Who would pay someone so ineffective? I think he's just an actual internet troll.

Rocks, they can't do that because any kind of "mixing routine" that would be adopted by wallets or users on top of Bitcoin would require interaction between them (some sort of coordination or key exchange type process). However, that isn't how Monero works and the relaxation of a simultaneity and coordination requirements is probably the most important part of the protocol.

If you want to comment intelligently on it you really need to understand how the protocol works, and not just understand it in vague terms of "people decided to use mixing." The type of "mixing" that occurs in Monero is not really the same type that Bitcoin mixing uses, even though the word is the same.

It really is different cryptography. You can't just have a group of Bitcoin users decide to use Zerocash, nor can you have group of Bitcoin users decide to do Cryptonote-style mixing either.

Yeah its posible that one or two people could be taken out in a "suspicious" manner. So as I said earlier, open the project. Get others to participate (even if that includes giving up some measure of your anonymity to do it, and I think it does). Otherwise, as long as you remain critical to the effort, you are betting solely on your ability to actually remain anonymous for your safety. That is difficult and may even be impossible. It certainly didn't work out too well for Ross.

For all we know satoshi's identity is well known to the NSA, etc. (I consider that quite likely). Likewise the developers of cryptonote are probably identifiable by the NSA too. But what difference does either really make at this point? The code is out there. Interest has been established, so the projects will continue.

Doesn't it seem likely that bittrex follows along this account verification path fairly soon?

Well for a start I don't buy the paranoia about people developing open source software going behind bars. It hasn't happened and it isn't happening on any kind of significant scale (obviously there can always be individual cases). What I see as more likely is it becomes a regulatory hassle, possibly, and people don't think it is worth the trouble so they quit. Maybe at that point a farther underground approach is needed, but that will come at a real cost in credibility and uptake. Everyone doesn't get to be satoshi (even Sunny King has his share of detractors). So far, though, there is no sign of that either. Just engaging in software development and distribution was removed from bitlicense, for example, several months ago.

If you think you can develop something purely anonymously and get anyone to actually care about it (even enough for credible non-anonymous developers to get involved), go right ahead. But realistically you can probably just take the simple approach of not being anonymous (and therefore having some much needed credibility) and just finish what you want to finish and move on before regulations become too onerous. Ideally by then your participation isn't needed any more. As I said earlier, there has to be a time when the baby grows up and leaves the nest, or the effort is pointless.

Sometimes this isn't true if your electricity is extremely cheap or free (for example if you're using electric heat). But it is certainly true that the efficiency of hash/watt is low.

No. Software development and distribution was carved out in the previous rev. But if you are doing some kind of ICO/premine then you are potentially "issuing"

Exactly right. As I said before I don't know of anything wrong with Bittrex but people just want to trade where the most volume is, until and unless given some good reason to change. I have traded XMR on Bittrex on rare occasion though. Worked fine. 

BlockaFett just as technical matter, you can't reverse stealth addresses even with private keys. So in order to see that coins are moving to Poloniex to allow front-running the market, the MyMonero client would have to send the public destination address to the server before performing ECDH on it. I don't think it does that, or at least there wouldn't be a good reason to do it.

If you find something like that in the code, you are on to something here, otherwise, that aspect of your presentation is debunked.

I don't really think there is anything wrong with the scrutiny here, but I don't see any major problems either, based on what you've shown so far. The cookies thing is interesting, I'd like to hear what the MyMonero developers or other JavaScript experts (I'm not) have to say about it.

The vertpay/paybee connection seems particularly pointless. If he raised money and stole it, that would be one thing, but he didn't. You say it is now self-funded (i.e. he's spending his own money to build a business). I see nothing wrong with it at all based on what you've stated.

If "the network" is (i.e. people are) doing the picking then it has all certainly become a political process, and lobbying is inevitable.

If a political process is what you want, just stick with fiat. It's far more efficient, more functional (arguable, and probably the only item on this list that is), has far stronger network effects, and represents the most legitimate claim as the true global ledger.

Then I wasn't clear. The only devs that really work in the case of a decentralized cryptocurrecncy are no devs at all. If you have devs you have centralization. As long as we are having the discussion about whether Gavin should do this or Blockstream should do that (and there is a real possibility these things may happen), Bitcoin hasn't accomplished much of anything at all.

When the concept of the lead developer of Bitcoin makes as little sense as the lead developer of sex, then we'll be on to something.

At best, it may be on its way to that, and the same can be said for Monero.

I'm not convinced by the concept of fully anonymous developers in the embryonic stages. We may have gotten lucky with satoshi actually being sincere (though you argue he worked for or was a patsy for the Deep State) but the altcoin experiments have shown us rather conclusively that most anonymous devs are fraudsters and manipulators. That has made the task of any fully anonymous dev getting the trust of an intelligent and mature community, as is certainly needed during those embryonic stages, almost impossible.

market depth graph looks messed up. There is no 100k seller, and 100k was recently sent as a donation so that's probably what was there before, but won't be on the market again (at least not for a long time).

Fully anonymous devs with no reputation has its own set of problems. How do you know they aren't working for TPTB from the start?

I think you have to trust the source code, not the devs. If you aren't competent to trust the source code, develop a network of people you trust who are.

This is a good point, and part of why I consider all current crypto coins to be not ready for prime time. When something is truly on permanent auto-pilot then we can accept it is a working decentralized system.

MP's point about Bitcoin is, I think, that it should simply never be hard forked. If it fails, it fails, and perhaps is replaced by something better. But the idea of any developers having that kind of power is a fundamental failure of the concept. It's worth considering.

Same thing that happens to anything else with back doors in it. It's back doored.

What protection do we have against this for any technology of any type, at any time?

I think open source (including the possibly of forking if the current developers go off the rails, voluntarily or otherwise) is the best chance we've got. If you know of something better, please tell.

I don't really see it. If they are sending coins to you, then where those coins came from (which is what mixing does) is not obscuring the identify of you as their customer. They will have a record of sending coins to you, along with your KYC information. Should be good enough.

To me that sentence prohibits allowing things like straw buyers. I don't know how it would be interpreted in practice though, that's one of the problems with writing regulations for technologies that are in a fluid state of development and not even understood by the people writing the regulations.

What do you think the developers and promoters can actually do to stop it, even when/if the $5 wrench is applied?

It's an open source project, the code is "out there."

Worst case I suppose is some sort of malicious/coerced code changes to introduce a back door, of the sort that some of the most paranoid attribute to Gavin (I don't). But those are going to be public, and the code is sufficiently well organized that nefarious changes to the "juicy" stuff would be pretty darn obvious.

What am I missing here?

Also, by the way, not all the devs and especially independent contributors are public at all. Some are much more cautious with their identities than than I am. Even with some highly implausible seven person global takedown (for what exactly?), the project would likely continue.

That was confusion with Meni's earlier proposal. The out of band issue (where miners change fees in some way other than via the normal Bitcoin fee mechanism, though it may still be in the transaction itself) does not apply to his new proposal.

Bittrex is not an unreasonable exchange as far as I can tell, so in the event of a Polo disappearance I suspect most of the volume would just immediately move there.

It is somewhat inevitable that the volume will be concentrated in one place at one time because people want to trade where the most volume is. Polo got that by being first and not screwing up.

No, I have no idea of the possible range of outcomes.