[XMR] Monero Speculation

[vokain]

In my mind it is much simpler why Monero can overtake Bitcoin; it fulfills the cypherpunk dream of an e-cash. I just use bitcoin as a tool to buy monero and it's because i want e-cash and nothing short of this will do. It's weird for me to think that an intellectual dream/problem could be abandoned because an "almost there" enjoys market share. Bitcoin is a nice attempt (entry point), but it failed the fundamental mission (exit point). I believe Satoshi understood Bitcoin as the start and not the end, so he's probably enjoying Monero's rise with the rest of us.

Can someone help me find the quote that goes like, don't invest too much into Bitcoin because it's just an experiment and something better might come along?

[Melbustus]

Bitcoin will die - no doubt.
However, it is a Goliath and it takes just a bit time. That being said, it most likely will not happen tomorrow and the coin will not die technologically, but the community will become simply poor and no new members are coming (why they should).
If I think very carefully, bitcoin has nothing to offer. It is very inconvenient. People get paid in dollars, why on earth they should convert those dollars to bitcoins?
The only real world use for bitcoin I could imagine is sending money from developed countries to undeveloped countries, perhaps bitcoin might save a few bucks compared to Westrn Union rates.

On the other hand, Monero offers a safe-haven for rich people since it is anonymous. Nobody can figure out your balance except Risto who knows that the largest Monero stack was worth only of 100 000 usd in the days of bottom prices.

if you think bitcoin will die, than i think monero will die to

It might do this. Chances are Monero will die and it is good to remember when you are investing into XMR.
However, Monero has better odds to succeed since you can add all the needed features of bitcoin into XMR. If you want to use Monero publically, it is possible, too.
Bitcoin's last chance to get some additional air is the Wall street pump. Bitcoin needs tons of stupid money flooding into it in order to gain some value.

Therefore, I think we should not focus too much on how many bitcoins Monero costs, but how many USD.
Monero needs to stand alone and separate itself from bitcoin - otherwise it is just another altcoin.

And I don't think Monero will be the ultimate crypto neither.

 

this is nonsense. if you believe there will always be a better crypto then there is no use investing in them other than speculation and day trading.

there is such a thing as network effect. and bitcoin's own dwarfs monero's by a couple order of magnitudes.

protocols don't need to be perfect, they just need to be good enough and all signs point to Bitcoin being good enough.

Monero is unique from most other alts in that it does present a use case that the market demands and that can not (yet?) be filled by Bitcoin but I believe it is too little too late for Monero to supplant Bitcoin on technological merits alone

+1 on all points.

[vokain]

Can someone help me find the quote that goes like, don't invest too much into Bitcoin because it's just an experiment and something better might come along?

I don't remember anyone saying these exact words, what we like to say to each other is: "don't invest more than you can afford to lose".

Yeah I still can't find it. Maybe I'm mixing up a bias with the common aphorism. Though I could've sworn...

[generalizethis]

Can someone help me find the quote that goes like, don't invest too much into Bitcoin because it's just an experiment and something better might come along?

I don't remember anyone saying these exact words, what we like to say to each other is: "don't invest more than you can afford to lose".

Yeah I still can't find it. Maybe I'm mixing up a bias with the common aphorism. Though I could've sworn...

From when Andreas met the Canadian Committee on banking:

Mr. Antonopoulos:  "It is useful to understand that bitcoin's monetary policy is just one recipe that is possible.  Bitcoin and other currencies allow us to implement monetary recipes at will and then fix them in place for each currency.  If bitcoin's monetary recipe is wrong, people will move to another currency that has the same characteristics of decentralized organization, but with a different monetary recipe.  It is simply one of the possible choices. 

I don't know if it is right or wrong, but I do know what it will be in 30 years exactly for bitcoin.  I can tell you to the millionth decimal point exactly how many currency units will exist 140 years from now in bitcoin.  What it provides, whether or not you like the recipe and whether or not you agree with it, is certainty and predictability, and it allows people to adjust their expectations for that.  Whether that's the right monetary policy or not, with this new model you can build your own currency which has a different monetary policy.  If it is better, it gets to win. It's an open competition."

[smooth]

Bitcoin will die - no doubt.
However, it is a Goliath and it takes just a bit time. That being said, it most likely will not happen tomorrow and the coin will not die technologically, but the community will become simply poor and no new members are coming (why they should).
If I think very carefully, bitcoin has nothing to offer. It is very inconvenient. People get paid in dollars, why on earth they should convert those dollars to bitcoins?
The only real world use for bitcoin I could imagine is sending money from developed countries to undeveloped countries, perhaps bitcoin might save a few bucks compared to Westrn Union rates.

On the other hand, Monero offers a safe-haven for rich people since it is anonymous. Nobody can figure out your balance except Risto who knows that the largest Monero stack was worth only of 100 000 usd in the days of bottom prices.

if you think bitcoin will die, than i think monero will die to

It might do this. Chances are Monero will die and it is good to remember when you are investing into XMR.
However, Monero has better odds to succeed since you can add all the needed features of bitcoin into XMR. If you want to use Monero publically, it is possible, too.
Bitcoin's last chance to get some additional air is the Wall street pump. Bitcoin needs tons of stupid money flooding into it in order to gain some value.

Therefore, I think we should not focus too much on how many bitcoins Monero costs, but how many USD.
Monero needs to stand alone and separate itself from bitcoin - otherwise it is just another altcoin.

And I don't think Monero will be the ultimate crypto neither.

 

this is nonsense. if you believe there will always be a better crypto then there is no use investing in them other than speculation and day trading.

Believing there will always be a better crypto is not the same as believing there might be a better crypto still. Before LTC we had to wonder whether 2.5 minute blocks might be a lot better than 10 minute blocks -- enough to overcome a big head start. And then perhaps close enough to optimal (maybe optimal is actually 2.21376 minutes) that it could never be replaced again. Now we know it isn't. Before TCP you might have picked whatever the previously-most-used network protocol was and said had too big of a head start. But it didn't. You can't really know in advance.

there is such a thing as network effect. and bitcoin's own dwarfs monero's by a couple order of magnitudes.

protocols don't need to be perfect, they just need to be good enough and all signs point to Bitcoin being good enough.

Monero is unique from most other alts in that it does present a use case that the market demands and that can not (yet?) be filled by Bitcoin but I believe it is too little too late for Monero to supplant Bitcoin on technological merits alone

I mostly agree. I think it is doubtful that Monero is sufficiently better to beat good enough with a big head start. Not impossible but doubtful. Only if fungibility and lack of privacy becomes such a major consideration it leads to collapse, or the problem with Bitcoin's block size never gets handled, again despite the threat of collapse. Those seem like long shots but not absolutely impossible.

[TrueCryptonaire]

do we really, as the smartest kids in the room, discuss about a cryptocurrency replacing bitcoin?

no fuckin way this will happen in the near future - money and value is an institution

when we say monero is worth 0.004 you may get a hint about what I am talking.

the comparison to any utility spending technology is complete nonsense - you simply do not substitute value for a slightly better technology, imagine what level of stress it would be to change the way we exchange value every 2-3 years .

the reason why monero is so special is because it can fill the biggest existing niche namely privacy - this alone given makes it better than every other coin despites bitcoin.

99.999% (maybe even more 9s) of people in the world haven't even assigned a value to Bitcoin yet, let alone considered substituting it for something better. Is there a Big Mac index for Bitcoin? How many places that accept Bitcoin aren't converting straight to their native currency because we are still in the "is it worth thousands of $$$$ or is it worth nothing" phase? 21% of tips given through changetip on reddit go unclaimed and a lot of people still think it's just used for buying drugs or it went bankrupt. You gotta admit that it has a bad rep right now. Litecoin looks like it is going on a straight path to zero but you have to realize that Bitcoin has been following the same path which began at the same time and it offers no technological improvements over litecoin so why should it succeed when litecoin shouldn't?

I will add the disclaimer that I am another one of the people that no longer owns any Bitcoin unless they are used to purchase Monero or to use for sports betting because they don't take monero yet. There are some fundamental flaws in Bitcoin that make me think it will not succeed and some that make me not want to use it at all. Biggest is lack of privacy and the other is lack of scalability. If Bitcoin can address those two issues I would jump back in but it seems like there are too many cooks in the kitchen now to come to agreements on major issues. Two years ago I would have aggressively defended Bitcoin to someone saying the things I say now but I am losing faith.

This is very much the same I have noticed when I have been talking about bitcoin to fiat denominated hands.
Therefore I think it is not that hard to replace bitcoin by some other crypto since bitcoin community is so small.
Perhaps the governements will launch their own cryptos that people are forced to use... Who knows?

Again, by saying bitcoin will be replaced, doesn't mean bitcoin ceases to exist but it means it will decrease slowly slwoly in value.

[TrueCryptonaire]

I will add the disclaimer that I am another one of the people that no longer owns any Bitcoin unless they are used to purchase Monero or to use for sports betting because they don't take monero yet. There are some fundamental flaws in Bitcoin that make me think it will not succeed and some that make me not want to use it at all. Biggest is lack of privacy and the other is lack of scalability. If Bitcoin can address those two issues I would jump back in but it seems like there are too many cooks in the kitchen now to come to agreements on major issues. Two years ago I would have aggressively defended Bitcoin to someone saying the things I say now but I am losing faith.

There is another important feature of Monero apart from privacy and fungibility, the tail emission, it will actually start many many years from now, by that time Monero will be older than Bitcoin is now and still have less coins than it, but gone will be the "Smeagol factor", the perpetual inflation is minimal, and even today with current buy support would have a negligible impact in the price, but it turns Monero into a crypto more fit to be used as true electronic cash, while I expect Bitcoin to become an electronic gold.

It depends on how you see gold.
If you consider all the existing gold as a constant, then bitcoin is gold and Monero is not.
On the other hand, if you consider the gold that is on the ground, then Monero's emission looks more like gold since gold is discovered all the time.

[rpietila]

The maxim "don't invest more than you can afford to lose" is often understood in a very lacking context, as if anything in this world was not prone to loss in certain circumstances.

Therefore,

- Don't invest in paper instruments (fiat, stocks, bonds) more than you can afford to lose in the situation of a paper collapse (happened many times in history).

- Don't invest in your house more than you can afford to lose in the situation that insurance refuses to cover (happens daily).

- Don't invest in precious metals more than you can afford to lose in the situation of theft or confiscation (both do happen).

- Don't invest in crypto more than you can afford to lose in the situation of any unforeseen event (some cryptos already bit the dust; hacks and scams).

- Don't invest in anything you cannot carry with you across border controls more than you can afford to lose if you need to flee (millions every year).

The list continues.

If you deduce that you don't want to lose more than 90% of your wealth if you are wrongfully put into prison and all your assets confiscated, prepare accordingly.

[nakaone]

regarding bitcoin as technology will be dethroned:

Glad to see some senior bitcoin holders kindle interesting and substantive discussions on altcoins. Especially thanks to rpietila and Peter R for their insights.

Regarding the The Alt-coin Narrative Cycle, which by the way was a very interesting read, I was wondering, since you disagree bitcoin is a technology which can be de-throned by better technology, on what do you base you belief and what do you think bitcoin is?

Because I don't believe bitcoin is a technology.  Bitcoin contains technology but the $7.3 billion market cap is not a measure of that.  Bitcoin is money, and money is memory.  Money represents a shared agreement between the individuals who voluntarily use it.  Our shared agreement is that spots on The Blockchain represent value and one transfers his value by signing a message with his private key (e.g., in exchange for goods or services). 

Forget about bitcoin the protocol, and even bitcoin the payment network (nodes + miners), and focus on bitcoin as a shared agreement that the distribution of wealth encoded by the blockchain is efficient and legitimate.  If it wasn't efficient, large holders would sell, and small holders would buy.  If it wasn't legitimate, people wouldn't be willing to trade their time in exchange for bitcoins, and bitcoin would have collapsed. 

So the value of money (e.g., bitcoin) primarily comes from the legitimacy of its ledger.  The legitimacy of this ledger increases as more people adopt this form of money, and as time proves that it's not a passing fad. 

Viewed through this lens, it becomes clear that even a superior technology (although I question if one exists) would unlikely de-throne bitcoin the ledger, for the new technology would simple be adopted by the ledger as the new payment system. 

In my mind, the only thing that could dethrone bitcoin would be a more legitimate ledger.  But I don't see how it is possible to create one.   

I think it is very hard to argue against this from a logical perspective; anyway even this guy sees monero as the most legitimate system besides bitcoin.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=624223.msg7014866#msg7014866

the first ~20 pages are really worth reading

[vokain]

It is certainly possible that a reason why Bitcoin might fall is the same reason Monero becomes "successful".

[rpietila]

Despite the current difference in market caps, all it takes for Bitcoin to be dethroned, is a small difference in the perceived legitimacy of the current and future distribution, in favor of Othercoin.

Monero has 2/3 of the coins not mined +  perpetual emission, and these might well be considered preferable from the new money pov.

To get to a level playing field, is still very far, though, due to Bitcoin's 5-year headstart and 10,000-fold brand awareness.

If the relative exchange rate continues to narrow, it is at least a sign that Monero is relatively going to the right direction even if the absolute numbers still favor Bitcoin 1,000:1.

[aminorex]

There's no way you can suggest Monero will replace Bitcoin in public and not get laughed out the room.

You can't stop the signal.  Laugh all you like.  I will laugh all the way to global domination.

Monero replaced bitcoin already for perhaps a quarter of those crypto speculators with whom I interact (a self-selected but very leading group).  The cutting edge of the high-linear-risk, higher-exponential-reward speculators always recognize very quickly that risk/reward asymmetry overwhelmingly favors Monero over Bitcoin.  Once they understand the competitve landscape, the differentiation from other "altcoins", they act decisively.  Their followers are legion, and will do what they always do:  Follow.

Perhaps a buying pause for a little while now.  I dunno.  But the major gains are still ahead.  Trying to front run the dips for a cheaper buy back is exceedingly difficult in XMR.  I will not even try.  Just drip buying here.

In general:  Now is a good time to buy BTC while it is still cheap, to buy all the more XMR if it corrects a bit.  My approach is "be right and sit tight".

[rpietila]

Where I live at least, some have gone from "laugh" to "fight" already, and that is intensifying. Bets hedged, waiting if the next stage comes 

[vokain]

Where I live at least, some have gone from "laugh" to "fight" already, and that is intensifying. Bets hedged, waiting if the next stage comes 

Laugh, fight, win—life

[Brilliantrocket]

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  )

[brg444]

Well I can only hope that you are both right cause I can afford much more XMR than BTC

[vokain]

Once Monero has a GUI, I doubt I will ever use Bitcoin again. Monero will be superior in every possible way.

lol you can buy what, exactly, with monero?

[Brilliantrocket]

Once Monero has a GUI, I doubt I will ever use Bitcoin again. Monero will be superior in every possible way.

To buy what lol

Anything that I would have otherwise used Bitcoin for? I guess that depends on the state of the cryptocurrency economy.

[cAPSLOCK]

Once Monero has a GUI, I doubt I will ever use Bitcoin again. Monero will be superior in every possible way.

lol you can buy what, exactly, with monero?

This is an important point.  There CAN be an answer though...  Will we see one?

[darlidada]

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  )

Everytime I read that "monero no gui blabla" rhetoric, it makes me MAAAAAAAAAAAAD

So Monero has a GUI. Even several GUIs. Here's one of them:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=683365.0

The dev has been interviewed in the last missive.

And if you tell me blabla no official gui, do you even use bitcoin official gui?