Monero exchance centralization... a danger?

[dinofelis]

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  

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 ?

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.

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.

[Febo]

@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  

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:

[thejaytiesto]

@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  

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:

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.

[sulfurtank]

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

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.

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.

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

Will it have a Lightning Network solution? it will keep scaling all onchain? and when we can expect more exchanges?

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.

[Thenoticer]

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.

There isn't much to criticize Monero for so people get hangup on the blockchain size comparing it with a completely different architecture like the archaic Bitcoin, news flash: blockchains are extremely inefficient and slow because of the p2p decentralized immutable nature, there is great delusion in thinking Bitcoin or Monero could handle the entirety of the worlds coffee purchase on mainchain, its not feasible, 2nd tier networks will have to do some of the scaling, so if you think Monero is worse than Bitcoin you are comparing apples to oranges, the original Cryptonote implementation allowed 0-mixins (no ring signatures) and by this feature the transactions were smaller than Bitcoin transactions, there was necessity of enforcing mixins as Monero Research Lab suggested with a full paper on the subject, now Monero transactions are bigger because a minimum number of mixins is required.

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.

[Spoetnik]

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 ?  

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

[dinofelis]

blockchains are extremely inefficient and slow because of the p2p decentralized immutable nature, there is great delusion in thinking Bitcoin or Monero could handle the entirety of the worlds coffee purchase on mainchain, its not feasible, 2nd tier networks will have to do some of the scaling

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).

[dinofelis]

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.

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.

All the others who BELIEVE the marketing slogans will potentially get arrested.

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.

[fotopajizo]

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

[Spoetnik]

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 !  

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.  

[dinofelis]

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 idiots do ?
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.

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 ? 

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

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.

EVEN AT THE EXPENSE OF GETTING PEOPLE ARRESTED

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).

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)

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.

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.

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.

[dinofelis]

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.

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.

[toknormal]

The whole point is that monero is, technically and conceptually, an improvement over some SERIOUS FLAWS in bitcoin

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", not blockchain obscurity.

"Technically and conceptually", Monero's design priorities owe their origins to an encrypted transfers facility that was backed.

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

[kiklo]

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

The problem is that gift cards might be a little too easy to use. Consider the potentially sinister side.
According to Jeffery Ross, a senior adviser with the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crime, terrorists and money launderers might find it easier to escape detection by using gift and other prepaid cards.

Ross says that criminals are increasingly using the cards, some of which are bought with "digital currency" via the Internet, to avoid leaving financial fingerprints.
The Department of the Treasury is considering new regulations to help monitor the $163 billion (U.S.) stored-value industry, which includes gift, long-distance, transit, payroll, and money cards redeemable at automated teller machines.
While casinos and banks are among the most established means for laundering, money launderers are increasingly turning to such methods as online payment services and gift cards to move their illicit funds because they provide anonymity.

 

[generalizethis]

The whole point is that monero is, technically and conceptually, an improvement over some SERIOUS FLAWS in bitcoin

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

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.

[dinofelis]

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

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.  

[dinofelis]

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.

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.

[toknormal]

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

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).

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.

[generalizethis]

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

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).

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.

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.

[toknormal]

And still a market that depends on privacy (Alphabay in this case) valued Monero over dash.

Looks like 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.)