monero is essentially private, in the sense that the next transaction you do cannot be linked strongly to the act of buying the coins from an exchange.  Which is the totally opposite behaviour of bitcoin.

Exchange IOU (the stuff you buy with fiat on an exchange) are NOT the crypto.

lol  Scheduled Monero hard fork was 4 days ago, so you can exactly see if there was a dip or not.
Next will be in Autumn 2017. So far we had 2 per year, so i think will be same in 2018. You should put them in your calendar, so you dont miss them by 4 days.


Meanwhile on the monero exchanges

https://i.gyazo.com/0367970443a49823d5bff5dbd0e2c1fc.png


@thejaytiesto

It seems danger passed in only a week time :)  so you are free to lock this thread.

Eh, my node tells me that it is in half a day, at block 1220516.  I'm currently at block 1220135.

http://moneroblocks.info/warning

I might be wrong. But as I understood this hardforks https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/50tngy/general_information_for_the_upcoming_hardforks/ , they get done one day, but changes that are encoded into hardfork start getting implemented at some blocks.  So like hard fork was on 5th January, but RingCT implementation will happen whenever block 1220516 will happen.

Ah, I have a conceptual difficulty distinguishing between both, to be honest.  To me, a hard fork happens when the rules to make blocks become different.  So I don't really know what happened on the 5th (although I have to say that I hurried like crazy to get my new node version running by then, which I had forgotten to update, and was then surprised that the status response told me that it was still several days away...)

Actually I think you are right. I usually learn while I post, would be better if I learned before I post. 5th January was just an approximate date set months ago.  Hard fork was encoded in last binaries that come out in middle of December and will happen if majority of nodes will run  it at  block 1220516.  Those running old binaries, will be sort of left on an fork without RingCT.

Does 64% negate what it has been for 2+ years ?
And what will see if this topic drops to page 100 ? 74% in a week or two ?
Get it ?

Oh and 65% does not concern you all ?  :D
It means if this point was being watched you would have a greater than 50/50 chance at getting put in jail for Crack selling on Alpha Bay.
I sure as hell would call that a "danger".

Tell me now exactly how that would happen.

Imagine that tomorrow, I buy, say, 100 XMR on Polo and withdraw them.  I now send my own 100 XMR to another of my addresses.  I do this, say, 3 times.

Imagine that 3 months from now, I use 80 of those to buy crack on Alpha bay. 

How is anyone going to link this transaction to the one I used to withdraw my XMR from Polo ?

I think you think too much in bitcoin.  In monero, these transactions are essentially unlinked.   So what has my Polo account information to do with this unlinked transaction on the monero block chain ?

Suppose that law enforcement knows about my withdrawal of my 100 XMR (because Polo knows it of course).  Suppose that they know that there has been an XMR transaction to alphabay of 80 XMR, but of course, law enforcement doesn't know what was bought with it, or to whom it was sent (if they knew, they had me already, and monero didn't have anything to do with it: for instance, I naively told Alphabay to send the stuff to my postal address, and law enforcement found out).

For you to accuse monero to "put people at danger", you have to explain how law enforcement can, from the knowledge they get from Polo (my withdrawal of 100 XMR)  infer that *I was the buyer*.

Now tell me exactly how that's going to happen.  How are they going to use the Polo information to track me to alphabay ?

If you are going to tell me that they saw that it was MY IP ADDRESS that did the transaction, then that's of course the same as "finding my postal address".  Monero/Polo/single exchange is not involved, they simply saw where the order was coming from. 

Tell me how "buying XMR on Polo" puts me at danger, which I wouldn't have if I didn't get my coins from Polo.

WOW holy fucking Christ you are playing stupid.
Then railing on in vain making excuses.. which i add is not doing Monero any favors.
Because smart people can see what i see.
But carry on though.. just realize i am in fact the messenger to the obvious here.
Your desperately trying to refute the blatant facts does not change them.
And if swaying the opinion of idiots makes you feel good then go for it i don't care.
After all they are just profiteers anyway.. who will dump on the coin at some point.

Coinbase ratted out the owner of KickAssTorrents.com and he was arrested and put in jail.
Cryptsy said they had a system in place for doing it and they did too when requested.
Your attempts to say there is no risk is a laughable joke.

Dipshits go look at the picture i posted earlier with David Latapie wearing the hoody..
Then read this topic title.. THEN go bring your picture ID to Poloniex and buy Monero to get crack on Alpha Bay.

Yeah.. the future of Monero is bright  :D

You just made it blatantly obvious that you don't understand what xmr is about...

but first of all:
- if you stay under the 2k-day-limit, you don't need any picture id... aka, you can give a false name... combine that with a little opsec (like using a vpn or something) and you're good to go

second of all:
- xmr transactions are unlinkable... here's the address where I send the coins that I buy on poloniex too (aka my base-wallet-address when I want to get coins offline): 4473WH5nch2Mr7mGjxo1gVGYcGXbPTFqREzffmUA8YJTBgLpfcLB5n1eL8pjV2YeXx8MDXj5Le5cZSr zoS4zFg549Cszzwx

now show me your magic and prove which transactions I have done with that address please! which coins have entered that address, which coins have left... how many coins have i deposited on that address etc... I'm sure LE would be very much interested in how you do it...

thanks in advance,
best regards

No, seriously.  How is one going to link the transaction to alphabay with the withdrawal from Polo ?

I don't know what happened to the owner of kickasstorrents.com, but I can think of two reasons, correct me if it is something else:

1) that guy was using his coinbase wallet to do directly transfers to or from shady activities.  
2) that guy was using bitcoin, and the transactions in bitcoin are of course linked and traceable.

(I would bet on 1) ).

But I repeat my question, so that you can clearly point out how silly I am:

1) I put my picture, ID and everything you want to know about me on Polo.

2) I buy 100 XMR on Polo with money from my bank account

3) I withdraw my 100 XMR from Polo.

4) I transfer my 100 XMR a few times between addresses of mine on the XMR block chain

5) I wait for a few months

6) I now buy crack on alphabay with 80 XMR from one of my addresses.

Tell me how one is going to use the ID information on Polo in relationship with this transaction.  Tell me how giving out my ID and picture on Polo is going to get linked to this transaction on alphabay and is going to inform law enforcement that *I* was the guy buying that stuff.

Or, to put it differently: tell me how giving out my ID to polo to buy XMR is going to put me at risk, while obtaining XMR over the counter from someone is NOT going to put me at risk (because you are talking about the risk of a centralized exchange and getting people in jail because of that, so the risk must come from the fact that I gave my picture to Polo to make your point).

Explain me in detail, so that my silliness is illustrated.

Your gonna get your ass ridin' hard when it happens eventually smart guy.
First you argue that it's "mostly secure"
And that no one was claiming it was fool proof.. then i show you the fucking god damn hoody
where it says "Secure, Private & Untraceable"

Dino you are all over the place desperately in vain trying to smooth over any Danger or risk etc.

We may not know entirely until after the fact how EXACTLY a suspect is tracked.
But i do know the assumption of having bullet proof computer code is foolish.
When has anything on a computer been secure ?

If it runs it can be cracked.

As always i have tried to explain this shit to contrarians who don't know fuck all about cracking.
I am not the guy doing it so i can only speculate.
You may want to contact the NSA who has performed sick brutal hardcore shit when it comes to computer code rape.
Seen my topic on the malware in the off-topic section that uses sound waves from your speaker or microphone to propagate ?

Hear about how the US govt intercepted a guys Dell computer from Dell and had it delivered to them instead so they could install custom one of a kind hacks so they could monitor him at the BIOS level from across the street ?

I am Spoetnik.. a poor guy at home.
I am not the CIA who can buy a Saudi a Lamborgini in exchange for a phone number.
But i do have the mind of a cracker and i have hammered you assholes with the concept of cross referencing which is how Bitcoin was tracked.
Why do they do mixing again ?
And no little miss contrarian looking to fire off another exception most guys are going to trust the slogan on the hoody and not go through extra steps to be extra secure.
So don't gimme that bullshit yet again.

What part of cross referencing don't you idiots understand ?

Lets say a Terrorist is doin' shit..
He signs up at Poloniex to use it to transfer large amounts of money.
He goes over 10k and gets flagged and is now being investigated.
His trade activity, IP address and coin address's are handed to the Fed's...
Now the Fed's suspect he is at XYZ location.. so they show up there and start harvesting Info.
Such as VPN providers or this forum or his own ISP or his family that rats him out or his Boss at work.. or his friends for a Lambo. LOL
And who is to say there is not a rat at Alpha Bay who is going to tattle on him for a cool million dollars in cash ?
Start point.. seized.. end point seized.. all control points seized.
All inputs and outputs being monitors means ?
The silly tech wankry bullshit in the middle is irrelevant.

That is not hypothetical.. that is in fact what happens all the time.
And they only get better at it too.

You know i love the precocious cute little opinions on security here but you are all idiots.
This was already proven by more than one guy with Monero exploits and yet you STILL did not learn your lesson ?
They already found some and now ? ohhhhhh well there is no more because NOW the code is secure HAHHAHA
Fuckin' Hillarious ROFL

I had a dev of a program mouthing me off getting all cocky before..
He was yammering at me all hot shit after i posted online Keygen's for his Firewall.
I told him i could crack his app with 1 byte if i wanted too.. he called me out.
So i posted the cracked binary and 3 versions of the keygen source and a picture tutorial on how to patch it.
Get it ?
Security bullshit in the middle that the dev thinks is bullet proof.. say a hashing algo.
So a cracker can try and crack the algo head on ... or ?
He can go around it with patching.. side stepping the frontal attack.
Cross referencing is close to that.
It's about the starting point and the end point.. not the silly security bullshit that lies in between the two.

What it REALLY boils down to is contrarians spouting off unrealistic and deceitful claims on the web giving users a false sense of security so their bags are worth more.

When those exploits came out of Monero before the price tanked.
..yeah on Polo of course  ::)

Imagine if a guy on Alpha Bay gets nailed.
If it's proven that Monero failed to keep the guy "Secure, Private and Untraceable" as it' sprinted on their merch and repeated here for years your Poloniex shitcoin prices will be decimated.

And what are the actual real odd's ?
0.01% ?
If even 1 person gets arrested then that is far too many.
That is enough to refute the bold claims being made and argued.

And is that realistic ? 0.01% chance of that ever happening ?
If so then YES we can say that having an exchange sitting there working with the Police is YES a god damn fucking "Danger"

Seriously cut the crap guys.. i know your bags are heavy and you think you "know things" but come on.

I think that bitcoin could survive a poloniex hack, we already had a major hack recently (bitfinex) and all the price did was dip, to grow higher later. If anything, exchanges getting hacked are oppotunities to buy in again cheaper, of course ideally this shouldn't happen..

About the monero scaling.. bi yearly fucking hardforks? that's insane isn't it? Too many hardforks in my book. We already know what happened when ETH hard forked, everytime a hardfork happens we know the risks..

No, that is not what I'm saying.  I'm saying that with monero's scheme, there is SOME ENTROPY leaking when two transactions happen quickly one after the other: the anonymity set is still small, in other words.  The number of potential "suspect transactions" is limited in that case.  If you put a few intermediate transactions, and you wait for a while, however, this "anonymity set" grows strongly, and in the end, it could be just any monero user.


That is true.  It is untraceable in the sense that EVEN two successive transactions are not traceable, in the sense that there is no way to PROVE that the second transaction was done by the receiver of the previous transaction, but there is some indication that it COULD be this receiver.  If you wait somewhat, and you do a few intermediate transactions, then this link is indeed becoming totally untraceable.


That was not your claim.  Of course, if the FBI gets into my computer, and sees directly my transaction to Alphabay, they know it was me.  Duh.  Your claim, however, was that having to buy monero on an exchange was the danger.   In other words, your claim is the fact that the MONERO PROTOCOL and block chain are going to rat me over ; that the fact that I bought monero on Polo was going to get linked to my buying stuff on alphabay with those same coins.  Well, I'm telling you that that is exactly what monero DOESN'T do (in opposition to bitcoin).

Of course, you are perfectly right that the very act of contacting Alphabay and having them send stuff to me is a risky act.  And that of course there's a serious risk that this very act, using computers and networks, is going to give me away.  But that has nothing to do with monero, and that is not your claim.  Your claim was that using monero on alphabay is going to be linked to my ID on Polo.  Well, I claim that that is not going to happen, exactly because of the way monero works.

That my very act of going to alphabay may give me away, is of course obvious.  But not through the use of monero.


Well, you need to find a deanonimisation bug in monero.  If you do so, I'm sure you can get rich with it.  Do you also consider that you can crack the bitcoin block chain, "because if it runs, it can be cracked", and that you can get at Satoshi's million coins or so ?  Or does your "if it runs it can be cracked" statement suddenly doesn't apply any more ?

If you consider that the cryptography can be cracked, then I wouldn't touch a bitcoin, honestly.  Before you know, people have cracked your address, and have discovered the secret key that goes with it.  Remember, if it runs, it can be cracked, and hence people know how to get the secret key of just any bitcoin address used on the chain.  Or are you suddenly much more confident ?


Sure.  So if you know someone's bitcoin address, you can crack the elliptic curve signature code, and find out his private key from it I guess ?  Who the hell would still be using bitcoin if it can be cracked ?


Of course, but if they do that to catch my buying on alphabay, they HAVE NOT USED MY POLO ID.  They just found me directly and saw me buying on alphabay directly, without the need of looking at monero.   And that was not your claim.  Your claim was that if I bought monero on Polo, and THEN bought something on alphabay, my Polo ID was going to give me away.

I'm telling you that in as much as it would be true that the monero block chain is giving me away because of that, that this is a cryptographic cracking that is of the same order as being able to find bitcoin private keys if one knows a bitcoin address.


Bitcoin is a traceable block chain.  If I do the same with bitcoin, I'm totally exposing myself.  That's exactly the difference between a transparant chain such as bitcoin, and an opaque chain such as monero.


To do a meager imitation of what happens automatically on the monero block chain, but with much, much more risk, and with the necessity to trust the mixer.  In other words, mixing can be even more dangerous.  Bitcoin is a privacy hell, everything can be followed.

Maybe you should understand how monero works before claiming things about it ?

You are upping your thing because you see that you're getting nowhere, don't you.  Now we already have a "terrorist".  First, it was a guy buying crack on Alphabay.  You're upping the amounts too, to get attention.  

I'm back to my guy buying 100 XMR on Polo.  I guess you can have your crack for some $1000,- right ?

Ok, so you think that all monero buyers on Polo are now under investigation.  That's good enough.  They have a lot of work then, at the FBI.


Up to now, that's not difficult.  That's the information you gave out to Polo.


So essentially, you're telling me that the guy would in any case be given out by someone, whether he was using monero or not.  So the fact of buying monero on Polo or not doesn't change a shit, does it ?


Of course, but that has nothing to do with monero, or with the "danger" of buying monero on Polo.  He would have been given out in any case.  So this doesn't prove your point about the danger of using monero when it is taken from a single exchange.


So every single person who ever withdrew some coins from Polo is now under profound investigation.   As such, whether or not you use those coins or not has nothing to do with the danger you spell out.  Monero is not the culprit is it ?  The guy is already under investigation.


Well, if it is proven that it was monero's block chain that gave him away, then that would be entirely normal because that is monero's value proposition.  If monero gets deanonymized, then of course it is worthless.  In the same way that if you can crack bitcoin addresses and do transactions in their name, bitcoin will be worthless.   If the cryptographic protocol of a crypto fails, then of course it is worthless.


if that happens through the deanonymisation of the monero block chain, I agree with you.   Like even if one person succeeds in finding the private keys of Satoshi from his (public) addresses, that's good enough to stop with bitcoin and put it in the dust bin.  Sure.

One single bitcoin key found from the block chain, and that's indeed good enough to consider it a total failure.  One deanonymisation of the monero block chain, and that's good enough to consider it a failure.


Consider now this.  Your guy buys 100 XMR of on Polo.
Now he loses his wallet.  His monero are gone.

A year later, he buys crack at a local dealer using amazon gift cards.  He is totally out of crypto.  In your story, he's JUST AS EXPOSED, because it was his buying coins one day on Polo, which got nowhere.  The very fact of buying monero on Polo put him under scrutiny, and whatever he did later which was against the law, got him caught, even if it didn't have anything to do with crypto.

I don't see how someone can get traced until his real identity gets found because of buying coins in poloniex. Let's say our guys buy BTC in localbitcoin or whatever, uses helix to mix the coins, then opens Tor Browser, then bitcoin core, this should make the transaction to poloniex anonymous, to access poloniex VPN is always used (im not sure if Tor works in poloniex), then you get your XMR, and theorically that's all since XMR doesn't need a mixer right?
So how can they trace our guy?

what opening tor and opening bitcoin to send a transaction have to do with being anonymous? i know that bitcoin do not reveal your ip, poloniex will never know what ip have your node, if you just send them a transaction, tor could be used to register there once, but has nothing to do with sending bitcoin, but maybe your are talking about tor node for bitcoin, by using the tor network?

they trace you here if you send your id for widrawing more than 2k usd per day, if you stay below that amount, nothing can be traced

I actually wrote a  long post on this yesterday night, but it seems was never posted :P

At end I actually got to this. Many times while I post that happens, that once post is already written i finally see what should I actually write. Anyway.


OP concern is that if to much coins gets traded on one exchange and that exchange gets hacked, lots of coins will change its owner.   If in past there was most trades made on Poloniex if totally fine for this fear, since you cant hack exchange in the past.


also first 2 years there was not that much volume on Poloinex as was  one to half year ago. When those ETH whales come to Poloniex and start playing with coins there increased Monero volume a lot and made far most Monero volume on the Poloniex exchange.  Now that will change quite fast. No worries about that. New exchanges are starting trade Monero almost weakly.

Actually, there are two different points. 

1) Why should one AVOID giving one's identity to Polo when buying monero ?  This question only makes sense if you think somehow that the simple fact of buying monero makes you a suspect.  If that is the case, then your liberties are in an extremely bad shape.  If the very fact of using a crypto currency makes you a suspect criminal, then the only thing you can hope for, is that half the world uses that crypto, so that half of the world becomes a suspect.  This is a matter of civil responsibility, to use all things that may "make them think you might be a criminal".  Set up a tor relay, use monero, use GPG, .... to fight for your freedom.

2) With monero (contrary to bitcoin) there is no reason to hide your identity when buying it, if you don't want people to link this act of buying monero with whatever you're going to do with it afterwards.  That's exactly what the crypto of monero is made for !

Of course the crypto can fail, like the crypto of bitcoin can fail.  Dark market activities are of course always a risky affair, and the biggest risk will not come from using monero, but from actually "getting into contact" and "obtaining stuff" there.  The whole idea of monero is not so much to stimulate dark markets, but to allow people to get their monetary privacy back which they lost partially with banks, and totally with bitcoin.   That privacy doesn't need to be used for illegal stuff.  You can just as well appreciate the privacy when doing things that are allowed by the laws that states have decided to impose upon to you.  But it is true that dark markets are a particularly well suited test bed for the solidity of the privacy.  So there's a symbiosis between all privacy-enabling technologies on one hand, and dark markets on the other.  The privacy-enabling technologies find in dark markets a great test bed, and dark markets can appreciate the privacy technology to allow them to escape the prying eyes of law enforcement.  It is a win-win situation.