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

[Zabaglione]

What services would benefit from anonymous transactions?

Practically speaking, how useful is Monero exactly? There are hardly any services that accept Monero, making it basically worthless as a currency. what's the point of a currency if you can't buy anything with it?

How concerned are people about privacy and anonymity? Just because we are supposed to be concerned, doesn't mean we will/are concerned.

Other cryptocurrencies boast anonymity too, what sets Monero apart from the crowd exactly?

Does Monero have a future? Or will it soon die like most cryptocurrencies?

How much value does Monero really have?

I bought into this coin because so many people have convinced themselves and me that this is the next best thing, and I wanted to profit from it. The lowering price is obviously not profitable to me, and now I'm starting to have doubts about this coin.

[BanditryAndLoot]

What services would benefit from anonymous transactions?

All of them

Practically speaking, how useful is Monero exactly?

Exactly 100% useful, every single Monero ever produced will have value. Value is useful.

There are hardly any services that accept Monero, making it basically worthless as a currency.

This is confirmation bias. Surely you didn't purchase a crypto currency in 2014 thinking that your neighbors were using them at the grocery store downtown?

what's the point of a currency if you can't buy anything with it?

You can already purchase anything you would like with any currency.

How concerned are people about privacy and anonymity?

Very concerned. For example, I'm wearing clothes right this very second. You also are not aware of my name. I'm sure the same will go for the majority of people you will ever interact with over the internet.

Just because we are supposed to be concerned, doesn't mean we will/are concerned.

Totes agree

Other cryptocurrencies boast anonymity too, what sets Monero apart from the crowd exactly?

Brand new code base, using different cryptography implementations than the Satoshi client or any of its derivatives.

Does Monero have a future?

Fuck yeah!

Or will it soon die like most cryptocurrencies?

I don't think anyone here is a fortune teller, or diviner. If you do find one, please do let the rest of us know.

How much value does Monero really have?

Right this minute - $ 3,040,959 as 23% of the total emission which would yield $13,200,000 at 100% emission, plus whatever value you place on hopes and dreams (CMC doesn't list those).

I bought into this coin because so many people have convinced themselves and me that this is the next best thing, and I wanted to profit from it. The lowering price is obviously not profitable to me, and now I'm starting to have doubts about this coin.

Personally, I don't think you're having increasing doubts, yet more decreasing beliefs. The doubts were likely always there. Seeing as how your main belief you held in buying into this was to only attain profit, obviously your beliefs have decreased in your relative position to your doubts. In that case, I highly suggest you become motivated to discover some more legitimate beliefs, rather than let them shrink in scale to your doubt, lest you will then be in a position to really lose money.

[Zabaglione]

@BanditryAndLoot

Good answers, thank you!

Other cryptocurrencies boast anonymity too, what sets Monero apart from the crowd exactly?

Brand new code base, using different cryptography implementations than the Satoshi client or any of its derivatives.

Does this really set Monero apart from other anon cryptocurrencies though? Both Monero and other anon cryptocurrencies ultimately do the same thing, transfer value anonymously, unless I'm mistaken. Also, Monero wasn't the first to do this so it doesn't get the advantage of being first like Bitcoin does.

Seeing as how your main belief you held in buying into this was to only attain profit

I think most people do this. Other than the DSH/XMR etc markets on Poloniex, there isn't much else reason to buy Monero. Just because you believe in Monero you don't have to buy it.

How concerned are people about privacy and anonymity?

Very concerned. For example, I'm wearing clothes right this very second. You also are not aware of my name. I'm sure the same will go for the majority of people you will ever interact with over the internet.

I do agree that people are concerned to an extent, but I think the large majority of people would be content with the psuedo anonymity that Bitcoin provides. Especially when using Bitcoin is just easier. Monero does really lack ease of use and there is quite a steep learning curve. I never hear people talk about how easy to use Monero is.

[jwinterm]

Does this really set Monero apart from other anon cryptocurrencies though? Both Monero and other anon cryptocurrencies ultimately do the same thing, transfer value anonymously, unless I'm mistaken. Also, Monero wasn't the first to do this so it doesn't get the advantage of being first like Bitcoin does.

What other coins offer anonymous transactions outside of cryptonotes? All I see are promises to implement something in the future, except for anoncoin, and their implementation seems to getting some pointed critiques. You're correct that Monero wasn't the first, Bytecoin was the first, but they had an effective 80%+ premine, making bitmonero/monero the first fairly launched and de facto first anonymous cryptocurrency, unless I'm mistaken.

[Quicken]

I do agree that people are concerned to an extent, but I think the large majority of people would be content with the psuedo anonymity of Bitcoin. Especially when using Bitcoin is just easier. Monero does really lack ease of use and there is quite a steep learning curve.

The large majority of people are happy with fiat at the moment, which is easier than any crypto. That didn't stop BTC gaining value, and I believe there is plenty of money interested in genuine anonymity.

Finally, Monero is only six months old. Look again in another 6 months. 

[Zabaglione]

Does this really set Monero apart from other anon cryptocurrencies though? Both Monero and other anon cryptocurrencies ultimately do the same thing, transfer value anonymously, unless I'm mistaken. Also, Monero wasn't the first to do this so it doesn't get the advantage of being first like Bitcoin does.

What other coins offer anonymous transactions outside of cryptonotes? All I see are promises to implement something in the future, except for anoncoin, and their implementation seems to getting some pointed critiques. You're correct that Monero wasn't the first, Bytecoin was the first, but they had an effective 80%+ premine, making bitmonero/monero the first fairly launched and de facto first anonymous cryptocurrency, unless I'm mistaken.

What about Darkcoin and Stealthcoin? Those are just two off the top of my head but I thought they had managed to achieve anonymity?

I do agree that people are concerned to an extent, but I think the large majority of people would be content with the psuedo anonymity of Bitcoin. Especially when using Bitcoin is just easier. Monero does really lack ease of use and there is quite a steep learning curve.

The large majority of people are happy with fiat at the moment, which is easier than any crypto. That didn't stop BTC gaining value, and I believe there is plenty of money interested in genuine anonymity.
Finally, Monero is only six months old. Look again in another 6 months.  

I don't think fiat money is always easier than crypto. For me, I find online transactions with Bitcoin FAR more easy (cheaper and faster also). But yeah, I suppose you're right in that the easiness isn't the most important factor. But I still believe convenience and easiness is important. I really do wonder what Monero will be like in another 6 months. Are there any plans for the future of Monero?

[Este Nuno]

Does this really set Monero apart from other anon cryptocurrencies though? Both Monero and other anon cryptocurrencies ultimately do the same thing, transfer value anonymously, unless I'm mistaken. Also, Monero wasn't the first to do this so it doesn't get the advantage of being first like Bitcoin does.

What other coins offer anonymous transactions outside of cryptonotes? All I see are promises to implement something in the future, except for anoncoin, and their implementation seems to getting some pointed critiques. You're correct that Monero wasn't the first, Bytecoin was the first, but they had an effective 80%+ premine, making bitmonero/monero the first fairly launched and de facto first anonymous cryptocurrency, unless I'm mistaken.

What about Darkcoin and Stealthcoin? Those are just two off the top of my head but I thought they had managed to achieve anonymity?

Most people like to see some professional cryptographers make an independent review first before taking it on faith that some coin has achieved anonymity. As far as I know there are no such published papers, but I could be wrong because I don't follow either of those currencies.

[BanditryAndLoot]

Does this really set Monero apart from other anon cryptocurrencies though? Both Monero and other anon cryptocurrencies ultimately do the same thing, transfer value anonymously, unless I'm mistaken. Also, Monero wasn't the first to do this so it doesn't get the advantage of being first like Bitcoin does.

I'm unaware of every technicality of every implementation of a privacy-centric cryptocurrency, but I'm definitely aware of a few. Darkcoin utilizes masternodes in a network that has become a PoW/PoS system to handle your transactions. I view this as an interesting concept for pretty much everything other than securing anonymity. While I feel it has a decent implementation of privacy, it offers the least amount of privacy subject to the most trade offs compared to the competition. For one, people need to have large amounts of the currency remain absoultely immobile in order to provide their anonymity. What happens when they want to use this money, while getting the MN reward? I see promise notes taking root relatively quickly if Darkcoin were to gain any significant market cap.

Last I saw they had ~1k nodes, of 1000 DRK each. That's about 20% of their current money supply out of usage for transacting. Their goal of (IIRC) 3k - 5k nodes will be 3 million out of production out of ~22M total coins, so it looks like they want to keep it at about 20% for the entire time. While this is nice, their reward structure has not been defined completely yet (If I'm wrong please let me know). With their goal is 22M total coins, I haven't seen an answer as to what will happen to the 20% block reward going to the master nodes when the block reward runs out. Seeing as their structure right now is a minimum of 1 DRK/block going to all masternodes, I think they'll see some trouble in figuring out what to do when that 22M max coins is hit.

So, for the nodes to always receive this minimum payment, the same nodes on which their entire premise of anonymity rests, they'll have to settle on a permanent block reward of at least 1 DRK/block and a PoS system that rewards only masternodes, if they were to completely cut out the hardware miners. If they stick with PoW, then what would the block reward have to be to keep the network secure? Let's say 1 DRK to MN's and 1 DRK to miners. So a minimum of 2 DRK/block. At 22M max coins, and a block time of 2.5 minutes, this is an annual debasement of 420k/year, or about a 2% yearly inflation. Understand that at this point, 50% of DRK is already accounted for by 100 wallets. So, we can reasonably assume that most of the MN reward will go to these peoples wallets. So, even without hardware, we're likely going to see < 100 people with ~2.1 million DRK catch most of 20% of the block reward forever, so these 100 wallets will likely catch an easy 2.6 million more DRK while doing absolutely no work other than running a server and keeping it on. I don't think that's representative of them paying the market price, and believe that it's stealing, equivalent to a premine (ADD: by non-developers). ADD: I say this because, simply by using cryptonote, I have the ability to offer anyone using cryponote anonymity for what is right now only transaction fees. As drk already had an instamine, it would be pretty awkward to see that instamine coupled with a premine by likely the same people.

Alternatively, they can leave the masternodes and miners with transaction fees. Bitcoin right now, for a 1335 tx block collects .18036 BTC in transaction fees. If this was Darkcoin at max coins, then .0360 DRK/block would go to MN's. If they have ~4k MN's online at this point, each node will collect an average of about 902 satoshi's per block. With 17568 blocks/month this is .1584 DRK/month per masternode. If DRK had the same marketcapcost per coin as Bitcoin right now, this would be about $55 USD/month. Is that worth it for you to have something with a value of $346,000 sitting around? Highly doubtful - if you have over a quarter million dollars in value sitting around and all you can do is pull $55 USD/month with is that's a damn joke (ADD: on average, of course, within a timeframe that one can afford - this isn't an investment discussion, this is a service for a fee discussion). So what will they do? (add: this $55 number does not account for the fact that bitcoin block time is 10 mins, drk is 2.5, so this number reflects a higher usage and same marketcap scenario.)

It's placed me at a serious economic disadvantage, and I'm not okay with it; however, all the choices can ever do is limit the penetration into society, so I don't spend my days criticizing their efforts and continue to support their innovation, I even own myself a whopping 5 DRK. I haven't addressed the technical basis of masternodes at all here though, so keep that in mind.

There's other coins that other people have a better understanding of like zerocoin, bitcoindark, or even other cryptonote forks .. I'm sure they can give a better answer than I can .. but just like my above paragraphs - there's volumes to be said, so it's not really a quick conversation.

I think most people do this. Other than the DSH/XMR etc markets on Poloniex, there isn't much else reason to buy Monero. Just because you believe in Monero you don't have to buy it.

I agree, and repeat that if you find things to believe in then surely you can find a reason to hold onto at least a couple

Personally, I'm looking forward to trying out Risto's game, and have set aside a few XMR to do so. The initial buy in is too costly for me, but I await to see what he's come up with. While I already owned XMR, even if I didn't I would be interested in purchasing at least 5-10 to play the game, depending on whether or not I wanted to play the game. It's a choice that wasn't there a month ago. That same kind of utility has brought me to buy a few huntercoin, and darknote, because I wanted to try out huntercoins blockchain game, and darknotes messaging system. The values were small enough that I don't care to run to the market and dump them on a downtrend, but large enough to afford myself the utility these things provide. Also, large enough that if either one ever got the same marketcap as bitcoin, I would feel very happy, as a simple $5-$10 investment could yield 10k-100k gains. While I don't know if that's ever possible with either of them, I have to also admit that it's not impossible.

I do agree that people are concerned to an extent, but I think the large majority of people would be content with the psuedo anonymity of Bitcoin. Especially when using Bitcoin is just easier. Monero does really lack ease of use and there is quite a steep learning curve.

They are satisfied for now. Just this year, coinbase has been taking advantage of the linkability of transactions to deny some people their services. How long that can go on for and to what extent it can be taken to remains to be fully observed, but speculation says that it can go pretty far. Regardless of the pseudo anonymity, if your money is worthless to some people regardless of who you are and relies entirely on its recent history then I don't really see much good coming out of it.

As far as easier - Bitcoin has had 5 years of development. This has had 5 months. I can accept that an order of magnitude in lifetime will result in an order of magnitude in usability, comparably. I don't think it will take 4.5 more years to get to the same type of usability though, likely much much less time, as we have tens of thousands of more people who are capable of developing cryptocurrencies now than we did 5 years ago.

[GBattaglia]

Monero was worth roughly $2.20 not all that long ago, and now it is worth less than $.70.
Those who invested $2000 in your project here in the past few months now only have about $600 in investment value.
While I agree with people saying it isn't the devs job necessarily to maintain the price of a currency, I can't say these
facts should just be ignored.

[bigj]

It's like an early Xmas! Moneros almost for free!! Buy now, be happy later :-) I cant stop buying!

[jwinterm]

Does this really set Monero apart from other anon cryptocurrencies though? Both Monero and other anon cryptocurrencies ultimately do the same thing, transfer value anonymously, unless I'm mistaken. Also, Monero wasn't the first to do this so it doesn't get the advantage of being first like Bitcoin does.

What other coins offer anonymous transactions outside of cryptonotes? All I see are promises to implement something in the future, except for anoncoin, and their implementation seems to getting some pointed critiques. You're correct that Monero wasn't the first, Bytecoin was the first, but they had an effective 80%+ premine, making bitmonero/monero the first fairly launched and de facto first anonymous cryptocurrency, unless I'm mistaken.

What about Darkcoin and Stealthcoin? Those are just two off the top of my head but I thought they had managed to achieve anonymity?

As someone pointed out above, Darkcoin relies on masternodes to perform mixing. As they said, I don't think this technology has been reviewed by actual cryptographers, and another thing is this semi-centralized system puts forth an attack vector for malicious actors to focus their efforts on.

I don't think Stealthcoin has actually implemented any real anonymous transactions. They were talking about using chandran signatures, but that seems to have been shot down by some people as not workable in the form they initially proposed.

[GBattaglia]

It's like an early Xmas! Moneros almost for free!! Buy now, be happy later :-) I cant stop buying!

People have been saying that regarding BTC since it was sub $600 I think.

[bigj]

It's like an early Xmas! Moneros almost for free!! Buy now, be happy later :-) I cant stop buying!

People have been saying that regarding BTC since it was sub $600 I think.

And if they were to buy coins every couple of days/weeks or so, they would be perfectly fine on average.

[GBattaglia]

It's like an early Xmas! Moneros almost for free!! Buy now, be happy later :-) I cant stop buying!

People have been saying that regarding BTC since it was sub $600 I think.

And if they were to buy coins every 3 weeks, they would be perfectly fine on average.

How can you say that? If you were buying Monero every three weeks since the past few months when the price dipped below $2 you would be currently
out a large portion of your investment. Monero has not experienced a price spike and dump during this time, it has been quite consistently falling, much like BTC.

[rpietila]

since the past few months

Anything less than 3 years to measure success just wastes your time and gives bad results

[Come-In-Behind]

It's like an early Xmas! Moneros almost for free!! Buy now, be happy later :-) I cant stop buying!

People have been saying that regarding BTC since it was sub $600 I think.

And if they were to buy coins every 3 weeks, they would be perfectly fine on average.

How can you say that? If you were buying Monero every three weeks since the past few months when the price dipped below $2 you would be currently
out a large portion of your investment. Monero has not experienced a price spike and dump during this time, it has been quite consistently falling, much like BTC.

I realized this too, it's basically doing the same as BTC on it's up/downtrends. Which is a good thing(incase another btc runup happens like this May)

[eXe47]

Does this really set Monero apart from other anon cryptocurrencies though? Both Monero and other anon cryptocurrencies ultimately do the same thing, transfer value anonymously, unless I'm mistaken. Also, Monero wasn't the first to do this so it doesn't get the advantage of being first like Bitcoin does.

What other coins offer anonymous transactions outside of cryptonotes? All I see are promises to implement something in the future, except for anoncoin, and their implementation seems to getting some pointed critiques. You're correct that Monero wasn't the first, Bytecoin was the first, but they had an effective 80%+ premine, making bitmonero/monero the first fairly launched and de facto first anonymous cryptocurrency, unless I'm mistaken.

What about Darkcoin and Stealthcoin? Those are just two off the top of my head but I thought they had managed to achieve anonymity?

As someone pointed out above, Darkcoin relies on masternodes to perform mixing. As they said, I don't think this technology has been reviewed by actual cryptographers, and another thing is this semi-centralized system puts forth an attack vector for malicious actors to focus their efforts on.

I don't think Stealthcoin has actually implemented any real anonymous transactions. They were talking about using chandran signatures, but that seems to have been shot down by some people as not workable in the form they initially proposed.

Actually Supercoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=736705.0) managed it. 
It's kind of a funny & sad story. The technology is there but marketing and communication from the dev side failed completely...

Well, its about more than just advanced technology, Supercoin is currently looking for qualified Devs/Team to take over the project.... if on of you guys is interested

[jwinterm]

Does this really set Monero apart from other anon cryptocurrencies though? Both Monero and other anon cryptocurrencies ultimately do the same thing, transfer value anonymously, unless I'm mistaken. Also, Monero wasn't the first to do this so it doesn't get the advantage of being first like Bitcoin does.

What other coins offer anonymous transactions outside of cryptonotes? All I see are promises to implement something in the future, except for anoncoin, and their implementation seems to getting some pointed critiques. You're correct that Monero wasn't the first, Bytecoin was the first, but they had an effective 80%+ premine, making bitmonero/monero the first fairly launched and de facto first anonymous cryptocurrency, unless I'm mistaken.

What about Darkcoin and Stealthcoin? Those are just two off the top of my head but I thought they had managed to achieve anonymity?

As someone pointed out above, Darkcoin relies on masternodes to perform mixing. As they said, I don't think this technology has been reviewed by actual cryptographers, and another thing is this semi-centralized system puts forth an attack vector for malicious actors to focus their efforts on.

I don't think Stealthcoin has actually implemented any real anonymous transactions. They were talking about using chandran signatures, but that seems to have been shot down by some people as not workable in the form they initially proposed.

Actually Supercoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=736705.0) managed it. 
It's kind of a funny & sad story. The technology is there but marketing and communication from the dev side failed completely...

Well, its about more than just advanced technology, Supercoin is currently looking for qualified Devs/Team to take over the project.... if on of you guys is interested

Based on your link the anonymous send version of Supercoin is still closed source. How can anyone evaluate the technology if the devs are unwilling to show their code?

[Zabaglione]

Monero was worth roughly $2.20 not all that long ago, and now it is worth less than $.70.
Those who invested $2000 in your project here in the past few months now only have about $600 in investment value.
While I agree with people saying it isn't the devs job necessarily to maintain the price of a currency, I can't say these
facts should just be ignored.

Why is the price falling so much though? Mining reward is too high? I thought I read somewhere about mining botnets making up a large portion of the net hash rate of Monero, and the operators dump the Monero for BTC causing huge sell pressure.

For whatever reason its falling, isn't the price fall a serious problem? At this rate Monero will literally be worthless soon wouldn't it?

[shojayxt]

since the past few months

Anything less than 3 years to measure success just wastes your time and gives bad results

I disagree.  It might have taken bitcoin years before it had any value but the landscape has changed.  Three years to measure success is ridiculous.  Cryptocurrencies are no longer just some geeky experiment like bitcoin was when it started.  The foundation has been poured.  Those building on that foundation will need to move quickly or get left behind.  Bitcoins history is just that.  To be successful going forward, a cryptocurrency will need to rapidly deploy features people want, create an infrastructure that will support it, and users willing to adopt it.  If a currency doesn't accomplish those things it will go nowhere.

I think one of the reasons for the exodus out of altcoins is that people have been speculating on the next bitcoin.  It's become apparent to many that the majority of all altcoins are just quick schemes to make money.  They all promise this and that, new features coming, etc...  None of the promises have come true.  None of the altcoins have succeeded in gaining any significant adoption and most likely none of them will.

If any cryptocurrency wants to be around in three years then it needs to offer something people want and it needs to offer it now.  If it doesn't it won't be around in three years, monero included.

Telling people it might take three years is like shooting yourself in the foot.  People aren't going to do that.  They are already losing patience as proven by the recent selling.  People want results now.  That's just a fact of life.