Samourai Wallet seized by the feds

[DaveF]

Obviously everybody is free to use whatever suits them the best. In fact Ltc makes more sense than the other two for coffee transactions since it is fast, cheap and is as widely adopted as btc.

I sorted them based on their privacy abilities. Monero is the most hardcore privacy oriented coin so people who demand the hardest privacy will use nothing but monero because it makes more sense. The biggest handicap of xmr is that it has low liquidity and that’s not a small problem. Especially when you want to cash out over a million usd. People who demand the best privacy still prefer to use btc over monero because of that probably.

It doesn’t have to be this or that in the end. There is a place for many alts in this market.

Drifting a bit OT, but I don't think XMR has that low a liquidity. It's still trading $50 million a day. And it then follows that the more people use it the more that number will grow but people have to want to use it.
And I don't think a lot of people care about privacy as much as we think.

Most people want to pick out the stuff they want, pay for it and move on. Zero thought about privacy or what data tracking info is being sold.
Which is why when Samourai gets seized, mixers get seized and so on the general thought of most people is 'meh...whatever' even people in crypto. It's just not something they care about.

Which is also why XMR and a lot of privacy coins don't get a lot of traction,

Just my view.

-Dave

[MusaMohamed]

Drifting a bit OT, but I don't think XMR has that low a liquidity. It's still trading $50 million a day. And it then follows that the more people use it the more that number will grow but people have to want to use it.
And I don't think a lot of people care about privacy as much as we think.

No cryptocurrency can replace Bitcoin in trading volume in a long time. They can have very high trading volume that is higher than Bitcoin trading volume in one or some days but can not maintain it for too long time and never can take over Bitcoin in market cap or trading volume.

Monero with about $1.3B in trading volume last 30 days or as you said, $50M a day is good for trading and can satisfy criminals for money laundering. I could be wrong but criminals will not launder money with very big value within a day like more $B a day and Monero is good for their privacy and private transactions.

[mindrust]

Obviously everybody is free to use whatever suits them the best. In fact Ltc makes more sense than the other two for coffee transactions since it is fast, cheap and is as widely adopted as btc.

I sorted them based on their privacy abilities. Monero is the most hardcore privacy oriented coin so people who demand the hardest privacy will use nothing but monero because it makes more sense. The biggest handicap of xmr is that it has low liquidity and that’s not a small problem. Especially when you want to cash out over a million usd. People who demand the best privacy still prefer to use btc over monero because of that probably.

It doesn’t have to be this or that in the end. There is a place for many alts in this market.

Drifting a bit OT, but I don't think XMR has that low a liquidity. It's still trading $50 million a day. And it then follows that the more people use it the more that number will grow but people have to want to use it.

That's the total trading volume on all exchanges and trading pairs which is also mostly fake.


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

The pair with the most volume is on Gate.io and it is probably fake. Azbit fake. Poloniex fake, bithash fake. All fakes till Kraken. Another fake exchange bit2me and then Kucoin comes with a volume of $2.8m. Mexc has $2m daily volume. Finex has another $2m.

I'd say Monero has no more than $10m genuine daily trading volume at the moment. A person with $1m can mess these pairs up quite easily.

[MeGold666]

Liquidity problem is a myth, otherwise Bitcoin would never be worth more than $1 per coin.

The more people want to buy it, the higher the price will go - that's a "problem" that is self-resolving.

"A friend of a friend" had no problem selling and buying XMR in very large quantities, it took minutes.

[JayJuanGee]

Drifting a bit OT, but I don't think XMR has that low a liquidity. It's still trading $50 million a day. And it then follows that the more people use it the more that number will grow but people have to want to use it.
And I don't think a lot of people care about privacy as much as we think.

No cryptocurrency can replace Bitcoin in trading volume in a long time. They can have very high trading volume that is higher than Bitcoin trading volume in one or some days but can not maintain it for too long time and never can take over Bitcoin in market cap or trading volume.

Monero with about $1.3B in trading volume last 30 days or as you said, $50M a day is good for trading and can satisfy criminals for money laundering. I could be wrong but criminals will not launder money with very big value within a day like more $B a day and Monero is good for their privacy and private transactions.

Why are we going to presume that the mere fact that something is secret that it all of a sudden is being used mostly by criminals rather than for legitimate personal privacy reasons?  We would likely need more data if we are going to start to make those kinds of presumptions, and surely I understand some of the ideas of the slippery slope that also would include increase in trade volume that allows larger and larger players to come into the product.. so surely there are ongoingly going to be some challenges when the non-traceable services increase in their capacities.

Liquidity problem is a myth, otherwise Bitcoin would never be worth more than $1 per coin.

The more people want to buy it, the higher the price will go - that's a "problem" that is self-resolving.

"A friend of a friend" had no problem selling and buying XMR in very large quantities, it took minutes.

How many millions did your friend of a friend sell / buy?

[peter0425]

Why are we going to presume that the mere fact that something is secret that it all of a sudden is being used mostly by criminals rather than for legitimate personal privacy reasons?  We would likely need more data if we are going to start to make those kinds of presumptions, and surely I understand some of the ideas of the slippery slope that also would include increase in trade volume that allows larger and larger players to come into the product.. so surely there are ongoingly going to be some challenges when the non-traceable services increase in their capacities.

I don’t think there has been a study regarding how much of privacy coins are actually being used in nefarious purposes probably because there is no accurate count of criminals that can be used for the research. So maybe all the idea that criminals are using privacy coins as some kind of fort came from mere idea that criminals have to be discreet.

The government does not trust anything they have no information on hence why they are suspicious of privacy coins.

[MeGold666]

How many millions did your friend of a friend sell / buy?

More than 1.

[RickDeckard]

Recently a Portuguese newspaper ran an article detailing (partly) how was the case handled by the Portuguese authorities[1]. I'll post here a few highlights/resume for those interested in learning how it was conducted:

• William Hill - one of the two founders arrested - was living already in Portugal (Lisbon) close to a year when the detention was made on 24th of April;
• Ever since he landed on Portuguese soil - arriving from France - the authorities started watching him 24 hours, per request of the FBI;
• The surveillance of William extended during multiple months so that the Portuguese Criminal Investigation Police (PJ) made sure he wasn't attempting to flee from the country. This surveillance also included inspectors on the field;

The article then goes to explain what Whirlpool means the rest of evidences already described before[2]. Goes to show that William was already being followed long before his arrival on Portugal.
[1]https://observador.pt/especiais/barao-das-criptomoedas-william-hill-geria-no-centro-de-lisboa-uma-app-que-permitia-a-oligarcas-russos-escaparem-a-sancoes-do-ocidente/
[2]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5494114.msg63989229#msg63989229

[joker_josue]

The article then goes to explain what Whirlpool means the rest of evidences already described before[2]. Goes to show that William was already being followed long before his arrival on Portugal.

This proves that when we hear about this type of arrest or closure of service, it is not something the police remember to do that morning. It involves months or years of investigation. And for the police to waste so much time in this investigation, it is not because they are simply against a certain business, but because there is clear evidence that it is being used for illegal purposes.

They are not after the users here on the forum, who used this or other equivalent services, but rather the mentors of these services who were premissive regarding the illegalities that they knew were being committed.