What cryptocurrency is closest to my ideal? Monero?

[TechorMarketing]

I suggest that you do not buy any XMR (or any other currency) until you do a lot more research.  As others have pointed out there are some problems with some of the criteria you are looking for (for example in terms of how they may impact privacy or scaling).

I suggest you start by looking at this site with 100+ Q&A already

https://monero.stackexchange.com/

There are also 30 or so questions comparing Monero to other alternatives based on some of the criteria you specified:

https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/cryptocurrency-comparison

If you have more questions, please ask them on Stack Exchange!

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[coinphilosopher]

My idea of a perfect cryptocurrency, in order of importance is:

1 - Secure from hacking etc (obviously)
2 - Privacy by default.
3 - Transaction fees should be a percentage
4 - Inflation - I think there should be either a hard cap of the total amount of coins.
5 - I think the idea of proof of stake is better than proof of work
6 - Current market cap, I dont want anything too small and obscure.
7 - Good GUI's, apps etc for peer to peer transfers etc.
8 - I am concerned about transaction speeds, [..] sub 30 second transactions [..]

Take a look at Ardor (ardorplatform.org). It is still alpha (testnet only) but is perhaps the only one that can fulfill your requirements - with the exception of point 3 (it has variable transaction fees) and 8 (~1 minute confirmation time), and it has an a little bit weaker privacy mechanism than Monero, but with Coin Shuffling you should be OK. It is proof of stake and secure (it doesn't need checkpoints like Peercoin-based currencies).

Its predecessor, NXT, has almost the same features, but will soon be outdated when Ardor releases.

A comment to your requirements 3 and 8: Fix "percentage" transaction fees will lead to spam if the currency grows and to scalability problems. Very low confirmation times lead to worse security. For example, a coin with a 30 second block time won't have even the same security with 20 confirmations than one single 10 minute confirmation in coins like Bitcoin, because the risk of orphan blocks is much higher.

[AusKipper]

I have ideal of the combination of these:

1. Bitcoin - as a reserve of the world currency
2. Monero - as the most anonymous coin
3. Decred - the most advanced governance in crypto space
4. Dash - the best PR and marketing.
5. Magi (XMG) - the most friendly community.
6. Ethereum - the world supercomputer, smart contracts and dapps.
7. Waves - fiat gateways.

Thanks, I havn't heard of a couple of those but i'll look them up shortly. I thought Dash had one of the best, if not the best government structures so maybe i'll look up Decred see how that differs.

[AusKipper]

i don't like the third point about the transaction fee being at %, because if i want to send a big amount i would pay a very big fee, like for example sending $1000 would result in $10 in fee, if you want to put 1% for the fee
The other point about pos vs pow, pow is better because it is backed by real power and electricity, pos just incentivate the dumping on the market, why holding if you get coins for free each day?

If the transaction fee is a fixed fee and the value of the currency skyrockets, suddenly to  buy a $2 cup of coffee you have to pay a $10 transaction fee.

Current systems (PayPal, MasterCard, Visa) use a fixed fee percentage hybrid system, but I think just a percentage is perfectly viable.

In my idea of the PoS perfect coin you would only recieve "free" coins if you where processing transactions (thus earning the fee), so, noone with a really low end machine sitting around holding the currency would be receiving any free coins. Maybe what I mean isnt a PoS but something that doesnt exist yet, where the people who process the transactions and keep the network secure are the ones paid, using the transaction fees. I dont think you should get free coins for simply holding them in a wallet.

Like I say i'm new to cryptocurrencies so maybe I have my terminologies confused, thats why i'm here

[AusKipper]

you should always come and ask your questions on the main PIVX topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1262920.0), the devs are so gracious and kind, what ever the questions. But I hope that I will be able to answer you simply.

there was first a mining phase (PoW) like bitcoin or monero where the coin supply grew to (Max Coin Supply - PoW Phase: ) 43,199,500.

Then as you can see the coin went PoS (a few months ago) and since then the additional incremental supply is decreasing regularly to

PoS Phase 1: [blocks 259201-302399] 50 PIV (90% distributed to staker and masternode - 10% available to budget system) (Complete)

PoS Phase 2: [blocks 302400-345599] 45 PIV (90% distributed to staker and masternode - 10% available to budget system) (Complete)

PoS Phase 3: [blocks 345600-388799] 40 PIV (90% distributed to staker and masternode - 10% available to budget system) (Complete)

PoS Phase 4: [blocks 388800-431999] 35 PIV (90% distributed to staker and masternode - 10% available to budget system) (Complete)

PoS Phase 5: [blocks 432000-475199] 30 PIV (90% distributed to staker and masternode - 10% available to budget system) (Complete)

PoS Phase 6: [blocks 475200-518399] 25 PIV (90% distributed to staker and masternode - 10% available to budget system) (Complete)

PoS Phase 7: [blocks 518400-561599] 20 PIV (90% distributed to staker and masternode - 10% available to budget system) (In-Progress) (where we just entered),

as you can see it's planned to go to infinity


PoS Phase 8: [blocks 561600-604799] 15 PIV (90% distributed to staker and masternode - 10% available to budget system)

PoS Phase 9: [blocks 604800-647999] 10 PIV (90% distributed to staker and masternode - 10% available to budget system)

PoS Phase X: [blocks 648000-Infinite]   5 PIV (90% distributed to staker and masternode - 10% available to budget system

Remember in PoS there are transactions fees but they don't go to stakers or masternodes, as such it's necessary to have a flow of new coins to get the system going. Actually there is around 1450 masternodes (http://178.254.23.111/~pub/DN/DN_masternode_payments_stats.html) and growing with a chance to get a "block" Expected Payment per Masternode: every 1.01 days. which means that the 5 would be splitt between the masternode and the staker meaning around 2.7 which is 0.027% return on your masternodes daily  (because the rate of splitting between staking and masternode evolves too).

the actual supply is 51833610 DNET with a return of 11 DNET daily per MN (of 10k). As you can guess all depend of the number of MN of stakers .

Good luck in your quest. again, Arvydas77 is into something with no1 . but PIVX as all it takes to be the real no2. will see as it's just the beginning.

Please join the main topic here, or the slack

Alright, that was kinda too confusing for me to follow perfectly lol, but the gist of it is that there is an unlimited coin supply with gradually decreasing inflation over time. Kinda not ideally what i'm looking for but as I said low inflation (ie, Monero) is acceptable, but I cant really figure out from that if it is low inflation or a bit too high.

Regardless, at the moment, it is still too small and obscure for me to be super interested in, but I will continue to follow PivX for a while at least.

[boolberry]

I have ideal of the combination of these:

1. Bitcoin - as a reserve of the world currency
2. Monero - as the most anonymous coin
3. Decred - the most advanced governance in crypto space
4. Dash - the best PR and marketing.
5. Magi (XMG) - the most friendly community.
6. Ethereum - the world supercomputer, smart contracts and dapps.
7. Waves - fiat gateways.

Thanks, I havn't heard of a couple of those but i'll look them up shortly. I thought Dash had one of the best, if not the best government structures so maybe i'll look up Decred see how that differs.

Decred is far better at governance than DASH. In fact Monero is better than Dash at governance. Not just according to Monero community members that have witnessed multiple large scale failures for expensive masternode voted budget items but in the eyes of Charlie Lee, creator of LTC:

https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/lamassu-update.10266/
https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/825138178591821825

[AusKipper]

2 - Privacy by default.
3 - Transaction fees should be a percentage IMO.

These two are in direct conflict with each other. A privacy protecting coin reveals no information about transaction amounts, and therefore cannot make fees dependent on them.

3 is really a bad idea...

I'm pretty sure if Monero has a way to obscure transactions without anyone know who is sending transactions or how much they are, they can obscure the fees too. You may know someone on the network has just transferred a transaction worth $x, but you wont know who at all.

You didn't elaborate on why you think 3 is really bad idea, and noone as yet has given me what I think is a reason that would make percentage based transaction fees an insurmountable problem.

[AusKipper]

I have ideal of the combination of these:

1. Bitcoin - as a reserve of the world currency
2. Monero - as the most anonymous coin
3. Decred - the most advanced governance in crypto space
4. Dash - the best PR and marketing.
5. Magi (XMG) - the most friendly community.
6. Ethereum - the world supercomputer, smart contracts and dapps.
7. Waves - fiat gateways.

Thanks, I havn't heard of a couple of those but i'll look them up shortly. I thought Dash had one of the best, if not the best government structures so maybe i'll look up Decred see how that differs.

Decred is far better at governance than DASH. In fact Monero is better than Dash at governance. Not just according to Monero community members that have witnessed multiple large scale failures for expensive masternode voted budget items but in the eyes of Charlie Lee, creator of LTC:

https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/lamassu-update.10266/
https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/825138178591821825

I have a feeling that who has the best governance could be debated and argued forever with no clear winner ever being determined, and its something I haven't really looked into as much as I probably should as yet.

[iamnotback]

2 - Privacy by default.
3 - Transaction fees should be a percentage IMO.

These two are in direct conflict with each other. A privacy protecting coin reveals no information about transaction amounts, and therefore cannot make fees dependent on them.

3 is really a bad idea...

I'm pretty sure if Monero has a way to obscure transactions without anyone know who is sending transactions or how much they are, they can obscure the fees too. You may know someone on the network has just transferred a transaction worth $x, but you wont know who at all.

You didn't elaborate on why you think 3 is really bad idea, and noone as yet has given me what I think is a reason that would make percentage based transaction fees an insurmountable problem.

Transaction fees should be the cost to store the data and has nothing to do with the amount being transferred.

Anonymity coins need artificially and excessively high (fixed) fees in order to prevent spamming the anonymity sets as a way to unmask the anonymity.

Thus anonymity coins need to reveal the amount of the fees.

[AusKipper]

I suggest that you do not buy any XMR (or any other currency) until you do a lot more research.  As others have pointed out there are some problems with some of the criteria you are looking for (for example in terms of how they may impact privacy or scaling).

I have already done a lot more research on crypto-currencies than I did for any of the stocks I have ever purchased lol... and I still haven't decided yet.

I'm still leaning Monero, but didnt buy any as yet, still researching, if Dash over-takes it in the next couple of weeks than that will definitly throw a spanner in the works, but probably wont change my decision in the end...

Can anyone just tell me what will happen to Monero transfer fee if Monero suddenly shoots up in value in a big way? can it be lowered? how is it lowered if it can be? That fixed transaction fee is still my main sticking point for Monero.

[iamnotback]

That fixed transaction fee is still my main sticking point for Monero.

Did you not read my post? The fixed fee is absolutely necessary in order to keep the level of anonymity from collapsing.

Do you not understand what an anonymity set is?

[AusKipper]

Transaction fees should be the cost to store the data and has nothing to do with the amount being transferred.

Anonymity coins need artificially and excessively high fees in order to prevent spamming the anonymity sets as a way to unmask the anonymity.

Thus anonymity coins need to reveal the amount of the fees.

If noone is doing any transactions then the coin is dead. The percentage of the transaction taken in fees needs to account for the storage of the data etc.

Another way to overcome this that would be acceptable to me is a small "tax" on holdings that goes to miners, ie, every 3 days the equivalent of 3% per year gets removed from wallets and given to miners or something like that, although that may not work because it would make millions of transactions that would need to be processed so maybe I didnt think that through....

I dont mind the bitcoin fee system (the user sets the fee they are willing to fee, the lower the fee the longer their transaction will take), in fact I would probably be just as happy with that fee structure as a percentage structure.

[iamnotback]

1 - Secure from hacking etc (obviously)

That is largely a function of your capabilities and knowledge, not the project you invest in.

You have to set up a hardware wallet, and follow other best practices.

I am not saying there aren't differences of security with different ecosystems, I am just pointing out that primarily (largely) it is a function of your effort and capability.

2 - Privacy by default. I am mainly interested in coins such as Monero, Dash etc. I am new to cryptocurrencies and am of the impression that Monero is the most secure of the top 10 coins by market cap. I'm happy for you all to tell me otherwise.

In terms of security of the blockchain against 50% or 33% selfish-mining attacks, that would probably be Bitcoin.

4 - Inflation - I think there should be either a hard cap of the total amount of coins. Coins with very low pool inflation rates are acceptable to me, but, I would prefer the hard cap (another reason I dont think Monero is quite perfect for me)

Proof-of-work has a tragedy of commons failure without a perpetual block reward. Recent published white papers have proven this.

I will be making an altcoin that has a perpetually shrinking money supply (infinitely divisible so it never reaches zero). I can do that because mine won't be proof-of-work.

5 - I think the idea of proof of stake is better than proof of work for the purposes of just simply not wasting huge amounts of electricity for a currency. However, my current understanding is that there is no particularly secure proof of stake option currently, so, maybe thats something that would need to be implemented later. I guess the question from me here is could Monero (or whatever coin you are recommending to me) switch to a proof of stake later if a secure one came out?

Only proof-of-work can remain unstuck without whales. Only proof-of-work doesn't have nothing-at-stake and other problems of Byzantine agreement.

However, I am about to introduce a radical new consensus algorithm which doesn't waste electricity and doesn't have those problems.

6 - Current market cap, I dont want anything too small and obscure.

Stay away from mine then, as it is currently vaporware.

7 - Good GUI's, apps etc for peer to peer transfers etc. I believe this is another current Monero issue, though I do know they have a GUI wallet now.

Dash may have these, but the anonymity of Dash is a joke.

8 - I am concerned about transaction speeds, though my understanding is that more mining = faster transactions so its an issue that can be resolved later if it becomes a serious issue with higher transaction fees yes?

Incorrect. Transaction speed will only be improved with a radical new consensus algorithm. Dash's InstantX is seriously flawed. I found a high school level math probability error in its web page "white paper".

I am definitely after a coin that has the potential to go mainstream in shops etc, so im not interested in any coin that could not facilitate sub 30 second transactions by any method.

Then there is nothing you can invest in at this time. Well maybe Steem...but there are other issues with it...

[tromp]

I'm pretty sure if Monero has a way to obscure transactions without anyone know who is sending transactions or how much they are, they can obscure the fees too.

Fees are a mechanism for letting miners prioritize transactions and weed out spam; thus the amounts need to be visible to miners.

[AusKipper]

Do you not understand what an anonymity set is?

Your post wasn't there as I was writing that reply that you commented on.

No I dont understand what an anonymity set is, I'm new to all this, I think I said that a few times somewhere.

Can the minimum Monero tx fee be changed in any way? ie, if hypothetically the value went to $10,000 per Monero coin, and the TX fee was still .02 xmr, then using the coin for day to day purposes would be impossible.

[AusKipper]

1 - Secure from hacking etc (obviously)

That is largely a function of your capabilities and knowledge, not the project you invest in.

You have to set up a hardware wallet, and follow other best practices.

2 - Privacy by default. I am mainly interested in coins such as Monero, Dash etc. I am new to cryptocurrencies and am of the impression that Monero is the most secure of the top 10 coins by market cap. I'm happy for you all to tell me otherwise.

In terms of security of the blockchain against 50% or 33% selfish-mining attacks, that would probably be Bitcoin.

4 - Inflation - I think there should be either a hard cap of the total amount of coins. Coins with very low pool inflation rates are acceptable to me, but, I would prefer the hard cap (another reason I dont think Monero is quite perfect for me)

Proof-of-work has a tragedy of commons failure without a perpetual block reward. Recent published white papers have proven this.

I will be making an altcoin that has a perpetually shrinking money supply (infinitely divisible so it never reaches zero). I can do that because mine won't be proof-of-work.

5 - I think the idea of proof of stake is better than proof of work for the purposes of just simply not wasting huge amounts of electricity for a currency. However, my current understanding is that there is no particularly secure proof of stake option currently, so, maybe thats something that would need to be implemented later. I guess the question from me here is could Monero (or whatever coin you are recommending to me) switch to a proof of stake later if a secure one came out?

Only proof-of-work can remain unstuck without whales. Only proof-of-work doesn't have nothing-at-stake and other problems of Byzantine agreement.

However, I am about to introduce a radical new consensus algorithm which doesn't waste electricity and doesn't have those problems.

6 - Current market cap, I dont want anything too small and obscure.

Stay away from mine then, as it is currently vaporware.

7 - Good GUI's, apps etc for peer to peer transfers etc. I believe this is another current Monero issue, though I do know they have a GUI wallet now.

Dash may have these, but the anonymity of Dash is a joke.

8 - I am concerned about transaction speeds, though my understanding is that more mining = faster transactions so its an issue that can be resolved later if it becomes a serious issue with higher transaction fees yes?

Incorrect. Transaction speed will only be improved with a radical new consensus algorithm. Dash's InstantX is seriously flawed. I found a high school level math probability error in its web page "white paper".

I am definitely after a coin that has the potential to go mainstream in shops etc, so im not interested in any coin that could not facilitate sub 30 second transactions by any method.

Then there is nothing you can invest in at this time. Well maybe Steem...but there are other issues with it...

Thanks for that, probably one of the best replies I have had so far.

In your opinion (iamnotback's) if you earned an average income and where going to "invest" $1000 on a semi-speculative play (ie, its a bit of money, not ideal to have it go to 0, but not a major crisis either) and you where going to put it into one of the following:

Bitcoin
Monero
Dash
PrivX
MaidSafeCoin

What coin would you chose?

[iamnotback]

Do you not understand what an anonymity set is?

Your post wasn't there as I was writing that reply that you commented on.

No I dont understand what an anonymity set is, I'm new to all this, I think I said that a few times somewhere.

Can the minimum Monero tx fee be changed in any way? ie, if hypothetically the value went to $10,000 per Monero coin, and the TX fee was still .02 xmr, then using the coin for day to day purposes would be impossible.

I don't know who does and how the fee is set, but I presume it can be adjusted.

The high fixed fee is necessary to prevent transaction spam, which is especially important in Monero's (and any anonymity coin's) case because:

a) Blockchain bloat is higher due to the large ring signatures.

b) The anonymity set is all the other transaction outputs as fake inputs for your anonymity ring. If all those were transactions of the attacker, then the attacker knows which input is not fake and he knows it is you. Even if the attacker only has a percentage of those fake inputs in your ring signature, he can use this to make it easier to combinatorially factor out who you are and de-anonymize you:

Although we will never have absolute iron-clad anonymity  <----- CLICK THIS LINK

[iamnotback]

In your opinion (iamnotback's) if you earned an average income and where going to "invest" $1000 on a semi-speculative play (ie, its a bit of money, not ideal to have it go to 0, but not a major crisis either) and you where going to put it into one of the following:

Bitcoin
Monero
Dash
PrivX
MaidSafeCoin

What coin would you chose?

This is my opinion, so please feel free to consult with others. For now, I would invest 80% in Bitcoin and 20% in Monero but that is not a prediction of whether the price will go up or down. If you want potentially more upside (also downside), you might weight more to Monero, but since I think you want to be reasonably conservative then I suggest those weightings.

And I am not factoring in hype mastery, which Dash seems to somehow be very good at. Or maybe they are buying their own token, manipulating the market. I don't know.

And if my project reaches its stated goals and is not just some vaporware and meets your requirements at that time in the future, then I would consider adding to the list you invest in.

I haven't been following Zcash past few months, but that anonymity seemed to be a high quality alternative, but there were other problems with the distribution and such.

[AusKipper]

I'm pretty sure if Monero has a way to obscure transactions without anyone know who is sending transactions or how much they are, they can obscure the fees too.

Fees are a mechanism for letting miners prioritize transactions and weed out spam; thus the amounts need to be visible to miners.

Ok, well if there is no way to have a percentage based fee in a privacy focused coin, then I would like the fees to be the same as bitcoins where the user chooses the fee, and if they choose a fee too low then their transaction will take forever.

[AusKipper]

Do you not understand what an anonymity set is?

Your post wasn't there as I was writing that reply that you commented on.

No I dont understand what an anonymity set is, I'm new to all this, I think I said that a few times somewhere.

Can the minimum Monero tx fee be changed in any way? ie, if hypothetically the value went to $10,000 per Monero coin, and the TX fee was still .02 xmr, then using the coin for day to day purposes would be impossible.

I don't know who does and how the fee is set, but I presume it can be adjusted.

The high fixed fee is necessary to prevent transaction spam, which is especially important in Monero's (and any anonymity coin's) case because:

a) Blockchain bloat is higher due to the large ring signatures.

b) The anonymity set is all the other transaction outputs as fake inputs for your anonymity ring. If all those were transactions of the attacker, then the attacker knows which input is not fake and he knows it is you. Even if the attacker only has a percentage of those fake inputs in your ring signature, he can use this to make it easier to combinatorially factor out who you are and de-anonymize you.

Thanks for the clear explanation that I could understand.

Also, thanks for your second reply indicating the 20 Monero 80 bitcoin split.

I only threw Bitcoin in there as a "mainstream" alternative, I personally dont like its near complete lack of privacy, so i'm still looking at 100% Monero.

My cryptocurrency investment is not exactly trying to be conservative, its:
1. An educational exercise learning about something I have nothing of, and know little about, but that interests me
2. A thought in my head that thinks "what if suddenly .5% of global investments decide to go into a crypto-currency, or what if a country with a failed currency suddenly adopts a crypto currency, the value could absolutely skyrocket many many %

I have some physical gold, silver, and quite a few ASX listed companies as my conservative investments, so this is more of a "play".

Pretty confident at this point now, if I can confirm somewhere that the Monero fee can be changed by a reasonable method, i'm going to have a go of that.