If my answering your question makes me useless than perhaps you should ask more useful questions.

Rofl what no. Havn't you been paying attention? It's a permissionless system. If you make it expensive people will use someone elses node. You understand that there isn't some limited number of slots to fill up where you get life time ownership of that slot right? You don't seem like you understand at all how the technology works. You remind me of a commenter from zerohedge not bitcointalk.

I have officially retired from attempting to understand the market dynamics of Monero. Why does it go up when it goes up? Why does it go down when it goes down? I have come to terms with the fact that I have no effing clue. I know why I own it and I know why I hold it and I'll sell it the day I see a better value proposition for what ever price it is that day. That is just going to have to be good enough.

That's good. Hope is inherently an anti-rational concept. It's good for religion and entertainment but no place for it in the pursuit of financial success. The real trick will be to try not to re-acquire it when this thing turns bull market.

You can own all of the nodes if you want but that wont help you to attack the network. The moment you begin doing nefarious things users will open channels with someone who is not doing nefarious things and the network will very quickly self heal from your attack.

It's a permissionless system. The nodes are anyone who wants to be a node. You can be a node if you want. How big those nodes need to be depends on how low of a fee users want. Individuals will have to make that choice. It will be a trade off. Do they want a smaller fee and a bigger node or a bigger fee and a smaller node or a few smaller nodes. I will probably be a power user, I will probably have several open channels to medium or small nodes. Some starving pleb in Venezuela will probably have one open channel to coinbase or some big entity because he will need absolute best value and will be willing to sacrifice anything to scrape a few pennies. The average trade off selected by users will be a function of the demand for transactions and the progression of technology (assuming the bitcoin community is willing to increase the block size as technology improves, I for one support this).

Well it's a yes to my original statement but once I revised my statement it became a question that doesn't apply to what I'm saying. But uh yes, it does move around small letter b bitcoin. So do I if I hand a funded open dime to my friend, that doesn't make me a force for centralization in the big B Bitcoin network.

Sorry you are right. FTFY

This is the big fallacy. Bro, Even if LN is centralized (debatable but it is more centralized in some aspects by necessity) that doesn't make Bitcoin more or less centralized because Lightning Network ISN'T BITCOIN.

What ever could you be talking about?

Wait how does selling drugs threaten the financial stability of the United States . Social stability maybe but nothing could be as detrimental to that as open borders and mass immigration, something most government employees seem to be more than okay with.

Frankly I don't care what you guys do before this cold civil war turns hot as long as you back the RIGHT side when things do turn hot. Nothing else matters compared to that one decision that you will have to make. You claim to love the USA than back the good guys not the commies when things get real.

That sounds awesome! I wanna drink Monero beer on a Trans-Siberian train!

I'm watching Ivan on Tech's interview with Fluffy Pony https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqhRZfKRriU and the interview is interesting sure, but I noticed something much more interesting. You can see the comments rolling in on the right side the same way they came in when the show was live, and I must say almost everyone is very positive. It's the first time I have been able to put a finger on the pulse of a random sampling of the wider crypto currency comminity with regards to their feelings about monero and they seem to have mostly very positive perceptions. It's worth a look if you have the time.

This has to be a joke  . There is more government regulation and red tape today than there ever has been. Taxes on anyone who is actually productive are crippling while the unproductive are subsidized. The landscape is dominated by megalithic corporations because individuals and smaller firms lack the economy of scale to comply with the profoundly onerous burden of regulatory compliance. And from this you perceive laissez faire... How... just how...

Can you believe that was in theaters in our (most of us) lifetimes? Can you imagine that today? Now we have social justice shoe horned into every film even action movies. How things have changed. There would be pink and purple haired protesters at every big city in the country if they released that today.

It's simple really. There is no other project out there that delivers fungibility. Fungibility is arguably necessary for a functional currency. Also it is the only project that delivers privacy if that is something that you need. Well Monero and it's forks and I think you can imagine why it's forks would be taken less seriously. Also bytecoin that it was forked from but bytecoin is really scammy.

If all one was to do was read every projects marketing wank than one would come to the conclusion that there are a dozen projects out there that offer privacy but the other ones also have all these cool and interesting features that monero doesn't have. The reason monero is so capitalized is because all of that marketing wank is just lies while monero doesn't have cool and interesting features it actually does deliver on privacy and fungibility.

Venezuelans think bitcoin is in a bull market.

"Explained" I don't really care about. "Sorted" is potentially interesting. How was it "sorted" exactly?

I suppose the fact that it's a premine scam doesn't factor into the assessment?

The price is crashing because infofront isn't posting enough bottom pix to hold it up. INFO I BLAME YOU!