Bitcoin Vs Monero - Privacy as the world becomes more dystopian

[barto123]

I love bitcoin, however i see privacy as the #1 concern going forward.

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

Most of the truth & freedom movement appear to recommend it over Bitcoin.

Node count has passed BTC and mining hash rate is growing rapidly as you don't need an Asics, just your PC.

To me it seems Monero is something that should not be ignored.

Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees.

There's no reason why you can't Coinjoin/Lightning your UTXO's in conjunction with Monero - it's a good privacy tool and supplement to Bitcoin IMO.

Thoughts please. I want some honest opinions here.

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[Odohu]

I love bitcoin, however i see privacy as the #1 concern going forward.

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

Most of the truth & freedom movement appear to recommend it over Bitcoin.

Node count has passed BTC and mining hash rate is growing rapidly as you don't need an Asics, just your PC.

To me it seems Monero is something that should not be ignored.

Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees.

There's no reason why you can't Coinjoin/Lightning your UTXO's in conjunction with Monero - it's a good privacy tool and supplement to Bitcoin IMO.

Thoughts please. I want some honest opinions here.

Even with all these and more supposed advantages of Monero over Bitcoin, I will still choose the later. A lot of projects have been developed with some claiming to be able to solve the scalability trilema that is attributed to Bitcoin but none have been successful in achieving this. There was a time ripple prided itself as being able to achieve this until time shows that ripple might be heavily centralized.  I believe with time, the weak side of this major contender will also surface and it will become obvious that Bitcoin will always be the leader.

Nothing is perfect, but Bitcoin is unique in many respect. This argument of Monero is coming up again because of the high fees of Bitcoin which is a consequence of Ordinal attack on Bitcoin Network. "This one too shall pass"

[NotATether]

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

Are you sure it is getting a lot of adoption on exchanges? Because I know there's a lot of DEXes that are supporting Monero, but it seems like centralized exchanges are rushing to drop it like a hot potato (because "money laundering" and "crime" and ... you get the idea).

You are right that Monero should not be ignored though. Both of these coins solve different kinds of problems.

[348Judah]

I love bitcoin, however i see privacy as the #1 concern going forward.

There's no other cryptocurrencies that can provide you with the level of privacy you can have with bitcoin after knowing well that bitcoin itself is a decentralized digital currency and most of these altcoins are centralized, privacy is achieved at it's maximum level with bitcoin.

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

I still don't get the reason why you need to compare bitcoin with monero here, they are different things entirely, any further discussion about menero should be channelled under altcoins discussion, maintaini bitcoin discussion here is more of need than altcoins discussion.

[Yamane_Keto]

The comparison between Bitcoin and Monero in terms of privacy is unfair because the only use of Monero is due to high privacy. I can understand the comparison between Bitcoin and Monero in general, but in terms of privacy, Monero is better.
Bitcoin was not built to enhance privacy in the same way as Monero, but rather to enhance transparency and make it difficult to track and stop who sent the transaction despite the possibility of knowing who sent it.

[zakservers]

Monero is a much better option if you want to stay anonymous with your payments and transactions.

[Helena Yu]

The difference is when you're use Monero, other people will automatically think you're use it for illegal thing.

But when you use Bitcoin, people wouldn't automatically judge you're using it for illegal thing since most country accept it, moreover El Salvador dare to legalize it as legal tender.

So holding and using Bitcoin give you a neutral impression instead of Monero.

[stadus]

Monero is a much better option if you want to stay anonymous with your payments and transactions.

It might beat Bitcoin in that specific aspect, but overall, Bitcoin holds more value, and that's quite evident. I believe Monero has potential for future growth, but it's unlikely to surpass what Bitcoin has already achieved. Bitcoin remains the main cryptocurrency accepted by the majority, and even though it doesn't offer complete privacy due to government regulations, we still need Bitcoin to lead the market. This way, altcoins like Monero can have a chance to progress.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I believe with time, the weak side of this major contender will also surface and it will become obvious that Bitcoin will always be the leader.

What weak side are you referring to?

Are you sure it is getting a lot of adoption on exchanges? Because I know there's a lot of DEXes that are supporting Monero, but it seems like centralized exchanges are rushing to drop it like a hot potato (because "money laundering" and "crime" and ... you get the idea).

Centralized exchanges should not be taken to be the arbiter of what is a good coin or not. They will list endless numbers of outright scams if it makes them profit. All their decisions are driven only by what will make them profit, not by what is good for their users or the community.

There's no other cryptocurrencies that can provide you with the level of privacy you can have with bitcoin

This is just false. Monero is exponentially more private than bitcoin.

So holding and using Bitcoin give you a neutral impression instead of Monero.

Various governments around the world are currently advancing legislation to make it illegal to own and hold bitcoin outside of fully KYCed centralized exchanges and in your own wallet. So you will soon be viewed as equally suspect. The correct answer is not to acquiesce to these crazy regulations and give in to the surveillance state.


I've said many times before that Monero is the only coin other than Bitcoin which I own and use, and the only altcoin I consider not to be a shitcoin. It shares many of the good things about bitcoin - decentalized, PoW, no premine, etc. - while also being far more private if used properly. I don't think it will ever replace bitcoin, but I also think it is one of the only altcoins which will continue to grow and continue to be used many years in the future.

[rojan]

Monero is a privacy coin and it has a facilities to make internal transcation and bitcoin is a decentralised crypto coin and here you can use bitcoin totally anonymously here also has privacy Because no one can track someone personal document  by a bitcoin address and on the other hand you can hold bitcoin in a decentralised wallet where you will get a private key or security phrase which is not possible to hack. so bitcoin has totally privacy in holding and transaction too

[kryptqnick]

While I am somewhat concerned about privacy violations and how tons of data end up in the hands of corporations, as well as governments, it's not my #1 concern, and I don't mind a balance of privacy and security. So, to me, Bitcoin is enough. When using a wallet like Electrum, I'm not providing any information about my real identity to anyone, so it's private enough for me. Perhaps, if someone really put their mind to it, they could find out my real identity, but why would anyone want to do that? It takes resources, and I'm just a regular human being.
I don't mind Monero and the existence of similar currencies, but I also appreciate the transparency that comes with Bitcoin's pseudonymity, so I don't feel like I need Monero, personally.

[avikz]

If the privacy is what you are looking from cryptocurrency adoption you should go ahead with Monero. There is literally no competition in this market and the best part is that Monero is minable through CPU. You do not require those expensive rigs to mine this cryptocurrency.

But the majority of the crypto users are mainly investors. They do not like to spend their cryptocurrency. I have no shame in admitting that I am also an investor. So monero is not something that are appealing to this investor community. Investors will always stay with Bitcoin because of the huge upside potential. But for regular users who are concerned about privacy, Monero is the best choice.

[Twentyonepaylots]

The difference is when you're use Monero, other people will automatically think you're use it for illegal thing.

Well that's for sure, if you want to a clean transaction, without anyone knowing where it come from then use Monero, but then that is where the sus starts.

But when you use Bitcoin, people wouldn't automatically judge you're using it for illegal thing since most country accept it, moreover El Salvador dare to legalize it as legal tender.

Fine for me for not leaving signature on paper when transacting online or putting my name, my age, my country of origin, just a beautiful alphanumeric address. 

So holding and using Bitcoin give you a neutral impression instead of Monero.

Well for both coins that serves quite a different purpose is great, both do have its level of privacy either of these can be used so be it. Bitcoin just tops over with its holding value, and that's what most of us are looking for.

[target]

Monero isn't popular for traders as it once was delisted from exchanges. This coin is also hot and I bet authorities are closely watching it.
Buying XMR from exchanges seems to have defeated its purpose especially when you already have submitted KYC on this CEX.  It would be best to just buy XMR from DEX and keep transactions in p2pn, with no middleman to avoid that dystopian situation.

[mcdouglasx]

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

The hidden does not go hand in hand with legality, I believe that with bitcoin you obtain the balance between transparency and privacy necessary to avoid legal conflicts and mistrust, and yet some governments want to regulate it, because governments always fear losing control.

As for Monero, sadly the government only sees money leaks, illegal purchases, hackers and problems.

[Kruw]

There's no reason why you can't Coinjoin/Lightning your UTXO's in conjunction with Monero - it's a good privacy tool and supplement to Bitcoin IMO.

If you are already using coinjoin and Lightning, then what supplementation does Monero provide?

[Marvelman]

There's no reason why you can't Coinjoin/Lightning your UTXO's in conjunction with Monero - it's a good privacy tool and supplement to Bitcoin IMO.

If you are already using coinjoin and Lightning, then what supplementation does Monero provide?

Both Coinjoin and Lightning come with limitations when it comes to achieving completely untraceable transactions. Monero has some fancy encryption stuff going on under the hood to keep things extra confidential.  Specifically, features like confidential transactions and stealth addresses make it way harder for folks to follow the money trail back to any particular person and  so if if privacy is a top concern, Monero brings another layer of anonymity to the table.

[apogio]

I've said many times before that Monero is the only coin other than Bitcoin which I own and use, and the only altcoin I consider not to be a shitcoin. It shares many of the good things about bitcoin - decentalized, PoW, no premine, etc. - while also being far more private if used properly. I don't think it will ever replace bitcoin, but I also think it is one of the only altcoins which will continue to grow and continue to be used many years in the future.

Me too, I hold bitcoin and monero personally. I also run a Monero node, except for the 2 Bitcoin nodes that I also run.

I also use Monero swaps with Bitcoin for more privacy. (thanks to you who pointed it out to me).

I have some difficulties with monero, that I think can be addressed in this topic:

1. I don't properly understand the address system it has. It supports stealth addresses. I have seen in various places on the internet that with Monero you can always use the same address and don't bother with changing addresses, like in Bitcoin. It seems strange though, because monero, like bitcoin uses UTXOs and not balance system like Ethereum.

2. I can't sign transactions offline, no matter how hard I tried. Perhaps if I bought a Trezor model T, I would be able to do so, but for the time being, I can't.

3. I am not sure whether the variable sized blocks are good or not... I haven't come to a conclusion yet, but I would like to hear your thoughts.

Also Governments, CEXs, the Press, Twitter etc, HATE Monero. This is another reason why I love it.

[hatshepsut93]

Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees.

Because Bitcoin is used 1000x more often than Monero. If Monero would reach the limits of its capacity, it would have high fees too. And since Monero is not using any different blockchain architecture that would make it more efficient than Bitcoin with block space, you can't say that it's more scalable just because the devs chose to have higher block size cap. Raising the size cap is trivial, dealing with the consequences is not.

[OcTradism]

To me it seems Monero is something that should not be ignored.

Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees.

You can use both Bitcoin and Monero to enhance your privacy and anonymity with transactions on Bitcoin and Monero blockchains and support from non-KYC exchanges.

Non-KYC exchanges are helpful for you too and if you are seriously concerning about privacy and anonymity, no reason to use centralized KYC exchanges.

https://kycnot.me/

[Darker45]

Monero is actually one of the reasons why I find the stand of those Bitcoin maximalists myopic. The cryptocurrency innovation doesn't have to be a one-coin or a single-project universe. Bitcoin isn't perfect in all aspects. Privacy is one thing it doesn't guarantee and even focus on. But I kind of like it this way, that Monero is being kicked out from centralized exchanges and somehow being treated as a pariah in the face of increasing regulations. Keep it that way so that Monero remains underground so to speak, unnoticed and undisturbed, yet silently functioning in its important role. I guess Bitcoin, being the face of crypto, catching all these negative criticisms is actually doing a great service to Monero.

[barto123]

I love bitcoin, however i see privacy as the #1 concern going forward.

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

Most of the truth & freedom movement appear to recommend it over Bitcoin.

Node count has passed BTC and mining hash rate is growing rapidly as you don't need an Asics, just your PC.

To me it seems Monero is something that should not be ignored.

Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees.

There's no reason why you can't Coinjoin/Lightning your UTXO's in conjunction with Monero - it's a good privacy tool and supplement to Bitcoin IMO.

Thoughts please. I want some honest opinions here.

Even with all these and more supposed advantages of Monero over Bitcoin, I will still choose the later. A lot of projects have been developed with some claiming to be able to solve the scalability trilema that is attributed to Bitcoin but none have been successful in achieving this. There was a time ripple prided itself as being able to achieve this until time shows that ripple might be heavily centralized.  I believe with time, the weak side of this major contender will also surface and it will become obvious that Bitcoin will always be the leader.

Nothing is perfect, but Bitcoin is unique in many respect. This argument of Monero is coming up again because of the high fees of Bitcoin which is a consequence of Ordinal attack on Bitcoin Network. "This one too shall pass"

I used to think this, however I've realized people are mostly lazy & not very bright. privacy by default & even some degree scalability by default are a must on chain. lightning is a good little tool for more advanced users. I've had a few issues myself lately routing and making payments, I've nearly lost funds too (i know many have).

I understand wallet GUI is improving everyday & it's getting easier to obtain privacy, however it's race against CBDC's & Monero.

High fees are great for chain security and miners, however the little guys gets screwed and majority of masses are the little guy. 5-10 dollars per tx is too much. Even when you use lightning wallet, you either pay to open channel or you sacrifice privacy and security. lightning still has lots of privacy issues too.

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

Are you sure it is getting a lot of adoption on exchanges? Because I know there's a lot of DEXes that are supporting Monero, but it seems like centralized exchanges are rushing to drop it like a hot potato (because "money laundering" and "crime" and ... you get the idea).

You are right that Monero should not be ignored though. Both of these coins solve different kinds of problems.

I don't even use CEX's so I didn't consider even them lol. I meant on swap sites, P2P platforms (Bisq), DEX's, atomic swaps etc

Indeed Bitcoin is more like gold SoV and Monero is more cash. Lightning adoption isn't going anywhere by the looks of it. Coinjoin is expensive in high fee environment as and not really that private. In the mean time Monero is cheap & easy & does give you ample privacy. government don't like it, so there's your proof it works.

[krishnaverma]

I love bitcoin, however i see privacy as the #1 concern going forward.

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

Most of the truth & freedom movement appear to recommend it over Bitcoin.

Node count has passed BTC and mining hash rate is growing rapidly as you don't need an Asics, just your PC.

To me it seems Monero is something that should not be ignored.

Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees.

There's no reason why you can't Coinjoin/Lightning your UTXO's in conjunction with Monero - it's a good privacy tool and supplement to Bitcoin IMO.

Thoughts please. I want some honest opinions here.

Yes, I also love the privacy option in monero and may others will see it as benefit. But in the same way Bitcoin has has many benefits like higher trust. So if we compare overall, Bitcoin is much ahead of monero. As a result, I am preferring Bitcoin over monero for transactions and investment.

[laurenB7742]

If talking about privacy, Monero is undeniably superior to bitcoin and when evaluating many other factors, bitcoin is also inferior to other altcoins. Bitcoin is not perfect, but the point is that everyone coming to this market needs privacy and needs a currency that can bring profits, and bitcoin is the most suitable choice. We enter this market not only about privacy, freedom, security but also about profit, the most important factor. Monero is not more popular than bitcoin, does not give better returns than bitcoin, while altcoins give better returns than bitcoin but are not more secure than bitcoin. So that's why bitcoin is the perfect combination and the best choice.

[Essential10]

Bitcoin's blockchain is larger due to the fact that Bitcoin's market cap is much larger than Monero's. As a result, Bitcoin's blockchain size is much larger than Monero's. Bitcoin and Monero are two cryptocurrencies offered in different versions apart from each other. Bitcoin privacy is an important feature, but Monero is known for its ease of use and often modern privacy technology. Monero transaction information is completely private, which can be a secret investment method for users. Bitcoin has its share of privacy debates from time to time, but it provides for secure transactions and transparent ledgers. Depending on whether you prefer more or less privacy and security levels, you can take your pick.

[btc78]

well it will depend on your intentions

if you plan on using cryptocurrency for your business that will require you transactions with other clients, monero might not be the best choice for you however like you said monero is famous for its  privacy that it’s considered the most anonymous cryptocurrency right now

while btc is decentralized, monero is still far more private

[nutildah]

I've said many times before that Monero is the only coin other than Bitcoin which I own and use, and the only altcoin I consider not to be a shitcoin. It shares many of the good things about bitcoin - decentalized, PoW, no premine, etc. - while also being far more private if used properly. I don't think it will ever replace bitcoin, but I also think it is one of the only altcoins which will continue to grow and continue to be used many years in the future.

What do you think about Litecoin adding MWeb? It's like an opt-in privacy feature... transactions don't use it by default, but if you want to use it, its there as an option.

Monero TPS is also lower than BTC due to higher TX size and lower block size, despite lower block time.

I never thought to check the average size of XMR transactions before but you're absolutely right... Doing some rough extrapolation based on the statistics here, the average XMR transaction over the last 24 hours was 2.82 kb while the average BTC transaction was about 0.2 kb (note this is a rough extrapolation).

So even if XMR txs confirm 5x faster, they are still over 10x bigger, on average.

Regardless, I see the world moving toward a place where Monero will come in more and more handy in the future, despite its negative connotations.

[o_e_l_e_o]

1. I don't properly understand the address system it has.

When you pay a Monero address, you actually use that Monero address to generate a one time address known only to you and the recipient.

2. I can't sign transactions offline, no matter how hard I tried.

You can do this using the main Monero wallet CLI or GUI. What software are you using?

3. I am not sure whether the variable sized blocks are good or not... I haven't come to a conclusion yet, but I would like to hear your thoughts.

It's an economical debate. Bitcoin uses fixed block sizes to create a fee market to ensure security once the block subsidy is irrelevant. Monero uses a tail emission, meaning fees can be lower. Both have limits on block size to prevent centralization like we see with various Bitcoin forks with much larger blocks.

[apogio]

When you pay a Monero address, you actually use that Monero address to generate a one time address known only to you and the recipient.

Which means that I can give you the primary address and it will generate a new address behind the scenes for every transaction?

You can do this using the main Monero wallet CLI or GUI. What software are you using?

This: https://www.getmonero.org/downloads/

The problem is, I run a node and this is where I have my wallet. So my wallet is online all the time.

Perhaps I could create a wallet on another offline device, sign the TX and then import it to the node's wallet to be broadcast ?

[m2017]

Monero is a much better option if you want to stay anonymous with your payments and transactions.

Ok, that's undeniable. Will monero be the best option for investing and saving your capital? Bitcoin is already more likely to fill this role. These two coins have different capabilities, which means these cryptocurrencies can be used to achieve different tasks. XMR is for anonymity, and BTC is for hodl.

No one is stopping you from using these two crypto, right. For example, keep your money in the bitcoin (you can’t argue that this coin demonstrates greater profitability than monero, has a larger capitalization and market share, which shows the greatest confidence of investors and users, and also simply has greater influence and importance for the cryptoindustry in in general), and when you need to pay for the purchase, you convert BTC to XMR in order to assert your right to privacy and anonymity.

2 coins for 2 life occasions. There is no need to try to create / find a universal coin that can satisfy all user needs. Each coin designed to perform one specific task will do it much better than any universal one. XMR - anonymity, BTC - hold.

[barto123]

I love bitcoin, however i see privacy as the #1 concern going forward.

There's no other cryptocurrencies that can provide you with the level of privacy you can have with bitcoin after knowing well that bitcoin itself is a decentralized digital currency and most of these altcoins are centralized, privacy is achieved at it's maximum level with bitcoin.

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

I still don't get the reason why you need to compare bitcoin with monero here, they are different things entirely, any further discussion about menero should be channelled under altcoins discussion, maintaini bitcoin discussion here is more of need than altcoins discussion.

Agreed, decentralization is very important. Monero is the only one besides Bitcoin that even comes close IMO. Most are centralized scams.

I'm more concerned about privacy here. Yes I think you can achieve privacy with Bitcoin, but it's not by default & it's not easy. Also with high fees, achieving good privacy is even more costly.

I know a lot of Bitcoiners secretly use Monero as a privacy tool for their final spend, that's another reason why I don't think this discussion belongs in the altcoin section.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Which means that I can give you the primary address and it will generate a new address behind the scenes for every transaction?

Correct. The short explanation is basically ECDH. You create a new random key pair for each transaction, and use your one time private key and my shared public key to generate a new address. I can calculate the same address by using your public key (which is attached to the transaction) and my private key. For the long explanation, see section 5.4.1 here: https://masteringmonero.com/book/Mastering%20Monero%20First%20Edition%20by%20SerHack%20and%20Monero%20Community.pdf

Perhaps I could create a wallet on another offline device, sign the TX and then import it to the node's wallet to be broadcast ?

Yes, this is the correct method. Create your wallet on your airgapped computer, and then export your private view key to your online computer to create a view only wallet. Alternatively, create your wallet on your airgapped computer, and then in the GUI go to Settings -> Wallet -> Create a view only wallet.

[AmoreJaz]

Monero is a much better option if you want to stay anonymous with your payments and transactions.

Ok, that's undeniable. Will monero be the best option for investing and saving your capital? Bitcoin is already more likely to fill this role. These two coins have different capabilities, which means these cryptocurrencies can be used to achieve different tasks. XMR is for anonymity, and BTC is for hodl.

No one is stopping you from using these two crypto, right. For example, keep your money in the bitcoin (you can’t argue that this coin demonstrates greater profitability than monero, has a larger capitalization and market share, which shows the greatest confidence of investors and users, and also simply has greater influence and importance for the cryptoindustry in in general), and when you need to pay for the purchase, you convert BTC to XMR in order to assert your right to privacy and anonymity.

2 coins for 2 life occasions. There is no need to try to create / find a universal coin that can satisfy all user needs. Each coin designed to perform one specific task will do it much better than any universal one. XMR - anonymity, BTC - hold.

that is a very good approach on this subject matter. but some people will assert or compete these 2. so why not use both where they are good at? exhaust their pros and cons because the reality is, you can't rely on one coin alone to survive in this market.
because the fact is some platforms don't have xmr, whereas, btc will always be there in the trading pair. so there's no need to fight about which one is superior over the other. just use both of them where you think it is necessary.

[Myleschetty]

Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees.

Because Bitcoin is used 1000x more often than Monero. If Monero would reach the limits of its capacity, it would have high fees too. And since Monero is not using any different blockchain architecture that would make it more efficient than Bitcoin with block space, you can't say that it's more scalable just because the devs chose to have higher block size cap. Raising the size cap is trivial, dealing with the consequences is not.

I support what you said. I believe some crypto enthusiasts don't understand this fact about crypto usage and I can remember when Ethereum was yet to reach its maximum usage it was among one of the fair TX fee cryptocurrencies before things changed after it reached its capacity limit.
The same thing will happen to Monero and all the altcoins that claim to be scalable.

[GreatArkansas]

Monero is actually one of the reasons why I find the stand of those Bitcoin maximalists myopic. The cryptocurrency innovation doesn't have to be a one-coin or a single-project universe. Bitcoin isn't perfect in all aspects. Privacy is one thing it doesn't guarantee and even focus on. But I kind of like it this way, that Monero is being kicked out from centralized exchanges and somehow being treated as a pariah in the face of increasing regulations. Keep it that way so that Monero remains underground so to speak, unnoticed and undisturbed, yet silently functioning in its important role. I guess Bitcoin, being the face of crypto, catching all these negative criticisms is actually doing a great service to Monero.

In short, most of the altcoins now serve a different purpose. Bitcoin versus altcoins.
But this Monero vs Bitcoin, they indeed solving another problem that Bitcoin has, which for me is one of the many purposes of altcoins.
Bitcoin is more widely used, which more in payment transactions. Whereas Monero is designed for users who want more transaction privacy.

[Darker45]

~snip~

In short, most of the altcoins now serve a different purpose. Bitcoin versus altcoins.
But this Monero vs Bitcoin, they indeed solving another problem that Bitcoin has, which for me is one of the many purposes of altcoins.
Bitcoin is more widely used, which more in payment transactions. Whereas Monero is designed for users who want more transaction privacy.

No, most of the altcoins now serve the same purpose. They're copies of each other and they're only riding whatever is the hype. Most of them just want to make money. They don't offer anything new.

What my post actually meant is that there can be a legit altcoin. That's to refute those Bitcoin-only advocates. They're biased and they need to acknowledge that crypto isn't just all about Bitcoin. Monero is one good example.

But I'm not justifying the existence of tens of thousands of cryptocurrencies.

[vv181]

I don't think people actually ignore Monero, but rather they low-key utilize and are aware of its potency. The Monero ecosystem is surely not fueled by hype and so they are not gaining any widespread recognition. So it gives the sense or perception that it is being ignored. Moreover, Monero isn't advertised or endorsed heavily and bombastically, it just serves its purpose due to its technical merit, and the people who find it useful are spreading it but in a subtle manner.

You said it yourself they are quietly gaining the adoption, a coin that truly solves and serves people's needs will surely thrive consistently.

But this Monero vs Bitcoin, they indeed solving another problem that Bitcoin has, which for me is one of the many purposes of altcoins.
Bitcoin is more widely used, which more in payment transactions. Whereas Monero is designed for users who want more transaction privacy.

That is another important point, we don't necessarily have to compare either this or that. People have the option and should make their own decisions to choose what coin suits their needs.

[Blitzboy]

I really like Bitcoin, but its been harder than I thought to get into Monero. Monero is becoming more popular is correct; its privacy-focused features are what make it so popular. But it's impossible to ignore Bitcoin's established power and wider acceptance. Why is Monero's privacy a double-edged sword? It does give you anonymity, but there is a steep learning curve, which could stop most people from using it.

Monero's non - reliance on ASICs for mining democratises involvement, but one must wonder whether this makes the network more vulnerable to centralization as mining becomes more profitable for those with better hardware. You talk about Coinjoin and Lightning with UTXOs in Monero. This is interesting, but its not easy to make these work together. Its a complicated interaction between two different systems, each with its own quirks.

Even though Bitcoin has problems with fees and scaling, its network impact and constant improvements are too important to ignore. You are right to tell people not to ignore Monero; it is an interesting option, especially for people who value privacy. But its important to keep your excitement in check by being realistic about the pros and cons of each coin.

[barto123]

The comparison between Bitcoin and Monero in terms of privacy is unfair because the only use of Monero is due to high privacy. I can understand the comparison between Bitcoin and Monero in general, but in terms of privacy, Monero is better.
Bitcoin was not built to enhance privacy in the same way as Monero, but rather to enhance transparency and make it difficult to track and stop who sent the transaction despite the possibility of knowing who sent it.

Bitcoin started with people who were anarchists, anti-establishment. This culture around hodl and number go up is more about getting rich than fixing the world. A lot of people in the Monero community argue that Satoshi's original vision was to make it private on chain. I think transparency is good for government, but individuals should have privacy. And so I think they're correct when they say you can't have freedom unless you have privacy. The state would not survive if everyone had privacy. Similarly, the state would not survive if it was transparent & everyone knew the truth, the illusion would crumble fast. There's more people in Monero who have swallowed the red pill & can see the matrix.

[barto123]

The difference is when you're use Monero, other people will automatically think you're use it for illegal thing.

But when you use Bitcoin, people wouldn't automatically judge you're using it for illegal thing since most country accept it, moreover El Salvador dare to legalize it as legal tender.

So holding and using Bitcoin give you a neutral impression instead of Monero.

What if this type of thinking has been indoctrinated & brainwashed into people by the state?

They want you to feel like a criminal just because you want privacy.

Everything is backwards in society, all the biggest crimes are being committed at the top (wars, genocide, money laundering, counterfeiting, pedophilia - list goes on)

Sure there's a small percentage of bad people amongst us, but they're a small minority.

The main problem is the controlling hand of governments - the elites (parasites). They just lie about everything & most people believe them.

Privacy is security, so it's in everyone best interest to be as private as possible. especially in the digital age.

[arabspaceship123]

If ppl prefer to use Bitcoin because it's decentralised why can't it be updated in future to obfuscate spends. It's still going to be decentralised.

I know ppl use Monero for final spend or convert back to BTC because it's a privacy coin. Swaps from BTC to XMR help if you're wanting privacy for final spend but if you're trying to avoid using tumbles it costs more if XMR value went low if you're swapping XMR back to BTC.

Agreed, decentralization is very important. Monero is the only one besides Bitcoin that even comes close IMO. Most are centralized scams.

I'm more concerned about privacy here. Yes I think you can achieve privacy with Bitcoin, but it's not by default & it's not easy. Also with high fees, achieving good privacy is even more costly.

I know a lot of Bitcoiners secretly use Monero as a privacy tool for their final spend, that's another reason why I don't think this discussion belongs in the altcoin section.

[moneystery]

you are right that monero offers higher privacy compared to what bitcoin offers. but why monero seems unattractive to people is because it is not completely anonymous anymore because at any time regulators can crackdown on monero. and especially in the minds of most people today, bitcoin is the most popular coin which offers a level of anonymity and security in transactions compared to what other coins offer. also, the adoption level of bitcoin is higher compared to monero, and for this reason more people use bitcoin compared to monero.

[barto123]

Monero is a much better option if you want to stay anonymous with your payments and transactions.

It might beat Bitcoin in that specific aspect, but overall, Bitcoin holds more value, and that's quite evident. I believe Monero has potential for future growth, but it's unlikely to surpass what Bitcoin has already achieved. Bitcoin remains the main cryptocurrency accepted by the majority, and even though it doesn't offer complete privacy due to government regulations, we still need Bitcoin to lead the market. This way, altcoins like Monero can have a chance to progress.

I think it really depends which way the world goes. If enough people stop complying with tyranny, Bitcoin will go to the moon regardless. If enough people don't wake up to the truth of this reality and take a stand, Monero is going to be in high demand and very valuable IMO. Privacy will be the #1 priority in a cashless world governed by an AI surveillance grid.

[arabspaceship123]

What you're saying about Monero isn't how it functions because regulators haven't cracked down on Monero. If they regulated XMR they wouldn't be able to decrypt it so the most they'll achieve is ban it from regulated exchanges. When ppl access crypto addresses on blockchains they'll use mixers to get privacy so Monero's a choice. Bitcoin doesn't hide your trades but XMR's a privacy coin so it's completely anonymous.

you are right that monero offers higher privacy compared to what bitcoin offers. but why monero seems unattractive to people is because it is not completely anonymous anymore because at any time regulators can crackdown on monero.

 

[o_e_l_e_o]

Bitcoin started with people who were anarchists, anti-establishment. This culture around hodl and number go up is more about getting rich than fixing the world.

I was just saying this in another thread. The influx of people who just want to use bitcoin to make fiat profit, instead of wanting to use bitcoin as freedom money, is driving us down the route towards bitcoin becoming a government permissioned network. The current monero community is similar to the bitcoin community of 10 years ago. The bitcoin community of today is all about "when moon".

If they regulated XMR they wouldn't be able to decrypt it so the most they'll achieve is ban it from regulated exchanges.

Most scam centralized exchanges delisted monero years ago, and no one who actually uses monero for its anonymity is buying it on a centralized exchange anyway. Monero has been thriving on DEXs and P2P trades for years, and will continue to do so.

[apogio]

I have been running a monero node on an old laptop.
However, I need this laptop for other purposes now so I plan to set up a new node on a raspberry Pi that runs Raspbian.
I will run both bitcoin and monero nodes on the same machine. Do you think it is possible?
I think I won't have an issue running both of them. I have an SSD with 2TB capacity.

[fuguebtc]

The difference is when you're use Monero, other people will automatically think you're use it for illegal thing.

But when you use Bitcoin, people wouldn't automatically judge you're using it for illegal thing since most country accept it, moreover El Salvador dare to legalize it as legal tender.

So holding and using Bitcoin give you a neutral impression instead of Monero.

Are you sure that when you use bitcoin, people will never doubt you and believe you only use bitcoin for good purposes? If everyone thinks like you say then why do many governments consider bitcoin to be related to crime, why does the US government always try to shut down bitcoin mixers? And there are also many cases where criminals using bitcoin for illegal transactions have been detected. Bitcoin, XMR or fiat are just means, tools and what people use them for depends on their behavior. Don't be too biased bitcoin and monero is also a good coin, but it's not as bad as you say.

[barto123]

While I am somewhat concerned about privacy violations and how tons of data end up in the hands of corporations, as well as governments, it's not my #1 concern, and I don't mind a balance of privacy and security. So, to me, Bitcoin is enough. When using a wallet like Electrum, I'm not providing any information about my real identity to anyone, so it's private enough for me. Perhaps, if someone really put their mind to it, they could find out my real identity, but why would anyone want to do that? It takes resources, and I'm just a regular human being.
I don't mind Monero and the existence of similar currencies, but I also appreciate the transparency that comes with Bitcoin's pseudonymity, so I don't feel like I need Monero, personally.

Fair enough.

I personally believe privacy is security. One of the best forms of security is to not reveal sensitive data about yourself - like how much Bitcoin/Monero you have.

The reason why I believe privacy is #1 concern is because the direction in which the globalists are taking the world is complete control of everything. The want to control every living thing. Sounds like a conspiracy theory until you realize they say it in plain sight.

The CBDC (or whatever they chose to call it) is where everything changes. The best way to see the future they're planning is look at China & the social credit system. If you say the wrong thing about your government you can lose your privilege to board a train. Even this is just the tip of the iceberg compared to what they're planning.

One of the many reasons they're pushing climate change, so they can tie in multiple system of control. For instance, you've reached your total carbon credit for the month and cannot eat anymore beef, because cow farts are bad for the environment. So now they can freeze your money because your food intake is tracked. Yes Bitcoin is censorship resistant, however your connection the to internet is not.

All total BS to push us into total communism. The world is not what you think it is and that's why I think privacy will be very important.

[arabspaceship123]

The reason Monero's got strength in privacy's because XMR doesn't connect funds so if ppl used XMR from centralised exchanges they'd lose anonymity. It isn't recommended to swap there but if Monero stays on decentralised exchanges it's going to be swapped. If bitcoin can't become a privacy coin ppl will use Monero.

If they regulated XMR they wouldn't be able to decrypt it so the most they'll achieve is ban it from regulated exchanges.

Most scam centralized exchanges delisted monero years ago, and no one who actually uses monero for its anonymity is buying it on a centralized exchange anyway. Monero has been thriving on DEXs and P2P trades for years, and will continue to do so.

[wallet4bitcoin]

I love bitcoin, however i see privacy as the #1 concern going forward.

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

Most of the truth & freedom movement appear to recommend it over Bitcoin.

Node count has passed BTC and mining hash rate is growing rapidly as you don't need an Asics, just your PC.

To me it seems Monero is something that should not be ignored.

Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees.

There's no reason why you can't Coinjoin/Lightning your UTXO's in conjunction with Monero - it's a good privacy tool and supplement to Bitcoin IMO.

Thoughts please. I want some honest opinions here.

I have always admired privacy coins and not just monero alone, I consider them the future with the whole clamp down by SEC and agencies, I feel like there Is a war between the institutional finance system and the blockchain oriented finance system and it might further drive users into the world of advanced privacy, even though bitcoin is still the flagship and most popular crypto currency, people will opt for a privacy driven coin to avoid certain brouhaha.

[nutildah]

The reason Monero's got strength in privacy's because XMR doesn't connect funds so if ppl used XMR from centralised exchanges they'd lose anonymity. It isn't recommended to swap there but if Monero stays on decentralised exchanges it's going to be swapped. If bitcoin can't become a privacy coin ppl will use Monero.

If you receive XMR from a KYC exchange, they don't know who sent it to you, only that you received XMR. If you send XMR from a KYC exchange, they will know the address you are sending it to & the amount, but nothing beyond that. They really have no idea what you are using it for unless they ask you and you tell them.

I'm not sure there's any "decentralized" exchange for XMR. Maybe AtomicSwap supports it but I'm not sure, and they've had troubles recently. ThorSwap doesn't support it at all. There are only KYC exchanges, non-KYC exchanges, and swapping services (a mixture of KYC and non-KYC).

[Sipizter]

Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees.

Because Bitcoin is used 1000x more often than Monero. If Monero would reach the limits of its capacity, it would have high fees too. And since Monero is not using any different blockchain architecture that would make it more efficient than Bitcoin with block space, you can't say that it's more scalable just because the devs chose to have higher block size cap. Raising the size cap is trivial, dealing with the consequences is not.

This is not true. Monero's broadcasted transactions per second are typically 5 - 10% of Bitcoin's transactions. Sometimes reaching as high as 20%. At the time writing this Monero has 0.29 tx/sec where as Bitcoin has 3.25 tx/sec. This is a nice site to see real-time statistics in comparison: https://txstreet.com/v/xmr-btc

[BlackHatCoiner]

Perhaps, if someone really put their mind to it, they could find out my real identity, but why would anyone want to do that?

Because your identity and activities / preferences / transactions, if tied together, are worth a lot of money. I mean, not particularly yours personally, but en masse a lot. Currently, data brokers is one of the most profitable professions in the branches of informatics.

But, besides data brokers, you wouldn't tell a stranger how much money you have. Why? Because that gives away unnecessary information that can be easily exploited.

[adultcrypto]

I have always admired privacy coins and not just monero alone, I consider them the future with the whole clamp down by SEC and agencies, I feel like there Is a war between the institutional finance system and the blockchain oriented finance system and it might further drive users into the world of advanced privacy, even though bitcoin is still the flagship and most popular crypto currency, people will opt for a privacy driven coin to avoid certain brouhaha.

At first I thought that Bitcoin offer that privacy until when I knew better. Without privacy, there will be huge problem in the future and recent developments already confirms this. Even though privacy coins can also be used for the wrong reasons, they offer the only way out of total control by the super powers.

For several governments and agencies to be against mixers they bring some level of privacy to Bitcoin, it is an indication that they will see privacy coins as a big threat to their power.

[Sim_card]

For several governments and agencies to be against mixers they bring some level of privacy to Bitcoin, it is an indication that they will see privacy coins as a big threat to their power.

They are not just against mixer but they are against any technology that will give us privacy and they will do whatever it takes to make sure that they deprive us from our privacy. We can see how they have bought some mining pool over to be on their side so that they can control which transaction should be added to the mining pool or not. And as humans due to greed, they forgot that it is only us that can make bitcoin more private by protecting bitcoin from the government. Monero has a better privacy than bitcoin because nobody cares about it, but everyone is after bitcoin for their own selfish reason.

[darkangel11]

If ppl prefer to use Bitcoin because it's decentralised why can't it be updated in future to obfuscate spends. It's still going to be decentralised.

There's mixing. It's possible to create a second layer, like LN, than automatically mixes coins.
Bitcoin can be improved when it comes to privacy, but why should it be? I own some old bitcoin that was bought long ago on a now defunct exchange. Nobody can subpoena that exchange as it shut down years ago and the owner was found dead years later. If I paid you for something illegal, nobody would be able to find my name, or even the person who bought bitcoin from me. Bitcoin is as private as we want it to be. If you use a centralized exchange that has all your private data, with pictures, you have no privacy, but some people don't care.

[cryptosize]

The reason why I believe privacy is #1 concern is because the direction in which the globalists are taking the world is complete control of everything. The want to control every living thing. Sounds like a conspiracy theory until you realize they say it in plain sight.

The CBDC (or whatever they chose to call it) is where everything changes. The best way to see the future they're planning is look at China & the social credit system. If you say the wrong thing about your government you can lose your privilege to board a train. Even this is just the tip of the iceberg compared to what they're planning.

One of the many reasons they're pushing climate change, so they can tie in multiple system of control. For instance, you've reached your total carbon credit for the month and cannot eat anymore beef, because cow farts are bad for the environment. So now they can freeze your money because your food intake is tracked. Yes Bitcoin is censorship resistant, however your connection the to internet is not.

All total BS to push us into total communism. The world is not what you think it is and that's why I think privacy will be very important.

Even people on this board still believe this is a silly tinfoil hat conspiracy theory ("Digital ID is a good thing, it will reduce bureaucracy" ) and also believe that human beings cause climate change (therefore a population reduction would be "appropriate") due to CO2 (which is plants' food).

I say cull the useless eaters (their BTC will disappear from circulation if they don't inherit the private key to anyone), we don't need them anyway. The jabs will do it either way...

Regarding Monero, I think it has a real chance to replace cash, especially in notorious transactions (such as drugs, hookers and maybe even red meat, assuming it becomes illegal in the future).

But Bitcoin will still be better for savings, since Monero has eternal inflation (tail emission).

Monero for e-cash and Bitcoin for savings/digital gold sounds good enough to me.

[jossiel]

I like Monero and there is no doubt if the topic to be discussed is about privacy, it's the most recommended cryptocurrency to use.

But when you've said about it gaining lots of adoptions from exchanges, you have to consider the news of it being delisted mostly in popular exchanges and I think in some other global exchanges as well.

• Binance to Delist Monero, Zcash in 4 European Countries
• CoinSpot will be delisting Monero (XMR), Bytecoin (BCN) & ZCoin (XZC)
• Huobi to delist Monero and other privacy coins, citing regulatory pressures

There's a big issue on it and as we can see, it's being cracked by the governments.

[Casdinyard]

Monero's definitely a worthy contender, but that doesn't mean you could just dismiss bitcoin just cause it's not "decentralized enough for you"

Plus it's not even true that Monero's being adopted in most crypto exchanges, just a couple of months ago as stated beforehand by @jossiel and as I will reiterate, massive exchanges like binance and huobi are dropping their Monero listings over concerns about it being exploited for its overtly anonymous features, and also because there's not much use case behind monero besides the fact that it's secure, which most cryptocurrencies are in the first place. Is Monero a good coin? Yes. Is it worth dismissing the impact and longevity of bitcoin over? Probably not. You can't put a price on price security especially in an industry that's as volatile as the crypto world.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I'm not sure there's any "decentralized" exchange for XMR.

Bisq is the best option.

But when you've said about it gaining lots of adoptions from exchanges, you have to consider the news of it being delisted mostly in popular exchanges and I think in some other global exchanges as well.

As far as I see it, being delisted from KYCed centralized exchanges is a good thing - it proves that Monero works, the government are unable to trace it or deanonymize it like they can do with every other coin, so instead they are resorting to delisting it. Delisting shows that it works. And as I said before, no one who actually uses Monero cares about this since they aren't using KYCed exchanges in the first place.

There's a big issue on it and as we can see, it's being cracked by the governments.

So is bitcoin. We are seeing mining pools like F2Pool censoring transactions the government tells them to. We are seeing wallets like Wasabi censoring inputs the government tells them to. We are seeing regulations which will ban self custody and mean bitcoin can only be bought, stored, and sold on fully KYCed centralized exchanges. And yet no one seems to care that bitcoin is marching towards a government permissioned network. Bitcoin is being cracked down on by governments even more strongly than Monero is. The difference is they can't do any of these things with Monero, so they are just forcing it to be delisted instead.

[Pmalek]

I'm not sure there's any "decentralized" exchange for XMR.

What about AgoraDesk? It supports Monero but I am not sure of it's decentralized nature. They have an arbitration feature but I don't know much about it. LocalMonero is basically the same thing with a different name. 
Isn't UnstoppableSwap a decentralized solution for Monero?
Also, Robosats supports Monero. I think it's still centralized, but there was a proposal to make it decentralized. No idea how far they have come with that. If I remember correctly, there was talk about the decentralized solution becoming custodial during trades, so that's not optimal.

[arabspaceship123]

If you receive XMR from a KYC exchange, they don't know who sent it to you, only that you received XMR. If you send XMR from a KYC exchange, they will know the address you are sending it to & the amount, but nothing beyond that. They really have no idea what you are using it for unless they ask you and you tell them.

Traders wouldn't want their exchanges to know how much XMR they've received & sent or their dates. They'd prefer to keep their deals private but if a privacy coin doesn't give it they do it outside the centralised exchange. If ppl want privacy I'd ask them to use any DEX.

I'm not sure there's any "decentralized" exchange for XMR. Maybe AtomicSwap supports it but I'm not sure, and they've had troubles recently. ThorSwap doesn't support it at all. There are only KYC exchanges, non-KYC exchanges, and swapping services (a mixture of KYC and non-KYC).

Exch.cx
Bisq
UnstoppableSwap

Exch.cx XMR rates are the highest I've found. UnstoppableSwap's the lowest.

[Sarah Azhari]

To me it seems Monero is something that should not be ignored.

Yes me too, Monero is one of the coins besides BTC which has good privacy and scalability to invest. Monero also has good movement prices from 2018, and 2021 and maybe next 2024 will pass a new ATH ($475). Monero also has the same trend as BTC, so that situation, many people focus on buying Monero when BTC comes to halving near. But, I still don't know what is good software wallet for keeping Monero for a long time?. I just know that BTC has electrum, but I still don't know about Monero?, Because I heard that someone just lost his Monero on wallet CSS (community Crowdfunding System).

By the way, when we talk about Monero (Altcoin), is this thread on the right board?

[jossiel]

But when you've said about it gaining lots of adoptions from exchanges, you have to consider the news of it being delisted mostly in popular exchanges and I think in some other global exchanges as well.

As far as I see it, being delisted from KYCed centralized exchanges is a good thing - it proves that Monero works, the government are unable to trace it or deanonymize it like they can do with every other coin, so instead they are resorting to delisting it. Delisting shows that it works. And as I said before, no one who actually uses Monero cares about this since they aren't using KYCed exchanges in the first place.

Yeah, it's actually good riddance since the main purpose and what monero is boasting for is its privacy and anonymous feature which is ideal for people that want to keep themselves anonymous. And if it's on a centralized exchanges that asked for the user/trader's identity through KYC, that defeats the purpose of it. So, it's truly a good thing and a blessing in disguise for those that sees it being delisted.

But it is understandable that it's still needed to stay in some major exchanges for its liquidity and volume. IMO, we will not see it as a stand alone crypto like mostly used only for P2P trades because of these cexes that won't delist it.

There's a big issue on it and as we can see, it's being cracked by the governments.

So is bitcoin. We are seeing mining pools like F2Pool censoring transactions the government tells them to. We are seeing wallets like Wasabi censoring inputs the government tells them to. We are seeing regulations which will ban self custody and mean bitcoin can only be bought, stored, and sold on fully KYCed centralized exchanges. And yet no one seems to care that bitcoin is marching towards a government permissioned network. Bitcoin is being cracked down on by governments even more strongly than Monero is. The difference is they can't do any of these things with Monero, so they are just forcing it to be delisted instead.

Probably it's because that with government intervention on Bitcoin, this gives us the thought that 'yeah, they're supporting Bitcoin' but if we clear that path on the actuality is you're right. Many of us seems to unnotice what's actually happening on Bitcoin and they've got more control on it and can easily done than Monero. I just hope that purpose of Bitcoin won't be defeated and someday, we don't have to rely on these cexes and governments. But the truth is, this is inevitable for it as part of "adoption".

[OcTradism]

Probably it's because that with government intervention on Bitcoin, this gives us the thought that 'yeah, they're supporting Bitcoin' but if we clear that path on the actuality is you're right. Many of us seems to unnotice what's actually happening on Bitcoin and they've got more control on it and can easily done than Monero. I just hope that purpose of Bitcoin won't be defeated and someday, we don't have to rely on these cexes and governments. But the truth is, this is inevitable for it as part of "adoption".

I don't consider that they, governments want and are doing it because they are supporting Bitcoin. They are doing this because:

They can not stop Bitcoin.
They can not stop their citizens to access a big innovation in human history.

So they have to create as many barriers as possible to reduce the adoption growth of Bitcoin and want to do more regulations to control financial flows in society. They are doing this to help central banks have more tools to trace their citizen financial flow and gain tax for their government.

Are they doing this for benefit of citizens? I see no.

[nutildah]

I'm not sure there's any "decentralized" exchange for XMR.

What about AgoraDesk? It supports Monero but I am not sure of it's decentralized nature. They have an arbitration feature but I don't know much about it. LocalMonero is basically the same thing with a different name. 
Isn't UnstoppableSwap a decentralized solution for Monero?
Also, Robosats supports Monero. I think it's still centralized, but there was a proposal to make it decentralized. No idea how far they have come with that. If I remember correctly, there was talk about the decentralized solution becoming custodial during trades, so that's not optimal.

These are all companies that charge fees. If their server were to go down, there'd be no way to utilize them. This is the same reason I don't consider something like Uniswap to be a DEX... everyone is dependent on a single server, website, or single point of failure, so they are not decentralized.

An exception to this is ThorChain which utilizes liquidity pools of coins on different blockchains to perform swaps. The fees are paid to the liquidity providers rather than a company.

[o_e_l_e_o]

They can not stop Bitcoin.

Except it seems that they can. Make 51% of the hashrate comply with their OFAC sanctions as F2Pool have done, and bitcoin is firmly under their control. At that point they can censor any transaction they choose.

An exception to this is ThorChain which utilizes liquidity pools of coins on different blockchains to perform swaps. The fees are paid to the liquidity providers rather than a company.

Bisq is completely peer to peer in the same way that bitcoin is - you run the software locally and connect directly to other peers (over Tor). You can also run your own Robosats instance, and Robosats is developing processes to make it easier for these instances to talk to each other: https://github.com/RoboSats/robosats/blob/main/federation.md

[Kruw]

We are seeing wallets like Wasabi censoring inputs the government tells them to.

You are lying, Wasabi Wallet is completely non custodial, it cannot censor inputs.  Your keys, your coins.

[apogio]

You can also run your own Robosats instance, and Robosats is developing processes to make it easier for these instances to talk to each other: https://github.com/RoboSats/robosats/blob/main/federation.md

In case someone runs an Umbrel node, Robosats is built-in and is super easy to use! I have used it really a lot.

Of course Robosats can be installed from scratch, but I needed to clarify how easy it is to run it on an Umbrel node.

[Pmalek]

You are lying, Wasabi Wallet is completely non custodial, it cannot censor inputs.  Your keys, your coins.

Hey, you forgot to mention that Wasabi is also open-source. They are not going to be happy with you if you make such oversights. In the future, whenever someone mentions anything negative about Wasabi, your job is to hit them with the we are open-source and baaam, that will shut them up. If they are advertising a mixer, you also call them a thief to really get your point across.

o_e_l_e_o wasn't lying. Your wallet's main coordinator uses the services of a blockchain analysis company to check the history of the coins people want to coinjoin. If the blockchain analysis company isn't happy with its secret findings, it tells you to prevent the person to register those UTXOs for a coinjoin. Therefore, your main coordinator supports a made-up nonsense called taint and censorship.

Now it's the perfect time to tell the community that they should run their own coordinators. I haven't heard that in like a week. But that's not the point. The point isn't that everyone can run their own coordinator. The point is that you, a so-called privacy service, directly or indirectly supports censorship and considers certain coins dirty because someone tells you to do it.   

[Kruw]

You are lying, Wasabi Wallet is completely non custodial, it cannot censor inputs.  Your keys, your coins.

Hey, you forgot to mention that Wasabi is also open-source. They are not going to be happy with you if you make such oversights. In the future, whenever someone mentions anything negative about Wasabi, your job is to hit them with the we are open-source and baaam, that will shut them up. If they are advertising a mixer, you also call them a thief to really get your point across.

o_e_l_e_o wasn't lying. Your wallet's main coordinator uses the services of a blockchain analysis company to check the history of the coins people want to coinjoin. If the blockchain analysis company isn't happy with its secret findings, it tells you to prevent the person to register those UTXOs for a coinjoin. Therefore, your main coordinator supports a made-up nonsense called taint and censorship.

Now it's the perfect time to tell the community that they should run their own coordinators. I haven't heard that in like a week. But that's not the point. The point isn't that everyone can run their own coordinator. The point is that you, a so-called privacy service, directly or indirectly supports censorship and considers certain coins dirty because someone tells you to do it.   

No, that is the point:  ANYONE can run their own coordinator since the Wasabi software is entirely open source.

[jossiel]

Probably it's because that with government intervention on Bitcoin, this gives us the thought that 'yeah, they're supporting Bitcoin' but if we clear that path on the actuality is you're right. Many of us seems to unnotice what's actually happening on Bitcoin and they've got more control on it and can easily done than Monero. I just hope that purpose of Bitcoin won't be defeated and someday, we don't have to rely on these cexes and governments. But the truth is, this is inevitable for it as part of "adoption".

I don't consider that they, governments want and are doing it because they are supporting Bitcoin. They are doing this because:

They can not stop Bitcoin.
They can not stop their citizens to access a big innovation in human history.

So they have to create as many barriers as possible to reduce the adoption growth of Bitcoin and want to do more regulations to control financial flows in society. They are doing this to help central banks have more tools to trace their citizen financial flow and gain tax for their government.

Are they doing this for benefit of citizens? I see no.

Well, for those countries that have strict implementation of their rules. Adopting it and having all of those regulations can still be said that this is favorable to its citizens that are in Bitcoin.

They don't have to hide in shadows but you know these times, it's better to remain unknown and lowkey with all of the crimes happening related to Bitcoin robberies and violence that were reported on the media.

I have put apostrophe on it and that's what I am highlighting that there's a meaning about the adoption and of course the thought about making us think that they're supporting it. In every support, there's always the agenda that they can't deny like those that you've mentioned.

[crwth]

There are a lot of reasons why people are opting for the more privacy part knowing that they don't want anything to be governed or any information leaked about themselves. I think a dystopia is kind of an overreaction toward what is happening because it's still not at that level where you are dehumanized or something. Fearful, maybe, but that might be because of what you are doing with it as well that's why some people are frightened of it because of their use case or application.

Node count has passed BTC and mining hash rate is growing rapidly as you don't need an Asics, just your PC.

Can you explain this further OP? I want to know what you mean by this.

[arabspaceship123]

That's what govts are trying to do. It's possible they're concerns are legit but if they're going to use laws to pressure exchanges or ppl to surrender user info it's worrying what they're going to do with it. If ppl want to hide bitcoin trades they're using a mixer but if they want to hide trades using Monero they're using swaps to XMR but swapping back to BTC. It isn't free.

Paying more fees for greater privacy isn't a bad deal in a big bro society.

For several governments and agencies to be against mixers they bring some level of privacy to Bitcoin, it is an indication that they will see privacy coins as a big threat to their power.

They are not just against mixer but they are against any technology that will give us privacy and they will do whatever it takes to make sure that they deprive us from our privacy. We can see how they have bought some mining pool over to be on their side so that they can control which transaction should be added to the mining pool or not. And as humans due to greed, they forgot that it is only us that can make bitcoin more private by protecting bitcoin from the government. Monero has a better privacy than bitcoin because nobody cares about it, but everyone is after bitcoin for their own selfish reason.

[SamReomo]

Monero is the best coin for those who love to have transactions that are fully anonymous and that can't be tracked by anyone. I would possibly go with Monero without any hesitation because the coin is among the best coins that we have in the crypto market and it offers the best privacy which's way better then Bitcoin and the fees that Monero offer are low as compare to Bitcoin fees.

I would say that I like to use both Bitcoin and Monero as both of them are the best crypto-currencies out there, I know that no altcoin can compete Bitcoin as it's the king of the crypto world but I would still say that the features Monero offers are unique and anyone who knows about that coin would most probably favor it.

I also believe that Monero is a good alternative during the network congestion times as the fees of the transactions aren't high and the Monero transactions are quite fast. If I have to choose Bitcoin vs Monero then I would go with both of them, surely I would prefer Bitcoin more but I won't ignore Monero as well because that coin is truly an awesome one.

[virasog]

Are you sure it is getting a lot of adoption on exchanges? Because I know there's a lot of DEXes that are supporting Monero, but it seems like centralized exchanges are rushing to drop it like a hot potato (because "money laundering" and "crime" and ... you get the idea).

You are right that Monero should not be ignored though. Both of these coins solve different kinds of problems.

While Bitcoin provides you with a transparent blockchain ledger where everyone can see the transactions but i am afraid that for this to be workable perfectly, we also need a transparent honest world where people may not try to misuse this transparent data 

Monero solves a lot of problems for a common man who needs to hide the transactions from the cruel government system (by the way Satoshi developed Bitcoin in order to have an alternative monetary system not controllable by the authorities but by the people).

We will see CEX stop the support for privacy coins in order to comply with the regulations and this is the same that they are implementing KYC to cope with regulations. Anyways even though no centralized exchange supports XMR. it will still be widely used in the decentralized world.

[Pmalek]

No, that is the point:  ANYONE can run their own coordinator since the Wasabi software is entirely open source.

I got to hand it to you. You are not giving up in defending the undefendable. No matter how pointless it is, or the fact that absolutely no one supports the idea of your open-source client using secret findings by a malicious entity that is against both you and me. But it's always good to know on what side you stand.

We will see CEX stop the support for privacy coins in order to comply with the regulations and this is the same that they are implementing KYC to cope with regulations.

We have already reached that point, and many popular centralized exchanges have delisted Monero, with others surely to follow suit in the future.

[arabspaceship123]

Owners of crypto exchanges are finding American regulators on their backs but I don't see it as a negative development if every CEX delists privacy coins. If they're going to get removed it won't stop swaps ppl are going to be directed to DEX's because privacy coins won't go out of business.

We will see CEX stop the support for privacy coins in order to comply with the regulations and this is the same that they are implementing KYC to cope with regulations.

We have already reached that point, and many popular centralized exchanges have delisted Monero, with others surely to follow suit in the future.

[bbc.reporter]

well it will depend on your intentions

if you plan on using cryptocurrency for your business that will require you transactions with other clients, monero might not be the best choice for you however like you said monero is famous for its  privacy that it’s considered the most anonymous cryptocurrency right now

while btc is decentralized, monero is still far more private

However, in reality it is arguable because regulators can crackdown on your business for accepting a cryptocoin that cannot be placed under their surveillance. I reckon to use Monero, you should also be anonymous. This coin is not for legal businesses because it will only a risk to be harrassed by the government. How many exchanges have delisted Monero because of this?

[FinneysTrueVision]

I don't even use CEX's so I didn't consider even them lol. I meant on swap sites, P2P platforms (Bisq), DEX's, atomic swaps etc

Indeed Bitcoin is more like gold SoV and Monero is more cash. Lightning adoption isn't going anywhere by the looks of it. Coinjoin is expensive in high fee environment as and not really that private. In the mean time Monero is cheap & easy & does give you ample privacy. government don't like it, so there's your proof it works.

Daily transaction count for Monero hasn't changed much in the last 3 years. I'm not sure its adoption is going anywhere either.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.html

For every new merchant that accepts Monero I see two or three that accept Lightning. This is purely anecdotal so I'm not sure which one has the advantage.

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

Node count has passed BTC and mining hash rate is growing rapidly as you don't need an Asics, just your PC.

Node count isn't a very reliable measure because you can cherry pick whichever source is more favorable to your argument. MoneroHash says Monero has 3k nodes while Monero.Fail says it's 22k. For Bitcoin it's 16k nodes according to Bitnodes and 63k according to Luke Dashjr's website.

[nutildah]

Daily transaction count for Monero hasn't changed much in the last 5 years. I'm not sure its adoption is going anywhere either.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.html

Are you reading this chart the same way I am? 5 years ago there was about 4.1k transactions per day and now its about 26k transaction per day... That's an increase of over 5x. I'd say that definitely suggests adoption is occurring.

Node count isn't a very reliable measure because you can cherry pick whichever source is more favorable to your argument. MoneroHash says Monero has 3k nodes while Monero.Fail says it's 22k.

These websites are counting different things: the first is active (currently reachable) nodes, the second is total nodes seen within the last 2 weeks.

[Kakmakr]

Yes, financial privacy are important, but there are bigger problems with it that needs to be considered.. if you want to allow that.

We know 100% anonymity is directly linked to criminal actions and we should find solutions to expose criminals and still protecting people's financial information.

Do we want the blood of innocent victims of child abuse or victims of terrorism on our conscience, when people use this technology to pay for child porn or when they buy weapons to kill innocent people in the streets as part of some religious war?

[cryptosize]

Monero is still listed in big exchanges such as Binance, Kraken, KuCoin:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#Markets

Eventually I expect DEX to become the norm... good luck regulating those!

[nutildah]

We know 100% anonymity is directly linked to criminal actions and we should find solutions to expose criminals and still protecting people's financial information.

Hmm... I'm not entirely sure about that. As far as we know, Satoshi is 100% anonymous. Does that mean he is linked to criminal actions and should be exposed? There are instances when anonymity is important to non-criminals, for example, whistleblowers both corporate & political. Also protection from government overreach isn't necessarily a bad thing... should everyone who uses bitcoin in Iran, Bangladesh and a few other countries be punished just because its against the law?

Do we want the blood of innocent victims of child abuse or victims of terrorism on our conscience, when people use this technology to pay for child porn or when they buy weapons to kill innocent people in the streets as part of some religious war?

No of course not, and the government (US feds, INTERPOL mainly) already have their hands full when it comes to investigating & prosecuting these types of criminals. There are other ways they can be found and tracked than by monitoring their crypto transactions.

[Blitzboy]

Yes, financial privacy are important, but there are bigger problems with it that needs to be considered.. if you want to allow that.

We know 100% anonymity is directly linked to criminal actions and we should find solutions to expose criminals and still protecting people's financial information.

Do we want the blood of innocent victims of child abuse or victims of terrorism on our conscience, when people use this technology to pay for child porn or when they buy weapons to kill innocent people in the streets as part of some religious war?

Your complaints are fair, but they miss a key point: the issue is bad users, not Bitcoin's privacy feature. Should we not consider that most Bitcoin users value privacy for genuine reasons? All financial systems risk misuse, but humans are unpredictable, not technology.

We shouldnt dispute Bitcoin's privacy concept; instead, how can we strengthen ecosystem monitoring and regulation without infringing privacy rights? Blockchain experts, law enforcement, and privacy activists may collaborate. Innovations that balance security and privacy may result from such collaboration. Its difficult, but it protects money privacy and prevents criminal exploitation. Lets not forget Bitcoin's ability to transform financial privacy while solving these issues.

[yazher]

As far as I remember, the government is making some huge effort to stop the development of such coins because it has become popular in recent years until they made some action and for some exchanges to delisted them throughout this time since they have the power to do it and they are using it while they can. Unlike bitcoins, all they are doing right now is putting some pressure on exchanges and I hope it won't be getting tight in the upcoming years because we will lose some financial freedom if they continue to tighten their rules in all centralized exchanges.

[davis196]

1.There's no problem having both Bitcoin and Monero in your portfolio. I don't see your question as a "this or that" type of choice.
2.Yes, Monero is more private than Bitcoin, but so what? You could send monero to someone and still get scammed.
You could deposit monero in a centralized crypto exchange or crypto casino and never see it again.
The only advantage of Monero is the lack of transparency of transactions, but you could achieve the same thing by using a trusted BTC mixer.
Monero transaction fees are lower, but I wonder what the tx fees would be, if the Monero blockchain gets clogged with some useless shit like the Bitcoin Ordinals.

[cryptosize]

1.There's no problem having both Bitcoin and Monero in your portfolio. I don't see your question as a "this or that" type of choice.
2.Yes, Monero is more private than Bitcoin, but so what? You could send monero to someone and still get scammed.
You could deposit monero in a centralized crypto exchange or crypto casino and never see it again.
The only advantage of Monero is the lack of transparency of transactions, but you could achieve the same thing by using a trusted BTC mixer.
Monero transaction fees are lower, but I wonder what the tx fees would be, if the Monero blockchain gets clogged with some useless shit like the Bitcoin Ordinals.

https://mordinals.org/

[nutildah]

1.There's no problem having both Bitcoin and Monero in your portfolio. I don't see your question as a "this or that" type of choice.
2.Yes, Monero is more private than Bitcoin, but so what? You could send monero to someone and still get scammed.
You could deposit monero in a centralized crypto exchange or crypto casino and never see it again.
The only advantage of Monero is the lack of transparency of transactions, but you could achieve the same thing by using a trusted BTC mixer.
Monero transaction fees are lower, but I wonder what the tx fees would be, if the Monero blockchain gets clogged with some useless shit like the Bitcoin Ordinals.

https://mordinals.org/

LOL! I'm really not surprised... The first copycat was Litecoin Ordinals (because it also has SegWit & Taproot), then Doginals, then Ethscriptions, then Solscriptions, then inscriptions on AVAX & MATIC... and now Monero. That's the funny thing about NFTs on Monero though: nobody knows when they change hands, and nobody knows who has which ones. Think I'll pass.  

[shield132]

To me it seems Monero is something that should not be ignored.

Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees.

There's no reason why you can't Coinjoin/Lightning your UTXO's in conjunction with Monero - it's a good privacy tool and supplement to Bitcoin IMO.

Thoughts please. I want some honest opinions here.

Everyone can check my post history. I have been saying since 2017 that Monero is the next big thing that happened in crypto world. Monero is the currency that protects our privacy the most but it shocks me that Monero ranks 25th on coinmarketcap. As it looks, not everyone is looking for privacy but Monero will grow over time, people will appreciate the benefits that monero brings. At the moment Bitcoin Mixers are doing their job well, they simply cost expensive because Bitcoin price and transaction fees have increased.

[PrivacyG]

Monero is the better option IF you need Privacy.

The two Coins will have a difference in how adoption and acceptance works however.

Bitcoin will become more accepted the better ways Authorities find to trace you and your history.  So while Bitcoin will become more accepted there will be an enforced Centralization and Surveillance.  A 'Second Layer Centralization and Supervision' if you will.  But Bitcoin owners will become increasingly aware of Monero and many will take what Authorities say for granted.  I expect there will be news sounding like 'Bitcoin is much better than Monero' once adoption levels increase substantially.  Anyway.  Bitcoin owners will be for the most part the normies.

Monero will become more accepted too the better ways Authorities find to trace you and your history.  So while Monero will become more accepted there will be some back lash from Authorities and pretty much most Third Parties who obey.  It will be the 'Underground Currency' if you will.  But Monero owners will become increasingly aware of this and will resort to using mostly Monero only.  I expect there will be news sounding like 'Monero is the favorite Currency for crime' once adoption levels increase substantially.  Anyway.  Monero owners will be for the most part the rebels.

Like it or not.  The society will soon be segregated.  It sounds like these Science Fiction movies but we are almost there.  I do see a very clear line of separation between the two sides of our society already however.  Only for choosing to not have a Bank Account or a daily driver Smart phone I am seen as a non conformist and excluded automatically by society.

Like it or not.  Bitcoin will gain more popularity but will be closer to how Banks work than ever before.  Monero will be the Currency for escapees of society.  Not for crime but for the people who care.  For the people who rather not have any thing than have no Privacy.

Dystopia is here.  Bitcoin will continue to be King.  But Monero will be the King of the Underground.

[barto123]

Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees.

Because Bitcoin is used 1000x more often than Monero. If Monero would reach the limits of its capacity, it would have high fees too. And since Monero is not using any different blockchain architecture that would make it more efficient than Bitcoin with block space, you can't say that it's more scalable just because the devs chose to have higher block size cap. Raising the size cap is trivial, dealing with the consequences is not.

I've seen Monero's transaction volume range from 3% to 20% of Bitcoin

https://localmonero.co/blocks/stats/transaction-stats

https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_transactions_per_day

A lot of Monero's transactions are used for real commerce on dark net markets & now a bunch of websites - marketplaces, gift cards, internet services (VPN providers), esims, online shopping etc. See here kycnot.me

Bitcoin has a lot of the same sure, except it's used as gateway from fiat, so there's a lot of transactions that are just moving money, not spending.

Monero is being spent a lot, it's not a hodl culture. Spending is ultimately how we win. It's real adoption.

The demand for privacy is clearly growing, on every level. I've never seen so many people have degoogled phones, ditch their surveillance apps, software, operating systems.

[cryptosize]

Monero is being spent a lot, it's not a hodl culture.

That's partly because Monero is an inflationary currency (tail emission/eternal 0.6 XMR block subsidy), unlike BTC which is destined to become deflationary.

[FinneysTrueVision]

Daily transaction count for Monero hasn't changed much in the last 5 years. I'm not sure its adoption is going anywhere either.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.html

Are you reading this chart the same way I am? 5 years ago there was about 4.1k transactions per day and now its about 26k transaction per day... That's an increase of over 5x. I'd say that definitely suggests adoption is occurring.

I meant to say 3 years, which is the default shown when visiting that page. That's still quite a long time without significant growth.

Node count isn't a very reliable measure because you can cherry pick whichever source is more favorable to your argument. MoneroHash says Monero has 3k nodes while Monero.Fail says it's 22k.

These websites are counting different things: the first is active (currently reachable) nodes, the second is total nodes seen within the last 2 weeks.

The claim that Monero has more nodes seems to be based on the Monero.Fail website that includes older data which is why I believe they are cherry picking an inflated number.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/olb651/monero_nodes_15k_bitcoin_nodes_13k/

[NotATether]

LOL! I'm really not surprised... The first copycat was Litecoin Ordinals (because it also has SegWit & Taproot), then Doginals, then Ethscriptions, then Solscriptions, then inscriptions on AVAX & MATIC... and now Monero. That's the funny thing about NFTs on Monero though: nobody knows when they change hands, and nobody knows who has which ones. Think I'll pass. 

What? Why does ETH need Ordinal technology of all cryptocurrencies? It already has smart contracts, what the hell, it already has NFTs so this kind of thing is just bloat for the network.

It looks like people are trying to spam all the networks by using these projects for storing useless crap purely in an attempt to earn more money.

[pinggoki]

It's too late for me to hide anything on the government and it's not like they are going to tax me on my crypto stuff so I don't think that I'm ever going to try using Monero and now that a lot of CEX are trying their best to remove it in their exchange. We're probably living in a dystopia already, we just refuse to see it because it's not what we've expected of the dystopias we've watched and read. I would still go for bitcoin, I'm good enough with the pseudonymity that it provides, maybe I'll worry about my privacy when I have tens or hundreds of millions if not billions in crypto.

[apogio]

LOL! I'm really not surprised... The first copycat was Litecoin Ordinals (because it also has SegWit & Taproot), then Doginals, then Ethscriptions, then Solscriptions, then inscriptions on AVAX & MATIC... and now Monero. That's the funny thing about NFTs on Monero though: nobody knows when they change hands, and nobody knows who has which ones. Think I'll pass.  

The only question I have is why on earth do people want to have ordinals in the first place. What do they gain with them? Do people really think that this is art and someone will pay absurd amounts of money to buy them in the future? This is ridiculous, pixelized sh*t.

[cryptosize]

LOL! I'm really not surprised... The first copycat was Litecoin Ordinals (because it also has SegWit & Taproot), then Doginals, then Ethscriptions, then Solscriptions, then inscriptions on AVAX & MATIC... and now Monero. That's the funny thing about NFTs on Monero though: nobody knows when they change hands, and nobody knows who has which ones. Think I'll pass.  

The only question I have is why on earth do people want to have ordinals in the first place. What do they gain with them? Do people really think that this is art and someone will pay absurd amounts of money to buy them in the future? This is ridiculous, pixelized sh*t.

Why do people pay millions of dollars for a bunch of paint on a canvas (Mona Lisa)?

Most of the time it's money laundering via the "art" excuse.

[apogio]

Why do people pay millions of dollars for a bunch of paint on a canvas (Mona Lisa)?

Most of the time it's money laundering via the "art" excuse.

Or perhaps it's a way to show power. I mean apart from the money laundering reason. There are people who really think that others will feel jealousy if they buy a super expensive item. That's a motivation too.

[PrivacyG]

It's too late for me to hide anything on the government and it's not like they are going to tax me on my crypto stuff so I don't think that I'm ever going to try using Monero and now that a lot of CEX are trying their best to remove it in their exchange.

You are taking the wrong approach.  It is never too late to start taking your Privacy back.  Taxed or not, why continue letting the Government collect information on you and slash your Privacy away.  Using Monero is not about hiding for Taxes.  Using Monero is about just that.  Part of getting back Privacy in your life.

As for Monero and Exchanges.  Even if Centralized Exchanges remove Monero it does not mean much.  Centralized Exchanges will have to obey to what Authorities say.  Authorities hate Monero because you can have Privacy again.  So this happens.  Centralized Exchanges are requested to remove Monero or they are doing it on their own out of fear of getting sanctioned or investigated by United States.

We're probably living in a dystopia already, we just refuse to see it because it's not what we've expected of the dystopias we've watched and read. I would still go for bitcoin, I'm good enough with the pseudonymity that it provides, maybe I'll worry about my privacy when I have tens or hundreds of millions if not billions in crypto.

Why worry ONLY if you have a massive Wealth?  What is the point of only worrying when you have that much if every body can see your history already.  The point is caring about Privacy BEFORE some body is interested in researching your history.  Because why let them search your history.  Who are they to invade your Privacy?  No body should be able to do that.

[barto123]

There's no reason why you can't Coinjoin/Lightning your UTXO's in conjunction with Monero - it's a good privacy tool and supplement to Bitcoin IMO.

If you are already using coinjoin and Lightning, then what supplementation does Monero provide?

Coinjoin is only forward facing privacy & lightning has a lot of privacy holes. Monero as the final spend is a good idea IMO. Or swap Monero to Lightning. Mix it up though, you don't want the same patterns.

[panganib999]

Isn't monero getting dropped left and right from exchanges? Guess the "privacy and anonymity" that it offers couldn't work to its advantage huh.

Cutting the smug off, When you're given the choice between a practically new kid on the block with a lot to prove for itself but shows great promise, and a veteran in the industry that's standing still despite numerous attempts at its life and is still able to provide the same if not better kind of service all these years, I'm pretty sure you'd choose the latter. And that's no surprise, bitcoin's always been the safest choice all these years after all.
Monero is good and all that, but it just couldn't hold a candle against the longevity and the sense of security that people have over bitcoin. You can make people hold bitcoin for a decade, but you can't make them hold Monero, on a particularly long amount of time.

[Kruw]

Coinjoin is only forward facing privacy & lightning has a lot of privacy holes.

What do you mean "Coinjoin is only forward facing privacy"?

[arabspaceship123]

If it wasn't successful it won't be used. The privacy and anonymity works to its advantage that's why centralised exchanges in America are dropping Monero. They're scared of American regulations so they'll delist but it's going to remain available on decentralised exchanges. It doesn't change anything for privacy but XMR trade volumes aren't going to be high.

Isn't monero getting dropped left and right from exchanges? Guess the "privacy and anonymity" that it offers couldn't work to its advantage huh.

[GingerAle]

If it wasn't successful it won't be used. The privacy and anonymity works to its advantage that's why centralised exchanges in America are dropping Monero. They're scared of American regulations so they'll delist but it's going to remain available on decentralised exchanges. It doesn't change anything for privacy but XMR trade volumes aren't going to be high.

Isn't monero getting dropped left and right from exchanges? Guess the "privacy and anonymity" that it offers couldn't work to its advantage huh.

Which american exchanges?

[apogio]

Isn't monero getting dropped left and right from exchanges? Guess the "privacy and anonymity" that it offers couldn't work to its advantage huh.

Yes, but this is exactly the reason CEXs don't like Monero. Its anonymity and privacy is a threat for them, because they can't censor it and they can't have any control over it in case any central authority (i.e. government, bank etc) ask for it.

So, to comply with their rules, CEXs have to ignore Monero. It is by default, too good for us, too bad for them.

[cryptosize]

Isn't monero getting dropped left and right from exchanges? Guess the "privacy and anonymity" that it offers couldn't work to its advantage huh.

Yes, but this is exactly the reason CEXs don't like Monero. Its anonymity and privacy is a threat for them, because they can't censor it and they can't have any control over it in case any central authority (i.e. government, bank etc) ask for it.

So, to comply with their rules, CEXs have to ignore Monero. It is by default, too good for us, too bad for them.

Binance, Kraken, KuCoin still list it:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#Markets

Even if they delist it, they can do nothing about DEX bridges.

[arabspaceship123]

In America if crypto exchanges want to granted official or regulated status they won't be allowed to use XMR or other privacy coins because govts want to know everything about crypto transactions. If exchanges can't give govts details on transactions they won't be allowed to trade. Did you hear other news?

If it wasn't successful it won't be used. The privacy and anonymity works to its advantage that's why centralised exchanges in America are dropping Monero. They're scared of American regulations so they'll delist but it's going to remain available on decentralised exchanges. It doesn't change anything for privacy but XMR trade volumes aren't going to be high.

Isn't monero getting dropped left and right from exchanges? Guess the "privacy and anonymity" that it offers couldn't work to its advantage huh.

Which american exchanges?

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Are you sure it is getting a lot of adoption on exchanges?

I'm not even sure that's a big positive, even if what OP said is true, which I'm not sure of as monero has been listed on tons of exchanges for years now anyway.

The thing about bitcoin is that its one of the few cryptocurrencies that can actually be used as money to buy stuff from merchants, which I believe was one of the intended purposes from the get-go.  But monero?  I don't know any place you can spend it, and I'd like to see some evidence that it's being used on the dark web.  It makes sense that it would be, but I've never visited any onion sites and so I don't know if it's really being used there.

Aside from that, I've got no problems whatsoever with XMR.  And by the way, most altcoins have much lower fees and much faster confirmation times than bitcoin.  I wish that weren't so, but that's the reality.

Coinjoin is only forward facing privacy & lightning has a lot of privacy holes.

What do you mean "Coinjoin is only forward facing privacy"?

I was curious about that statement as well.

[leonair]

Isn't monero getting dropped left and right from exchanges? Guess the "privacy and anonymity" that it offers couldn't work to its advantage huh.

Yes, but this is exactly the reason CEXs don't like Monero. Its anonymity and privacy is a threat for them, because they can't censor it and they can't have any control over it in case any central authority (i.e. government, bank etc) ask for it.

So, to comply with their rules, CEXs have to ignore Monero. It is by default, too good for us, too bad for them.

Binance, Kraken, KuCoin still list it:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#Markets

Even if they delist it, they can do nothing about DEX bridges.

As a privacy coin it only complete a Internal transcation which is not possible publicly track like another crypto coins/tokens. but bitcoin is totally decentralised coin and it has more privacy then Monero. also bitcoin has decentralised wallet which is not possible to hack. so it doesn’t matter how internal transcation complete Monero coin bitcoin will always a strong secure coin then Monero

[arabspaceship123]

I don't understand why you're saying you need internal transactions for privacy because XMR's functioning on a privacy blockchain. Which coin are you talking about I've been reading your comments you haven't specified the name of the coin you've said works better than XMR. If this isn't about Monero which coin do you mean?

As a privacy coin it only complete a Internal transcation which is not possible publicly track like another crypto coins/tokens. but bitcoin is totally decentralised coin and it has more privacy then Monero. also bitcoin has decentralised wallet which is not possible to hack. so it doesn’t matter how internal transcation complete Monero coin bitcoin will always a strong secure coin then Monero

[apogio]

As a privacy coin it only complete a Internal transcation which is not possible publicly track like another crypto coins/tokens. but bitcoin is totally decentralised coin and it has more privacy then Monero. also bitcoin has decentralised wallet which is not possible to hack. so it doesn’t matter how internal transcation complete Monero coin bitcoin will always a strong secure coin then Monero

Are you saying "then" or "than"?

Bitcoin is not as private as monero is. Monero offers anonymity, whereas Bitcoin offers pseudonymity.

As far is decentralisation is concerned, then it is very difficult to calculate which one is more decentralised. Bitcoin is huge compared to XMR.

[cryptosize]

Isn't monero getting dropped left and right from exchanges? Guess the "privacy and anonymity" that it offers couldn't work to its advantage huh.

Yes, but this is exactly the reason CEXs don't like Monero. Its anonymity and privacy is a threat for them, because they can't censor it and they can't have any control over it in case any central authority (i.e. government, bank etc) ask for it.

So, to comply with their rules, CEXs have to ignore Monero. It is by default, too good for us, too bad for them.

Binance, Kraken, KuCoin still list it:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#Markets

Even if they delist it, they can do nothing about DEX bridges.

As a privacy coin it only complete a Internal transcation which is not possible publicly track like another crypto coins/tokens. but bitcoin is totally decentralised coin and it has more privacy then Monero. also bitcoin has decentralised wallet which is not possible to hack. so it doesn’t matter how internal transcation complete Monero coin bitcoin will always a strong secure coin then Monero

Excuse me? Are you a ChatGPT bot or what?

As a privacy coin it only complete a Internal transcation which is not possible publicly track like another crypto coins/tokens. but bitcoin is totally decentralised coin and it has more privacy then Monero. also bitcoin has decentralised wallet which is not possible to hack. so it doesn’t matter how internal transcation complete Monero coin bitcoin will always a strong secure coin then Monero

Are you saying "then" or "than"?

Bitcoin is not as private as monero is. Monero offers anonymity, whereas Bitcoin offers pseudonymity.

As far is decentralisation is concerned, then it is very difficult to calculate which one is more decentralised. Bitcoin is huge compared to XMR.

I'd argue Monero's decentralization is pretty good, since anyone with a CPU can contribute to the network's security (much like during BTC's early days). Not everyone has an ASIC though...

[o_e_l_e_o]

Isn't monero getting dropped left and right from exchanges? Guess the "privacy and anonymity" that it offers couldn't work to its advantage huh.

Exactly. Exchanges cannot surveil it, cannot control it, and cannot censor it like they can do with every other coin. Their only option to conform with governmental demands is to delist it entirely. This is just more proof that Monero works.

And as I've said before, no one who is actually interested in the privacy that Monero provides is buying it through a fully KYCed centralized exchange anyway.

But monero?  I don't know any place you can spend it

It makes up a third of all volume at Coincards: https://nitter.cz/CoinCards/status/1720502526339088602#m
And apparently now the most popular currency at this EU based online store: https://nitter.cz/shopinbit/status/1726672087761494495#m

Aside from that, I've got no problems whatsoever with XMR.  And by the way, most altcoins have much lower fees and much faster confirmation times than bitcoin.  I wish that weren't so, but that's the reality.

Only because most altcoins are incredibly insecure. If you think BCash is fast, for example, it actually takes over 1,000 BCash confirmations to have the same security as 6 bitcoin confirmations.

[wallet4bitcoin]

I love bitcoin, however i see privacy as the #1 concern going forward.

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

Most of the truth & freedom movement appear to recommend it over Bitcoin.

Node count has passed BTC and mining hash rate is growing rapidly as you don't need an Asics, just your PC.

To me it seems Monero is something that should not be ignored.

Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees.

There's no reason why you can't Coinjoin/Lightning your UTXO's in conjunction with Monero - it's a good privacy tool and supplement to Bitcoin IMO.

Thoughts please. I want some honest opinions here.

Privacy network simply gives better edge compared to Bitcoin network. I don't consider the Monero a network that has much traction because people are silent about it. The reason for the silence is not because people don't care but because they have little or no information about transactions that goes on in there.

In no distant time, I believe that privacy netowrks like monero will gain traction and still leave its users safe and secure as the transactions can not be mirrored like it is through the Bitcoin network.


This will also make projects migrate to privacy chains and another wave of boom will emerge for them.

[arabspaceship123]

I'd expect privacy networks to be taken away from centralised exchanges to outcast them. They'll be used but won't have activity because ppl won't be able to get fiat from centralised exchanges if they've originated from privacy networks. When ppl realise they won't have private info in centralised exchanges how many are going to use privacy networks?

In near time Monero could increase trades but we don't know if ppl will feel safe using it if they're sending exchanged crypto to centralised exchanges when they want fiat.

Privacy network simply gives better edge compared to Bitcoin network. I don't consider the Monero a network that has much traction because people are silent about it. The reason for the silence is not because people don't care but because they have little or no information about transactions that goes on in there.

In no distant time, I believe that privacy netowrks like monero will gain traction and still leave its users safe and secure as the transactions can not be mirrored like it is through the Bitcoin network.


This will also make projects migrate to privacy chains and another wave of boom will emerge for them.

[BenCodie]

I'd expect privacy networks to be taken away from centralised exchanges to outcast them. They'll be used but won't have activity because ppl won't be able to get fiat from centralised exchanges if they've originated from privacy networks. When ppl realise they won't have private info in centralised exchanges how many are going to use privacy networks?

In near time Monero could increase trades but we don't know if ppl will feel safe using it if they're sending exchanged crypto to centralised exchanges when they want fiat.

This has already happened for the most part. A lot of centralized exchanges have removed/dropped XMR entirely, or for most jurisdictions. While it effects liquidity, it does signify its effectiveness when it comes to privacy.

To address the second part of your post, I think many are becoming more and more fearful of centralized exchanges...some are even becoming more and more fearful of storing excess dollars. Over time, less will use CEXs for fiat related transactions, more will use DEXs for on chain trades and P2Ps if they ever need to do a fiat trade.

[PrivacyG]

I have some difficulties with monero, that I think can be addressed in this topic:

We have similar feelings.  Knowing Bitcoin, starting to use Monero in parallel for the first time is harder than it sounds.  It is not as easy as 1 2 3 for sure.  If you use Dogecoin it is one thing but using Monero is different.  Particularly because Monero is for PRIVACY, so more care is necessary if you want to keep it that way.  Wallet is different, Transactions look different et cetera.

I hope some day some body smart enough will drop some ELI 5 type of Monero Documentation.  Answering all What, How and Why questions.  There are definitely a lot of things I misunderstand about Monero even if I have been using it for a very long time already.

3. I am not sure whether the variable sized blocks are good or not... I haven't come to a conclusion yet, but I would like to hear your thoughts.

Guess we will find out when Monero usage reaches what is supposed to be a maximum.

[apogio]

We have similar feelings.  Knowing Bitcoin, starting to use Monero in parallel for the first time is harder than it sounds.  It is not as easy as 1 2 3 for sure.  If you use Dogecoin it is one thing but using Monero is different.  Particularly because Monero is for PRIVACY, so more care is necessary if you want to keep it that way.  Wallet is different, Transactions look different et cetera.

I hope some day some body smart enough will drop some ELI 5 type of Monero Documentation.  Answering all What, How and Why questions.  There are definitely a lot of things I misunderstand about Monero even if I have been using it for a very long time already.

Luckily the documentation here is good and easy to read.

But yeah Monero is superior to Doge (which I still dislike). In fact I don't like anything other than Bitcoin and Monero. The way I see it is totally privacy-centered. I want to achieve the highest privacy possible and Monero is a great asset in this regard.

[apogio]

In case anyone is interested, here is nice discussion, in a comparative video regarding censorhip in Bitcoin versus Monero.

[barto123]

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

I'm sure it's not true for exchange (Centralized ones) since legal makes it much harder or even impossible to list Monero on their exchange.

Node count has passed BTC and mining hash rate is growing rapidly as you don't need an Asics, just your PC.

Can you share which source data you use for Monero node count?

Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees.

But don't forget there are less TX created on Monero network compared with Bitcoin network. Monero TPS is also lower than BTC due to higher TX size and lower block size, despite lower block time.

yeah i don't even consider centralized exchanges, they will be short lived in my opinion as atomic swaps, dex's etc grow & privacy becomes more important


here's my source for node count bitcoin vs monero:

https://bitnodes.io/
https://monero.fail/map

yeah true, however it looks to me if monero has same TPS as bitcoin it would still be quite a lot cheaper with dynamic block sizes

[ABCbits]

here's my source for node count bitcoin vs monero:

https://bitnodes.io/
https://monero.fail/map

Thanks for the link. Although it's not directly comparable since bitnodes.io show number of total reachable nodes in last few hours while monero.fail shows total reachable nodes in last 2 weeks.

yeah true, however it looks to me if monero has same TPS as bitcoin it would still be quite a lot cheaper with dynamic block sizes

I don't think dynamic block help much since what matters most is how much transaction created by Monero users.

[coinerer]

We have similar feelings.  Knowing Bitcoin, starting to use Monero in parallel for the first time is harder than it sounds.  It is not as easy as 1 2 3 for sure.  If you use Dogecoin it is one thing but using Monero is different.  Particularly because Monero is for PRIVACY, so more care is necessary if you want to keep it that way.  Wallet is different, Transactions look different et cetera.

I hope some day some body smart enough will drop some ELI 5 type of Monero Documentation.  Answering all What, How and Why questions.  There are definitely a lot of things I misunderstand about Monero even if I have been using it for a very long time already.

Luckily the documentation here is good and easy to read.

But yeah Monero is superior to Doge (which I still dislike). In fact I don't like anything other than Bitcoin and Monero. The way I see it is totally privacy-centered. I want to achieve the highest privacy possible and Monero is a great asset in this regard.

Yes monero is a privacy coin and it has enough privacy to used but this coin is not much profitable. if you think only about your privacy then Monero is for you but if you think about privacy and potential profit too then Bitcoin will best. i want both so bitcoin is for me. If you want to compete between Bitcoin and Monero then Bitcoin will always be ahead in this field. Because no other coin compares to Bitcoin. so i always support bitcoin

[Synchronice]

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

Are you sure it is getting a lot of adoption on exchanges? Because I know there's a lot of DEXes that are supporting Monero, but it seems like centralized exchanges are rushing to drop it like a hot potato (because "money laundering" and "crime" and ... you get the idea).

If we want to protect privacy, we shouldn't use centralized exchanges, right? So, who cares?

I've said many times before that Monero is the only coin other than Bitcoin which I own and use, and the only altcoin I consider not to be a shitcoin. It shares many of the good things about bitcoin - decentalized, PoW, no premine, etc. - while also being far more private if used properly. I don't think it will ever replace bitcoin, but I also think it is one of the only altcoins which will continue to grow and continue to be used many years in the future.

The only reason bitcoin grows is that it is still an innovation, attracts people and it's possible for governments and financial institutes to control bitcoin by improving blockchain analysis and implementing massive KYC and making it illegal to hold Bitcoin without verifying yourself. I.E. if government can control it like your bank transactions, they'll let it's adoption to grow.
At the moment, Monero is the only solution. It's the only coin that offers everything and is still massively adopted.
Monero is the Tor of currencies while other altcoins act like a VPN.

The reason why I believe privacy is #1 concern is because the direction in which the globalists are taking the world is complete control of everything. The want to control every living thing. Sounds like a conspiracy theory until you realize they say it in plain sight.

That's not a conspiracy, that's reality. Controlled society can't do riots, can't protest. Government needs slaves, people with the lack of critical thinking. Probably soon, you won't have to study math and other subjects, your AI might do that for you but that will make average Joe dumb.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Thanks for the link. Although it's not directly comparable since bitnodes.io show number of total reachable nodes in last few hours while monero.fail shows total reachable nodes in last 2 weeks.

Perhaps a more fair comparison would be against bitnodes' Global Node list.

Monero is the Tor of currencies while other altcoins act like a VPN.

I wouldn't say altcoins are like a VPN at all. Many have even worse privacy than bitcoin does. Just take the biggest altcoin Ethereum as an example - they use an account based model rather than an UTXO based model, meaning all your ETH transactions (and all your stupid token transactions too) are all intrinsically linked together.

[barto123]

I don't even use CEX's so I didn't consider even them lol. I meant on swap sites, P2P platforms (Bisq), DEX's, atomic swaps etc

Indeed Bitcoin is more like gold SoV and Monero is more cash. Lightning adoption isn't going anywhere by the looks of it. Coinjoin is expensive in high fee environment as and not really that private. In the mean time Monero is cheap & easy & does give you ample privacy. government don't like it, so there's your proof it works.

Daily transaction count for Monero hasn't changed much in the last 3 years. I'm not sure its adoption is going anywhere either.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.html

For every new merchant that accepts Monero I see two or three that accept Lightning. This is purely anecdotal so I'm not sure which one has the advantage.

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

Node count has passed BTC and mining hash rate is growing rapidly as you don't need an Asics, just your PC.

Node count isn't a very reliable measure because you can cherry pick whichever source is more favorable to your argument. MoneroHash says Monero has 3k nodes while Monero.Fail says it's 22k. For Bitcoin it's 16k nodes according to Bitnodes and 63k according to Luke Dashjr's website.

At the start of scamdemic, Monero started to get more adoption - have zoom out further than 3 years.

I've been in Bitcoin since 2015, there's been so much more Monero discussion last couple years. A lot of people realizing they need more privacy as this digital prison comes online.

Bitcoiners must know it's not private enough. Almost all my coinjoined UTXO's have been censored lately. Yes I do try to use Bisq where I can.

I was hopeful for lightning - just checked 1ml.com - looks stagnant IMO. I remain hopeful, I just prefer Monero at this stage.

Yes, you might be right about node count. However Monero people are similar to Bitcoiner's. A lot of us run nodes. I'd say the number is up there regardless.

[DapanasFruit]

I love bitcoin, however i see privacy as the #1 concern going forward. Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc. Most of the truth & freedom movement appear to recommend it over Bitcoin. Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees. Thoughts please. I want some honest opinions here.

There is no question that on the area of privacy, Monero got it over Bitcoin and that is why organization and people who are really concerned on this factor can be choosing to use Monero rather than any other coins including BTC for that matter. Being a privacy coin, Monero is on the top of the list and can continue to be one as such for many long years. The only "disadvantage" is that many governments are wary of Monero as this is something that is truly beyond their eyes to see. Now, I have no problem with Monero though I am not one of its holders nor did I use it to transfer or buying anything. What is important is that people got choices according to the specifications of their situation.

[apogio]

The only "disadvantage" is that many governments are wary of Monero as this is something that is truly beyond their eyes to see.

This is an "advantage" as far as I am concerned. Governments can't control Bitcoin, nor Monero. The latter is definetely more private, having implemented both stealth addresses and ring signatures. To tell you the truth, I believe Monero serves its purpose very well. It's a private currency that can be used as a medium of exchange. Bitcoin, on the other hand serves a great purpose as a store of wealth, since it is more scarce and has limited supply. I love bitcoin and I use it for payments, even though I see a lot of hate regarding its higher fees. But I use it and I encourage everyone to use it.

[BlackHatCoiner]

The only "disadvantage" is that many governments are wary of Monero as this is something that is truly beyond their eyes to see.

This is an "advantage" as far as I am concerned.

It is a little bit of both, in my opinion. Sure, it is an advantage in the sense that they have even less control over the network. But, it's also a disadvantage, because it cannot let itself spread in the same variance as with Bitcoin.

Merchants and customers usually don't care about their privacy, whereas the government cares more than anyone about the merchants' and customers' privacy. So, there's not enough resistance from both sides. You can argue the same about Bitcoin, but the difference is that it's surveilled by the governments (and even that way, it's been attacked constantly, imagine).

[DeathAngel]

XMR is far better than Bitcoin if privacy is your goal. I just worry about the likelihood that it stays around for too much longer. Governments have been relentlessly pressuring exchanges to delist it & most have obliged. It’s so good at maintaining your privacy that its strength is its downfall. It’s great for privacy if your only plan is to use it as a medium of exchange. As an investment or long term hodl it’s awful & Bitcoin is far better.

[ChiBitCTy]

Monero's recent delisting on a major exchange ( I think it was Binance, but I could be wrong) is proof of why in my humble opinion should NEVER be made entirely anonymous.  This would end bitcoins chance at ever becoming a world wide currency system.  Governments already have a hard enough time accepting it as is, if it were to completely become anonymous, making the blockchain private..nearly every government in the world would shut it down.  More countries haven't shut down the use of Monero in their nation because it's not real popular.  I could go on and on about this, but this is my quick synopsis. 

[apogio]

whereas the government cares more than anyone about the merchants' and customers' privacy.

What do you mean by that? I am not sure I understood. Unless you meant that governments care about not allowing merchants' and customers' being private, so they can always keep an eye on their trades and their identities.

Monero's recent delisting on a major exchange ( I think it was Binance, but I could be wrong) is proof of why in my humble opinion should NEVER be made entirely anonymous.  This would end bitcoins chance at ever becoming a world wide currency system.

Do you think Satoshi chose to make Bitcoin pseudonymous and not anonymous for this reason? I mean it could be an argument, that if Bitcoin had Monero's features, then the governments would want to shut it down instead of surveilling it.

[BlackHatCoiner]

This would end bitcoins chance at ever becoming a world wide currency system.

I think that Bitcoin's optional privacy is a good selling point from a government's perspective. However, I am not convinced Satoshi deliberately did this. I mean, he reinvented money as concept, denationalized it; made money that is impossible for the state to intervene. He pretty much raised the middle finger to the entire financial and banking system. It's quite hard to buy that he was afraid. Anything but that. If he had thought Bitcoin's privacy wasn't good enough, or had known how to implement better privacy techniques, I believe he would have done it.

What do you mean by that? I am not sure I understood. Unless you meant that governments care about not allowing merchants' and customers' being private, so they can always keep an eye on their trades and their identities.

That's what I meant. Government cares about invading into everyone's privacy more than anyone. It sort of survives by that.

[cryptosize]

Monero's recent delisting on a major exchange ( I think it was Binance, but I could be wrong) is proof of why in my humble opinion should NEVER be made entirely anonymous.  This would end bitcoins chance at ever becoming a world wide currency system.  Governments already have a hard enough time accepting it as is, if it were to completely become anonymous, making the blockchain private..nearly every government in the world would shut it down.  More countries haven't shut down the use of Monero in their nation because it's not real popular.  I could go on and on about this, but this is my quick synopsis. 

You cannot shut down Monero or Bitcoin, just like you cannot shut down BitTorrent or Tor or any other decentralized protocol running on the permissionless TCP/IP.

What you're talking about is delisting certain cryptocurrencies from CEX and ETF custodians such as BlackRock, which would remove USD liquidity from the ecosystem and cause downwards pressure on the fiat price/valuation. Is that correct?

Do you think Satoshi chose to make Bitcoin pseudonymous and not anonymous for this reason? I mean it could be an argument, that if Bitcoin had Monero's features, then the governments would want to shut it down instead of surveilling it.

Satoshi wanted to implement XMR features on BTC, long before XMR was born:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=770.msg9074#msg9074

Maybe he didn't have enough time, maybe not enough programming expertise, who knows... it's endless speculation at this point.

Did Satoshi care about BlackRock's ETF? Most likely not.

And please stop assuming that it's possible to shut down decentralized, permissionless protocols, because it's not.

Nobody can shut down Monero even if the price drops all the way down to $1 or even $0.01. OTC trades will still exist, DEX too.

[apogio]

And please stop assuming that it's possible to shut down decentralized, permissionless protocols, because it's not.

Nobody can shut down Monero even if the price drops all the way down to $1 or even $0.01. OTC trades will still exist, DEX too.

I didn't mean it this way. The only way to shut them down would be to permanently shut down the internet. But even then, Blockstream has developed the Satellite which transmits the blockchain from space, without needing internet. That's unnecessary of course, because nobody can shut down the internet and even if they did, they would damage the current financial system too. Which of course is not their intention. I don't know who this "their" refers to, but you got the point.

As far as Monero is concerned, the only problem with the constant exchange price drop is that consumer goods are valued in FIAT, which is then converted to Monero, if you want to find a merchant that sells for Monero. So, they suffer from that. But if you can find a merchant that wants 1 XMR for product A, and doesn't care how much 1 XMR is worth in FIAT terms, then you can be confident that this merchant has deeply understood the value of Monero and Bitcoin. They are both P2P cash systems and should be treated as such!

[thecodebear]

Monero's main problem is its main feature. The powers that be simply won't allow a system with total privacy, because govts and law enforcement agencies need SOME ability to track criminals, terrorists, etc. Bitcoin, being pseudonymous allows the public monetary privacy if you put in the work to do things privately, but they can still track transactions through centralized exchanges, so there is still that ability to try to track and stop criminals.

Basically, total privacy is a safe haven for bad people. The powers of the world won't make it easy to use that sort of thing so Monero will never get popular enough with average people to get widely used.

While Bitcoin has enough privacy to be useful for the average person, but not so much privacy that its a safe haven for bad people. It's pretty much the perfect threading of the needle between those two things. Though we do indeed need more ability for privacy in Bitcoin for the average person through stuff like decentralized exchanges and whatnot. Right now its actually TOO hard to gain privacy with Bitcoin because centralized exchanges are the arteries of the ecosystem and they of course have to follow what the govt tells them to do. Decentralized exchanges need to gain a lot more volume to make them useful. Once we have a healthy mix of CEXs and DEXs for Bitcoin I think we'll have that best case scenario where people who want privacy can have it, but people who are using bitcoin in a bunch of illegal operations probably won't be able to retain perfect privacy under a lot of law enforcement scrutiny.

It's the old play of ideals vs the reality of what society needs. Monero leans too much on the ideal and not enough on what society needs, while Bitcoin is probably the best possible split of both those things. Hardcore privacy idealists will like Monero more, realists will like Bitcoin more. And, obviously, there's orders of magnitude more realists and just everyday people than there are hardcore privacy idealists, so Monero will remain a niche coin for them.

Monero is pretty much the only cryptocurrency besides Bitcoin that I think can realistically be called an actually currency, but it will remain in its niche and so will never be a very useful currency. While Bitcoin will continue to grow in to the world's alternate to national currencies and become humanity's global currency.

[barto123]

Yes, financial privacy are important, but there are bigger problems with it that needs to be considered.. if you want to allow that.

We know 100% anonymity is directly linked to criminal actions and we should find solutions to expose criminals and still protecting people's financial information.

Do we want the blood of innocent victims of child abuse or victims of terrorism on our conscience, when people use this technology to pay for child porn or when they buy weapons to kill innocent people in the streets as part of some religious war?

yes a small percentage of society are criminals, however most are just trying to pay their bills are look after their family

the real issue is a group of super rich pedophiles who run the world - they commit every crime under the sun and get away with it. they have weaponized everything. wars, money laundering, terrorism, theft, extortion, rape...everything, at least 17m people dead from the vaccine. they evidence is irrefutable.

surveillance is one of their main weapons of control, privacy coins like monero is massive - that's why binance, largest centralized exchange just delisted it. they're slowly coming for your privacy. 2020 during lockdowns lots of 5G infrastructure went up. no extra speed. it's for an AI prison. crazy conspiracy theory until you realize it's the truth.

[PrivacyG]

While Bitcoin has enough privacy to be useful for the average person, but not so much privacy that its a safe haven for bad people. It's pretty much the perfect threading of the needle between those two things.

But this is also what could break Bitcoin in the future.

I understand entirely your point and you do have one.  But then let me flip the situation over and think about it differently.

Since Bitcoin offers a way to Privacy for those who seek it but also a way to de conspire most Transactions of the people who do not care or of the people who make mistakes along the road to Privacy.  Is it not safe to assume there is no risk here for us who want Privacy?  If you can differentiate between what is a de conspired Transaction and a 'Private' one, then the 'Private' ones can easily become targets.

By this I mean precisely what Centralized Exchanges do about UTXOs coming from Mixers and Coin Joins.  If I can get a ban hammer and suspect flag for spending my 'Private' Bitcoin then I think this can easily break Bitcoin and make it similar to what we know CBDCs will be like.  Lack of Privacy through induced fear.

On the other hand.  Monero offers Privacy by default.  By using Monero no body knows any thing about any Transaction.  You can spend and receive and no body knows shit.

This gives it a HUGE advantage.  The only way Monero can be broken is through huge crack downs and a big ban hammer.  Will this really happen?  Will we really listen to a ban hammer?  If Monero gets the hammer.  Is that not a dystopia?  If yes then who the hell will listen to any thing any more.  It would mean any thing we will try to do privately equals suspicion.  It means Monero will thrive in the underground.  Which also means the Fiat we know today will be cash less too and the only option to stay private is by using Monero.

I am split 50 and 50 on this situation.  Truth is that we are living a time surrounded by uncertainty.  You never know what comes next and unfortunately it looks like only worse and worse situations and decisions are made.  Monero is in my eyes never going to die because they just can not kill it.  If they do not know and can not find out who is using it then there is no target to attack.

[arabspaceship123]

Monero's good because it's doing a job. Govt's want it delisted in exchanges they'll give licences to because they don't want privacy coins used. XMR's only useful if you've got markets to to sell or exchange it that's why they'll try to drive it out of business.

Monero is pretty much the only cryptocurrency besides Bitcoin that I think can realistically be called an actually currency, but it will remain in its niche and so will never be a very useful currency. While Bitcoin will continue to grow in to the world's alternate to national currencies and become humanity's global currency.

[PrivacyG]

XMR's only useful if you've got markets to to sell or exchange it that's why they'll try to drive it out of business.

This is what makes Monero stand still and strong even if largest Exchanges remove it.  There are a lot of Decentralized opportunities to convert Monero into other Cryptocurrencies.  There is even Atomic Swap possibility between Monero and Bitcoin.  There will in consequence ALWAYS be an option and a Market for it.  I honestly doubt it is going any where unless Europe or The United States ban it.  Even then, underground it will continue to thrive in my opinion.  You can ban Open Source legally.  But you can not stop Monero nor can you find its users easily.

If Coins like XRP get in this same mud Monero is in, it would die quickly and painfully.  Look at Monero however.  Every body hates on it all of a sudden but it is still on the rise.  Monero simply can not die for now.

[Easteregg69]

I sold my Dash when Monero got delisted. Just saying. Monero was delisted after I sold that first.

Cheers. I get my beer and then a shower. At a loss. Unreported. Notch notch.

[9TONNN]

I love bitcoin, however i see privacy as the #1 concern going forward.

Monero is quietly gaining lots of adoption on websites, services, exchanges, dark net markets etc.

Most of the truth & freedom movement appear to recommend it over Bitcoin.

Node count has passed BTC and mining hash rate is growing rapidly as you don't need an Asics, just your PC.

To me it seems Monero is something that should not be ignored.

Also scaling is another issue, Bitcoin fees are 1000x Monero fees.

There's no reason why you can't Coinjoin/Lightning your UTXO's in conjunction with Monero - it's a good privacy tool and supplement to Bitcoin IMO.

Thoughts please. I want some honest opinions here.

Which are the top three DEX exchanges having higher Monero(XMR) trading volumes?

[zabzob]

Which are the top three DEX exchanges having higher Monero(XMR) trading volumes?

Bisq is one to consider

[arabspaceship123]

Monero price's going to take a swipe loss if 1 or 2 big exchanges to delist it. How's it going to affect SEC in 1 or 2 years if they'll allow American licence operated exchanges to receive deposits connected to XMR BTC swaps. It'll have a long life if decentralised ops exist because ppl didn't stop using it.

XMR's only useful if you've got markets to to sell or exchange it that's why they'll try to drive it out of business.

This is what makes Monero stand still and strong even if largest Exchanges remove it.  There are a lot of Decentralized opportunities to convert Monero into other Cryptocurrencies.  There is even Atomic Swap possibility between Monero and Bitcoin.  There will in consequence ALWAYS be an option and a Market for it.  I honestly doubt it is going any where unless Europe or The United States ban it.  Even then, underground it will continue to thrive in my opinion.  You can ban Open Source legally.  But you can not stop Monero nor can you find its users easily.

If Coins like XRP get in this same mud Monero is in, it would die quickly and painfully.  Look at Monero however.  Every body hates on it all of a sudden but it is still on the rise.  Monero simply can not die for now.

[apogio]

This is what makes Monero stand still and strong even if largest Exchanges remove it.  There are a lot of Decentralized opportunities to convert Monero into other Cryptocurrencies.  There is even Atomic Swap possibility between Monero and Bitcoin.  There will in consequence ALWAYS be an option and a Market for it.  I honestly doubt it is going any where unless Europe or The United States ban it.  Even then, underground it will continue to thrive in my opinion.  You can ban Open Source legally.  But you can not stop Monero nor can you find its users easily.

If Coins like XRP get in this same mud Monero is in, it would die quickly and painfully.  Look at Monero however.  Every body hates on it all of a sudden but it is still on the rise.  Monero simply can not die for now.

I honestly agree with you. Monero will be there for us, for a long time (I could say forever, but anyway). Monero persists some amazing features and it is a brilliant cryptocurrency privacy-wise.

But if we dream of such a cryptocurrency to become widely adopted and more and more people to start using it, then I seriously doubt about it. The problem lies in getting higher adoption.

Most people follow the dark path created by governments and the media. They will not be able to escape the lie they have been immersed in and I take for granted that they will follow the logic that monero exists only for criminals. Simply because the media and governments say so. Not to mention the unimaginably strong bond of the average person with the modern economic system (banks, loans, FIAT money, inflation, etc.).

[barto123]

It's too late for me to hide anything on the government and it's not like they are going to tax me on my crypto stuff so I don't think that I'm ever going to try using Monero and now that a lot of CEX are trying their best to remove it in their exchange. We're probably living in a dystopia already, we just refuse to see it because it's not what we've expected of the dystopias we've watched and read. I would still go for bitcoin, I'm good enough with the pseudonymity that it provides, maybe I'll worry about my privacy when I have tens or hundreds of millions if not billions in crypto.

This is the mentality of most and I get it.

"I'm just a drop in the ocean" "I've got nothing to hide"

The dystopia is advancing at a rapid rate. Soon you'll need to buy real meat on dark net markets if you don't want to eat ze bugs. Soon you'll need regular poison jabs to get your UBI.

To me, privacy will be life or death. If you want to live a healthy and free life, you're going to have to be like neo and navigate the matrix like a ninja. Or you're going to have to leave the system entirely/walk into the forest & start a new life.

Hopefully I'm wrong, Hopefully people find themselves again and start acting like humans, the world can change so fast if people started doing the right thing. Almost no one is a good person, because everything in this system is immoral. We're the problem and the solution.

[cryptosize]

It's too late for me to hide anything on the government and it's not like they are going to tax me on my crypto stuff so I don't think that I'm ever going to try using Monero and now that a lot of CEX are trying their best to remove it in their exchange. We're probably living in a dystopia already, we just refuse to see it because it's not what we've expected of the dystopias we've watched and read. I would still go for bitcoin, I'm good enough with the pseudonymity that it provides, maybe I'll worry about my privacy when I have tens or hundreds of millions if not billions in crypto.

This is the mentality of most and I get it.

"I'm just a drop in the ocean" "I've got nothing to hide"

The dystopia is advancing at a rapid rate. Soon you'll need to buy real meat on dark net markets if you don't want to eat ze bugs. Soon you'll need regular poison jabs to get your UBI.

To me, privacy will be life or death. If you want to live a healthy and free life, you're going to have to be like neo and navigate the matrix like a ninja. Or you're going to have to leave the system entirely/walk into the forest & start a new life.

Hopefully I'm wrong, Hopefully people find themselves again and start acting like humans, the world can change so fast if people started doing the right thing. Almost no one is a good person, because everything in this system is immoral. We're the problem and the solution.

They'll tell you you're a crazy tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist...

[barto123]

Yes, financial privacy are important, but there are bigger problems with it that needs to be considered.. if you want to allow that.

We know 100% anonymity is directly linked to criminal actions and we should find solutions to expose criminals and still protecting people's financial information.

Do we want the blood of innocent victims of child abuse or victims of terrorism on our conscience, when people use this technology to pay for child porn or when they buy weapons to kill innocent people in the streets as part of some religious war?

Your complaints are fair, but they miss a key point: the issue is bad users, not Bitcoin's privacy feature. Should we not consider that most Bitcoin users value privacy for genuine reasons? All financial systems risk misuse, but humans are unpredictable, not technology.

We shouldnt dispute Bitcoin's privacy concept; instead, how can we strengthen ecosystem monitoring and regulation without infringing privacy rights? Blockchain experts, law enforcement, and privacy activists may collaborate. Innovations that balance security and privacy may result from such collaboration. Its difficult, but it protects money privacy and prevents criminal exploitation. Lets not forget Bitcoin's ability to transform financial privacy while solving these issues.

What defines a bad user though? and can you trust a central point of authority to enforce what is moral or immoral?

I would say a lot of the "bad users" you're referring to aren't actually that bad. The only thing that is truly immoral is harming another. The law will say otherwise, because the system protects the worst kind of criminals, who perpetrate war crimes, sex trafficking of minors, ritualistic blood sacrifice, terrorism,  - to name a few. They've just changed the wording of their crimes and brainwashed society to believe it. The ones who run this world are doing the worst crimes and that's why people like Assange are locked up. Those who speak truth are silenced. killed, imprisioned, "suicided".

A lot of the privacy activists have their morals intact. I wouldn't allow law enforcement or blockchain experts to tell me what is moral. most blockchain experts are scammers and law enforcement - well if you've been paying attention, they would beat people to the ground during the plandemic if you didn't wear a mask, for a virus that's never been proven to exist. they coerced a vaccination that's killed millions & that is just the tip of the iceberg. The police clearly work for the politicians, they don't represent the people. If you actually take the time to think, you'll realize everything single thing in this system is immoral. There is no law.

[arabspaceship123]

There isn't the reason to stop providing services like XMR if they're being used by good users or bad users. It's known good ppl use banks for their needs so bad ppl use banks for theirs. We aren't debating closing down banks because of good users or bad users but when it's about crypto govt's want to take control.

[Troytech]

I believe with time, the weak side of this major contender will also surface and it will become obvious that Bitcoin will always be the leader.

What weak side are you referring to?

Are you sure it is getting a lot of adoption on exchanges? Because I know there's a lot of DEXes that are supporting Monero, but it seems like centralized exchanges are rushing to drop it like a hot potato (because "money laundering" and "crime" and ... you get the idea).

Centralized exchanges should not be taken to be the arbiter of what is a good coin or not. They will list endless numbers of outright scams if it makes them profit. All their decisions are driven only by what will make them profit, not by what is good for their users or the community.

There's no other cryptocurrencies that can provide you with the level of privacy you can have with bitcoin

This is just false. Monero is exponentially more private than bitcoin.

So holding and using Bitcoin give you a neutral impression instead of Monero.

Various governments around the world are currently advancing legislation to make it illegal to own and hold bitcoin outside of fully KYCed centralized exchanges and in your own wallet. So you will soon be viewed as equally suspect. The correct answer is not to acquiesce to these crazy regulations and give in to the surveillance state.


I've said many times before that Monero is the only coin other than Bitcoin which I own and use, and the only altcoin I consider not to be a shitcoin. It shares many of the good things about bitcoin - decentalized, PoW, no premine, etc. - while also being far more private if used properly. I don't think it will ever replace bitcoin, but I also think it is one of the only altcoins which will continue to grow and continue to be used many years in the future.

Well said just as tho you've said all my thoughts on this issue, I've not used monero but I've been a fan and It's a coin that I consider using something although not to store but anytime I would like to do a private transaction.

Bitcoin and monero should not be compared, there serve different purpose and have different strengths, bitcoin security has been compromised a bit since online exchanges appeared to be the most commonly used and there would not fail to deliver you information to the government to save their ass, unless your doing your transactions off exchanges.

I can't advise anyone to invest in monero but you can sure use it when you want to keep your privacy secured.

This is what makes Monero stand still and strong even if largest Exchanges remove it.  There are a lot of Decentralized opportunities to convert Monero into other Cryptocurrencies.  There is even Atomic Swap possibility between Monero and Bitcoin.  There will in consequence ALWAYS be an option and a Market for it.  I honestly doubt it is going any where unless Europe or The United States ban it.  Even then, underground it will continue to thrive in my opinion.  You can ban Open Source legally.  But you can not stop Monero nor can you find its users easily.

If Coins like XRP get in this same mud Monero is in, it would die quickly and painfully.  Look at Monero however.  Every body hates on it all of a sudden but it is still on the rise.  Monero simply can not die for now.

I honestly agree with you. Monero will be there for us, for a long time (I could say forever, but anyway). Monero persists some amazing features and it is a brilliant cryptocurrency privacy-wise.

But if we dream of such a cryptocurrency to become widely adopted and more and more people to start using it, then I seriously doubt about it. The problem lies in getting higher adoption.

Most people follow the dark path created by governments and the media. They will not be able to escape the lie they have been immersed in and I take for granted that they will follow the logic that monero exists only for criminals. Simply because the media and governments say so. Not to mention the unimaginably strong bond of the average person with the modern economic system (banks, loans, FIAT money, inflation, etc.).

IMO I monero starts chasing mass adoption we might have to compromise this amazing privacy that we are getting from it, remember the case of the silk road market place and how so many illegal activities where done through it and this might also be a case for monero, government doesn't like anything that there are not in control of

[BlackHatCoiner]

Bitcoin and monero should not be compared, there serve different purpose and have different strengths, bitcoin security has been compromised a bit since online exchanges appeared to be the most commonly used and there would not fail to deliver you information to the government to save their ass, unless your doing your transactions off exchanges.

That has nothing to do with Bitcoin's security. The network is the most secure comparably to every other cryptocurrency, with an All Time High of 673.8 EH/s hashrate.

IMO I monero starts chasing mass adoption we might have to compromise this amazing privacy that we are getting from it

... and why is that exactly? First things first, nobody controls the network. So, it isn't a regular, centralized shitcoin that the authorities can just shut down. Governments have tried breaking the privacy techniques of Monero and haven't succeeded once since the last big update (RingCT). The Proof-of-Work algorithm used (RandomX) and the overall stance of the community regarding it, is discouraging the development of ASICs, so it is even more decentralized than Bitcoin in a way.

Needless to say that if Monero's privacy is compromised voluntarily, it stops serving a purpose.

remember the case of the silk road market place and how so many illegal activities where done through it and this might also be a case for monero

• Silk road wasn't decentralized.
• Silk road was operating illegally.

[barto123]

Coinjoin is only forward facing privacy & lightning has a lot of privacy holes.

What do you mean "Coinjoin is only forward facing privacy"?

The way I understand it (& I'm no expert). You can Coinjoin all you want, but if the final destination links to you in anyway - IP address, name, address, browser, operating system, patterns etc. all the Coinjoin is useless because government blockchain analysis can connect the dots (for e.g). If you Coinjoin plus Lightning or Coinjoin plus Monero, it's much harder to connect start to finish. Unless you've bought or acquired your BTC P2P without KYC, then it's exponentially harder to track. Most people screwed this up though.

In summary, Coinjoin is only good in one direction, unless you have bought non-KYC BTC.

[BlackHatCoiner]

You can Coinjoin all you want, but if the final destination links to you in anyway - IP address, name, address, browser, operating system, patterns etc. all the Coinjoin is useless because government blockchain analysis can connect the dots (for e.g).

Picture coinjoin as a black box, where coins enter and leave the box as new coins. Let's make the hypothesis that each of the inputs is equally probable to create each of the outputs for the sake of simplicity (just like in this whirlpool coinjoin).

You see, you're right in the sense that all of the inputs have a slight connection with all of the outputs, but that's not the point. The point is that you can't match inputs with outputs, to de-anonymize the coinjoined outputs. Blockchain analysis is incapable to connect the dots, because first and foremost it relies on guesswork, and secondly good software (like Sparrow with Whirlpool) comes with anonymization techniques that hide IP address, OS, and other fingerprints, uses Tor etc.

[barto123]

XMR is far better than Bitcoin if privacy is your goal. I just worry about the likelihood that it stays around for too much longer. Governments have been relentlessly pressuring exchanges to delist it & most have obliged. It’s so good at maintaining your privacy that its strength is its downfall. It’s great for privacy if your only plan is to use it as a medium of exchange. As an investment or long term hodl it’s awful & Bitcoin is far better.

Almost everyday I'm watching them shadow ban Monero. EU banning anon wallets, Google flagging monero wallets as dangerous.

They can't flat out ban Monero as it would only attract more users. Monero is #1 underground currency.

Google just added blockchain surveillance for Bitcoin & altcoins. The cabal (j's) are coming for privacy in 2024, they need to launch CBDC soon before too many people wake up, probably on the back of some crisis so people will adopt it.

IMO, Monero will be around as long as internet stays up/people can still route around the dystopian surveillance grid

[barto123]

You can Coinjoin all you want, but if the final destination links to you in anyway - IP address, name, address, browser, operating system, patterns etc. all the Coinjoin is useless because government blockchain analysis can connect the dots (for e.g).

Picture coinjoin as a black box, where coins enter and leave the box as new coins. Let's make the hypothesis that each of the inputs is equally probable to create each of the outputs for the sake of simplicity (just like in this whirlpool coinjoin).

You see, you're right in the sense that all of the inputs have a slight connection with all of the outputs, but that's not the point. The point is that you can't match inputs with outputs, to de-anonymize the coinjoined outputs. Blockchain analysis is incapable to connect the dots, because first and foremost it relies on guesswork, and secondly good software (like Sparrow with Whirlpool) comes with anonymization techniques that hide IP address, OS, and other fingerprints, uses Tor etc.

What if you do everything right as above. You make an online purchase but your delivery address is included in transaction. Can't they just connect beginning & final transaction. Sure it'll take them a bit to work out, but that black box you're referring to is still transparent in a block explorer. Sure, if you buy non-KYC Bitcoin you're sweet. there's plausible deniability on how or when it was acquired.

If you use Monero, the black box in the middle isn't transparent. so they can't connect the beginning and final transaction.