[XMR] Monero Speculation

[rpietila]

In scenario thinking, anything that could happen, is worth assigning a probability.

Monero can replace BTC.

Litecoin can never replace BTC.

[Joshuar]

This has nothing to do with economics or price speculation, but is anyone here a biologist, biochemist, geneticist, etc? Just wondering if it's feasible at all to have the blockchain emulate biological characteristics(Like that of a small animal). I just thought about how a private blockchain such as Monero's would be perfect for such a thing(As the brain, body is "private" until the owner/person wishes otherwise(No one can read your thoughts for example) and not open like a transparent blockchain).

[vokain]

the government should be freaking out about the potential implications of this tech. but they aren't. at all. not even a wiff of it. firmly in the ignore stage.

Well, there *is* a "whiff" of it, so to speak. During the Jan 2013 NYDFS BitLicense exploratory panels, Lawsky made some comment to the effect of: "...maybe we need to require that all virtual currencies use a transparent ledger" (paraphrasing). Remember, Zerocash has been on the radar for a while.

In any event, I think Bitcoin kind-of luck-boxed into being something that govs can accept. There's some quote from Satoshi where he basically outlines something akin to ring-signatures as a desirable design, but didn't have an implementation for it. If he had, and Bitcoin had been launched with native robust privacy, I fear it's path would've been *much* more difficult. As is, I think it's path is workable and probably leads to much higher market cap. Some people around here seem to underestimate the degree to which truly aggressive widespread multi-government legal action would curtail adoption and value.

So I think Bitcoin kinda stumbled into this (from a practical perspective) best of both worlds scenario, where it *can* afford reasonable privacy via various techniques, yet is palatable to govs because it *is* an open ledger.

That said, I think the native-privacy niche is the big one to be filled by an alt, and Monero has a nice shot at eating the market-caps of many of the other top-10 coins.

Bitcoin is a Trojan horse.

[dEBRUYNE]

the government should be freaking out about the potential implications of this tech. but they aren't. at all. not even a wiff of it. firmly in the ignore stage.

Well, there *is* a "whiff" of it, so to speak. During the Jan 2013 NYDFS BitLicense exploratory panels, Lawsky made some comment to the effect of: "...maybe we need to require that all virtual currencies use a transparent ledger" (paraphrasing). Remember, Zerocash has been on the radar for a while.

In any event, I think Bitcoin kind-of luck-boxed into being something that govs can accept. There's some quote from Satoshi where he basically outlines something akin to ring-signatures as a desirable design, but didn't have an implementation for it. If he had, and Bitcoin had been launched with native robust privacy, I fear it's path would've been *much* more difficult. As is, I think it's path is workable and probably leads to much higher market cap. Some people around here seem to underestimate the degree to which truly aggressive widespread multi-government legal action would curtail adoption and value.

So I think Bitcoin kinda stumbled into this (from a practical perspective) best of both worlds scenario, where it *can* afford reasonable privacy via various techniques, yet is palatable to govs because it *is* an open ledger.

That said, I think the native-privacy niche is the big one to be filled by an alt, and Monero has a nice shot at eating the market-caps of many of the other top-10 coins.

Relevant:

I'm not grasping your idea yet.  Does it hide any information from the public network?  What is the advantage?

If at least 50% of nodes validated transactions enough that old transactions can be discarded, then everyone saw everything and could keep a record of it.

Can public nodes see the values of transactions?  Can they see which previous transaction the value came from?  If they can, then they know everything.  If they can't, then they couldn't verify that the value came from a valid source, so you couldn't take their generated chain as verification of it.

Does it hide the bitcoin addresses?  Is that it?  OK, maybe now I see, if that's it.

Crypto may offer a way to do "key blinding".  I did some research and it was obscure, but there may be something there.  "group signatures" may be related.

There's something here in the general area:
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hopwood/crypto/rh/

What we need is a way to generate additional blinded variations of a public key.  The blinded variations would have the same properties as the root public key, such that the private key could generate a signature for any one of them.  Others could not tell if a blinded key is related to the root key, or other blinded keys from the same root key.  These are the properties of blinding.  Blinding, in a nutshell, is x = (x * large_random_int) mod m.

When paying to a bitcoin address, you would generate a new blinded key for each use.

Then you need to be able to sign a signature such that you can't tell that two signatures came from the same private key.  I'm not sure if always signing a different blinded public key would already give you this property.  If not, I think that's where group signatures comes in.  With group signatures, it is possible for something to be signed but not know who signed it.

As an example, say some unpopular military attack has to be ordered, but nobody wants to go down in history as the one who ordered it.  If 10 leaders have private keys, one of them could sign the order and you wouldn't know who did it.

This is a very interesting topic.  If a solution was found, a much better, easier, more convenient implementation of Bitcoin would be possible.

Originally, a coin can be just a chain of signatures.  With a timestamp service, the old ones could be dropped eventually before there's too much backtrace fan-out, or coins could be kept individually or in denominations.  It's the need to check for the absence of double-spends that requires global knowledge of all transactions.

The challenge is, how do you prove that no other spends exist?  It seems a node must know about all transactions to be able to verify that.  If it only knows the hash of the in/outpoints, it can't check the signatures to see if an outpoint has been spent before.  Do you have any ideas on this?

It's hard to think of how to apply zero-knowledge-proofs in this case.

We're trying to prove the absence of something, which seems to require knowing about all and checking that the something isn't included.

Btw, did you know that Monero can also be transperant optionally and/or on-demand?



PS: There is another post from satoshi where he is speaking about ring-signatures, but unfortunately I can't find it now. If I recall correctly, another Monero supporter has that quote in his sig, but can't remember exactly who it was.

[Melbustus]

Well, there *is* a "whiff" of it, so to speak. During the Jan 2013 NYDFS BitLicense exploratory panels, Lawsky made some comment to the effect of: "...maybe we need to require that all virtual currencies use a transparent ledger" (paraphrasing). Remember, Zerocash has been on the radar for a while.

In any event, I think Bitcoin kind-of luck-boxed into being something that govs can accept. There's some quote from Satoshi where he basically outlines something akin to ring-signatures as a desirable design, but didn't have an implementation for it. If he had, and Bitcoin had been launched with native robust privacy, I fear it's path would've been *much* more difficult. As is, I think it's path is workable and probably leads to much higher market cap. Some people around here seem to underestimate the degree to which truly aggressive widespread multi-government legal action would curtail adoption and value.

I thought Bitcoin goal was replace nation-states not negotiate its co-existance with status quo Anyway, I have yet to find a sound argument that makes Monero less law-abiding than Bitcoin, except in the scenario everyone using Bitcoin is required to have its ID linked to his address in order to transact with other persons or business so everything can be tracked forever, in this scenario Monero wins tremendously more.

Well, I think bitcoin can possibly become high-enough adoption and high-enough market-cap to serve as a check on fiat money; ie, if/when govs get too reckless with their currencies, wealth will flow to bitcoin and disincent the reckless behavior.

That happens by more and more people using and holding bitcoin. Bitcoin being legal to use/hold in most parts of the world is probably necessary for significant adoption, at least on <50yr timescales.

[smooth]

...

He most certainly is as he is employing a Bitcoin service paid in XMR.

Only until the merchants stop getting tired of paying to convert their appcoins, and decide to accept Monero directly. Don't worry someone will build btc.to for the poor schlubs who still hold btc at that point..

That's atypically cocky of you...

I guess it wasn't clear I was being deliberately hyperbolic for effect

guys please take it easy. i know times are crazy, some allready are very in the green, but we are still far far away from all this.

What's wrong with a little mania among friends?

[vokain]

This has nothing to do with economics or price speculation, but is anyone here a biologist, biochemist, geneticist, etc? Just wondering if it's feasible at all to have the blockchain emulate biological characteristics(Like that of a small animal). I just thought about how a private blockchain such as Monero's would be perfect for such a thing(As the brain, body is "private" until the owner/person wishes otherwise(No one can read your thoughts for example) and not open like a transparent blockchain).

See https://github.com/DavidJohnstonCEO/DecentralizedApplications

Bitcoin is not an experiment.   It is a living organism - much like a virus.   It mutates.

The blockchain is like its DNA, with us, the market participants, as its ribosomes that read the DNA and eventually craft the proteins so necessary for its function. Organic proliferation is a beautiful thing; a simple time function

Now, to answer your question literally... yes, it's possible, but the latency of writing such an extraordinary amount of information in between each generation would only seem practical in virtual simulation, considering relative time.

[rpietila]

Well, I think bitcoin can possibly become high-enough adoption and high-enough market-cap to serve as a check on fiat money; ie, if/when govs get too reckless with their currencies, wealth will flow to bitcoin and disincent the reckless behavior.

That happens by more and more people using and holding bitcoin. Bitcoin being legal to use/hold in most parts of the world is probably necessary for significant adoption, at least on <50yr timescales.

Gold was made legal tender (against silver) in the 1870s. It took - in addition to all the history of mankind - I think 15 years of active accumulation of gold and selling silver by the bankers, before they could be sure they had the gold in their control.

And then the golden era of 1870-1913 started with so much new gold production, they could not be sure any more. And then the gold confiscation and outlawing of 1933, and the IMF, World Bank, BIS, etc with most of the gold of the nations taken to the U.S., and then the theft of all that gold, and the derivatives scheme to control the mining etc. etc. In all probability, 80% of the gold is in banksters' control now.

There is no lack of tricks (start with applying all the above to BTC with modifications necessary) they can use to coerce 80% of all the BTC to their control as well. Their timeframe is longer than ours. It is true that they like BTC more than gold.  

ADD: I am speaking truth. A troll was recently summoned to harass me, that is a further confirmation

[eizh]

this is by far the most popular thread. all eyes on us

http://www.blockchained.com/

i feel naked

4 of the top 5 involve Monero.

1. [XMR] Monero Speculation
2. XMR vs DRK
3. Bitstake hired Satoshi Nakamoto as Lead Developer?
4. Crypto Kingdom - 1991 Retro Virtual World(City)
5. stay away from monero

[TrueCryptonaire]

Browsing through Polo sell orderbook.

From spot to 0.01 price ~ 1,000 btc's worth of sell orders
From spot to 0.98 price ~ 2,400 (1400 addition bitcoins) btc's worth of Moneros for sale
From spot to 1 price ~ 5,000 btc's worth of Moneros for sale

If something, this is potentially explosive.
Just putting this into perspective: 3,600 new btc are mined every day, and the daily mining requires over 800,000 usd.

Even small increase in the demand will be able to put Monero to fly. Big time.
The biggest resistance (relatively speaking) is at these low price points which indicates that there are still a lot of pessimism among the sellers (they are willing to sell below recent ATH price).

[binaryFate]

Browsing through Polo sell orderbook.

From spot to 0.01 price ~ 1,000 btc's worth of sell orders
From spot to 0.98 price ~ 2,400 (1400 addition bitcoins) btc's worth of Moneros for sale
From spot to 1 price ~ 5,000 btc's worth of Moneros for sale

If something, this is potentially explosive.
Just putting this into perspective: 3,600 new btc are mined every day, and the daily mining requires over 800,000 usd.

Even small increase in the demand will be able to put Monero to fly. Big time.
The biggest resistance (relatively speaking) is at these low price points which indicates that there are still a lot of pessimism among the sellers (they are willing to sell below recent ATH price).

As already said earlier, a lot of sell orders would pop up if price keeps rising.
The price scale you're taking in exemple are so disproportionately far from the current price that it's completely meaningless.

You could say the exact same thing for every shitcoins on poloniex, just because "there is so little bitcoins on the overall sell order book!".

[TrueCryptonaire]

Browsing through Polo sell orderbook.

From spot to 0.01 price ~ 1,000 btc's worth of sell orders
From spot to 0.98 price ~ 2,400 (1400 addition bitcoins) btc's worth of Moneros for sale
From spot to 1 price ~ 5,000 btc's worth of Moneros for sale

If something, this is potentially explosive.
Just putting this into perspective: 3,600 new btc are mined every day, and the daily mining requires over 800,000 usd.

Even small increase in the demand will be able to put Monero to fly. Big time.
The biggest resistance (relatively speaking) is at these low price points which indicates that there are still a lot of pessimism among the sellers (they are willing to sell below recent ATH price).

As already said earlier, a lot of sell orders would pop up if price keeps rising.
The price scale you're taking in exemple or so disproportionately far from the current price that it's completely meaningless.

You could say the exact same thing for every shitcoins on poloniex, just because "there is so little bitcoins on the overall sell order book!".

Also many of those coins can disappear from the sell orders if the price starts to move big time.
Not many coins in Polo or whatever is the main exchange of that coin can even potentially have this type of rise.

My point is, quite small money can make a big move in the price (if there is a reason to invest into XMR).

[nioc]

I bought more btc recently with the intention of hodling it as I was 100% Monero.  Half of this new btc has somehow become Monero.  It seems I have no control.  There is Alcoholics Anonymous,  is there Monero Anonymous? 

[macsga]

I bought more btc recently with the intention of hodling it as I was 100% Monero.  Half of this new btc has somehow become Monero.  It seems I have no control.  There is Alcoholics Anonymous,  is there Monero Anonymous? 

It seems you're right at the spot. I'm macsga; I have to confess that I bought moar. It was an urge. I couldn't help it. I won't guarantee it won't happen again soon. The price is too low for me to resist; I'm sorry.

Thanks for listening (reading)...

[TrueCryptonaire]

I bought more btc recently with the intention of hodling it as I was 100% Monero.  Half of this new btc has somehow become Monero.  It seems I have no control.  There is Alcoholics Anonymous,  is there Monero Anonymous?  

It seems you're right at the spot. I'm macsga; I have to confess that I bought moar. It was an urge. I couldn't help it. I won't guarantee it won't happen again soon. The price is too low for me to resist; I'm sorry.

Thanks for listening (reading)...

Hello, I am True! I bought also some btc today and those have been converted into Moneros at 0.00385...
I did not even have the slightest intention to hold any btc.

[explorer]

Once Monero has a GUI, I doubt I will ever use Bitcoin again. Monero will be superior in every possible way. (Except maybe user base and market cap at first, but that can be resolved  )

Ditto.  Bitcoin is just transitional.
XMR.TO ftw

[generalizethis]

I bought more btc recently with the intention of hodling it as I was 100% Monero.  Half of this new btc has somehow become Monero.  It seems I have no control.  There is Alcoholics Anonymous,  is there Monero Anonymous? 

Same here--I tell myself to hedge, but then I'm like, "Why do I want public ledger money? I want cash!"

[Its About Sharing]

Curious, does Obama passing this new crazy Gestapo law have any affect on Monero? 
These types of laws are just going to increase use cases for Monero, etc. and increase BTC mixing sites.

(Taken from reddit)
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/31443f/donating_to_snowden_is_now_illegal_and_the_us/
Donating to Snowden is now illegal and the U.S. Government can take all your stuff. - Thanks Obama.

"Sec. 2. I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type of articles specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to section 1 of this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in this order, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order.

Sec. 3. The prohibitions in section 1 of this order include but are not limited to:

(a) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; and

(b) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person."

Sec. 7. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render those measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in this order, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1 of this order." ... aka, they can take all your stuff without due process instantly if you have "constitutional rights" in the US (wow).

The rabbit hole is deep people. This is almost as bad as the patriot act... a national emergency LOL what a joke. I pray that non of you donated to Snowden using Coinbase or any other bitcoin platform that keeps your identity on file

source - https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/04/01/executive-order-blocking-property-certain-persons-engaging-significant-m

[Lloydimiller4]

I bought more btc recently with the intention of hodling it as I was 100% Monero.  Half of this new btc has somehow become Monero.  It seems I have no control.  There is Alcoholics Anonymous,  is there Monero Anonymous? 

Don't worry about it, I have the same problem haha. Probably one of the better 'problems' to have imho.

And I think Monero is already anonymous enough, I don't think it needs a support group

Once Monero has a GUI, I doubt I will ever use Bitcoin again. Monero will be superior in every possible way. (Except maybe user base and market cap at first, but that can be resolved  )

Ditto.  Bitcoin is just transitional.
XMR.TO ftw

I too find myself yearning to depend solely on XMR and less on XBT for all my crypto related expenses.

this is by far the most popular thread. all eyes on us

http://www.blockchained.com/

i feel naked

4 of the top 5 involve Monero.

1. [XMR] Monero Speculation
2. XMR vs DRK
3. Bitstake hired Satoshi Nakamoto as Lead Developer?
4. Crypto Kingdom - 1991 Retro Virtual World(City)
5. stay away from monero

This is a very positive sign

[TrueCryptonaire]

What are the price points the donations are released?