[XMR] Monero Speculation

[otila]

Also, the recent seizure of underground markets, primarily Silk Road 2, and the arrest of several vendors using those markets, should increase adoption with anonymity coins i.e Monero.

I'd hope so .. but what overall led to the markets getting their servers seized?

Were there any explicit details on how information was compromised?

some speculation...
[tor-dev] yes hello, internet supervillain here https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-November/007731.html

[e-coinomist]

...We are all in the same boat, and it is burning. How about doing what it takes now, so that we can continue to other things?

Meanwhile the price is going up. If it continues that way, I suppose at one point we could naturally stop this discussion?

Since August 2014 it isn't exactly going up, that is wishfull thinking. And no, not burning but sinking.

• This boat is nearly underwater, and just now is the chance to change emission. Not at 0.050BTC, nor on 0.100BTC. Now, or never -
• now, or never! Once completely submerged below waterline, all passengers might choose to swim over elsewhere, saving their savings.

[BitmoreCoin]

...We are all in the same boat, and it is burning. How about doing what it takes now, so that we can continue to other things?

Meanwhile the price is going up. If it continues that way, I suppose at one point we could naturally stop this discussion?

Since August 2014 it isn't exactly going up, that is wishfull thinking. And no, not burning but sinking.

• This boat is nearly underwater, and just now is the chance to change emission. Not at 0.050BTC, nor on 0.100BTC. Now, or never -
• now, or never! Once completely submerged below waterline, all passengers might choose to swim over elsewhere, saving their savings.

If we want to change emission, it is now. Otherwise it is never.

[binaryFate]

Also, the recent seizure of underground markets, primarily Silk Road 2, and the arrest of several vendors using those markets, should increase adoption with anonymity coins i.e Monero.

I'd hope so .. but what overall led to the markets getting their servers seized?

Were there any explicit details on how information was compromised?

Remember this is not only about how they are seized, but also what happens after that:

Expect the transactions to/from seized wallets to be heavily used to prove charges.

Bye bye plausible deniability, hello complete knowledge of your bitcoin activity. Knock knock for some of your buddies.
It's sad that the false sense of opacity and fungibility in bitcoin is learned the hard way for many, but at least it will be learn.

[bobabouey2]

http://www.coindesk.com/day-reckoning-dark-markets-hundreds-illicit-domains/

Expect the transactions to/from seized wallets to be heavily used to prove charges.
This is the time for privacy-oriented solutions to come to light...

I also wonder if they will be able to link wallets to vendors by tracking transactions to exchanges and getting subpoenas.  I.e. subpoena exchanges to get their deposit addresses, get all the vendor deposit addresses they can from their infiltration of SR2 (and possibly the SR2 tumbler), and try and connect the two.

People who are careful and mix multiple times may be ok, but there will always be a few who were sloppy.  Even if they don't capture the biggest and most sophisticated this way, I see a lot of PR value to government taking credit for "cracking" bitcoin's pseudonymity.

In this regard, how secure is Darkcoin?  It seems like the masternode operator can link transactions that they mix - although I'm not totally clear on this.  And there is no reason the gov't can't operate a lot of masternodes.

The response from Darkcoin seems to be that you can mix several times, and as long as one of the masternodes is not compromised, you are ok.  But it seems like the flip side is true as well.  If there are multiple compromised masternodes, then over time, they will capture the full transaction.

[nioc]

...We are all in the same boat, and it is burning. How about doing what it takes now, so that we can continue to other things?

Meanwhile the price is going up. If it continues that way, I suppose at one point we could naturally stop this discussion?

Since August 2014 it isn't exactly going up, that is wishfull thinking. And no, not burning but sinking.

• This boat is nearly underwater, and just now is the chance to change emission. Not at 0.050BTC, nor on 0.100BTC. Now, or never -
• now, or never! Once completely submerged below waterline, all passengers might choose to swim over elsewhere, saving their savings.

Would anybody be asking to change the emission if we were at those prices?  We are nowhere near those prices nor will be anytime soon due to emissions, where the big boys not aware of it?, and there is currently be no practical use for it, another surprise?

We were told it was not even beta software but alpha.  That is not ready for prime time.

Nothing was hidden.   

The team will deliver the software.  The practical uses need to be built by others.  Then there are the circumstances beyond our control.

I am and have been underwater because I be idiot.  The money means more to me than most.  I get excited when peanut butter goes on sale!  For me the price is in no way a motivating factor to change things, the overall picture would be.  Given the conversation that picture is obviously cloudy.  The blind men and the elephant. 

[binaryFate]

With all due respect, I believe anybody thinking there is no way to absorb current emission is completely wrong.

The problem is that the community is not expanding as it was in the beginning. There is no new investors, no fresh money, and obviously with only the current community we cannot absorb infinitely the emission.
From http://redditmetrics.com/r/Monero:




Fix that, and I am sure the discussions about the emission being "wrong" will quickly be old memory. Trying to fix the emission to fit the needs of a constant - not growing - community, is grossly wrong.

[TrueCryptonaire]

With all due respect, I believe anybody thinking there is no way to absorb current emission is completely wrong.

The problem is that the community is not expanding as it was in the beginning. There is no new investors, no fresh money, and obviously with only the current community we cannot absorb infinitely the emission.
From http://redditmetrics.com/r/Monero:




Fix that, and I am sure the discussions about the emission being "wrong" will quickly be old memory. Trying to fix the emission to fit the needs of a constant - not growing - community, is grossly wrong.

The problem is there is it is harder to get new investors while the price is in bearish trend.
It doesn't make any sense investing in an instrument which looses in value.
Making Monero scarce we might get the bearish trend back to bullish which will make the coin more appealing in the eyes of investors.
The current high emission is an issue which makes the coin less interesting in the eyes of investors, I suppose.

[binaryFate]

With all due respect, I believe anybody thinking there is no way to absorb current emission is completely wrong.

The problem is that the community is not expanding as it was in the beginning. There is no new investors, no fresh money, and obviously with only the current community we cannot absorb infinitely the emission.
From http://redditmetrics.com/r/Monero:




Fix that, and I am sure the discussions about the emission being "wrong" will quickly be old memory. Trying to fix the emission to fit the needs of a constant - not growing - community, is grossly wrong.

The problem is there is it is harder to get new investors while the price is in bearish trend.
It doesn't make any sense investing in an instrument which looses in value.
Making Monero scarce we might get the bearish trend back to bullish which will make the coin more appealing in the eyes of investors.
The current high emission is an issue which makes the coin less interesting in the eyes of investors, I suppose.

It doesn't make any sense investing in an instrument which looses in value -> Wrong. If there are good news, the software gets much easier to use than before, "investors" should see the value in there.

You should stop thinking so much about investors. Remember bitcoin after the 2011 crisis? Price was in bearish trend forever. Many called it dead. It would be dead today if the emission was changed at that time because "let's content the investors".

[TrueCryptonaire]

With all due respect, I believe anybody thinking there is no way to absorb current emission is completely wrong.

The problem is that the community is not expanding as it was in the beginning. There is no new investors, no fresh money, and obviously with only the current community we cannot absorb infinitely the emission.
From http://redditmetrics.com/r/Monero:




Fix that, and I am sure the discussions about the emission being "wrong" will quickly be old memory. Trying to fix the emission to fit the needs of a constant - not growing - community, is grossly wrong.

The problem is there is it is harder to get new investors while the price is in bearish trend.
It doesn't make any sense investing in an instrument which looses in value.
Making Monero scarce we might get the bearish trend back to bullish which will make the coin more appealing in the eyes of investors.
The current high emission is an issue which makes the coin less interesting in the eyes of investors, I suppose.

It doesn't make any sense investing in an instrument which looses in value -> Wrong. If there are good news, the software gets much easier to use than before, "investors" should see the value in there.

You should stop thinking so much about investors. Remember bitcoin after the 2011 crisis? Price was in bearish trend forever. Many called it dead. It would be dead today if the emission was changed at that time because "let's content the investors".

The issue is

1) Bull trend turned many people on bitcoin. Adaption happens when the price is in bullish trend. The bearish trend is a sign of not new adaption which is due to lower prices. Even I am not interested in buying asset that tomorrow is cheaper than today. I do not know any reason why other investors should buy it neither. The purpose of investing is to increase the purchasing power, not to loose it. Otherwise an investor is better off keeping the money in fiat which is much more practical than crypto in general.

2) If we burn the whole emission today it is unlikely to get new adaption due to various reasons. For example, too low future inflation threathens the network security, makes the transaction fees expensive which decreases the number of transactions. When the number of transactions is decreasing, the privacy of Monero is also threathens since the mixing is less efective.
Bitcoin even now find it hard to get new investors since it is mined too much already.

[smooth]

2) If we burn the whole emission today it is unlikely to get new adaption due to various reasons. For example, too low future inflation threathens the network security, makes the transaction fees expensive which decreases the number of transactions. When the number of transactions is decreasing, the privacy of Monero is also threathens since the mixing is less efective.

Slowing the reward function doesn't fix this, it just delays the inevitable, because sooner or later you still run out. A minimum reward fixes it, which is why it has always been part of the design.

If anything should be clear by now it should be that there will be no clear consensus to cut the emissions. All the arguments have been repeated several times already, so repeating another ten times isn't going to work any better than the first ten.

If you (not you personally speaking to everyone) are an advocate for changing the emissions you better realize that your current approach is not working and try something else, or accept that it was a good idea that just wasn't feasible. The constant bickering over it neither helpful nor effective.

My suggestion if you want more mining and security later under the current design would be to simply make full use of the "<1%" inflation that was included in the design and set the minimum reward at about 0.3 instead of the 0.1 that was previously proposed. That would kick in after about 6-7 years, addressing the issue that the coin appears to be nearly fully mined in 3-4 years. When the 0.3 kicks in that would be about 0.9% inflation (as opposed waiting 10 years to reach 0.3% before setting the minimum) that would decline over time but never quite reach zero (as with any fixed reward).

If that is rejected because 0.9% is too much inflation then it is very likely we will end up with the existing curve and a minimum after 10 years.

[hodlmybtc]

Looooving them coins under 0.002 

[BanditryAndLoot]

We have >700 people on reddit.

The best marketing we can possibly hope for is to actively encourage people to go to other places on reddit, and make smart sounding comments. People can see your other posts .. and it's not an uncommon thing for someone to find a new community by going through someone else's posts.

The exact same goes for this forum.

I know there's not supposed to be talk about 'other coins' in this thread, so I won't mention any specifically .. but consider that if these people saw you in their threads, being decent and asking questions about their technology and improvements, then you're really gonna see things turn around. I promise you.

Being exclusive, or being labeled as exclusive, has been the greatest impediment to this coin and community. It's literally why we're here talking about emission. We need people in other threads on this forum, posting at least questions on how to use their software, or at least commenting that some aspect of their software is nice. I'm not saying go hard on them, and hype them up but ffs if you haven't seen how beautiful a bitsharesx or nxt wallet is my god you're really missing out.

We really need to branch out now, and show some real interest in not only being an alternative currency, but showing other people that we realize we're a part of a larger community of other alternative currencies, all with the exact same hopes and dreams as us.

I mean, for some of them with active communities, it takes literally less than 30 cents to secure yourself .0000075 of the currency, which by comparison is the same as having 150 bitcoins.

Ask yourself, is holding onto 30 cents worth the continued scorn of this community and  forum?

I promise you, you can pick at least 30 currencies, spend less than fifty bucks total, and secure yourself .0000075 of the total emission for all of them. Imagine next that, that fifty dollars is the same fifty dollars you didn't have to spend on a marketing company, which is likely gonna tell you to do the exact same thing I'm telling you right now .. or fifty dollars you don't have to spend on propping this price up. You can still keep monero as your biggest and most favorite investment, nothing has changed except that you show a little more culture.

My point is that if people see you in their thread, in their community, in their home, at peace and trying to show them that you're not a spiteful asshole, and at least acknowledge their existence, maybe make a friend or two, then they're probably gonna turn around and show you the same. They're not all scams, or bad, or lame .. I can promise you that there are a lot that really are all three of them .. but there's also a few that aren't. If you'd like the list of things I've gone through, I'm willing to share my hacked together spreadsheet portfolio with you (obviously with my information removed).

How many of us actually go to other threads and ask questions, literally any question at all, about the different types of technology that we're collectively entrenched in every time we come here? I promise you, if you're not doing this, you're really missing out. You don't even have to buy any of it, because the fact that you spent ten minutes compiling and running their software is really gonna be enough for most people.

This is what we need to do next, not rehash the same emission discussion every month. Make some friends.

I realize this is off topic, and it's probably gonna be offensive to some people because it literally translates to 'buy another coin' in some sentences, but it's to make the point that I really think that participation in other communities than just this one and bitcoin will return to us our network effects that have almost diminished over the last month.

[Febo]

The issue is

1) Bull trend turned many people on bitcoin. Adaption happens when the price is in bullish trend. The bearish trend is a sign of not new adaption which is due to lower prices. Even I am not interested in buying asset that tomorrow is cheaper than today. I do not know any reason why other investors should buy it neither. The purpose of investing is to increase the purchasing power, not to loose it. Otherwise an investor is better off keeping the money in fiat which is much more practical than crypto in general.

You want that bullish trend and that will trigger wider adoption start today? Without database set and GUI wallet.

As i see main problem people state here is that Monero will be to much mined at adoption should start when GUI wallet and even more important database will be set perfectly. So exactly at that time, Monero would need bullish trend. Not today because of the emission change. Emission change will boost price or stop it decrease on to the right natural level. This will make that when Monero will be ready for wide adoption it will be to expensive already. And that bullish trend will be much smaller.

"You are not interested in buying asset that tomorrow will be cheaper then today."  And this might happen then with Monero adopters. People might find it to expensive.



I see only "must do" need for a change is if you expect that in long period of time, noone will want to mine Monero and network will become unstable.  I dont think anyone can predict that. You cant predict what will happen in half year how to predict what will happen in 5 years.




PS: I changed my mind. Developers can keep plans of changing emission in secret and exactly on day when database will be fixed and GUI wallet ready, they bang put out Special Edition Missives with emission change, and price of Monero will skyrocket and help getting more people into Monero at exactly perfect time.  

[smooth]

The issue is

1) Bull trend turned many people on bitcoin. Adaption happens when the price is in bullish trend. The bearish trend is a sign of not new adaption which is due to lower prices. Even I am not interested in buying asset that tomorrow is cheaper than today. I do not know any reason why other investors should buy it neither. The purpose of investing is to increase the purchasing power, not to loose it. Otherwise an investor is better off keeping the money in fiat which is much more practical than crypto in general.

You want that bullish trend and that will trigger wider adoption start today? Without database set and GUI wallet.

As I said before, our ranking in the crypto market hasn't really ever changed. This is a market issue not an XMR-specific issue (i.e. neither emission nor GUI/DB).

Adoption happens in crypto when the crypto market doesn't suck. Otherwise, people have no reason to pay attention outside of a few hard core insiders (i.e us). They go back to paying attention to the stock market or flipping houses or something else.

[TrueCryptonaire]

The issue is

1) Bull trend turned many people on bitcoin. Adaption happens when the price is in bullish trend. The bearish trend is a sign of not new adaption which is due to lower prices. Even I am not interested in buying asset that tomorrow is cheaper than today. I do not know any reason why other investors should buy it neither. The purpose of investing is to increase the purchasing power, not to loose it. Otherwise an investor is better off keeping the money in fiat which is much more practical than crypto in general.

As i see main problem people state here is that Monero will be to much mined at adoption should start when GUI wallet and even more important database will be set perfectly. So exactly at that time, Monero would need bullish trend. Not today because of the emission change. Emission change will boost price or stop it decrease on to the right natural level. This will make that when Monero will be ready for wide adoption it will be to expensive already. And that bullish trend will be much smaller.

This is double edged sword.
Many alts have beautiful wallets and even some merchants accepting them but still their marketcap is not exactly what it should be in order to be considered even as a niche coin.
It is hard to say which will be the triggering force for bull-run (= adoption) - economical factors such as emission, inflation etc or technical stuff like wallets etc.
I am not saying wallets should be ignored but as far as I have read between lines, the wallets hardly are ready by xmas, or am I completely wrong here?

The issue is

1) Bull trend turned many people on bitcoin. Adaption happens when the price is in bullish trend. The bearish trend is a sign of not new adaption which is due to lower prices. Even I am not interested in buying asset that tomorrow is cheaper than today. I do not know any reason why other investors should buy it neither. The purpose of investing is to increase the purchasing power, not to loose it. Otherwise an investor is better off keeping the money in fiat which is much more practical than crypto in general.

You want that bullish trend and that will trigger wider adoption start today? Without database set and GUI wallet.

As I said before, our ranking in the crypto market hasn't really ever changed. This is a market issue not an XMR-specific issue (i.e. neither emission nor GUI/DB).

Adoption happens in crypto when the crypto market doesn't suck. Otherwise, people have no reason to pay attention outside of a few hard core insiders (i.e us). They go back to paying attention to the stock market or flipping houses or something else.

Yes, Monero's ranking is more or less the same as it has been for a long time. It has been hoovering between TOP 10th and 15th marketcapwise.
However, it is hard to say which has carried the marketcap: huge dollar denominated daily emission or the weakness of other currencies.

A few million usd marketcap for any currency is a joke by the way IMHO.

[Febo]

TrueCryptonaire it seems you misunderstood me. 
Wallet and DB are not triggering points, but are something Monero needs before we anyway try to push it for wider use. 

You said that changing emission will make bull trend and that will help with getting new users. I said that might happen, but is much better if it happens when there is DB and wallet here. And i also said it will even do the opposite if emission and then bull trend start now.

[smooth]

This is double edged sword.
Many alts have beautiful wallets and even some merchants accepting them but still their marketcap is not exactly what it should be in order to be considered even as a niche coin.
It is hard to say which will be the triggering force for bull-run (= adoption) - economical factors such as emission, inflation etc or technical stuff like wallets etc.
I am not saying wallets should be ignored but as far as I have read between lines, the wallets hardly are ready by xmas, or am I completely wrong here?

I think all these factors are interrelated. For example, we have two serviceable third party wallets that were largely completed months ago but with rough edges (hard to install, no updated for latest node, etc.). If the coin was growing in value like crazy, it is pretty likely either the original developers or other independent developers would be pretty interested in working on those, and they would be far more usable now. But since the value has been pretty stagnant since July-August there is little interest and the work doesn't get done.

Yes, Monero's ranking is more or less the same as it has been for a long time. It has been hoovering between TOP 10th and 15th marketcapwise.
However, it is hard to say which has carried the marketcap: huge dollar denominated daily emission or the weakness of other currencies.

I guess it is possible to interpret things all sorts of ways. I see a general downtrend affecting nearly all of crypto and nothing the suggest the price decline is XMR specific. There could be XMR specific factors but there is just no strong evidence for it.

[dnaleor]

first thing:
I'm working on a small website with layman explanation about monero/cryptonote.
I've been distracted by some RL things lately, but still slowly working on it.
Maybe we should create a "community wiki" where we can collaborate to finish this.
We can use this wiki to structure the information that is now spread around in different threads, websites, papers, etc.
This would be a good tool to point new possible users of monero to. This project should be finished before the GUI is published


and now a rehashing of a part of my argument about emission change:

When you buy a coin, the first thing you want to know is how much coins will be mined, NOT the mining reward system (as long as there is no hidden premine).
when someone buys 1840 XMR, he knows that he bought 1/10000 of the total supply. I personally know no one who buys a certain % of the current supply or compares his stash to the current supply.

What matters is TOTAL supply. "21 million bitcoins" is something everybody on this forum knows. The number of people who know what the current mining reward is will be lower. The number of people who know the first years of bitcoin had a 50 BTC block reward will be even lower than that.
The 21 million bitcoins already exist. Only 14M are mined yet, but that is just temporarily.  

So... for the general public who wants to USE monero, the mining scheme doesn't really matter. What they need is liquidity.
And we still have that liquidity? It has been higher, yes... But still, not bad.
When DB + fee structure + solution for ram issues + GUI are finished (end of 2014?), I expect to see new adoption, more liquidity and slowly increasing exchange rate.

I'm still not convinced a change need to happen.

Nur miaj du cendoj

[lyth0s]

All of those advancements will be made by the end of 2014? IE in less than 2 months? --Just curious.


I am proud to say that I joined the Monero bandwagon today. Using that command prompt style wallet makes me feel like I'm in the early days of bitcoin.

If anyone would like to give me some Monero to start off with my address is this: 46aWMLjf2aYKwFHt27Rsc21njMecyvGcniRhSYcsZr5pLvRd92KanY73HgEzRVRdoRfiPfYFwMNxr1y ZhdamPEaBS9DGk8X


Currently my purchased coins are on an exchange and I will move them over once I feel comfortable with the Monero client. If there is anything I can do to help spread the word let me know

Edit:
Other stuff that will help increase adoption is making it more known that the total coin cap is about 18 million coins (even on monero.cc it's hidden in some details). Took me a while to hunt that down.

I would also show ancillary services such as blockchains for it, also a pain to find. I found this one: http://chainradar.com/xmr/blocks but there should also be a moneriochain.info or moneroblockchain.com/info etc.

Also the main website could use some aesthetic appeal (maybe I can help with this?).