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

[smooth]

it's worth taking into account that all of the alts that are privacy centered have taken a massive beating lately (dark, bbr, btcd, etc).

(Almost) all the alts that aren't privacy centered have been taking a massive beating lately too, and Bitcoin too.

Crypto bear market.

That pretty much sums it up.  If you look at other coin threads you'll see the same talk about price.  However, this latest decline in XMR price has been pretty substantial compared to other coins.

Compared to some yes. But over the past 30 days BTCD is down more, DRK is down less, so I don't think you can really attribute it to privacy-centered vs. others. Our ranking on coinmarket cap has slipped a bit (down to #14 now) but 11-20 are all pretty close in value, and the entire group has dropped about as much as we have (though the composition of the group has changed a little).

Nothing remarkable about the XMR price drop really, given the rest of the market. That's not to say I'm happy about it, but being realistic.

[Wekkel]

It's just price discovery. Earn your place in the crypto world with hard results and price will eventually rebound.

[bigj]

It's just price discovery. Earn your place in the crypto world with hard results and price will eventually rebound.

Never got so many totally cheap Monero coins in my life! My thanks go to Mr. Burns dumping all his coins because he's too old to understand

[Serby]

If I may play devil's advocate for a moment....
Why should anyone besides criminals care about a non-transparent blockchain?  I can imagine that a big holder wouldn't want their big holdings potentially traced back to them whenever they send coins.  Any other (practical, non-philosophical) reason?

It's been debated a lot already.
Without privacy there is no democracy nor freedom. Simple as that.

All the people claiming that they have nothing to hide are ALL LYING.
Hundred of experiments have proven that people behave submissively and are much more easy to control when feeling being watched.

Start with this :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

people who think that privacy doesn't matter are misinformed/ignorant and don't fully understand the whole spectrum of the issue.
"I've got nothing to hide" is a dangerous mantra that contradicts itself as people who use it are still walking with their clothes on and use doors in their house, keys etc.. Privacy is the very essence of capitalism!

Privacy is the very essence of individualism.

On a side note, XMR has a great community, keep faith in this coin and in the devs' awsome work.

[otila]

I live in the western world in one of the most sophisticated democracies with very high standards regarding rule of law etc. - we probably never need btc or xmr.

Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/us/law-lets-irs-seize-accounts-on-suspicion-no-crime-required.html

[Quicken]

I live in the western world in one of the most sophisticated democracies with very high standards regarding rule of law etc. - we probably never need btc or xmr.

Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/us/law-lets-irs-seize-accounts-on-suspicion-no-crime-required.html

Yes, and never forget Executive Order 6102. ;-)

[liteon]

Price: 0.0017
Never forget 

[bitcoinrocks]

EXCELLENT points guys!  My faith in the concept of a non-transparent blockchain is restored.  But will Monero be the One?  It sounds like ZeroCash has a lot of people very interested but it hasn't been released yet.  Is Boolberry the next best thing in CryptoNote?  What does BBR have going for it that XMR doesn't?

[dEBRUYNE]

EXCELLENT points guys!  My faith in the concept of a non-transparent blockchain is restored.  But will Monero be the One?  It sounds like ZeroCash has a lot of people very interested but it hasn't been released yet.  Is Boolberry the next best thing in CryptoNote?  What does BBR have going for it that XMR doesn't?

Quoting eizh on reddit for the comparison between BBR and XMR

The two major departures are:
(1) The PoW as it uses block header hashes as a scratchpad. This was intended to get a faster hashrate for verification purposes. It resulted in scrypt-like differences in CPU v. GPU hashpower. This itself led to concentrated distribution due to closed source private miners acquiring large portions of the network.
(2) It removes old ring signatures from the blockchain under a checkpoint. This is questionable because it pre-supposes consensus. The BBR dev himself referred to it as "Not the best solution, maybe we gonna find something more nice."
I like the alias feature, though it should come with some fee in order to prevent meaningless bloating.

I should add that BBR also already has a good GUI. It's in beta, but it's an "official" beta whereas XMR has several unofficial GUIs in beta. XMR won't make one official until the GUI development contest ends on July 1st.
Overall, I would say BBR is more experimental with respect to the CryptoNote reference code (i.e. BCN) while XMR is more conservative. Think of it as Litecoin vs. Peercoin. LTC went with simple changes to the reference (BTC) while PPC changed some things starkly -- namely PoW to PoW/PoS hybrid.
Of course, not everything has worked out for either coin. LTC has trouble justifying its existence and use while PPC has to deal with centralized checkpointing and hoarding. There are no direct parallels, but this can help non-technical people get a sense of the difference.
Make your investment allocations based on your judgement of merits, but it's silly to call a pretty different coin "Monero on steroids" because it's not Monero.

According to aminorex zerocoin/zerocash has some serious issues.

the winner will be taken once zerocash is out - anc failed so miserably that I think it is dead.

I think we will see the classical situation of two networks competing - the dominant ledger from the cryptonote implementations which is by no question monero and the dominat zerocash implementation.

from a game-theoretic point odds for monero are not that bad, it will strongly depend how zerocash is distributed.

zerocash has data size and compute time issues which make it unsuitable for many uses cases of xmr.  
it also has the trusted mint problem, last i heard.
for those reasons i doubt that it can attain sufficient liquidity to displace monero as the dominant provider of dark liquidity.

If the anon fad is over, then hype will have less impact on price.  Technical merit and community effort will play a larger role in determining the outcome.  Lows are always the best time to invest.  If the froth is gone, volatility declines and appreciation is more reliable.  The end of the bubble is always good for the high-quality enterprises.  Their fly-by-night competition is weeded out by the depressive lows.  Fewer fools throwing money around means less malinvestment.  I.e. investment goes to the most fit.  Because monero is the most fit, monero will benefit.

Let us recap the situation and the contenders:

ANC - Zerocoin has serious UX problems due to high computational complexity and data-intensive operation.  Also, it is moon math, and only time and extensive review within the cryptographic community will lend confidence.  A promising crypto in the zygote stage.
DRK - Snake oil, plus instamine, plus ponzi, large entrepreneurial community, late-term fetal development stage.
XMR - High-quality well-tested crypto, large development and entrepreneurial community, mid-term fetal development stage.

Nothing else has enough promise*liquidity to be a contender.  Of the three, XMR and ANC are respectable.  XMR is substantially ahead of ANC in terms of technical development, mind-share and liquidity.  DRK is substantially ahead of XMR in those terms, but it is technically unfit for most legitimate purposes.

Unfortunately I can't elaborate more on aminorex' opinions. Maybe some other member could do that.

[bitcoinrocks]

Great analysis there.

Why is the XMR emission curve so much steeper than with other PoW coins?  Is there a benefit to flattening out sooner?

[bitcoinrocks]

fungibility is also a serious issue.

Why is that?

If you live in a corrupt state where the state is confiscating without serious reasoning maybe the citizens should get the possibility for something which is not that easy to link or to confiscate.

Doesn't that mean XMR is under much more regulatory danger than BTC?

[RentaMouse]

If I recall correctly, Aminorex originally gave a very similar assessment of the "anonymous/private" coin competition 2-3 months ago, and in that time nothing has changed.The Bitcoin based alternatives are struggling to come up with a solution they can announce to great fanfare because they know if its not at least as good as Monero/Cryptonote based coins then they will shoot themselves in the foot. Unfortunately whilst this is a major public relations bonus for XMR we still can't maximise that benefit because the technology isnt ready.

Anyone who has invested in Monero at this stage should have been well aware that its still a "beta" technology - one of the seemingly few honest dev teams that admits the pros and cons whilst not giving in to the pressure to hype up the price in the short term with marketing stunts. Hopefully that will reflect well on XMR in the long term.

[RentaMouse]

Great analysis there.

Why is the XMR emission curve so much steeper than with other PoW coins?  Is there a benefit to flattening out sooner?

Bit of a sore point that one, the emission curve is something we got stuck with from the original incarnation of Bitmonero, which had an autocratic solo dev who knew best.... It was then forked by the current team and so you can tell what the people preferred, but the emission curve stayed.

[bitcoinrocks]

Why is the XMR emission curve so much steeper than with other PoW coins?  Is there a benefit to flattening out sooner?

Bit of a sore point that one, the emission curve is something we got stuck with from the original incarnation of Bitmonero, which had an autocratic solo dev who knew best.... It was then forked by the current team and so you can tell what the people preferred, but the emission curve stayed.

Really nice to have that info, thank you.  How big of a problem does this pose to an investor?

[Patel]

Why is the XMR emission curve so much steeper than with other PoW coins?  Is there a benefit to flattening out sooner?

Bit of a sore point that one, the emission curve is something we got stuck with from the original incarnation of Bitmonero, which had an autocratic solo dev who knew best.... It was then forked by the current team and so you can tell what the people preferred, but the emission curve stayed.

Really nice to have that info, thank you.  How big of a problem does this pose to an investor?

Pretty significant to be honest. Monero will have 18.4 million total/max coins. 14.72 million (80%) will be mined in the first 4 years. Currently, we're at 4.2 million in circulation.

The first 4 years, has heavy inflation. This gives investors an incentive to buy in at the end of that timeframe. And 4 years in crypto is a long time, with a significant chance that something better will come into the market.

[bitcoinrocks]

Why is the XMR emission curve so much steeper than with other PoW coins?  Is there a benefit to flattening out sooner?

Bit of a sore point that one, the emission curve is something we got stuck with from the original incarnation of Bitmonero, which had an autocratic solo dev who knew best.... It was then forked by the current team and so you can tell what the people preferred, but the emission curve stayed.

Really nice to have that info, thank you.  How big of a problem does this pose to an investor?

Pretty significant to be honest. Monero will have 18.4 million total/max coins. 14.72 million (80%) will be mined in the first 4 years. Currently, we're at 4.2 million in circulation.

The first 4 years, has heavy inflation. This gives investors an incentive to buy in at the end of that timeframe. And 4 years in crypto is a long time, with a significant chance that something better will come into the market.

I can imagine that XMR must become very popular as an investment or as a store of value (short or long term) in order to counteract that degree of inflation.

[Patel]

Why is the XMR emission curve so much steeper than with other PoW coins?  Is there a benefit to flattening out sooner?

Bit of a sore point that one, the emission curve is something we got stuck with from the original incarnation of Bitmonero, which had an autocratic solo dev who knew best.... It was then forked by the current team and so you can tell what the people preferred, but the emission curve stayed.

Really nice to have that info, thank you.  How big of a problem does this pose to an investor?

Pretty significant to be honest. Monero will have 18.4 million total/max coins. 14.72 million (80%) will be mined in the first 4 years. Currently, we're at 4.2 million in circulation.

The first 4 years, has heavy inflation. This gives investors an incentive to buy in at the end of that timeframe. And 4 years in crypto is a long time, with a significant chance that something better will come into the market.

I can imagine that XMR must become very popular as an investment or as a store of value (short or long term) in order to counteract that degree of inflation.

Yeah, if a coin has a emission rate similar to Monero, it needs to make sure the coin have an awesome start and growing demand to counteract the inflation. Because if your lagging behind in demand, then the emission is just going to keep dragging price down. Thus discouraging new entrants.

I'm not an economist, but that's my take on it.

[Techone]

I hope the price of monero will drop to a rate where mining is not profitable compared to other crypto coins out there.

It serves two purposes:

1. Botnets switch to "yummy-cash-cow-coin" and leave monero alone.
2. "Professional" Miners (mine´n´sell) switch too.

This provides a very good spread of coins, everyone can mine some and let monero develop.

Monero is a new born child, only a few month old, and some people here expect it to have nice look, be famous, to have a high value per coin... are you serious?! Give it some time. Don´t like it? You got two options: Help to improve it or get out asap. Your choice. But please, please: Stop complaining. It feels like ~ 400 pages of complaining 50 pages "BTCx exploit panic" and ~ 400 pages usefull stuff.

[bitcoinrocks]

I hope the price of monero will drop to a rate where mining is not profitable compared to other crypto coins out there.

Maybe that's the magic price point.  Any math geniuses in here?

[Techone]

It´s at 0.0011 for most regions in the US and at 0.0021 in western europe, at least with Nvidia GPUs, CPU and AMD may be a little higher.

I am from Germany, power cost is ~ 0.30 USD (25 euro cents) here, but many companies provide you with free power during the winter if you are willing to take care of the temperature during winter in their warehouses. Keep them above 0°C to avoid burst water pipes.