Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[rocks]

It is not clear how uniformity/fungibility is any different from Bitcoin.

Most likely if an entity (company, government, individual, ect) decided to censor bitcoin transactions based on tx history, then that entity would not accept a currency like XMR at all because tx history cannot be completely known.  In this sense, XMR could be LESS FUNGIBLE than bitcoin, or at least less accepted as fungibility may be the wrong term to use in that case.

In that case you still can't differentiate units, which is the premise of fungibility. It would simply be outlawed.

Which puts Monero in the exact same position as Bitcoin then. Bitcoin would have certain transaction types outlawed and Monero would be entirely outlawed. Yet both Monero and Bitcoin would still function and processed the outlawed transactions for people who choose to ignore the (illegal) rules.

And so both maintain fungibility through the exact same mechanism, which is people ignoring governments.  This is why I'll maintain privacy is a matter of usage, but is not a property of money.

[1714207979]

1714207979

[1714207979]

1714207979

[1714207979]

1714207979

[1714207979]

1714207979

[1714207979]

1714207979

[kazuki49]

Which puts Monero in the exact same position as Bitcoin then. Bitcoin would have certain transaction types outlawed and Monero would be entirely outlawed. Yet both Monero and Bitcoin would still function and processed the outlawed transactions for people who choose to ignore the (illegal) rules.

And so both maintain fungibility through the exact same mechanism, which is people ignoring governments.  This is why I'll maintain privacy is a matter of usage, but is not a property of money.

I dont think anyone said money needs to be private to be money, Monero is a private form of electronic money from blockchain perspective, Bitcoin is not truly one because all separating anyone from tracing you is them not knowing you own the addresses, create one single exit or entry point with KYC and your entire history of transactions is compromised and you'll never know whos watching and why, think credit card, thats is what Bitcoin is more like, Monero on other hand is setup so that traceability of funds is limited within the scope of a certain organization or government, basically a database of view keys, Bitcoin was setup to be traceable by anyone including their doge. Monero also has better mining algo to difficult ASICS and can SCALE.

[cypherdoc]

There is a "viewkey" in Monero that allows people to track your transactions... so I wouldn't say that Monero "forces" privacy on its users. (Maybe I'm splitting hairs though).

Thanks for the correction, Chris.  What's your take on Monero and ring-signature technology, BTW?

what's this about a viewkey?

[rocks]

Which puts Monero in the exact same position as Bitcoin then. Bitcoin would have certain transaction types outlawed and Monero would be entirely outlawed. Yet both Monero and Bitcoin would still function and processed the outlawed transactions for people who choose to ignore the (illegal) rules.

And so both maintain fungibility through the exact same mechanism, which is people ignoring governments.  This is why I'll maintain privacy is a matter of usage, but is not a property of money.

I dont think anyone said money needs to be private to be money, Monero is a private form of electronic money from blockchain perspective, Bitcoin is not truly one because all separating anyone from tracing you is them not knowing you own the addresses, create one single exit or entry point with KYC and your entire history of transactions is compromised and you'll never know whos watching and why, think credit card, thats is what Bitcoin is more like, Monero on other hand is setup so that traceability of funds is limited within the scope of a certain organization or government, basically a database of view keys, Bitcoin was setup to be traceable by anyone including their doge. Monero also has better mining algo to difficult ASICS and can SCALE.

Not debating any of that, agree that Monero is more private.

Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption. The subset of people who need privacy can use both in a manner that achieves it. Regarding "better mining algo", again this is not a property of money I think people who are resorting to these types of arguments to convince themselves that altcoin x is better are kidding themselves.

On the six properties I care about Monero is either the same or worse than Bitcoin. Explain to me how Monero is better on any of those six properties, otherwise you don't have a solid argument that it is better.

[sickpig]

Very valuable work coming from Andrew Miller (@socrate1024): a way to test bitcoin at scale using shadow (1) and a custom made shadow multi-thread plugin. Applying this framework they even found out a novel denial-of-service attack against the Bitcoin software.

The paper: "Shadow-Bitcoin: Scalable Simulation via Direct Execution of Multi-threaded Applications"

https://cs.umd.edu/~amiller/shadow-bitcoin.pdf

And here the link to the plugin code: https://github.com/shadow/shadow-plugin-bitcoin

(1) https://shadow.github.io

[kazuki49]

Not debating any of that, agree that Monero is more private.

Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption. The subset of people who need privacy can use both in a manner that achieves it. Regarding "better mining algo", again this is not a property of money I think people who are resorting to these types of arguments to convince themselves that altcoin x is better are kidding themselves. On the six properties I care about Monero is either the same or worse than Bitcoin.

I can convince myself of whatever I want, including that Bitcoin as money sucks is a NWO tracking tool waiting to happen.

BTW would you use a metal as money that has only 3 or 4 large groups mining 80% of all deposits of it or one that has better qualities of money and can be found in your backyard yet as rare as the first one.

[cypherdoc]

https://medium.com/@21dotco/a-bitcoin-miner-in-every-device-and-in-every-hand-e315b40f2821

Nice find!

I was surprised to see a quote from this individual:

seems to me that at the very least we will see companies like Qualcomm opening their own mining pools at which all these devices will be pointed.  this would be fantastic in further decentralizing mining in terms of increasing pool choices.  especially here in the US.  and if Qualcomm opens a pool, others are sure to follow.  like Whirlpool, GE, Subzero, etc.

i think 21 is seriously going to mess with credit card companies.

[smooth]

Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.

Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.

[chriswilmer]

Guys, even if you think buying Monero is a terrible decision (perfectly reasonable stance) I highly recommend this excellent and fascinating technical interview with the Monero core dev:

https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/ltb-e202-understanding-monero

Explains viewkeys and ring signatures. Also very briefly touches of fungibility... but the discussion mostly revolves around the cryptography.

[cypherdoc]

Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.

Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.

i think privacy is an important aspect of money.

at least if you want it to be adopted by the broadest swaths of the population which you should.  and that even means adoption by druglords and money launderers who absolutely need their privacy.  not that i advocate those sorts of activities but that's unrelated to my point.

i also don't think Coinbase is a privacy destroyer except if you try to do something illegal with coins one hop away from them.  as the coins spread out through the economy though it's extremely difficult to link illegal activity with those original coins.

[rocks]

Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.

Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.

Fully agree. But as HeliKopterBen and dEBRUYNE pointed out a few posts ago, a fully private currency such as Monero could just as easily be outlawed in it's entirety. Which puts Monero in the same position as a Bitcoin where blacklist coins are outlawed.

The government can attack the fungibility of both by either outlawing the currency or outlawing blacklist transactions, so the fungibility of both rest to a certain extent on the ability of individuals to interact with the currency outside of the law. This is true for gold or any other money in existence.

For an example, the privacy of gold was broken when they outlawed direct possession and forced everyone into bank notes. Gold used to be able to be used privately (direct transfer) but now it wasn't (no direct transfer legally allowed). The innate properties of Gold and Money did not change, gold was still fungible. What changed was the legal framework around them that prevented that fungibility from being used to gain privacy. This leads me to believe again that privacy is NOT an innate property of money, but is determined by how it is used.

[smooth]

Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.

Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.

Fully agree. But as HeliKopterBen and dEBRUYNE pointed out a few posts ago, a fully private currency such as Monero could just as easily be outlawed in it's entirety. Which puts Monero in the same position as a Bitcoin where blacklist coins are outlawed.

Legally yes, but in terms of fungibility no. If I'm a fully compliant Bitcoin user I may -- purely as a practical matter -- have to check on coins I'm receiving to see if they are "bad", and because coins may be added to a blacklist (or removed from a whitelist) after I receive them, it means I'm left with performing my own KYC to convince myself that the counterparty is unlikely to be passing off "bad" coins.

I'm not doing this because the law requires it but because I'm worried about being left holding the bag with "bad" coins, even if the transaction itself is entirely legal. This is fundamentally incompatible with the concept of fungibility (again, which is distinct from legality).

The risk of this is fungibility concerns is far less to nonexistent with a private coin, where tagging coins as "good" or "bad" is technologically less feasible or impossible (Monero is not as private as say zerocash, so some issues remain there, but far less so than Bitcoin).

[cypherdoc]

after analyzing the report, i think 21 is going to be big.

[rocks]

Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.

Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.

i think privacy is an important aspect of money.

at least if you want it to be adopted by the broadest swaths of the population which you should.  and that even means adoption by druglords and money launderers who absolutely need their privacy.  not that i advocate those sorts of activities but that's unrelated to my point.

i also don't think Coinbase is a privacy destroyer except if you try to do something illegal with coins one hop away from them.  as the coins spread out through the economy though it's extremely difficult to link illegal activity with those original coins.

Not questioning whether privacy is an important aspect to have in money, it definitely is.

But I think everyone needs to work out for themselves if privacy is: 1) an innate property of money, or if privacy is 2) derived from how money is used. I personally think it is #2. This has very important implications on if you think Bitcoin will win, or if something like Monero will win. If you think #1 then Monero is better money, if #2 then Bitcoin at this point.

Gold was fungible & portable, it was the combination of these two properties that enabled Gold to be used privately. When governments outlawed gold, both portability and acceptance dropped significantly which made gold much more difficult to be used privately. This leads me to believe #2 above.

[smooth]

Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.

Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.

i think privacy is an important aspect of money.

at least if you want it to be adopted by the broadest swaths of the population which you should.  and that even means adoption by druglords and money launderers who absolutely need their privacy.  not that i advocate those sorts of activities but that's unrelated to my point.

i also don't think Coinbase is a privacy destroyer except if you try to do something illegal with coins one hop away from them.  as the coins spread out through the economy though it's extremely difficult to link illegal activity with those original coins.

We don't know that Coinbase limits their tracking of "bad" activity to "one hop." In fact I'm pretty sure at least one of the reported cases was more than one hop. Also, I'm certain that Coinbase requires intrusive and privacy-violating measures of their users even when the coins involved have had no connection to illegal activity whatsoever. You can use your imagination to figure out how I'm certain of that.

That said, what is true of Coinbase isn't necessarily true of Bitcoin unless Coinbase and services like it become so pervasive that talking about Bitcoin outside of them is in practice meaningless.

[kazuki49]

Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.

Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.

Fully agree. But as HeliKopterBen and dEBRUYNE pointed out a few posts ago, a fully private currency such as Monero could just as easily be outlawed in it's entirety. Which puts Monero in the same position as a Bitcoin where blacklist coins are outlawed.

I fully expect some governments to outlaw Monero in some ways, it is much more dangerous to them than Bitcoin. But it would be out of ignorance because Monero can be made transparent if required by law on a individual basis and not on a panopticon level like Bitcoin.

[cypherdoc]

We don't know that Coinbase limits their tracking of "bad" activity to "one hop."

doesn't matter. at some point, just b/c you might be in a linear linkage with an address owned by SR at some time doesn't mean you're a criminal.

[rocks]

Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.

Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.

Fully agree. But as HeliKopterBen and dEBRUYNE pointed out a few posts ago, a fully private currency such as Monero could just as easily be outlawed in it's entirety. Which puts Monero in the same position as a Bitcoin where blacklist coins are outlawed.

Legally yes, but in terms of fungibility no. If I'm a fully compliant Bitcoin user I may -- purely as a practical matter -- have to check on coins I'm receiving to see if they are "bad", and because coins may be added to a blacklist (or removed from a whitelist) after I receive them, it means I'm left with performing my own KYC to convince myself that the counterparty is unlikely to be passing off "bad" coins.

I'm not doing this because the law requires it but because I'm worried about being left holding the bag with "bad" coins, even if the transaction itself is entirely legal. This is fundamentally incompatible with the concept of fungibility (again, which is distinct from legality).

The risk of this is fungibility concerns is far less to nonexistent with a private coin, where tagging coins as "good" or "bad" is technologically less feasible or impossible (Monero is not as private as say zerocash, so some issues remain there, but far less so than Bitcoin).

The only reason you would ever be worried about receiving "bad" coins would be because of some legal framework that makes such coins possibility "bad". The exact same legal framework could make 100% of Monero's coins "bad". And you're back to square one.

My understanding of your argument is that in order to maintain fungibility, you need privacy or else that fungibility will be attacked. My argument is both a private and a non-private coin can be equally attacked, and in that situation both have to equally resort to being used outside the legal framework in order to maintain fungibility, so I don't see an advantage of one over the other.

[kazuki49]

The only reason you would ever be worried about receiving "bad" coins would be because of some legal framework that makes such coins possibility "bad". The exact same legal framework could make 100% of Monero's coins "bad". And you're back to square one.

My understanding of your argument is that in order to maintain fungibility, you need privacy or else that fungibility will be attacked. My argument is both a private and a non-private coin can be equally attacked, and in that situation both can be equally used outside the legal framework (i.e. Bitcoin and Monero will both still process "bad" coins with no discrimination) with fungibility untouched.

man that's some mental gymnastic you do, the math is simple, Bitcoin is not inherently fungible but no one is saying it is not or cannot be used as money because of what, you are free to keep using 1984-tokens in your future.

[rpietila]

The only reason you would ever be worried about receiving "bad" coins would be because of some legal framework that makes such coins possibility "bad". The exact same legal framework could make 100% of Monero's coins "bad". And you're back to square one.  

Having to spend contraband coins in a public blockchain would feel awkward, a private chain suits the use case much better.