[XMR] Monero Speculation

[smoothie]

So true, just look at the bitcointalk/reddit posts from 2011-2013, it was all about "anonymous instant internet money". The feeling has changed a lot since then, but since it's a slow continous change (trend being the correct word, risto is right) most users didn't realize they were basing their usage on a completely false promise.

Nothing has changed in Bitcoin of course, it's simply that the perception is becoming more accurate with respect to the actual characteristics.
 

Great comment. I dug up a comment from reddit that's pretty attributable to this particular situation:

Any bitcoin transaction with a party that knows your identity leaks information that can be used to identify your activity, past and future, on the block chain. For example, if you transfer bitcoins to an online retailer, an exchange, or many of the other services that take customer identity information, you allow them to link that identity to your blockchain pseudonym, potentially revealing the other transactions that you are party to.

Now its just the beginning of bitcoin forensic companies, blockchain research and surveillance. It is  only going to get worse if bitcoin is going mainstream. Bitcion devs and community probably has already too much invested in bitcoin, as to go away from the transparency and mainstream push. They need to please regulators and investors.

If monero would be at the position of bitcoin, it would have to do same. It would have to please regulators. Even if feds or governments made mandatory to give up your view keys to them or to banks, then at least a random monero forensic company, research or online shop, would have much, much more difficult task of identifying your transactions in the blockchain.

But then off course, some people would not like to give up their view keys to anyone, and would move to  another new anon coin, and the circle would repeat it self.

Either that or more likely people would just boycott a particular service that wants them to disclose their view keys and transact elsewhere?

If monero would become fully regulated, e.g. each online shop accepting monero needs to get your view key and personal data, than there is not much to boycott. Its already happening with bitcoin and bitlicence in usa.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/beware-bitlicense-new-yorks-virtual-currency-regulations-invade-privacy-and-hamper

True you can have multiple view keys.

So basically it would be the honor system that you reveal all of your view keys to regulatory agencies.

[smoothie]

sorry this is a bit off topic but does anyone have any testnet XMR they can send me?

thanks

[smooth]

When I heard about Monero, I did not "worry" about Bitcoin.

(should have...  )

Maybe in the long run, but we are not there yet

My cryptic text should be understood as:

"When I heard about and invested into Monero, I did not have any worries that the value of my much larger BTC stash would be affected. What happened, though, is that it has declined 60% since then, probably due to the very things that Monero fixes (anonymity, fungibility, blocksize). Also I never thought BTC would have caused silver price decline, but from hindsight it seems to be the case."

What makes you think Bitcoin has decline because of the lack of privacy that monero has?

Specific example?

Trends are not specific examples. Despite technically knowing the facts (which have not changed), using Bitcoin in 2013 felt like "good, I am striking the controllers back and using my own decentralized money the way I want, and they cannot even know". Now it feels more like "nah, again I am touching this totally-monitored big brother system, which happens to be the best medium for this exchange since it is [enter BTC's advantages here]".

Using bitcoin is not fun (any more) due to lack of fungibility.

Using Monero is fun.

Using CK is __________

This is not by accident.

It is funny how your description of your own inner monologue is pretty much the same as mine.

I feel the same way about mining. When I first learned about Bitcoin, it was a totally run by individuals, democratic, decentralized, p2p, etc. I was among those mining it and I felt that my role in the mining made me a true part of the system. It wasn't a bank or other regulated financial service, it was a piece of software you ran on your computer, and that's it. It was disruptive and totally unlike anything else current or previous, and exciting and appealing for that reason. Now the whole thing is run by big corporations in massive data centers (third parties to almost everyone) and subject to all manner of regulations under which you can maybe stay out of trouble if you are careful but will likely violate if you look at it the wrong way. Not so interesting, nor so different from other payment systems.

That transition represents an inherent loss of subjective value, which as rpietila points out is probably not unrelated to the decline in price.

The loss of fun is quite bad for something still an the early adopter phase.

[elrippo]

When I heard about Monero, I did not "worry" about Bitcoin.

(should have...  )

Maybe in the long run, but we are not there yet

My cryptic text should be understood as:

"When I heard about and invested into Monero, I did not have any worries that the value of my much larger BTC stash would be affected. What happened, though, is that it has declined 60% since then, probably due to the very things that Monero fixes (anonymity, fungibility, blocksize). Also I never thought BTC would have caused silver price decline, but from hindsight it seems to be the case."

What makes you think Bitcoin has decline because of the lack of privacy that monero has?

Specific example?

Trends are not specific examples. Despite technically knowing the facts (which have not changed), using Bitcoin in 2013 felt like "good, I am striking the controllers back and using my own decentralized money the way I want, and they cannot even know". Now it feels more like "nah, again I am touching this totally-monitored big brother system, which happens to be the best medium for this exchange since it is [enter BTC's advantages here]".

Using bitcoin is not fun (any more) due to lack of fungibility.

Using Monero is fun.

Using CK is __________

This is not by accident.

It is funny how your description of your own inner monologue is pretty much the same as mine.

I feel the same way about mining. When I first learned about Bitcoin, it was a totally run by individuals, democratic, decentralized, p2p, etc. I was among those mining it and I felt that my role in the mining made me a true part of the system. It wasn't a bank or other regulated financial service, it was a piece of software you ran on your computer, and that's it. It was disruptive and totally unlike anything else current or previous, and exciting and appealing for that reason. Now the whole thing is run by big corporations in massive data centers (third parties to almost everyone) and subject to all manner of regulations under which you can maybe stay out of trouble if you are careful but will likely violate if you look at it the wrong way. Not so interesting, nor so different from other payment systems.

That transition represents an inherent loss of subjective value, which as rpietila points out is probably not unrelated to the decline in price.

The loss of fun is quite bad for something still an the early adopter phase.

Well see my quote on the S7 discussion 

[keystroke]

Introduction:  
Warning: This is a HUGE post, and if you reply to it and quote it, Smooth will likely delete your post.  Please don't do this!
 
As you may know, I didn't exactly roll a natural 18 under the Arithmatic stat: https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3fgrk5/how_long_would_we_have_to_use_bitcoin_before_we/ctomj9y

Good find. Read this back in high school in the late 90s which got me into this stuff in the first place.

PS http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/Bionomics/Extropians/HardyTribbleSilkRoad.html
The Digital Silk Road
by Norman Hardy (norm@netcom.com) and Eric Dean Tribble (tribble@netcom.com Ph: 415 851 2582)

[smoothie]

When I heard about Monero, I did not "worry" about Bitcoin.

(should have...  )

Maybe in the long run, but we are not there yet

My cryptic text should be understood as:

"When I heard about and invested into Monero, I did not have any worries that the value of my much larger BTC stash would be affected. What happened, though, is that it has declined 60% since then, probably due to the very things that Monero fixes (anonymity, fungibility, blocksize). Also I never thought BTC would have caused silver price decline, but from hindsight it seems to be the case."

What makes you think Bitcoin has decline because of the lack of privacy that monero has?

Specific example?

Trends are not specific examples. Despite technically knowing the facts (which have not changed), using Bitcoin in 2013 felt like "good, I am striking the controllers back and using my own decentralized money the way I want, and they cannot even know". Now it feels more like "nah, again I am touching this totally-monitored big brother system, which happens to be the best medium for this exchange since it is [enter BTC's advantages here]".

Using bitcoin is not fun (any more) due to lack of fungibility.

Using Monero is fun.

Using CK is __________

This is not by accident.

It is funny how your description of your own inner monologue is pretty much the same as mine.

I feel the same way about mining. When I first learned about Bitcoin, it was a totally run by individuals, democratic, decentralized, p2p, etc. I was among those mining it and I felt that my role in the mining made me a true part of the system. It wasn't a bank or other regulated financial service, it was a piece of software you ran on your computer, and that's it. It was disruptive and totally unlike anything else current or previous, and exciting and appealing for that reason. Now the whole thing is run by big corporations in massive data centers (third parties to almost everyone) and subject to all manner of regulations under which you can maybe stay out of trouble if you are careful but will likely violate if you look at it the wrong way. Not so interesting, nor so different from other payment systems.

That transition represents an inherent loss of subjective value, which as rpietila points out is probably not unrelated to the decline in price.

The loss of fun is quite bad for something still an the early adopter phase.

Well see my quote on the S7 discussion 

That probably was a smart move on your part.

I gave up on the mining rat race in 2011 and never looked back.

Mining is an arms race and I refuse to race for the tiny carrot reward at the end of the race.

Rather just buy whatever it is you are considering mining.

[smooth]

When I heard about Monero, I did not "worry" about Bitcoin.

(should have...  )

Maybe in the long run, but we are not there yet

My cryptic text should be understood as:

"When I heard about and invested into Monero, I did not have any worries that the value of my much larger BTC stash would be affected. What happened, though, is that it has declined 60% since then, probably due to the very things that Monero fixes (anonymity, fungibility, blocksize). Also I never thought BTC would have caused silver price decline, but from hindsight it seems to be the case."

What makes you think Bitcoin has decline because of the lack of privacy that monero has?

Specific example?

Trends are not specific examples. Despite technically knowing the facts (which have not changed), using Bitcoin in 2013 felt like "good, I am striking the controllers back and using my own decentralized money the way I want, and they cannot even know". Now it feels more like "nah, again I am touching this totally-monitored big brother system, which happens to be the best medium for this exchange since it is [enter BTC's advantages here]".

Using bitcoin is not fun (any more) due to lack of fungibility.

Using Monero is fun.

Using CK is __________

This is not by accident.

It is funny how your description of your own inner monologue is pretty much the same as mine.

I feel the same way about mining. When I first learned about Bitcoin, it was a totally run by individuals, democratic, decentralized, p2p, etc. I was among those mining it and I felt that my role in the mining made me a true part of the system. It wasn't a bank or other regulated financial service, it was a piece of software you ran on your computer, and that's it. It was disruptive and totally unlike anything else current or previous, and exciting and appealing for that reason. Now the whole thing is run by big corporations in massive data centers (third parties to almost everyone) and subject to all manner of regulations under which you can maybe stay out of trouble if you are careful but will likely violate if you look at it the wrong way. Not so interesting, nor so different from other payment systems.

That transition represents an inherent loss of subjective value, which as rpietila points out is probably not unrelated to the decline in price.

The loss of fun is quite bad for something still an the early adopter phase.

Well see my quote on the S7 discussion 

That probably was a smart move on your part.

I gave up on the mining rat race in 2011 and never looked back.

Mining is an arms race and I refuse to race for the tiny carrot reward at the end of the race.

Rather just buy whatever it is you are considering mining.

You're missing the point a bit, I think. When I was mining back then it wasn't so much about getting the coins, so there wasn't an arms race or carrot aspect to it, really. Buying coins was certainly an option, though it was probably a bit more hassle than mining at the time. The motivation was more about the fun of being an essential part of the system itself, and getting more and more people involved, to promote Bitcoin and keep it all decentralized. That was why I always solo mined, even when it got to the point of taking months to get a block. I was more interested in the fun of being a direct part of the system that seemed to have so much potential than I was in consistent income.

I'm not sure that cryptocurrencies can ever truly succeed without keeping the fun in it. It just becomes a corporate machine that is narrowly focused on its profit margin at the expense of broad participation and inconvenient social objectives, as Bitcoin largely has. But in doing so that destroys its reason to exist at all. Centralized systems likely have higher profit margins.

[elrippo]

When I heard about Monero, I did not "worry" about Bitcoin.

(should have...  )

Maybe in the long run, but we are not there yet

My cryptic text should be understood as:

"When I heard about and invested into Monero, I did not have any worries that the value of my much larger BTC stash would be affected. What happened, though, is that it has declined 60% since then, probably due to the very things that Monero fixes (anonymity, fungibility, blocksize). Also I never thought BTC would have caused silver price decline, but from hindsight it seems to be the case."

What makes you think Bitcoin has decline because of the lack of privacy that monero has?

Specific example?

Trends are not specific examples. Despite technically knowing the facts (which have not changed), using Bitcoin in 2013 felt like "good, I am striking the controllers back and using my own decentralized money the way I want, and they cannot even know". Now it feels more like "nah, again I am touching this totally-monitored big brother system, which happens to be the best medium for this exchange since it is [enter BTC's advantages here]".

Using bitcoin is not fun (any more) due to lack of fungibility.

Using Monero is fun.

Using CK is __________

This is not by accident.

It is funny how your description of your own inner monologue is pretty much the same as mine.

I feel the same way about mining. When I first learned about Bitcoin, it was a totally run by individuals, democratic, decentralized, p2p, etc. I was among those mining it and I felt that my role in the mining made me a true part of the system. It wasn't a bank or other regulated financial service, it was a piece of software you ran on your computer, and that's it. It was disruptive and totally unlike anything else current or previous, and exciting and appealing for that reason. Now the whole thing is run by big corporations in massive data centers (third parties to almost everyone) and subject to all manner of regulations under which you can maybe stay out of trouble if you are careful but will likely violate if you look at it the wrong way. Not so interesting, nor so different from other payment systems.

That transition represents an inherent loss of subjective value, which as rpietila points out is probably not unrelated to the decline in price.

The loss of fun is quite bad for something still an the early adopter phase.

Well see my quote on the S7 discussion 

That probably was a smart move on your part.

I gave up on the mining rat race in 2011 and never looked back.

Mining is an arms race and I refuse to race for the tiny carrot reward at the end of the race.

Rather just buy whatever it is you are considering mining.

Thank´s, i thought that out by myself   (just kidding  )
Yeah, it´s insane how "home miners" are at a disadvantage opposed to the big players with technology that´s superior by factor 4.
I went through S1, S3, S5 and nowdays it is not affordable in middle europe if you have to pay regular power fees, although i had my fun with it  

The centralisation of BTC is huge, i hope Monero will stay out of that fairway, although the GPU mining farms used in the beginning of BTC will most likely be used on Monero when it hits the critical mass of adoption...
@RISTO: I think you already have been doing your considerations on this topic, maybe you could be so kind to share your assumptions with us  

I really like Monero, i hope it will get adopted in a healthy scale to use it in every day life  

[8XMR]

When I heard about Monero, I did not "worry" about Bitcoin.

(should have...  )

Maybe in the long run, but we are not there yet

My cryptic text should be understood as:

"When I heard about and invested into Monero, I did not have any worries that the value of my much larger BTC stash would be affected. What happened, though, is that it has declined 60% since then, probably due to the very things that Monero fixes (anonymity, fungibility, blocksize). Also I never thought BTC would have caused silver price decline, but from hindsight it seems to be the case."

What makes you think Bitcoin has decline because of the lack of privacy that monero has?

Specific example?

Trends are not specific examples. Despite technically knowing the facts (which have not changed), using Bitcoin in 2013 felt like "good, I am striking the controllers back and using my own decentralized money the way I want, and they cannot even know". Now it feels more like "nah, again I am touching this totally-monitored big brother system, which happens to be the best medium for this exchange since it is [enter BTC's advantages here]".

Using bitcoin is not fun (any more) due to lack of fungibility.

Using Monero is fun.

Using CK is __________

This is not by accident.

It is funny how your description of your own inner monologue is pretty much the same as mine.

I feel the same way about mining. When I first learned about Bitcoin, it was a totally run by individuals, democratic, decentralized, p2p, etc. I was among those mining it and I felt that my role in the mining made me a true part of the system. It wasn't a bank or other regulated financial service, it was a piece of software you ran on your computer, and that's it. It was disruptive and totally unlike anything else current or previous, and exciting and appealing for that reason. Now the whole thing is run by big corporations in massive data centers (third parties to almost everyone) and subject to all manner of regulations under which you can maybe stay out of trouble if you are careful but will likely violate if you look at it the wrong way. Not so interesting, nor so different from other payment systems.

That transition represents an inherent loss of subjective value, which as rpietila points out is probably not unrelated to the decline in price.

The loss of fun is quite bad for something still an the early adopter phase.

Well see my quote on the S7 discussion 

That probably was a smart move on your part.

I gave up on the mining rat race in 2011 and never looked back.

Mining is an arms race and I refuse to race for the tiny carrot reward at the end of the race.

Rather just buy whatever it is you are considering mining.

Thank´s, i thought that out by myself   (just kidding  )
Yeah, it´s insane how "home miners" are at a disadvantage opposed to the big players with technology that´s superior by factor 4.
I went through S1, S3, S5 and nowdays it is not affordable in middle europe if you have to pay regular power fees, although i had my fun with it  

The centralisation of BTC is huge, i hope Monero will stay out of that fairway, although the GPU mining farms used in the beginning of BTC will most likely be used on Monero when it hits the critical mass of adoption...
@RISTO: I think you already have been doing your considerations on this topic, maybe you could be so kind to share your assumptions with us  

I really like Monero, i hope it will get adopted in a healthy scale to use it in every day life  

Not easy problem solved. Electricity costs and maximum hash rate never level playing field for all user.

[owm123]

Thank´s, i thought that out by myself   (just kidding  )
Yeah, it´s insane how "home miners" are at a disadvantage opposed to the big players with technology that´s superior by factor 4.
I went through S1, S3, S5 and nowdays it is not affordable in middle europe if you have to pay regular power fees, although i had my fun with it  

The centralisation of BTC is huge, i hope Monero will stay out of that fairway, although the GPU mining farms used in the beginning of BTC will most likely be used on Monero when it hits the critical mass of adoption...
@RISTO: I think you already have been doing your considerations on this topic, maybe you could be so kind to share your assumptions with us  

I really like Monero, i hope it will get adopted in a healthy scale to use it in every day life  

I think that corporations as well as general public is just scared of 'regular' miners, mining on their old laptops or in milk crates in a basement. Show something like this: https://i.imgur.com/mhGU4SV.png and tell average person that this and similar  setups are used for securing and confirming your transactions. Then show him this: http://egmr.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/portfolio1.jpg . So from the average person's point of view centralization is good. Banks are centralized, just like any other other finical intuition. People are used to centralization, and bitcoin is going there very quickly.

Monero is no different. If it grows, big farmers will join in, and regular single-cpu or gpu miners will stop. I already gave up on mining it. Too difficult on my pc.

[elrippo]

Thank´s, i thought that out by myself   (just kidding  )
Yeah, it´s insane how "home miners" are at a disadvantage opposed to the big players with technology that´s superior by factor 4.
I went through S1, S3, S5 and nowdays it is not affordable in middle europe if you have to pay regular power fees, although i had my fun with it  

The centralisation of BTC is huge, i hope Monero will stay out of that fairway, although the GPU mining farms used in the beginning of BTC will most likely be used on Monero when it hits the critical mass of adoption...
@RISTO: I think you already have been doing your considerations on this topic, maybe you could be so kind to share your assumptions with us  

I really like Monero, i hope it will get adopted in a healthy scale to use it in every day life  

I think that corporations as well as general public is just scared of 'regular' miners, mining on their old laptops or in milk crates in a basement. Show something like this: https://i.imgur.com/mhGU4SV.png and tell average person that this and similar  setups are used for securing and confirming your transactions. Then show him this: http://egmr.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/portfolio1.jpg . So from the average person's point of view centralization is good. Banks are centralized, just like any other other finical intuition. People are used to centralization, and bitcoin is going there very quickly.

Monero is no different. If it grows, big farmers will join in, and regular single-cpu or gpu miners will stop. I already gave up on mining it. Too difficult on my pc.

Well, that`s why i kindly asked Risto for his two cents on this matter.
I have some spare hardware, mainly a self configured router running a Linux Distro, which is running 24/7 so i can run a full node on this AMD Octacore anyway. Mainly for beeing a full node, secondary to mine, although i already found 3 blocks with it since february 2015 

[smooth]

Thank´s, i thought that out by myself  (just kidding  )
Yeah, it´s insane how "home miners" are at a disadvantage opposed to the big players with technology that´s superior by factor 4.
I went through S1, S3, S5 and nowdays it is not affordable in middle europe if you have to pay regular power fees, although i had my fun with it 

The centralisation of BTC is huge, i hope Monero will stay out of that fairway, although the GPU mining farms used in the beginning of BTC will most likely be used on Monero when it hits the critical mass of adoption...
@RISTO: I think you already have been doing your considerations on this topic, maybe you could be so kind to share your assumptions with us 

I really like Monero, i hope it will get adopted in a healthy scale to use it in every day life 

I think that corporations as well as general public is just scared of 'regular' miners, mining on their old laptops or in milk crates in a basement. Show something like this: https://i.imgur.com/mhGU4SV.png and tell average person that this and similar  setups are used for securing and confirming your transactions. Then show him this: http://egmr.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/portfolio1.jpg . So from the average person's point of view centralization is good. Banks are centralized, just like any other other finical intuition. People are used to centralization, and bitcoin is going there very quickly.

Monero is no different. If it grows, big farmers will join in, and regular single-cpu or gpu miners will stop. I already gave up on mining it. Too difficult on my pc.

That being the case (people want centralization, Bitcoin is going there, Monero is no different), I'm not sure there is a point to any of this. Is this all just about hoping for The Big Pump so we can cash out to fiat and buy Lambos or are we actually trying to accomplish something here?

[owm123]

Thank´s, i thought that out by myself  (just kidding  )
Yeah, it´s insane how "home miners" are at a disadvantage opposed to the big players with technology that´s superior by factor 4.
I went through S1, S3, S5 and nowdays it is not affordable in middle europe if you have to pay regular power fees, although i had my fun with it 

The centralisation of BTC is huge, i hope Monero will stay out of that fairway, although the GPU mining farms used in the beginning of BTC will most likely be used on Monero when it hits the critical mass of adoption...
@RISTO: I think you already have been doing your considerations on this topic, maybe you could be so kind to share your assumptions with us 

I really like Monero, i hope it will get adopted in a healthy scale to use it in every day life 

I think that corporations as well as general public is just scared of 'regular' miners, mining on their old laptops or in milk crates in a basement. Show something like this: https://i.imgur.com/mhGU4SV.png and tell average person that this and similar  setups are used for securing and confirming your transactions. Then show him this: http://egmr.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/portfolio1.jpg . So from the average person's point of view centralization is good. Banks are centralized, just like any other other finical intuition. People are used to centralization, and bitcoin is going there very quickly.

Monero is no different. If it grows, big farmers will join in, and regular single-cpu or gpu miners will stop. I already gave up on mining it. Too difficult on my pc.

That being the case (people want centralization, Bitcoin is going there, Monero is no different), I'm not sure there is a point to any of this. Is this all just about hoping for The Big Pump so we can cash out to fiat and buy Lambos or are we actually trying to accomplish something here?

The point is that monero maybe "fun" to use and support now, like bitcoin was at the beginning. If it grows into being as popular as bitcoin now, than we will probably see threads here about how monero is not "fun" any more, as its getting centralized, regulated, etc. Just like with bitcoin now.

[smooth]

Thank´s, i thought that out by myself  (just kidding  )
Yeah, it´s insane how "home miners" are at a disadvantage opposed to the big players with technology that´s superior by factor 4.
I went through S1, S3, S5 and nowdays it is not affordable in middle europe if you have to pay regular power fees, although i had my fun with it 

The centralisation of BTC is huge, i hope Monero will stay out of that fairway, although the GPU mining farms used in the beginning of BTC will most likely be used on Monero when it hits the critical mass of adoption...
@RISTO: I think you already have been doing your considerations on this topic, maybe you could be so kind to share your assumptions with us 

I really like Monero, i hope it will get adopted in a healthy scale to use it in every day life 

I think that corporations as well as general public is just scared of 'regular' miners, mining on their old laptops or in milk crates in a basement. Show something like this: https://i.imgur.com/mhGU4SV.png and tell average person that this and similar  setups are used for securing and confirming your transactions. Then show him this: http://egmr.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/portfolio1.jpg . So from the average person's point of view centralization is good. Banks are centralized, just like any other other finical intuition. People are used to centralization, and bitcoin is going there very quickly.

Monero is no different. If it grows, big farmers will join in, and regular single-cpu or gpu miners will stop. I already gave up on mining it. Too difficult on my pc.

That being the case (people want centralization, Bitcoin is going there, Monero is no different), I'm not sure there is a point to any of this. Is this all just about hoping for The Big Pump so we can cash out to fiat and buy Lambos or are we actually trying to accomplish something here?

The point is that monero maybe "fun" to use and support now, like bitcoin was at the beginning. If it grows into being as popular as bitcoin now, than we will probably see threads here about how monero is not "fun" any more, as its getting centralized, regulated, etc. Just like with bitcoin now.

That's exactly why I asked that question. Do you think that Monero being centralized, regulated, etc. actually has a useful purpose? Because I pretty much don't.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Is this all just about hoping for The Big Pump so we can cash out to fiat and buy Lambos or are we actually trying to accomplish something here?

I just want my Lambo.

But in all seriousness, technology will always be an arms race against governments and organizations trying to regulate and profit from it. We may win some battles, but I doubt there will ever be a time where we can sit back and live happily ever after with a perfectly incorruptible form of money.

[owm123]

Thank´s, i thought that out by myself  (just kidding  )
Yeah, it´s insane how "home miners" are at a disadvantage opposed to the big players with technology that´s superior by factor 4.
I went through S1, S3, S5 and nowdays it is not affordable in middle europe if you have to pay regular power fees, although i had my fun with it 

The centralisation of BTC is huge, i hope Monero will stay out of that fairway, although the GPU mining farms used in the beginning of BTC will most likely be used on Monero when it hits the critical mass of adoption...
@RISTO: I think you already have been doing your considerations on this topic, maybe you could be so kind to share your assumptions with us 

I really like Monero, i hope it will get adopted in a healthy scale to use it in every day life 

I think that corporations as well as general public is just scared of 'regular' miners, mining on their old laptops or in milk crates in a basement. Show something like this: https://i.imgur.com/mhGU4SV.png and tell average person that this and similar  setups are used for securing and confirming your transactions. Then show him this: http://egmr.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/portfolio1.jpg . So from the average person's point of view centralization is good. Banks are centralized, just like any other other finical intuition. People are used to centralization, and bitcoin is going there very quickly.

Monero is no different. If it grows, big farmers will join in, and regular single-cpu or gpu miners will stop. I already gave up on mining it. Too difficult on my pc.

That being the case (people want centralization, Bitcoin is going there, Monero is no different), I'm not sure there is a point to any of this. Is this all just about hoping for The Big Pump so we can cash out to fiat and buy Lambos or are we actually trying to accomplish something here?

The point is that monero maybe "fun" to use and support now, like bitcoin was at the beginning. If it grows into being as popular as bitcoin now, than we will probably see threads here about how monero is not "fun" any more, as its getting centralized, regulated, etc. Just like with bitcoin now.

That's exactly why I asked that question. Do you think that Monero being centralized, regulated, etc. actually has a useful purpose? Because I pretty much don't.

Ah I see. I also think same. I would be scared of centralization and regulation of monero. I would like to see monero, somewhere behind bitcoin. I usually use the email analogy. Tutanota or Protonmail dont need to overtake gmail and outlook to be successful and usable. They have a very specific purpose and target very specific users base. And they are doing well (I hope) by doing this. I wish  same for monero.

[chennan]

Is this all just about hoping for The Big Pump so we can cash out to fiat and buy Lambos or are we actually trying to accomplish something here?

I just want my Lambo.

But in all seriousness, technology will always be an arms race against governments and organizations trying to regulate and profit from it. We may win some battles, but I doubt there will ever be a time where we can sit back and live happily ever after with a perfectly incorruptible form of money.

Idk, I think it's refreshing that this group of "monerians" are making a valiant effort to try though.  Plus, even though it may end up being "centralized", it won't (including bitcoin) ever be as bad as the private banks which prints more money it doesn't have.  There's a finite number, which therefore makes it better IMO.

[smoothie]

When I heard about Monero, I did not "worry" about Bitcoin.

(should have...   )

Maybe in the long run, but we are not there yet

My cryptic text should be understood as:

"When I heard about and invested into Monero, I did not have any worries that the value of my much larger BTC stash would be affected. What happened, though, is that it has declined 60% since then, probably due to the very things that Monero fixes (anonymity, fungibility, blocksize). Also I never thought BTC would have caused silver price decline, but from hindsight it seems to be the case."

What makes you think Bitcoin has decline because of the lack of privacy that monero has?

Specific example?

Trends are not specific examples. Despite technically knowing the facts (which have not changed), using Bitcoin in 2013 felt like "good, I am striking the controllers back and using my own decentralized money the way I want, and they cannot even know". Now it feels more like "nah, again I am touching this totally-monitored big brother system, which happens to be the best medium for this exchange since it is [enter BTC's advantages here]".

Using bitcoin is not fun (any more) due to lack of fungibility.

Using Monero is fun.

Using CK is __________

This is not by accident.

It is funny how your description of your own inner monologue is pretty much the same as mine.

I feel the same way about mining. When I first learned about Bitcoin, it was a totally run by individuals, democratic, decentralized, p2p, etc. I was among those mining it and I felt that my role in the mining made me a true part of the system. It wasn't a bank or other regulated financial service, it was a piece of software you ran on your computer, and that's it. It was disruptive and totally unlike anything else current or previous, and exciting and appealing for that reason. Now the whole thing is run by big corporations in massive data centers (third parties to almost everyone) and subject to all manner of regulations under which you can maybe stay out of trouble if you are careful but will likely violate if you look at it the wrong way. Not so interesting, nor so different from other payment systems.

That transition represents an inherent loss of subjective value, which as rpietila points out is probably not unrelated to the decline in price.

The loss of fun is quite bad for something still an the early adopter phase.

Well see my quote on the S7 discussion  

That probably was a smart move on your part.

I gave up on the mining rat race in 2011 and never looked back.

Mining is an arms race and I refuse to race for the tiny carrot reward at the end of the race.

Rather just buy whatever it is you are considering mining.

You're missing the point a bit, I think. When I was mining back then it wasn't so much about getting the coins, so there wasn't an arms race or carrot aspect to it, really. Buying coins was certainly an option, though it was probably a bit more hassle than mining at the time. The motivation was more about the fun of being an essential part of the system itself, and getting more and more people involved, to promote Bitcoin and keep it all decentralized. That was why I always solo mined, even when it got to the point of taking months to get a block. I was more interested in the fun of being a direct part of the system that seemed to have so much potential than I was in consistent income.

I'm not sure that cryptocurrencies can ever truly succeed without keeping the fun in it. It just becomes a corporate machine that is narrowly focused on its profit margin at the expense of broad participation and inconvenient social objectives, as Bitcoin largely has. But in doing so that destroys its reason to exist at all. Centralized systems likely have higher profit margins.

From a philosophical point of view I mined bitcoin for the same reason as you.

But of course there was monetary incentive (at least that's what I saw aside from the decentralized nature of bitcoin at the time).

One could argue that if you hold bitcoin you essentially are participating in the system. Just like holding monero. So it depends on your approach.

I'm over the mining scene as it was too much work to keep rigs cool, make sure they are up 24/7, and have the space to do it in (not to mention the worry about possible fire etc).

So from many stand points I stopped mining.

Another way I am trying to contribute (hopefully) is understanding the source code for Monero so that perhaps I will be able to help others under stand it fully. In fact this is "FUN" to me. I'm finding it very enlightening to look at the source and dig into it to hopefully understand how it all works together.

So in essence there is many facets of having "fun" in crypto. It all depends on your approach.

As Risto eluded earlier to the "fun" comment. He appear to not be a miner but a user of bitcoin and eventually found it not to be "fun", the same reason I'm losing interest in it with all of the hoorah hoorah drama of the block size etc going on, and the apparent stagnation in bitcoin development (IMO).

Fun can = coding, mining, trading, transacting, marketing, teaching others...and the list can go on i'm sure.

[elrippo]

Thank´s, i thought that out by myself   (just kidding  )
Yeah, it´s insane how "home miners" are at a disadvantage opposed to the big players with technology that´s superior by factor 4.
I went through S1, S3, S5 and nowdays it is not affordable in middle europe if you have to pay regular power fees, although i had my fun with it  

The centralisation of BTC is huge, i hope Monero will stay out of that fairway, although the GPU mining farms used in the beginning of BTC will most likely be used on Monero when it hits the critical mass of adoption...
@RISTO: I think you already have been doing your considerations on this topic, maybe you could be so kind to share your assumptions with us  

I really like Monero, i hope it will get adopted in a healthy scale to use it in every day life  

I think that corporations as well as general public is just scared of 'regular' miners, mining on their old laptops or in milk crates in a basement. Show something like this: https://i.imgur.com/mhGU4SV.png and tell average person that this and similar  setups are used for securing and confirming your transactions. Then show him this: http://egmr.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/portfolio1.jpg . So from the average person's point of view centralization is good. Banks are centralized, just like any other other finical intuition. People are used to centralization, and bitcoin is going there very quickly.

Monero is no different. If it grows, big farmers will join in, and regular single-cpu or gpu miners will stop. I already gave up on mining it. Too difficult on my pc.

That being the case (people want centralization, Bitcoin is going there, Monero is no different), I'm not sure there is a point to any of this. Is this all just about hoping for The Big Pump so we can cash out to fiat and buy Lambos or are we actually trying to accomplish something here?

The point is that monero maybe "fun" to use and support now, like bitcoin was at the beginning. If it grows into being as popular as bitcoin now, than we will probably see threads here about how monero is not "fun" any more, as its getting centralized, regulated, etc. Just like with bitcoin now.

That's exactly why I asked that question. Do you think that Monero being centralized, regulated, etc. actually has a useful purpose? Because I pretty much don't.

Ah I see. I also think same. I would be scared of centralization and regulation of monero. I would like to see monero, somewhere behind bitcoin. I usually use the email analogy. Tutanota or Protonmail dont need to overtake gmail and outlook to be successful and usable. They have a very specific purpose and target very specific users base. And they are doing well (I hope) by doing this. I wish  same for monero.

+1 Agreed

That´s the point towards i am travelling.
The fact that this specific coin with it´s specific protocol makes it desirable for me, is the fact that it is not well distributed yet on one hand, and it probably will gain some value hence to adoption and distribution on the other hand.

The wider the adoption marches on, the closer we probably will get to centralization again.
I think this could be countered with an ASIC proof protocol, as it seems to be today, and a fast time adjustment as it is today. GPU mining is present, and i believe we could make it more profitable for fullnodes rather than GPU mining farms.
I am not a mathematician, but i believe it would be feasible to modify the code to check if we are running a full node or mining in a pool and adapt the difficulty, maybe sqaure it, for that reason.
I know this is racialistic towards GPU mining farms, but an idea to think about, since that would lower the risk of centralization  

Then you would have one argument more to Monero as all other coins, pool resistance 

[phishead]

So I'm confused... if there is a mining centralization with monero and bitcoin, what problems could that possibly bring?  As what Chennan brought up last page, if there is a finite amount of coins and there are still active big time miners confirming transactions, why does it really matter?