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

[smooth]

People will run from any coin anyway, if the coin cant be used in "daily" life. Hashrate drops doesnt matter that much. From my point of view, emission curve, hashrate, transaction fees, etc are not the pressing problem. The real problem is the acceptance of Monero by "the guy on the street". Without mobil wallet, more exchanges (xmr <-> fiat) and so on, there is no future for any coin. XMR (and, e.g., BBR too) must aim for the user experience now -- which includes not to cause another level of uncertainty by changing the already running system.

"Guy on the street" adoption is going to take a long time under the most absolute rosy of scenarios (I know some may disagree but that is my opinion). The challenge is to get from here to there, or even to get to the point where there just needs one or two more pieces to fall into place (because then the incentive to build those pieces is much larger).

All of those things you describe and more will come in time, just as they have (somewhat) for Bitcoin and to a lesser extent a few other coins, but only if we can keep people interested and involved until we get there. In fact, the some of the people we need to get interested and involved are the ones who will build them.

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[Johnny Mnemonic]

My answer would be "early adopters" and that term can be somewhat broad, but according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle it is about 15%. Or possibly some of the "early mainstream" (they are greedy too), which takes the share to something in the 15%-50%.

So the easy (and common) assumption is that the early adopters are investors, which I would say is currently the case in this community. I'm arguing that early adopters don't have to be investors, only enthusiasts who see the utility in the project. Thus we shouldn't feel obligated to cater to investors when designing a currency, because they may not be the "early adopters" we wish to attract.

It is very hard to imagine a lot of (EDIT: early) adoption that is not inherently speculative or greed-based in some manner, because of the bootstrapping problem. Without much of a network there is no reason to be interested. "It seems cool" is somewhat of a motivator (in fact that's why I'm here), but I'm not sure how much we can expect to get from that. The later adopters can be pulled in by the network (thus we don't need to be concerned about giving them a direct incentive), but the early ones can't.

Paypal, for example, gave 10 USD away to everyone who signed up for an account in the early years, obviously a financial incentive, but a small one along the lines I suggesed (going to 15-50% of the potential users), as opposed to giving 10 million USD or 100 million USD to the first person to sign up, and 0 USD to the rest. They also waived processing fees for a long time, again a small financial incentive that got spread out among a lot of early adopters."

It seems that a lot of folks here got into bitcoin/crypto (at least at first) not for the investment opportunities but for the idea of decentralized money that could change the world. I agree that the cool factor is probably not a strong enough motivator, but that doesn't mean early adoption can't be achieved by superior utility, as opposed to investment potential in the coins themselves.

[smooth]

It seems that a lot of folks here got into bitcoin/crypto (at least at first) not for the investment opportunities but for the idea of decentralized money that could change the world.

Absolutely true. In the early years there was no value, and while some people thought it might become very valuable, skepticism was rampant. It was almost similar to DOGE in being viewed as something of an inside joke and trying to force it to have some sort of value (aka the 10K BTC pizzas).  

I agree that the cool factor is probably not a strong enough motivator, but that doesn't mean early adoption can't be achieved by superior utility, as opposed to investment potential in the coins themselves.

It would have to be one of two things:

1. Potential of future utility, since the early network would be too small to have actual utility. Who do you transact with, and for what (pizzas? tacos?)? That is ultimately speculative, but perhaps there is a subtle psychological difference I don't dismiss.

2. Actual (present) utility achieved with high adoption, initially, in a small subculture. A historical example here was eBay, which started as a site for trading Beanie Babies and other collectables. Since it was focused, it was possible for a small site to achieve some degree of network effect in that subculture where the buyers and sellers could transact in the same network. Otherwise buyers would avoid for lack of sellers and sellers would avoid for lack of buyers. Obviously, from there the site was able to grow into a larger marketplace incrementally.

Ideas for how to target one or the other or both or something else are certainly welcome.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

It seems that a lot of folks here got into bitcoin/crypto (at least at first) not for the investment opportunities but for the idea of decentralized money that could change the world.

Absolutely true. In the early years there was no value, and while some people thought it might become very valuable, skepticism was rampant. It was almost similar to DOGE in being viewed as something of an inside joke and trying to force it to have some sort of value (aka the 10K BTC pizzas).  

I agree that the cool factor is probably not a strong enough motivator, but that doesn't mean early adoption can't be achieved by superior utility, as opposed to investment potential in the coins themselves.

It would have to be one of two things:

1. Potential of future utility, since the early network would be too small to have actual utility. Who do you transact with, and for what (pizzas? tacos?)? That is ultimately speculative, but perhaps there is a subtle psychological difference I don't dismiss.

2. Actual (present) utility achieved with high adoption, initially, in a small subculture. A historical example here was eBay, which started as a site for trading Beanie Babies and other collectables. Since it was focused, it was possible for a small site to achieve some degree of network effect in that subculture where the buyers and sellers could transact in the same network. Otherwise buyers would avoid for lack of sellers and sellers would avoid for lack of buyers. Obviously, from there the site was able to grow into a larger marketplace incrementally.

Ideas for how to target one or the other or both or something else are certainly welcome.

I like to think of the current state of cryptocurrency as the late 1980s of the internet. It's impossible to know or even guess the future utility or impact something like this will have on the world even 10 years from now. But the current state of bitcoin adoption isn't a developmental issue but a fundamental one in that there's little incentive for non-acarchists/freedom fighters/goldbugs to give a shit.

Regular people already use rewards and points and miles and all kinds of virtual currencies. If we can get coins to as many people as possible and make them easy enough to spend, the utility will take care of itself. But I don't think we do ourselves any favors by creating scarcity with declining block rewards and limited money supplies.

[thelibertycap]

It seems that a lot of folks here got into bitcoin/crypto (at least at first) not for the investment opportunities but for the idea of decentralized money that could change the world.

Absolutely true. In the early years there was no value, and while some people thought it might become very valuable, skepticism was rampant. It was almost similar to DOGE in being viewed as something of an inside joke and trying to force it to have some sort of value (aka the 10K BTC pizzas).  

I agree that the cool factor is probably not a strong enough motivator, but that doesn't mean early adoption can't be achieved by superior utility, as opposed to investment potential in the coins themselves.

It would have to be one of two things:

1. Potential of future utility, since the early network would be too small to have actual utility. Who do you transact with, and for what (pizzas? tacos?)? That is ultimately speculative, but perhaps there is a subtle psychological difference I don't dismiss.

2. Actual (present) utility achieved with high adoption, initially, in a small subculture. A historical example here was eBay, which started as a site for trading Beanie Babies and other collectables. Since it was focused, it was possible for a small site to achieve some degree of network effect in that subculture where the buyers and sellers could transact in the same network. Otherwise buyers would avoid for lack of sellers and sellers would avoid for lack of buyers. Obviously, from there the site was able to grow into a larger marketplace incrementally.

Ideas for how to target one or the other or both or something else are certainly welcome.

I like to think of the current state of cryptocurrency as the late 1980s of the internet. It's impossible to know or even guess the future utility or impact something like this will have on the world even 10 years from now. But the current state of bitcoin adoption isn't a developmental issue but a fundamental one in that there's little incentive for non-acarchists/freedom fighters/goldbugs to give a shit.

Regular people already use rewards and points and miles and all kinds of virtual currencies. If we can get coins to as many people as possible and make them easy enough to spend, the utility will take care of itself. But I don't think we do ourselves any favors by creating scarcity with declining block rewards and limited money supplies.

I don't think we do ourselves any favors by tinkering with the money supply and going from scarcity to abundance. Isn't monero already abundant enough? Just look at the chart, the price has been down most of the time so nobody can complain about early adopters buying cheap.

Crypto currencies are about store of value as well - the scarcity part is baked in.

I can't believe you are even comparing cryptos with reward points and miles.

[smooth]

I don't think we do ourselves any favors by tinkering with the money supply and going from scarcity to abundance. Isn't monero already abundant enough? Just look at the chart, the price has been down most of the time so nobody can complain about early adopters buying cheap.

I think (though I could be wrong) that most people asking these questions are more concerned about the situation in 1-3 years or even longer, so talking about the current price chart isn't really very persuasive.

[smooth]

I like to think of the current state of cryptocurrency as the late 1980s of the internet.

If that is the case then we likely need a decade or more to have a real impact. That sort of time horizon doesn't scare me one bit, but I think others might feel differently.

The rewards points concept is interesting. At least that's something you can use without needing a big network in which to transact, so perhaps it could help bootstrap the network. Use as in-game currency is another.

[krawallmining]

Next missive is set for today?

[Eastwind]

Are the dev stating in Risto's castle at the moment?

[XDO]

BCX still seems to think that his "exploit" will hit in under a week's time. Are we confident that it's not going to do anything? I expect some of the price decline is due to this. Would dropping a few checkpoints now not help mitigate whatever the attack will turn out to be?

[Techone]

Yes, next missive should be today. At least I read it some pages back.

In my oppinion we should stop discussing emmision rates @ 800+ pages.
I mean, uhm, are you serious? The emmision rate was fixed when the coin got live, so thats it, end of story. Not happy? You can always do better with -your coin-

Of course there are pros and cons regarding emmision curves and things like that, but changeing -anything- in a working currency will disrupt any trust it gained so far.
Most folks are complaining US and EU run money printing machines non-stop, actively changeing fiat in circulation. Same thing, opposite direction.

There are many early adopters with shitloads of coins let´s say in Bitcoin. Mining was so easy back some years, you could get 100BTC per day with your laptop cpu, while Bitcoin however has a very unsexy blockhalving on it´s path, which truely disrupts any mining operations.
Difficulty alone changes the game, not emission rate. Now look @ Bitcoin. It has become a highly centralized "China-mining-operation". If the chinese government would stop allowing mining at all, the difficulty would drop drastically to some tiny fraction

Monero is going the smooth way. Everyone can join anytime. Yes, it´s true, there will be only 5 or 2 or even one monero per block reward some day, but it does not hurt any late adopter since monero´s value fluctuation causes even spreads of coins over time and provides good opportunities for late adopters.

[rpietila]

First opportunity for the MEW to vote is now started!

Everyone can view the discussion, only the members may attend.

[e-coinomist]

People will run from any coin anyway, if the coin cant be used in "daily life". Hashrate drops doesnt matter that much. From my point of view, emission curve, hashrate, transaction fees, etc are not the pressing problem. The real problem is the acceptance of Monero by "the guy on the street". Without mobil wallet, more exchanges (xmr <-> fiat) and so on, there is no future for any coin. XMR (and, e.g., BBR too) must aim for the user experience now -- which includes not to cause another level of uncertainty by changing the already running system.

Just you cannot trust a mobile wallet anymore, it is most safely stored away in your fridge. Otherwise even it's microphone will be abused to spy on you. So how secure are your coins on it?
"The Fappening" opened my eyes (not only for the girls)

[Techone]

BCX still seems to think that his "exploit" will hit in under a week's time. Are we confident that it's not going to do anything? I expect some of the price decline is due to this. Would dropping a few checkpoints now not help mitigate whatever the attack will turn out to be?

There is no secret "attack". It has been discussed several times by now. BCX discredited himself with pseudo-attack proof.

###Oh wait!!!### there IS an attack, an attack of FUD is hitting the community, take full cover and surrender your XMR to the enemy right now.

[XDO]

###Oh wait!!!### there IS an attack, an attack of FUD is hitting the community, take full cover and surrender your XMR to the enemy right now.

No intention to spread FUD. And I put very low faith in anything BCX says. But a low probability of something awful, is still worthy of some concern surely. Either the guy is purely malicious, and is spouting what he knows to be nonsense, or he truly believes that he's stumbled onto something, and he doesn't seem to have been convinced by anything anyone else has said that it's nothing. That must leave some small chance that he has really found something. What is the cost to a few checkpoints between now and this time next week, just in case?

[Nekomata]

XMR is the future.

[silencesilence]

VERY BIG BIG Manipulation

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[NewLiberty]

###Oh wait!!!### there IS an attack, an attack of FUD is hitting the community, take full cover and surrender your XMR to the enemy right now.

No intention to spread FUD. And I put very low faith in anything BCX says. But a low probability of something awful, is still worthy of some concern surely. Either the guy is purely malicious, and is spouting what he knows to be nonsense, or he truly believes that he's stumbled onto something, and he doesn't seem to have been convinced by anything anyone else has said that it's nothing. That must leave some small chance that he has really found something. What is the cost to a few checkpoints between now and this time next week, just in case?

There is no evidence of an attack coming, there was threat, but not any evidence.  Also interesting... is that the things that have been pointed to as evidence of an attack were obviously not-attacks but were just the sort of thing that might get fud-duds all excited and rumoring into the echo-chamber.    I spent some effort to shine the light of knowledge and truth on these until they subsided.  

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

There were also a few possible threats that were mitigated by new code from the developers that now make Monero the most advanced of all coins, Bitcoin included, in defending against a TW attack, except for the basic defense of more hash power in mining.

There is much effort expended in "appearing strong" when much less effort could be offered with some simple evidence (if such an attack were actually building).  This strongly suggests there is no attack pending.

[Nekomata]

XMR is the future.

[silencesilence]

VERY BIG BIG Manipulation

...

You talk like markets are a random force of nature turned rogue by shadow players, no its made by humans (or bots) on all coins and guess what, they do what they can, buying or selling

Just filling gaps. Nothing special.

believe you ha ha ha

PS
Now is the time to buy