[XMR] Monero - A secure, private, untraceable cryptocurrency

[phishead]

If anyone is interested in joining a "pool" to bet on for this year's Super Bowl, come buy a square or two over here in this year's, and 1st Annual Super Bowlero Pool.

[Millionero]

I'm having problems with monerujo wallet scanning.  This is on a Pixel XL running the latest Oreo.
I opened the wallet after not using it for a while.  It was about 30,000 blocks behind.  It scanned all the way up to the current block (I know because I checked blockheight on another computer).  The rolling red status bar was still moving, which apparently means it was still scanning, but since it was at the current block, I figured I could close the wallet and it would save at the current block.
Not so.  I opened the wallet again, and it said 14,260 blocks behind. No progress scanning, stayed stuck at 14,260.  I went into settings and force-stopped the app.  That didn't help.  I even unstalled the app and reinstalled it (uninstalling leaves the stored wallet files untouched).  It had no effect whatsoever.  14,260 blocks remaining.
This wallet is good and stuck.  How do you fix it?

Might have something to do with the remote node(s) being overwhelmed by new traffic.  Had this issue on the Cake wallet, and just reconnected to node a few times til it comlpelted.

The wallet had some kind of problem.  This fixed it:
settings - apps - monerujo - storage - clear cache

[Hueristic]

Riccardo Spagni talking in Zurich, Switzerland

https://np.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/7sdn65/riccardo_spagni_talking_in_zurich_switzerland/

Love the title! "The World’s Least Professional Cryptocurrency"

Watching now.

Added: I started zoning 15 minutes in and have to rewind now.


Get your Squares while they're hot! All will be random, the chart is just for placeholing.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2808377.msg28788350#msg28788350

[ekseliksis]

News:  Dream DNM adds monero! The adoption from the big DNM players is coming


https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7sjbem/dream_dnm_adds_monero/

[Hueristic]

@Fluffypony, Good job!

I have to say this is IMO the best Presentation I have ever seen Fluffy make and I think I've watched them all!

I especially likes to hear this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe5QPDLk0mE&feature=youtu.be&t=1925

You guys been keeping an eye on this as well? Might beat ledger out the door. lol

https://taiga.getmonero.org/project/michael-rfc-hwallet-1-implementation/

[ladozhskiy1995]

Too many bitcoin clones so this is good direction for coin diversity like Microsoft

[nikisev]

News:  Dream DNM adds monero! The adoption from the big DNM players is coming


https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7sjbem/dream_dnm_adds_monero/

At least some coins are used properly.
South Korea want to tax btc....oh no what do we do.
Go under. Go to darknet. FIAT holders must come to crypto world.

[btclegionario]

I like this because if you dont have GPU then dont worry you can mine the XMR through your computer by registering on minergate. All you need to download there software and start the same that will start mining through CPU.

[revelacaogr]

You guys been keeping an eye on this as well? Might beat ledger out the door. lol

https://taiga.getmonero.org/project/michael-rfc-hwallet-1-implementation/


exellent...

[ozkraut]

My new (old) Monero slogan for the Germaphiles amongst us (;-)

[Hueristic]

You guys been keeping an eye on this as well? Might beat ledger out the door. lol

https://taiga.getmonero.org/project/michael-rfc-hwallet-1-implementation/


exellent...

Yes, the great thing about this is it will all be open source and there will be a DIY to make your own!

[Millionero]

You guys been keeping an eye on this as well? Might beat ledger out the door. lol

https://taiga.getmonero.org/project/michael-rfc-hwallet-1-implementation/


exellent...

Yes, the great thing about this is it will all be open source and there will be a DIY to make your own!

La domo de viro estas lia kastelo!

[explorer]

A good read.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/7szhn3/empowering_people_through_privacy/

Empowering people through privacy (self.Monero)

 by oneoffephemeral

[Note that before posting it here I was looking for the official forum, but since it seemed to contain mainly topics related to developement I decided to give reddit a shot.]

Recently, I started looking into cryptocurrencies and, for mainly ideological reasons, discovered Monero. Since the concept of privacy is something that keeps me busy for quite some time now and that it seems to be an important part for the Monero project, I wanted to share some thoughts.

Problem: the narrative

Most of today’s discussions revolving around privacy are misguided. This can be explained by a presupposition trigger called “I’ve got nothing to hide”. A simple example:

You need to go to a public toilet and lock the door. Why? We all know what you’re doing in there. You’ve got nothing to hide.
A drug dealer goes to a public toilet and locks the door. Why? Chances are that he actually has something to hide.
While the end result may be the same (a locked door in a public place), the motivations for doing so are very different and can be summarized in two words: privacy and secrecy.

False dichotomies

When discussions initially intended to debate privacy end up being about secrecy, we face another implicit assumption: part of our governments’ job is to protect the public (e.g. by fighting crime). Since we are part of the public we would want for our governments to be able to do their job. Unfortunately for us, we end up feeling guilty about wanting to take a shit in private because in doing so we could hinder our governments to fight crime. They need to be sure that the drug dealer is using the public toilet for its intended purpose. Huge dilemma:

Government wants to fight crime
Secrecy helps criminals
The end result of privacy is identical to the one of secrecy
Conclusion: Privacy helps criminals or “We’ll have to get used to letting the entire world watch us taking a shit because we don’t want anyone to think that we are the bad guys.”

Is secrecy, and by extension privacy, bad?

At this point we’ve established the following:

secrecy is a tool used by criminals to cheat and deceive
privacy is a tool used to shit in peace + the “benefits” of secrecy as a side effect
Now, if we don’t want someone to come to our house and beat us up, it seems plausible to try and make sure that this someone doesn’t find out where we live. If our address was private we could actually choose to keep it a secret, thus making it difficult for that someone to come to our house in the first place. This in turn broadens the definition for both privacy and secrecy as follows:

privacy is a tool that can be used to enable secrecy
secrecy is a tool that can be used to protect ourselves
This leads to the situation that secrecy and privacy have conflicting use cases if we frame the discussion using simple binary thinking such as good vs. bad. “Now, this doesn’t seem to be that unusual...” thinks the guy who just bought a new knife to cut his steak before moving on to stabbing his annoying wife. And he’s right. It isn’t…

The real question is: who are we?

For argument’s sake, let’s be a “criminal” job applicant. Our goal is simple: we want to beat our competition for a given job. We decide to hack into their computers and gather as much information as possible. Knowing their weaknesses and strengths allows us to emphasize our strengths in ways that go beyond the scope of this small thought experiment, but let’s just say: we may find ourselves at a bit of an advantage.

Now, let’s be “criminal” politicians in a democracy with anyone being a potential competitor (democracy, right?) and hack into their computers and...wait a minute! Are we idiots? Why be “criminal” and bother with hacking at all? We’re politicians, let’s try and convince people to share their information willingly. How could we do that?

So we’re politicians and our mission is to get the upper hand over our potential opponents (which could be anyone in a democracy, but for simplicity’s sake let’s call them: the public) by increasing our knowledge about them. Unfortunately, the public’s not only comprised of idiots and asking them to share information about things they’d rather not share will prove to be difficult. After all, they don’t want us to go over to their house and beat them up (since we’re politicians we know better and would simply send someone else to do the job anyways.).

There are two things that really work to our advantage here:

The conflicting definitions for secrecy and privacy
The public’s perception of privacy
Being able to choose the same terms for different use cases allows us to obfuscate what we really want to achieve. Basically, we can shape how the public thinks by setting the stage with terms they believe to fully understand, leading them to engage in our discussion without questioning our motives for initiating it in the first place. After all, they trust that they understand a seemingly simple word that is part of their basic vocabulary.

Now, the trick is that when asked about privacy, people don’t think about taking a shit in peace, but rather about the locked door. This makes it virtually impossible for them to distinguish between privacy and secrecy and, by extension, between a space “without other people” and a space “protecting us against other people”. The former works without the latter, but the latter depends on the former. Of course, we don’t want them to think that secrecy can be beneficial, so we just add a drug dealer into the mix and we shift their focus from “the knife to cut the steak” [useful] to “the knife to stab the wife” [devious]. As long as people think

privacy = locking the door when doing harmless things
secrecy = locking the door when trying do hide “harmful” activity
we should easily be able to switch off their sense of self-protection at will.

But what if we’re the good guys and bad people want to hurt us? Short answer: we’re not the good guys. In fact, sometimes we are the good guys and need protection, but sometimes we are the bad guys and others need protection against us. Being aware of that can be a bit difficult at times.

In the context of Monero/cryptocurrency

Because of the unpredictable nature of a human being it makes sense to enable protection for all by default. If we can agree that privacy enables protection in form of secrecy, a project like Monero makes sense to me. While researching Monero or what is intended as a privacy-focused project, I ended up asking myself the question: doesn’t that look like the perfect example to try and make illegal? The first thing that came to mind was that a tax system as we know it (at least in my area) would be under serious threat. But the truth is: it should be. It is inefficient, leads to corruption and transparency doesn’t work. Following the money is impossible and even when documents are released they don’t make any sense to anyone who wasn’t somehow directly involved in the process (which means the majority of the public).

One user in this thread suggested that governments should have to crowd source every project. I came to the same conclusion. I have a feeling that we live in a system in which we are forced to throw money at our governments simply because it is assumed that we should trust them to do the right thing...which seems awfully hard to me if they collect money regardless of what they actually accomplish (or not). Changing the people working for the system won't solve anything, but changing the system itself could be pretty exciting. No idea whether this will be possible with something like Monero, but reading about the project seems at least to fire up some of my dormant neurones...

[Hueristic]

A good read....

[/quote]

It was a good read, he may want to swap out fight with deter though. I love it when a good read diasy chains me to another!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/7fqrse/hypothetical_us_gov_makes_xmr_illegal_now_what/

blockchain technology is so detrimental to power and control that it jeopardizes the very existence of government.

QFT!

[explorer]

A good read....

It was a good read, he may want to swap out fight with deter though. I love it when a good read diasy chains me to another!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/7fqrse/hypothetical_us_gov_makes_xmr_illegal_now_what/

blockchain technology is so detrimental to power and control that it jeopardizes the very existence of government.

QFT!

Taxes are oft cited as a reason to ban private money.  Are not taxes the lesser part of government 'funding' these days?  Don't they just - print/borrow/steal whatever its called this week - far more than they collect?  Especially if you count the infrastructure cost to make and enforce those collections?  Maybe US specific, but I'm thinking that taxes are more of a control mechanism than an income.  Perhaps that is the basis of the resulting detriment to power and control.  Taxes, like terrorism and 'the children' - just another ruse.

[explorer]

fast and secure money transfer is the most important feature. Privacy is important. Buy monero,mine monero. win and win.

Privacy is important.  You cannot have secure without private IMO, so it is not really a separate thing.  Obscurity is perhaps the best first line of security.

[Hueristic]

A good read....

It was a good read, he may want to swap out fight with deter though. I love it when a good read diasy chains me to another!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/7fqrse/hypothetical_us_gov_makes_xmr_illegal_now_what/

blockchain technology is so detrimental to power and control that it jeopardizes the very existence of government.

QFT!

Taxes are oft cited as a reason to ban private money.  Are not taxes the lesser part of government 'funding' these days?  Don't they just - print/borrow/steal whatever its called this week - far more than they collect?  Especially if you count the infrastructure cost to make and enforce those collections?  Maybe US specific, but I'm thinking that taxes are more of a control mechanism than an income.  Perhaps that is the basis of the resulting detriment to power and control.  Taxes, like terrorism and 'the children' - just another ruse.

True they arguments continue on why you must give up more and more of your freedom and privacy and the argument always boils down to the fact you are not trusted and are a potential criminal. This is why I pointed out it is not the Governments job to fight crime it is to Deter crime as in passing laws and enforceing them for criminal acts. Fighting is a proactive as opposed to the reactive role that the government is supposed to use. It needs to be against the law for any institution to provocative act in a manner detrimental to one of it's citizens even if it could possibly "Save the children". This where are current disconnect is in the Law enforcement machine at the moment and really never has been addressed as far as I can tell. It will more than likely have to be heard by the supreme court where it will be ruled that the "possible" needs of the many outweigh the rights of the individual.

lol I should post this on that reddit thread but I just hate it there. If I haven't said that in the last few seconds!

[crypt0baws]

Anyone else been picking up more XMR on the dips?

[Hueristic]

Anyone else been picking up more XMR on the dips?

No yet but I, like cAPSLOCK  am always wrong.

[LennyCarl]

Anyone else been picking up more XMR on the dips?

No yet but I, like cAPSLOCK  am always wrong.

I've been picking some up but I'm always wrong, too. One of us will be right for the first time!