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

[dreamspark]

Monero will never be a contender until it loses its dependency on BTC.

If consumers can't easily acquire XMR, then merchant adoption is out of the question. Fluffypony is right that a GUI means nothing. The core team builds the protocol. It's the responsibility of third parties to develop the necessary tools for consumers.

But we will never have the consumer demand to drive such third party development without a dedicated and easy fiat exchange. Notice I said "dedicated." It's not enough to be included on some BTC-fiat platform with other alts. There needs to be a stupidly easy way to purchase XMR with fiat money. And yes, I realize that achieving this (legally) is an extremely challenging problem.

We had a dedicated exchange which could have morphed into accepting fiat but the cold hard reality is all the volume moved to Polo, people will always trade alts on multi alt platforms until a crypto is big enough to support a dedicated platform.

Which one are you talking about then? I think if some reputable member of the Monero community started a fiat <-> XMR exchange, most of the volume will move to it. Lack of trust in other exchanges is one of the reasons people stay on poloniex.

TheKoziTwo an extremely reputable early btc and xmr investor wrote and ran it. Cryptonote.exchange.to. It was the first exchange we were on and then as soon as Polo added us everyone flocked over there. The fact is a dedicated exchange just doesn't gain traction.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

people will always trade alts on multi alt platforms until a crypto is big enough to support a dedicated platform.

It sounds like you're making up rules that nobody really has to follow. You're saying we all have to dick around on btc-denominated exchanges until we reach some magical threshold where everyone all agrees we can become a "real crypto" with our own exchange.

I'm saying we don't need to be the biggest fish in the small pond before competing in the big one. We need to start thinking of (and building) third party solutions for real-world use that will attract outsiders. We don't need the approval of altcoin speculators to do that.

[dreamspark]

people will always trade alts on multi alt platforms until a crypto is big enough to support a dedicated platform.

It sounds like you're making up rules that nobody really has to follow. You're saying we all have to dick around on btc-denominated exchanges until we reach some magical threshold where everyone all agrees we can become a "real crypto" with our own exchange.

I'm saying we don't need to be the biggest fish in the small pond before competing in the big one. We need to start thinking of (and building) third party solutions for real-world use that will attract outsiders. We don't need the approval of altcoin speculators to do that.

I'm not making up anything.... Look, just open up your own xmr/fiat exchange and find out what happens. You believe adamantly that people will flock to a fiat denominated exchange which isn't the case. Even LTC doesn't have its 'own' exchange. 

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I'm not making up anything.... Look, just open up your own xmr/fiat exchange and find out what happens. You believe adamantly that people will flock to a fiat denominated exchange which isn't the case. Even LTC doesn't have its 'own' exchange.  

You're still making assumptions. Show me a scenario where an alt had a dedicated fiat exchange that nobody used.

Oh, and which altcoin exchange was Bitcoin traded on before it got big enough for it's own exchange?

The point is: altcoin exchanges will never drive demand outsite of altcoin exchanges. Somewhere you must be independent of BTC. It doesn't have to be the most popular... but you need the option.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Recently a close friend of mine asked me how she could acquire some xmr. I agreed to get some for her, but should I instead have replied, "oh, monero isn't popular enough among crypto geeks for you to be able to buy it with your dollars. Instead you have to buy this other much more popular crypto first, and then trade it on a complicated exchange that won't make sense to regular folks like yourself"?

[smooth]

Recently a close friend of mine asked me how she could acquire some xmr. I agreed to get some for her, but should I instead have replied, "oh, monero isn't popular enough among crypto geeks for you to be able to buy it with your dollars. Instead you have to buy this other much more popular crypto first, and then trade it on a complicated exchange that won't make sense to regular folks like yourself"?

Valid point IMO.

Even something like retail prepaid cards would be much better.

[dreamspark]

Recently a close friend of mine asked me how she could acquire some xmr. I agreed to get some for her, but should I instead have replied, "oh, monero isn't popular enough among crypto geeks for you to be able to buy it with your dollars. Instead you have to buy this other much more popular crypto first, and then trade it on a complicated exchange that won't make sense to regular folks like yourself"?

Valid point IMO.

Even something like retail prepaid cards would be much better.

Everyone always says this for every coin. Fact is the demand isn't there. Nobody noticed that polo offers usdt, nobody noticed how hilarious the volume is.

Look I'd love a fiat exchange, go and do it, please I implore you. Fact is with the licenses, money laundering regulations etc it doesn't make business sense. If it did and was a profitable thing to do, an exchange such as Bitfinex or btc-e would have done it.

Funny though, your friend wants to hold xmr which still only has a command line wallet yet a simple btc/xmr exchange is complicated...

[macsga]

Recently a close friend of mine asked me how she could acquire some xmr. I agreed to get some for her, but should I instead have replied, "oh, monero isn't popular enough among crypto geeks for you to be able to buy it with your dollars. Instead you have to buy this other much more popular crypto first, and then trade it on a complicated exchange that won't make sense to regular folks like yourself"?

Valid point IMO.

Even something like retail prepaid cards would be much better.

Isn't there the ability to buy via USD into Poloniex? Never used it but I guess this is an option (I've even seen the deposit column). I'd bet it's feasible.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Recently a close friend of mine asked me how she could acquire some xmr. I agreed to get some for her, but should I instead have replied, "oh, monero isn't popular enough among crypto geeks for you to be able to buy it with your dollars. Instead you have to buy this other much more popular crypto first, and then trade it on a complicated exchange that won't make sense to regular folks like yourself"?

Valid point IMO.

Even something like retail prepaid cards would be much better.

Everyone always says this for every coin. Fact is the demand isn't there. Nobody noticed that polo offers usdt, nobody noticed how hilarious the volume is.

Look I'd love a fiat exchange, go and do it, please I implore you. Fact is with the licenses, money laundering regulations etc it doesn't make business sense. If it did and was a profitable thing to do, an exchange such as Bitfinex or btc-e would have done it.

USDT isn't fiat, and polo isn't a dedicated exchange. Even if it was, try creating an account for your mom and see if she can buy some Monero with her USD.

I agree with you that easy fiat exchange would be extremely challenging, but we will never achieve real-world adoption/use without it. And I'd definitely try to create it myself if I had the time and legal help/knowledge.

Again, I'm not saying everyone has to flock to it. It just has to exist. We want adoption and we want merchants to accept xmr, but we have to have an easy option for new users to acquire it that doesn't depend on BTC.

[dreamspark]

Recently a close friend of mine asked me how she could acquire some xmr. I agreed to get some for her, but should I instead have replied, "oh, monero isn't popular enough among crypto geeks for you to be able to buy it with your dollars. Instead you have to buy this other much more popular crypto first, and then trade it on a complicated exchange that won't make sense to regular folks like yourself"?

Valid point IMO.

Even something like retail prepaid cards would be much better.

Everyone always says this for every coin. Fact is the demand isn't there. Nobody noticed that polo offers usdt, nobody noticed how hilarious the volume is.

Look I'd love a fiat exchange, go and do it, please I implore you. Fact is with the licenses, money laundering regulations etc it doesn't make business sense. If it did and was a profitable thing to do, an exchange such as Bitfinex or btc-e would have done it.

USDT isn't fiat, and polo isn't a dedicated exchange. Even if it was, try creating an account for your mom and see if she can buy some Monero with her USD.

I agree with you that easy fiat exchange would be extremely challenging, but we will never achieve real-world adoption/use without it. And I'd definitely try to create it myself if I had the time and legal help/knowledge.

Again, I'm not saying everyone has to flock to it. It just has to exist. We want adoption and we want merchants to accept xmr, but we have to have an easy option for new users to acquire it that doesn't depend on BTC.

Just existing isn't good enough you need liquidity to have an exchange. You'd be better of setting up something like a local bitcoins seller where you accept fiat and then buy back your xmr on market.

[jwinterm]

...

USDT isn't fiat, and polo isn't a dedicated exchange. Even if it was, try creating an account for your mom and see if she can buy some Monero with her USD.

I agree with you that easy fiat exchange would be extremely challenging, but we will never achieve real-world adoption/use without it. And I'd definitely try to create it myself if I had the time and legal help/knowledge.

Again, I'm not saying everyone has to flock to it. It just has to exist. We want adoption and we want merchants to accept xmr, but we have to have an easy option for new users to acquire it that doesn't depend on BTC.

Considering that Coinbase is valued at more than $400M (approximately 100x the market cap of Monero), and Circle and Buttercoin are probably valued at least $5-10M (something greater than the ~$4M market cap of Monero), I don't think Monero is quite ready for this type of full service, nationwide fiat-to-crypto conversion. It'd be nice, but I think it costs a bit much relative to the worth of all the Monero currently available...

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Recently a close friend of mine asked me how she could acquire some xmr. I agreed to get some for her, but should I instead have replied, "oh, monero isn't popular enough among crypto geeks for you to be able to buy it with your dollars. Instead you have to buy this other much more popular crypto first, and then trade it on a complicated exchange that won't make sense to regular folks like yourself"?

Valid point IMO.

Even something like retail prepaid cards would be much better.

Everyone always says this for every coin. Fact is the demand isn't there. Nobody noticed that polo offers usdt, nobody noticed how hilarious the volume is.

Look I'd love a fiat exchange, go and do it, please I implore you. Fact is with the licenses, money laundering regulations etc it doesn't make business sense. If it did and was a profitable thing to do, an exchange such as Bitfinex or btc-e would have done it.

USDT isn't fiat, and polo isn't a dedicated exchange. Even if it was, try creating an account for your mom and see if she can buy some Monero with her USD.

I agree with you that easy fiat exchange would be extremely challenging, but we will never achieve real-world adoption/use without it. And I'd definitely try to create it myself if I had the time and legal help/knowledge.

Again, I'm not saying everyone has to flock to it. It just has to exist. We want adoption and we want merchants to accept xmr, but we have to have an easy option for new users to acquire it that doesn't depend on BTC.

Just existing isn't good enough you need liquidity to have an exchange. You'd be better of setting up something like a local bitcoins seller where you accept fiat and then buy back your xmr on market.

Just existing is plenty good enough if the only purpose is to sell people xmr for fiat. Here, give me 10 bucks, and I'll give you some xmr. See? No massive adoption necessary.

How much use does xmr.to or shapeshift.io depend on? None. They buy coins from exchanges as needed to fulfill orders.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Considering that Coinbase is valued at more than $400M (approximately 100x the market cap of Monero), and Circle and Buttercoin are probably valued at least $5-10M (something greater than the ~$4M market cap of Monero), I don't think Monero is quite ready for this type of full service, nationwide fiat-to-crypto conversion. It'd be nice, but I think it costs a bit much relative to the worth of all the Monero currently available...

I don't know what these companies value has to do with anything. A more relevant consideration might be:

What was bitcoin's first ever fiat exchange, and what was btc's value when it opened?

[dreamspark]

Just existing is plenty good enough if the only purpose is to sell people xmr for fiat. Here, give me 10 bucks, and I'll give you some xmr. See? No massive adoption necessary.

How much use does xmr.to or shapeshift.io depend on? None. They buy coins from exchanges as needed to fulfill orders.

Oh yeah sure, let me just get msb licenses and attempt to open bitcoin business accounts for the 10 bucks, gee glad I went through all that trouble, what a great business. It has to make economic sense sure saying I would like this that and the other is fine, I would love amazon to accept accept xmr. I wonder why they don't, do you think it's because it's not worth their time?

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Just existing is plenty good enough if the only purpose is to sell people xmr for fiat. Here, give me 10 bucks, and I'll give you some xmr. See? No massive adoption necessary.

How much use does xmr.to or shapeshift.io depend on? None. They buy coins from exchanges as needed to fulfill orders.

Oh yeah sure, let me just get msb licenses and attempt to open bitcoin business accounts for the 10 bucks, gee glad I went through all that trouble.

You said "just existing" wasn't good enough. I made a point. Now you're changing the subject.

For the third time, I never it would be easy. But my point still stands that it's 100% necessary.

[forevernoob]

Just existing is plenty good enough if the only purpose is to sell people xmr for fiat. Here, give me 10 bucks, and I'll give you some xmr. See? No massive adoption necessary.

How much use does xmr.to or shapeshift.io depend on? None. They buy coins from exchanges as needed to fulfill orders.

Oh yeah sure, let me just get msb licenses and attempt to open bitcoin business accounts for the 10 bucks, gee glad I went through all that trouble, what a great business. It has to make economic sense sure saying I would like this that and the other is fine, I would love amazon to accept accept xmr. I wonder why they don't, do you think it's because it's not worth their time?

Maybe we can get someone that lives somewhere where regulation is a bit more lax to create a XMR/USD exchange.
Then it won't cost as much.

[vokain]

I would do it but in the US you need a money transmitter license to legally sell crypto for fiat...

http://www.burtw.com/

I recommend working on increasing organic volume on an XMR/BTC exchange to the point other exchange operators realize they're losing out on commission potential (e.g. >volume than DRK on Bitfinex)

[smooth]

Recently a close friend of mine asked me how she could acquire some xmr. I agreed to get some for her, but should I instead have replied, "oh, monero isn't popular enough among crypto geeks for you to be able to buy it with your dollars. Instead you have to buy this other much more popular crypto first, and then trade it on a complicated exchange that won't make sense to regular folks like yourself"?

Valid point IMO.

Even something like retail prepaid cards would be much better.

Everyone always says this for every coin. Fact is the demand isn't there. Nobody noticed that polo offers usdt, nobody noticed how hilarious the volume is.

USDT is fairly useless. It's still crypto and you still need to buy USDT with USD somehow unless you are trading crypto-to-crypto.

I agree the market for anything other than crypto speculators really isn't there, and I mean both demand-side and supply-side. The exchanges are a good service for crypto-speculators and crypto-speculators like the exchanges (especially the bigger ones as you point out). For everyone else, not so much.

[smooth]

Recently a close friend of mine asked me how she could acquire some xmr. I agreed to get some for her, but should I instead have replied, "oh, monero isn't popular enough among crypto geeks for you to be able to buy it with your dollars. Instead you have to buy this other much more popular crypto first, and then trade it on a complicated exchange that won't make sense to regular folks like yourself"?

Valid point IMO.

Even something like retail prepaid cards would be much better.

Everyone always says this for every coin. Fact is the demand isn't there. Nobody noticed that polo offers usdt, nobody noticed how hilarious the volume is.

Look I'd love a fiat exchange, go and do it, please I implore you. Fact is with the licenses, money laundering regulations etc it doesn't make business sense. If it did and was a profitable thing to do, an exchange such as Bitfinex or btc-e would have done it.

USDT isn't fiat, and polo isn't a dedicated exchange. Even if it was, try creating an account for your mom and see if she can buy some Monero with her USD.

I agree with you that easy fiat exchange would be extremely challenging, but we will never achieve real-world adoption/use without it. And I'd definitely try to create it myself if I had the time and legal help/knowledge.

Again, I'm not saying everyone has to flock to it. It just has to exist. We want adoption and we want merchants to accept xmr, but we have to have an easy option for new users to acquire it that doesn't depend on BTC.

Just existing isn't good enough you need liquidity to have an exchange. You'd be better of setting up something like a local bitcoins seller where you accept fiat and then buy back your xmr on market.

I don't think average Joe type users really want an exchange at all. They just want a buy price and a sell price, the way the coinbase classic (not the new exchange version) works. The liquidity comes from somewhere else (could be an exchange, could be an internal trading desk, doesn't matter), but that is not visible or relevant to the customer.

[nachoig]

...

USDT isn't fiat, and polo isn't a dedicated exchange. Even if it was, try creating an account for your mom and see if she can buy some Monero with her USD.

I agree with you that easy fiat exchange would be extremely challenging, but we will never achieve real-world adoption/use without it. And I'd definitely try to create it myself if I had the time and legal help/knowledge.

Again, I'm not saying everyone has to flock to it. It just has to exist. We want adoption and we want merchants to accept xmr, but we have to have an easy option for new users to acquire it that doesn't depend on BTC.

Considering that Coinbase is valued at more than $400M (approximately 100x the market cap of Monero), and Circle and Buttercoin are probably valued at least $5-10M (something greater than the ~$4M market cap of Monero), I don't think Monero is quite ready for this type of full service, nationwide fiat-to-crypto conversion. It'd be nice, but I think it costs a bit much relative to the worth of all the Monero currently available...

When there was only Bitcoin, things worked exactly on this way, converting the bitcoins directly to fiat currency and vice-versa.