[XMR] Monero Speculation

[aminorex]

[Bitcoin's value is 90% speculative froth even now. A very small number of coins are needed to facilitate remittances...

Speculative and froth are distinct things.  Speculation with weak hands is frothy.  Speculation with strong hands is a foundation on which you can build.

[aminorex]

As far as bananas, we are down to one species that can be shipped worldwide.  I have no idea what we will do when that one is also gone.

Engineer new ones.

[aminorex]

If it's so easy to trace why do we continue to see scams of considerable amounts (many many 50+ btc) go with the slightest hint of consequence?

Methods and sources are the most intently protected secrets.  In the U.S. in particular, law enforcement has adopted military-intelligence modes of operation wholesale.  Their capabilities and practices are kept secret to the degree feasible.  In general the limits of feasibility are determined by the rules of evidence of the courts, and the degree of difficulty in gaming them.  Blockchain analysis and tracking funds are among the more technical methods, and hence more easily concealed from naive courts. 

Law enforcement in general does not care about your 50 btc.  If you want it back you have to track it down yourself, and use private legal apparatus.  Private legal apparatus is very costly to employ, making your 50 btc loss pragmatically unrecoverable, regardless of your skills in blockchain analysis, or your contacts at the exchanges.  You're more likely to meet recovery success by extrajudicial channels.

Several arrests have occurred which may be in part or whole attributable to blockchain analysis, but determining that would require tracking the cases through the courts, to see what evidence emerges at trial, and frankly that could take a while, because almost no one thinks they can get a favorable outcome at trial in the U.S. without a brobdignagian expenditure, so actual trials are quite rare.  Even then, the policy of concealing methods and sources may mean that it takes a while before a sufficiently plum case arises such that law enforcement are willing to disclose a given technique required to support their case.

[generalizethis]

If it's so easy to trace why do we continue to see scams of considerable amounts (many many 50+ btc) go with the slightest hint of consequence?

Methods and sources are the most intently protected secrets.  In the U.S. in particular, law enforcement has adopted military-intelligence modes of operation wholesale.  Their capabilities and practices are kept secret to the degree feasible.  In general the limits of feasibility are determined by the rules of evidence of the courts, and the degree of difficulty in gaming them.  Blockchain analysis and tracking funds are among the more technical methods, and hence more easily concealed from naive courts.  

Law enforcement in general does not care about your 50 btc.  If you want it back you have to track it down yourself, and use private legal apparatus.  Private legal apparatus is very costly to employ, making your 50 btc loss pragmatically unrecoverable, regardless of your skills in blockchain analysis, or your contacts at the exchanges.  You're more likely to meet recovery success by extrajudicial channels.

Several arrests have occurred which may be in part or whole attributable to blockchain analysis, but determining that would require tracking the cases through the courts, to see what evidence emerges at trial, and frankly that could take a while, because almost no one thinks they can get a favorable outcome at trial in the U.S. without a brobdignagian expenditure, so actual trials are quite rare.  Even then, the policy of concealing methods and sources may mean that it takes a while before a sufficiently plum case arises such that law enforcement are willing to disclose a given technique required to support their case.

Just to clarify, I was stating (obliquely) that Evolution and BTCe should have killed the myth of what was is in quotation. A tech savvy DMN thief who can't get the worlds largest regulatory non-compliment exchange to pass their stolen BTC is enough to let the normal cryptocurrency user know that BTC is not the coin for you if you want to smoothly and anonymously transact assets. I just wanted to clarify as i don't want anyone who just sees my name and the quotation to think that that was a statement I made.

[smooth]

A tech savvy DMN thief

This is the real point. These scammers are often (usually?) the operators. They're extremely competent (at least relatively speaking) in operating privately, whether or not they succeed has nothing to do with what less-expert users are exposed to.

generalizethis makes a good point that when even they can't do it, look out, but if they could, it still wouldn't matter to the average user.

[smooth]

Several arrests have occurred which may be in part or whole attributable to blockchain analysis, but determining that would require tracking the cases through the courts, to see what evidence emerges at trial, and frankly that could take a while, because almost no one thinks they can get a favorable outcome at trial in the U.S. without a brobdignagian expenditure, so actual trials are quite rare.  Even then, the policy of concealing methods and sources may mean that it takes a while before a sufficiently plum case arises such that law enforcement are willing to disclose a given technique required to support their case.

Or they just continue to use parallel construction and never expose the methods. Conversely whatever methods are exposed in public trials are probably not the most useful ones.

Parallel construction, by the way, can mean that you are charged with something completely different from what the self-appointed morality police have already convinced themselves you are guilty of.

[owm123]

Just to clarify, I was stating (obliquely) that Evolution and BTCe should have killed the myth of what was is in quotation. A tech savvy DMN thief who can't get the worlds largest regulatory non-compliment exchange to pass their stolen BTC is enough to let the normal cryptocurrency user know that BTC is not the coin for you if you want to smoothly and anonymously transact assets.

All the extra steps required to make your bitcoin payments private and anonymous just increase your chance of you "fucking it up". Btw, "dont fack it up" is the title of this defcon presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1q4Ir2J8P8 which explains how easy it is to "fuck it up" when you value your privacy and anonymity.

[ExtremeFacials.com]

As far as bananas, we are down to one species that can be shipped worldwide.  I have no idea what we will do when that one is also gone.

Engineer new ones.

eat chocolate with psyllium husk ... good going in, great coming out

[asepticskeptic]

As far as bananas, we are down to one species that can be shipped worldwide.  I have no idea what we will do when that one is also gone.

Engineer new ones.

eat chocolate with psyllium husk ... good going in, great coming out

That anything like peanut butter and psilocybin?

[smooth]

Back on topic please...

[pa]

We've seen recently how discord between developers and also between factions in the larger community has slowed Bitcoin's development (and perhaps depressed its price), affecting the entire cryptocurrency sector. Monero's politics is more opaque. Here are some questions:

1. Do the XMR devs get along?
2. Do they share a vision for Monero's future?
3. Are there significant points of technical disagreement?
4. Does everyone agree on the development path (for example, that code review and optimization should precede "official" GUI development).
5. Does everyone agree on Monero's "governance model"?

The answers will influence Monero's probability of success and its price.

[ArticMine]

We've seen recently how discord between developers and also between factions in the larger community has slowed Bitcoin's development (and perhaps depressed its price), affecting the entire cryptocurrency sector. Monero's politics is more opaque. Here are some questions:

1. Do the XMR devs get along?
2. Do they share a vision for Monero's future?
3. Are there significant points of technical disagreement?
4. Does everyone agree on the development path (for example, that code review and optimization should precede "official" GUI development).
5. Does everyone agree on Monero's "governance model"?

The answers will influence Monero's probability of success and its price.

These are of course very valid questions; however there is a critical difference with Bitcoin here. Bitcoin has a fundamental flaw baked into the protocol requiring a hard fork that prevents Bitcoin from scaling regardless of any future technological change. Monero does not have this problem. This is of course the 1 MB blocksize limit. The current dispute in the Bitcoin community is directly related to this flaw.

[medusa13]

nice to see bids recovering, but still a long way to go. no idea why asks are up to 300k since some time. maybe new holders that dont manage to move coins to local storage ? (most orders are far away from current price, i do the same to prevent fat finger error, i once sold on polo by accident)
i have not been active in the markets and feel many other holders like myself want to see where it goes without their constant intervention..at least until the fomo is back

this is healthy and also gives some confidence to people like risto, warz and whoever else. Its good to see the price relatively alive and stable without a single entity always supporting it.
managed to evolve to a situation(without selling a single coin) where i am fine with up or down, i really dont care that much short term, both seem fine

[smooth]

We've seen recently how discord between developers and also between factions in the larger community has slowed Bitcoin's development (and perhaps depressed its price), affecting the entire cryptocurrency sector. Monero's politics is more opaque. Here are some questions:

1. Do the XMR devs get along?
2. Do they share a vision for Monero's future?
3. Are there significant points of technical disagreement?
4. Does everyone agree on the development path (for example, that code review and optimization should precede "official" GUI development).
5. Does everyone agree on Monero's "governance model"?

There have been no major disagreements on any of these points. Sure there are technical disagreements at times, but ultimately the vision on purely technical issues comes down to we try something and if it doesn't work out we can change it. There were some heated discussions about the emissions curve debate last year but ultimately we came to agreement on that point too.

In terms of overall vision we strongly agree, and have agreed since the beginning of Monero (i.e. well before the block size debate became a big deal), that Bitcoin's development model is badly broken. While I'm not sure I can state a specific consensus of the Monero team as to a root cause, my personal opinion is that it largely comes down to premature maturity imposed on the basis of wishful thinking (i.e. like nearly every teenager). The Bitcoin community and especially some of the devs convinced themselves (the 2013 pump didn't hurt) that Bitcoin was already a big deal ("Billions in market cap!"), was rapidly approaching maturity, and needed to be treated as critical financial infrastructure like Visa or even Fedwire as opposed to a work in progress. That was erroneous in every possible way.

No one working on Monero sees it as anything but a work in progress and if I have anything to do with it they won't for a very long time (far beyond Bitcoin's current maturity).

[XMRpromotions]

nice to see bids recovering, but still a long way to go. no idea why asks are up to 300k since some time. maybe new holders that dont manage to move coins to local storage ? (most orders are far away from current price, i do the same to prevent fat finger error, i once sold on polo by accident)
i have not been active in the markets and feel many other holders like myself want to see where it goes without their constant intervention..at least until the fomo is back

this is healthy and also gives some confidence to people like risto, warz and whoever else. Its good to see the price relatively alive and stable without a single entity always supporting it.
managed to evolve to a situation(without selling a single coin) where i am fine with up or down, i really dont care that much short term, both seem fine

I really don't care about short term fluctuation either.

Long term all that matters is development and adoption. We are making progress in both areas

[GingerAle]

We've seen recently how discord between developers and also between factions in the larger community has slowed Bitcoin's development (and perhaps depressed its price), affecting the entire cryptocurrency sector. Monero's politics is more opaque. Here are some questions:

1. Do the XMR devs get along?
2. Do they share a vision for Monero's future?
3. Are there significant points of technical disagreement?
4. Does everyone agree on the development path (for example, that code review and optimization should precede "official" GUI development).
5. Does everyone agree on Monero's "governance model"?

There have been no major disagreements on any of these points. Sure there are technical disagreements at times, but ultimately the vision on purely technical issues comes down to we try something and if it doesn't work out we can change it. There were some heated discussions about the emissions curve debate last year but ultimately we came to agreement on that point too.

In terms of overall vision we strongly agree, and have agreed since the beginning of Monero (i.e. well before the block size debate became a big deal), that Bitcoin's development model is badly broken. While I'm not sure I can state a specific consensus of the Monero team as to a root cause, my personal opinion is that it largely comes down to premature maturity imposed on the basis of wishful thinking (i.e. like nearly every teenager). The Bitcoin community and especially some of the devs convinced themselves (the 2013 pump didn't hurt) that Bitcoin was already a big deal ("Billions in market cap!"), was rapidly approaching maturity, and needed to be treated as critical financial infrastructure like Visa or even Fedwire as opposed to a work in progress. That was erroneous in every possible way.

No one working on Monero sees it as anything but a work in progress and if I have anything to do with it they won't for a very long time (far beyond Bitcoin's current maturity).

this guy. Where'd he come from?

This isn't a very helpful post. I just like the core team. If anything, the bytecoin scammers should be commended for bringing out the best in crypto as manifest in Monero.

Lets see here, lemme provide some speculation. 47 cents. NPR says the stock market is a little hectic because everyones on vacation, low liquidity.  Could be the same in crypto. Also, lotsa kids going back to school - could also affect the crypto markets. Meanwhile, the damn block reward keeps getting lower and lower. And trains are feeling the brunt of decreased coal shipments. Dunno how coal could affect Monero. Apparently china's tanking a bit. Good thing we're not entirely exposed to China yet.

I also speculate that official release will cause a price spike. FOMO and general triggers for some investors.

[americanpegasus]

I aim to make a more complete writeup of this in the future, but the tl;dr of it will be: the dollar ascended to world reserve currency because (through a variety of means) oil had to be priced in dollars.  Oil was the dominant form of energy on our planet for a long time, and so the rest was just dominos.     
 
I think that many of us realize that the coming decades will mark a transformation into an information and knowledge age where energy, materials, and labor (through robotics) are all increasingly cheap/free.  Therefore only information and status will be valuable. 
 
We need to cultivate a future where all data, be it virtual items for your Oculus house, online classes, data security, music and movies, games, and schematics for 3D printable items are all priced in Monero. 
 
If we ensure this, the economy will naturally emerge and the dominos will fall into our desired positions.

[owm123]

I aim to make a more complete writeup of this in the future, but the tl;dr of it will be: the dollar ascended to world reserve currency because (through a variety of means) oil had to be priced in dollars.  Oil was the dominant form of energy on our planet for a long time, and so the rest was just dominos.     
 
I think that many of us realize that the coming decades will mark a transformation into an information and knowledge age where energy, materials, and labor (through robotics) are all increasingly cheap/free.  Therefore only information and status will be valuable. 
 
We need to cultivate a future where all data, be it virtual items for your Oculus house, online classes, data security, music and movies, games, and schematics for 3D printable items are all priced in Monero. 
 
If we ensure this, the economy will naturally emerge and the dominos will fall into our desired positions.

Why Monero? This can be said for any other present and/or future coin.

[GingerAle]

I aim to make a more complete writeup of this in the future, but the tl;dr of it will be: the dollar ascended to world reserve currency because (through a variety of means) oil had to be priced in dollars.  Oil was the dominant form of energy on our planet for a long time, and so the rest was just dominos.     
 
I think that many of us realize that the coming decades will mark a transformation into an information and knowledge age where energy, materials, and labor (through robotics) are all increasingly cheap/free.  Therefore only information and status will be valuable. 
 
We need to cultivate a future where all data, be it virtual items for your Oculus house, online classes, data security, music and movies, games, and schematics for 3D printable items are all priced in Monero. 
 
If we ensure this, the economy will naturally emerge and the dominos will fall into our desired positions.

Why Monero? This can be said for any other present and/or future coin.

any other present coin? no. The only coin that might pull it off is bitcoin, maybe litecoin. The first for network effects, the second for the wake of network effect. Monero's superior fungibility makes it a better candidate than both of them for any type of actual digital value transfer system. If you don't believe me, do your homework. I won't call people out by name because I'm sure they're no fan of this parading.

Regarding currencies with any type of privacy technologies, good luck finding one thats not a scam. On that note the Monero core team have proven to be excellent stewards of the technology, prioritizing development of the fundamental technology as opposed to a silly GUI.

Regarding future coins, sure. But this ship is sailing.

[TrueCryptonaire]

I aim to make a more complete writeup of this in the future, but the tl;dr of it will be: the dollar ascended to world reserve currency because (through a variety of means) oil had to be priced in dollars.  Oil was the dominant form of energy on our planet for a long time, and so the rest was just dominos.      
  
I think that many of us realize that the coming decades will mark a transformation into an information and knowledge age where energy, materials, and labor (through robotics) are all increasingly cheap/free.  Therefore only information and status will be valuable.  
  
We need to cultivate a future where all data, be it virtual items for your Oculus house, online classes, data security, music and movies, games, and schematics for 3D printable items are all priced in Monero.  
  
If we ensure this, the economy will naturally emerge and the dominos will fall into our desired positions.

Yes Monero needs real world use.
Currently it is a token traded back and forth on Poloniex so there are some work to be done still.

However, if we manage to get a network effect it is possible Monero will attract entrepreneurs who create some use for Monero. However at current state of only a few million marketcap basically nobody but a speculator is interested in Monero.