I am not saying that I'd want to make my transactions public. Rather, there isn't enough incentive to switch to monero JUST because you can keep such trivial transactions private. It's not a big enough motivation for most people.

@^
Of course I admit I have things I never want other people to find out about me. In fact, in comparison with the world (not the crypto community) I believe I lean towards the side that values privacy. That said, if in the future there is technology that can completely eliminate crimes before they are committed, because everything about the criminal's mindset is known, and that a computer can analyze exactly what I want, for example, what movie would interest me the most at that particular time, instead of having me search google for recommendations, read dozens of them then end up getting "tricked" by a misleading review/rec and wasting my time on mediocre movies.

I can certainly see benefits in having info collected.

Can you tell me what I'm convinced of? Because I don't know. What I do know is, I hope bitcoin succeeds rather than another coin, because as a selfish human being, I hope I made the right choice so I can profit myself.

This is why I think pointing out potential pitfalls in being too bullish is important. I think we should be a little paranoid, even too paranoid to make sure that the one that succeeds absolutely is bitcoin. If, for example, I was able to increase bitcoin's success rate by 0.00001% by talking about possible points of failure, then that's something.

I am not at all ashamed to say that I am in this for potential profit rather than political or ideological belief of a decentralized monetary system. I strongly believe in bitcoin's technology and think that it will succeed, though I don't particularly value decentralization myself. It's like how no matter how much money I have, I will never buy a Louis Vuitton bag, though I can understand that many other people value it. Because of this, I feel that I can offer a different voice, different from the strong ideological/political believers, but also different from the troll-bears. I suspect that most people in the world don't care for decentralization or killing fiat. But sometimes, because of the demographics of this forum, we are led to believe that decentralization, anonymity etc, are so important that people will run to bitcoin once they realize its usefulness. I don't think that will happen.

I think we need to realize that the VC investments are in crypto companies, not bitcoin. If another coin takes over, it shouldn't be hard for these companies to pivot. Particularly if governments decide to push out their own coin and harshly regulate bitcoin. I think this (among 100000 other reasons) is why most "real" VCs don't invest directly in bitcoin the coin.


By real, I mean reputable ones like Fred Wilson.

After a certain point, there will be a number, probably a significant population who, in persuit of not being left behind will fuse themselves with machines into superhuman cyborgs.

So it's not purely machines vs humans

I have to say that I really don't, and I think the vast majority (or at least a good number of ordinary folks) of the world doesn't. More important things to care about.

That said, I guess I can see that some people might care about such things, which does give it value. Is it enough to make monero mainstream? Only time will tell.

I don't see monero being needed in day-to-day services. I really couldn't care less if that Aero bar I bought was anonymous or not. I think monero's niche is in *cough* blackmarket *cough* (quite unfortunately), but also in some large items that might garner public/friends, relatives and neighbour's interest. For example, buying/selling a house. It is also likely to be used as a store of value, since it is convenient in that it hides your net worth. I think this is where monero is stronger than bitcoin.

Perhaps in the future, when/if monero's market cap is significantly higher and more liquid, it could be an easy way for lottery winners to hide their assets, at least the ones who are/want to be anonymous. Lottery winners probably don't have the prowess, knowledge or network to effectively hide their winnings, and monero might offer a surprisingly easy way to do so. We've all heard of stories where lottery winners receive thousands of letters begging them for money, distant relatives who's great-great-great-great parents were cousins and "friends" they've met once at a coffee shop all come out to pester them with business opportunities and so on. They certainly have an incentive to use monero.

So what I'm trying to say is, I'm not even sure monero needs services, at least not the same services that are trying to make bitcoin mainstream, because I don't think monero's place is to function as a currency but as a store of value.

I really didn't want to seem like I'm trying to "rush" the development process, I am not. It should take as long as the devs and you think it needs to take. I just wanted a vague timeline so that I can kind of prepare on my end, whether it's understanding the game rules better, or filling up on BTC/XMR etc.

@Smooth: I don't want to speak for KLONE, but I don't think of it as "reducing risk", but increasing potential. As he said, if XMR suddenly turned to $1000 per, no one would buy into the game, not at current prices. I don't think it's likely for such a game to increase its value relative to XMR. I understand that it's a game, not an investment tool. Still, I'm sure a lot more people are willing to consider it, given a 2-way exchange, from XMR to game currency and back. Again, Entropia Universe does this and has been online for 10 years or more now. Well, I never played it so I can't comment on it much, but I think such a system is worth looking into.

At the risk of looking like a no good greedy pig, I am also going to suggest a signature campaign, for example, giving 10 or 5 stones per post or something like that, or offering incentives to have people mention this game in their blogs/websites, have an ad banner or whatever. Maybe titles like "The Preacher" for people who invite 10 players to the game. Just tiny incentives so that it doesn't devalue the current inventory in game, but at the same time will help spread the word about the game at a low cost.

Nevermind, it is difficult to fully grasp everything involved in just a few days. It may or may not have been easier if I was here from the start and followed through all the developments.

Is there ANY vague timeline of when the game will go online? For example, in a month? 3 months? half a year? a year?

KLONE brought up a very good point, which is my concern as well. I would be much more comfortable if we can exchange ckg/whatever other currency in game as xmr at some constant exchange rate, and simply have the game charging a % tax for resources imported from foreign lands (i.e, people using their xmr to join CK)

this method is about as easy as saying "If every bitcoiner convinces 10 people to become a bitcoiner, bitcoin will reach mass adoption, and the price will increase accordingly"

I'd even say my method is easier.

I wouldn't say never. Who knows, we might understand what "conciousness" is one day, just as we figured out that every "thing" is made up of atoms.


At that point we might be able to measure the degree of conciousness things have, if such a degree exists.

This is why 2 pages back, I brought up the point that we need to create machines that we can fully control, not ones that will harm us.

And we need a central system to monitor this, because conceivably there will be people who want to destroy the world just as there are suicide bombers now. Can't let them create a machine that will exterminate us all.

See, most of the people on this forum are running on this assumption that people CARE about decentralization, etc.

That is simply an unfounded assumption. If people happily use fiat now, why would they suddenly become suspicious of it?

My scenario is this: Bitcoin slowly gains ground in terms of becoming a legitimate (in the eyes of people) currency, and grows stronger everyday. The governments of the world begins to view it as a threat rather than a cute toy. They create their own crypto, that is completely centralized, and advertise that it has all the benefits of crypocurrency technology, and none of the negatives.

It's possible they'll even say that being decentralized is a fatal flaw of bitcoin, and that being centralized and monitored by the government makes it more secure and better. I bet most people would believe the government if they did say that.

This, coupled with penalizing bitcoin use by making it extremely hard to obtain bitcoin (or obtain a license to obtain bitcoin) etc.

The central point here, is, I think most people on this forum has become somewhat "delusional", in that they think that decentralization is so obviously this holy grail, and everyone can see the benefits. It's just not true.

Dude, you can spend 50,000 a DAY just for lunch. 5M isn't a lot.

See, that's what I've been trying to say. Bitcoin's "first mover" advantage is pretty much useless against a government backed crypto. All of the current infrastructure could possibly be easily modified to work with the government coin, and it might be made mandatory.

What would you do if it reached mass adoption, where you can literally just pay for your groceries at walmart or your local convenience store with bitcoins, buy houses and cars with bitcoins, and the price skyrocketed to $50,000?

well, first, I have to say thank you for being one of the only people who actually understands (or actually read my post) what I was trying to say.

The thing is, those sheep don't matter to me normally, but having them join bitcoin instead of another government controlled program would benefit bitcoiners, because that would necessarily mean more businesses accepting bitcoin, higher bitcoin prices, etc.

If you think self awareness is inseparable from free will, you're free to think that. I don't think the rest of the world agrees. That said, even if that was true, the point is that intelligence comes in many different forms, you don't need to satisfy every single point to be called "intelligence". Thus you can have AI without free will.

Your last point I don't even see how to address, except to say that it's flat out wrong, but even if it wasn't, it's a complete red herring.

I'm not the one confusing different ideas, you're the one drawing boundaries and giving definitions that simply isn't how they're normally used.


EDIT: And to take a hundred steps back, even assuming everything you pointed out is correct, even if I used the wrong words to describe what I am trying to say, so what?

All I wanted to say is that we should be careful and only create machines that will be beneficial to human society, not artificial beings that will destroy humanity or become our overlords. There's no need to pick on my choice of words.

I don't know what you have against me.

There is no mention of free will anywhere in that, is there. There are many different types of intelligence, and we only need to develop machines in certain areas of intelligence that will prove to be useful to us and not in areas where it might harm us.

A machine can possibly be programed to be able to learn and have the capacity for logic and abstract thought, creativity and problem solving. There's no need for them to have emotions or free will. That would still be AI.

Machines won't see themselves as superior if we don't program them to. In that sense, I think centralization is extremely important, with regards to AI technology research and development. We don't want a random mad scientist (computer scientist?)/anarchist creating a powerful AI that can destroy human civilization as we know it.

We only need AI that can do work better than we do, but will still be subservient to humans.