It's borrowed from the goldbugs, who like to joke about telling the feds that all their gold was lost in a boating accident, when the gold confiscation happens.

"All countries are advised to take action against Digital Currencies Mixers/Tumblers. Such services are designed exclusively to anonymize transactions and to make it impossible for Law Enforcement Agencies to detect and trace suspicious transactions. The existence of such companies should not continue to be tolerated"

Didn't see this discussed. Sounds like an explicit call to outlaw Monero.

What ZEC is trading for is totally irrelevant. There's a coin called 42coin that's trading at $138, does that make it better than Monero? Of course, there are only 70 42coins in existence and its market cap is <10K. Zcash market cap is ~8% of Monero's. It's a bit player.

Thanks for doing this!

I bought Bitcoin in 2015, and used some of it less than a year later to buy Monero (another cryptocurrency). Can I treat this as a "like kind" transaction on which I wouldn't have to pay tax immediately, or do I have to treat this as if I had sold my Bitcoin for cash, then bought the Monero? I'm unable to find a clear answer for this. If I could defer paying tax on the appreciation of the Bitcoin, then I'd have a long term rather than a short term gain.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but I understand it's possible to track specific Bitcoins as they travel from wallet to wallet. Of course it's true that gov't couldn't prevent the use of "confiscated" Bitcoins, but as I said they could prevent their use on exchanges within their jurisdiction. If someone owes you Bitcoins, would you rather be paid in "clean" Bitcoins that you could sell on an exchange or in "confiscated" Bitcoins you couldn't sell? Remember Gresham's law (bad money drives out good). People would hoard their "clean" Bitcoins and try to get rid of their "confiscated" Bitcoins. At the very least this would create two classes of Bitcoins.

Suppose that it were a felony to trade "confiscated" Bitcoins. Are you really so confident that you can cover your tracks that you would be willing to risk prison time to continue to use your "confiscated" Bitcoins? I wouldn't. Would you continue to buy or accept even "clean" Bitcoins knowing that they might be blacklisted at any time? I wouldn't do that either.

Bitcoin is not truly fungible or anonymous. For those who don't know, fungibility is the property of one unit being the same as any other unit. When you borrow $20, the lender doesn't expect you to pay him back with the same $20 bill. Any $20 bill will do.

There is an established legal principle that states that once cash has been spent, it can't be clawed back even if it is proven that that the particular bill in question was obtained illegally. If someone mugs you for $20, and spends the money at a liquor store, you can't get the $20 back from the liquor store even if you can prove via the serial number on the bill that it's the one that was stolen from you. Imagine the havoc that would follow if it were possible for the treasury department to blacklist certain bills because they had been obtained illegally. One couldn't trust the cash in his wallet.

This legal principle does not apply to Bitcoin, which could lead to Bitcoin's demise. This could happen tomorrow - the feds could declare that this list of bitcoins [insert list here] had been used to pay a ransom or to buy drugs or support terrorism and were now forfeit. Obviously there would be no way for the feds to actually confiscate said Bitcoins, but this would effectively keep them off the exchanges and make them worthless.

This is why I believe that one of the anonymous cryptocurrencies (of which Monero is currently the frontrunner) could eventually replace Bitcoin.

http://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/2050744/chinas-central-bank-caps-yuans-outflow-stem-currencys-slump?utm_source=edm&utm_medium=edm&utm_content=20161201&utm_campaign=breaking_news

Interesting story about China implementing capital controls. This could have something to do with the recent spike in Bitcoin, and possibly Monero too?

There may soon be hundreds of billions of renminbi trying to get out of China. What could be easier than buying Bitcoin (or better still, Monero) in China for renminbi and selling for dollars elsewhere?

If this meme were to take hold...

New guy here. I've been following the discussion for some months and finally want to put my thoughts out there.

The discussion is way too focused on the short term -- technical charts, what the whales are doing, where support and resistance are, etc. etc. Is anyone paying attention to what is happening in the outside world? The national debt, the federal deficit? Unsustainable debt everywhere? The impending Deutsche Bank collapse and the resulting contagion? Rampant money creation by the central banks? I could go on and on but you get the idea. That which cannot go on forever will, at some point, stop. I am one of many who expect a financial collapse far worse than 2008.

People looking for a safe haven traditionally flee to government bonds and precious metals. With the dollar itself collapsing, the former is not a viable option. Precious metals are an alternative but you'd better hold them in physical form - there is approximately 500X as much paper gold out there than physical. And the physical is a bother to obtain and store securely, plus it's vulnerable to confiscation as in 1933.

Cryptocurrencies are an ideal alternative. Security and storage aren't much of an issue, if you pay attention. Like gold, the supply of a given cryptocurrency is not inflatable. Of course we all know this. The general public doesn't, but will figure it out in a hurry when the time comes.

When the collapse begins people will be desperate for a safe store of value, and I expect an absolute deluge of money to be heading for cryptocurrencies. Everyone has at least heard about Bitcoin and it will be affected first but there will be spillover to other coins and I expect every decent coin to skyrocket.

This is where fungibility comes in. Precious metals are fungible, Bitcoin isn't, Monero is. The government could collapse Bitcoin tomorrow by announcing that certain Bitcoins had been used to buy drugs/pay a ransom/abet a terrorist plot, and were forfeit. Of course they couldn't actually confiscate the coins, but this would effectively keep them off the exchanges and people would always wonder whether their specific bitcoins were next. This would destroy Bitcoin.

So the deluge of money coming into cryptos will preferentially channel itself into the fungible & anonymous coins, of which Monero is the current front-runner.  These short term discussions about where Monero is going in the next few days or weeks are irrelevant. What will matter is how many Monero you hold, not how much you bought them for.

Just my opinion.

Yes it could. The fungibility issue does not get enough play.

Bitcoin would crash tomorrow were the FBI to announce that such and such specific Bitcoins were forfeit because they had been used in a drug transaction/kidnapping/etc. Of course the agency would be unable to actually seize the coins, but they would immediately become toxic on any exchange and worthless for any purpose. This would break Bitcoin as a whole.

Were this to occur I think Bitcoin and the anonymous altcoins would exchange market caps in a very short period of time.

Even if Monero's time is not now, it will come. The Bitcoin fungibility issue is not going to go away. All that it will take is the FBI declaring that such-and-such bitcoins have been used in a drug transaction and are now forfeit. Of course the authorities have no way to seize them but this would effectively keep these bitcoins off the exchanges and nobody would want them.

Monero would seem to be the front runner to replace Bitcoin as it does everything Bitcoin does and eliminates the fungibility issue.