[XMR] Monero Speculation

[rpietila]

I think the situation is good.

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[canth]

I think the situation is good.

Indeed - hopefully it won't take a Gox-style event for it to happen, but I could definitely see Bitfinex picking up volume over the coming months. The near-term future for XMR looks very strong:

- RingCT
- GUI
- Bitfinex additional liquidity & decentralization (and wallet storage for the risk-takers)

Do we have you back in the XMR game, Risto?

[fiscorcle]

I think the situation is good.

Indeed - hopefully it won't take a Gox-style event for it to happen, but I could definitely see Bitfinex picking up volume over the coming months. The near-term future for XMR looks very strong:

- RingCT
- GUI
- Bitfinex additional liquidity & decentralization (and wallet storage for the risk-takers)

Do we have you back in the XMR game, Risto?

Heh I'd actually argue the big exchanges are actually the weak link, given everything that's happened with them

[TrueCryptonaire]

I think the situation is good.

Indeed - hopefully it won't take a Gox-style event for it to happen, but I could definitely see Bitfinex picking up volume over the coming months. The near-term future for XMR looks very strong:

- RingCT
- GUI
- Bitfinex additional liquidity & decentralization (and wallet storage for the risk-takers)

Do we have you back in the XMR game, Risto?

I speculate he bought in when he tricked some people to sell their coins sub 0.01 by giving predictions of Monero hitting the bottom of 0.004 which never happened obviously.

[KeyJockey]

I think the situation is good.

Indeed - hopefully it won't take a Gox-style event for it to happen, but I could definitely see Bitfinex picking up volume over the coming months. The near-term future for XMR looks very strong:

- RingCT
- GUI
- Bitfinex additional liquidity & decentralization (and wallet storage for the risk-takers)

Do we have you back in the XMR game, Risto?

I know it's a long-shot but I'd add to that list FluffyPony's going to speak to coinbase in January too.

Probably has very small chance of happening BUT if Brian Armstrong *really* wants to make a name for himself as a serious mo-fo in the crypto space, adding Monero support for coinbase customers would be an epic, awesome, totally out-of-the-blue amazing game-changer, LOL, especially in light of all this recent hullaballoo over the IRS trying to muscle info out of coinbase on all their customers.

Coinbase is largely persona non grata in crypto space for a long time now, after all the shit they've pulled over the last few years, BUT doing THIS would totally redeem them, at least in my eyes.

Yeah, I know... snowball's chance in hell of actually happening BUT can you IMAGINE what the IMPACT would be IF it really DID happen???

[kurious]

I think the situation is good.

Indeed - hopefully it won't take a Gox-style event for it to happen, but I could definitely see Bitfinex picking up volume over the coming months. The near-term future for XMR looks very strong:

- RingCT
- GUI
- Bitfinex additional liquidity & decentralization (and wallet storage for the risk-takers)

Do we have you back in the XMR game, Risto?

I know it's a long-shot but I'd add to that list FluffyPony's going to speak to coinbase in January too.

Probably has very small chance of happening BUT if Brian Armstrong *really* wants to make a name for himself as a serious mo-fo in the crypto space, adding Monero support for coinbase customers would be an epic, awesome, totally out-of-the-blue amazing game-changer, LOL, especially in light of all this recent hullaballoo over the IRS trying to muscle info out of coinbase on all their customers.

Coinbase is largely persona non grata in crypto space for a long time now, after all the shit they've pulled over the last few years, BUT doing THIS would totally redeem them, at least in my eyes.

Yeah, I know... snowball's chance in hell of actually happening BUT can you IMAGINE what the IMPACT would be IF it really DID happen???

At the end of the day it's business and XMR is an earner.   I don't think they will jump immediately, but opening communication channels is a good idea and never hurts.   

I think they might look at Bitfinex's volume and be non-plussed about it, but if (when, rather) it picks up, then the need to consider it will renew and the obvious privacy factor may or may not be of interest according to how Coinbase sees its own position in crypto long-term.

It would be good for XMR, but it's for them to decide how they see it fitting in.  The volume justifies them considering it, certainly and XMR is growing and gaining respect constantly....

[kurious]

I think the situation is good.

Good to see you back Risto - I hope things are improving in your world and I am sure I am not the only one looking forward to your further thoughts.

[iCEBREAKER]

I think the situation is good.

Indeed - hopefully it won't take a Gox-style event for it to happen, but I could definitely see Bitfinex picking up volume over the coming months. The near-term future for XMR looks very strong:

- RingCT
- GUI
- Bitfinex additional liquidity & decentralization (and wallet storage for the risk-takers)

Do we have you back in the XMR game, Risto?

I know it's a long-shot but I'd add to that list FluffyPony's going to speak to coinbase in January too.

Probably has very small chance of happening BUT if Brian Armstrong *really* wants to make a name for himself as a serious mo-fo in the crypto space, adding Monero support for coinbase customers would be an epic, awesome, totally out-of-the-blue amazing game-changer, LOL, especially in light of all this recent hullaballoo over the IRS trying to muscle info out of coinbase on all their customers.

Coinbase is largely persona non grata in crypto space for a long time now, after all the shit they've pulled over the last few years, BUT doing THIS would totally redeem them, at least in my eyes.

Yeah, I know... snowball's chance in hell of actually happening BUT can you IMAGINE what the IMPACT would be IF it really DID happen???

I'd generalize this sentiment and apply it as optimism to all exchanges which have yet to add XMR.

You know exchange operators/investors must be PISSED OFF at and JEALOUS of Poloniex for eating the lion's share of not only XMR volume, but most other alts as well.

What good does it do for your exchange to offer trendy stuff like ETC/ETH/DAO/ZEC when everyone stays at Polo because all the action is over there?   

[Billy Bunter]

Another big bunch of merges on the official GUI. Only three outstanding currently:

https://github.com/monero-project/monero-core/pulls

[nioc]

I think the situation is good.

Indeed - hopefully it won't take a Gox-style event for it to happen, but I could definitely see Bitfinex picking up volume over the coming months. The near-term future for XMR looks very strong:

- RingCT
- GUI
- Bitfinex additional liquidity & decentralization (and wallet storage for the risk-takers)

Do we have you back in the XMR game, Risto?

I speculate he bought in when he tricked some people to sell their coins sub 0.01 by giving predictions of Monero hitting the bottom of 0.004 which never happened obviously.

At that time I bought sub 0.01 because to me it was obvious we were going up considering what was on the near horizon.  I will continue to look towards the horizon near and far.  There are fundamental things about Monero and it's development that most people don't seem to appreciate.  No need to elaborate as all the info is in the open.

[LennyCarl]

I think the situation is good.

Good to see you back Risto - I hope things are improving in your world and I am sure I am not the only one looking forward to your further thoughts.

I like your posts, kurious, but I don't get the love for Mr Reptilia (from you and many others.) It affects the impressionable minds of newbies (cough cough me) into thinking this guy is some amazing oracle. I am guilty of believing his earlier predictions and selling a portion of my coins because I surmised he would know better than me (totally my fault, I know.)

[ol92]

I think the situation is good.

Looking back at when I followed your advices or sayings, I would say you have a far better "backtesting" on long term choices than short term trading... (best decision I take reading your posts and others during 2014 and later: invest in monero long term, worst one : selling a significant part when you predicted capitulation a few weeks ago).

[canth]

I think the situation is good.

Good to see you back Risto - I hope things are improving in your world and I am sure I am not the only one looking forward to your further thoughts.

I like your posts, kurious, but I don't get the love for Mr Reptilia (from you and many others.) It affects the impressionable minds of newbies (cough cough me) into thinking this guy is some amazing oracle. I am guilty of believing his earlier predictions and selling a portion of my coins because I surmised he would know better than me (totally my fault, I know.)

Risto is an enthusiastic investor and a thoughtful analyst, not Nostradamus. I'm glad to have his participation for his insights, not for his infallibility or anyone else's for that matter.

[tifozi]

I think the situation is good.

Looking back at when I followed your advices or sayings, I would say you have a far better "backtesting" on long term choices than short term trading... (best decision I take reading your posts and others during 2014 and later: invest in monero long term, worst one : selling a significant part when you predicted capitulation a few weeks ago).

Well the good news is you were selling it to him and he knows what to do with it better. 

[Hueristic]

I think the situation is good.

Looking back at when I followed your advices or sayings, I would say you have a far better "backtesting" on long term choices than short term trading... (best decision I take reading your posts and others during 2014 and later: invest in monero long term, worst one : selling a significant part when you predicted capitulation a few weeks ago).

I do believe I warned against this and even opened a long.

[cryptimus prime]

I think the situation is good.

Looking back at when I followed your advices or sayings, I would say you have a far better "backtesting" on long term choices than short term trading... (best decision I take reading your posts and others during 2014 and later: invest in monero long term, worst one : selling a significant part when you predicted capitulation a few weeks ago).

Well the good news is you were selling it to him and he knows what to do with it better. 

+1

Thats what I say: Let them all sell into our strong hodling arms.

XMR is so young, yet it is compared to other crypto projects already an established, growing project with new developers and community members joining continuously.
No one of us is even capable of predicting where Monero could be even in just 2 further years.

[ArticMine]

...
Do you have a better explanation that accounts for the observable fact heavily funded bitcoin companies failed to produce the kinds of spectacular results Silicon Valley expects, even as the value of bitcoin itself continues to climb?  Speculating about motivations and fretting about EVIL BLOCKSTREAMCORE doesn't count; your personal status as disgruntled isn't an argument that leads to a falsifiable (ie useful) hypothesis.
...

Very simple. If the maximum transactions per second is capped to somewhere between 2 tps and 7 tps this places a limit on the growth of a Bitcoin company, say for example a payment processor, no matter how much venture capital the company may raise. This explains, the weak performance of existing Bitcoin companies, the fall in new venture capital for Bitcoin companies and Bitcoin companies seeking greener pastures outside of Bitcoin.

Take for example Walmart. Walmart is currently at war with VISA over merchant fees. This is manifested in both litigation in the United States and trials in Canada where Walmart is testing not accepting VISA in certain stores. A Bitcoin payment processor could make a very good case on how they can process retail transactions for Walmart using Bitcoin for a fraction of what VISA charges. The trouble is that if such a Bitcoin payment processor were to succeed they would not be able to deliver since if only a small fraction of Walmart's sales were to be made using BItcoin the Bitcoin network would not be able to handle it. Furthermore we are not talking cups of coffee here, The typical Walmart retail sale is way more than that. There is a reason why virtually every Bitcoin company is pushing for an increase in the Bitcoin blocksize.

If it were as simple as increasing the blocksize in Bitcoin this would have been done a long time ago. The trouble is that the small block point of view also makes extremely valid points since without creating some kind of scarcity in the blocksize there is no way to force the fees in Bitcoin to rise in order to provide an incentive the miners once the block reward runs out. So in this respect Bitcoin is caught between a rock and hard place with one group arguing for the rock and the other group arguing for the hard place.

As I have mentioned before the only working solution I have seen that allows for both security and a market based adaptive blocksize is what we have in Monero or something very similar. This requires a tail emission, which is fundamentally against the Bitcoin social covenant. This whole issue is becoming highly relevant to not only both BItcoin and Monero, but also to most other crypto currencies as more and more market players recognize the issues involved. Any market participants trading in or investing in crypto currencies would be wise to inform themselves on this issue and its ramifications.

Edit: https://blockchain.info/

[ozkraut]

...
Do you have a better explanation that accounts for the observable fact heavily funded bitcoin companies failed to produce the kinds of spectacular results Silicon Valley expects, even as the value of bitcoin itself continues to climb?  Speculating about motivations and fretting about EVIL BLOCKSTREAMCORE doesn't count; your personal status as disgruntled isn't an argument that leads to a falsifiable (ie useful) hypothesis.
...

Very simple. If the maximum transactions per second is capped to somewhere between 2 tps and 7 tps this places a limit on the growth of a Bitcoin company, say for example a payment processor, no matter how much venture capital the company may raise. This explains, the weak performance of existing Bitcoin companies, the fall in new venture capital for Bitcoin companies and Bitcoin companies seeking greener pastures outside of Bitcoin.

Take for example Walmart. Walmart is currently at war with VISA over merchant fees. This is manifested in both litigation in the United States and trials in Canada where Walmart is testing not accepting VISA in certain stores. A Bitcoin payment processor could make a very good case on how they can process retail transactions for Walmart using Bitcoin for a fraction of what VISA charges. The trouble is that if such a Bitcoin payment processor were to succeed they would not be able to deliver since if only a small fraction of Walmart's sales were to be made using BItcoin the Bitcoin network would not be able to handle it. Furthermore we are not talking cups of coffee here, The typical Walmart retail sale is way more than that. There is a reason why virtually every Bitcoin company is pushing for an increase in the Bitcoin blocksize.

If it were as simple as increasing the blocksize in Bitcoin this would have been done a long time ago. The trouble is that the small block point of view also makes extremely valid points since without creating some kind of scarcity in the blocksize there is no way to force the fees in Bitcoin to rise in order to provide an incentive the miners once the block reward runs out. So in this respect Bitcoin is caught between a rock and hard place with one group arguing for the rock and the other group arguing for the hard place.

As I have mentioned before the only working solution I have seen that allows for both security and a market based adaptive blocksize is what we have in Monero or something very similar. This requires a tail emission, which is fundamentally against the Bitcoin social covenant. This whole issue is becoming highly relevant to not only both BItcoin and Monero, but also to most other crypto currencies as more and more market players recognize the issues involved. Any market participants trading in or investing in crypto currencies would be wise to inform themselves on this issue and its ramifications.

Edit: https://blockchain.info/

A most succinct overview of bitcoins conundrum. Thank you.
Adaptive blocksize, tail emission and privacy is what brought me to Monero. It is bitcoin 2.0 in my eyes.

[kurious]

I think the situation is good.

Good to see you back Risto - I hope things are improving in your world and I am sure I am not the only one looking forward to your further thoughts.

I like your posts, kurious, but I don't get the love for Mr Reptilia (from you and many others.) It affects the impressionable minds of newbies (cough cough me) into thinking this guy is some amazing oracle. I am guilty of believing his earlier predictions and selling a portion of my coins because I surmised he would know better than me (totally my fault, I know.)

Thank you for your compliment.  To explain, Risto was a cheerleader for XMR way back and I was trying to buy it OTC even before it was on Polo because of him as well as Aminorex, who are both intelligent and sagacious investors.

At times he can be wrong, yes - and he has been. Recently calling the 0.006 - 0.004 crash seems one of those calls, but those who know a little about what was going on in his life will probably forgive that one.

As others here have said and he and Aminorex will always admit - at best their calls are an educated guess.  All they have for all their savvy is 'an edge' and on average it will do better than most, but no one is infallible.

Listen to those you think wise and feel you can rust - but always make your own choices in order to learn from your own mistakes.

[iCEBREAKER]

...
Do you have a better explanation that accounts for the observable fact heavily funded bitcoin companies failed to produce the kinds of spectacular results Silicon Valley expects, even as the value of bitcoin itself continues to climb?  Speculating about motivations and fretting about EVIL BLOCKSTREAMCORE doesn't count; your personal status as disgruntled isn't an argument that leads to a falsifiable (ie useful) hypothesis.
...

Very simple. If the maximum transactions per second is capped to somewhere between 2 tps and 7 tps this places a limit on the growth of a Bitcoin company, say for example a payment processor, no matter how much venture capital the company may raise.

Your explanation is not "very simple" as it needlessly multiplies the entities responsible for Bitcoin's secular bull market, despite a more parsimonious theory (fat protocol) being available.

TPS doesn't limit growth of Bitcoin companies unless they are doing it wrong (ie trying to use the blockchain as a replacement for low-latency high-volume centralized services like Visa).

There are presently limits to Bitcoin's TSP, but there is no limit to how valuable those 2-7 tx are.  Hence Bitcoin's destiny to become high powered super money used for settlement between institutions which issue their own tokens backed by BTC.

Yes rising fee market pressure excludes marginal cases like SatoshiDice.  Oh well; that's called creative destruction.

Honey Badger and I really couldn't care less what "virtually every Bitcoin company is pushing for."  Fuck those free riding assholes and (your logical fallacy of) argumentum ad populum as well.

I'm not going to weep for past use cases (and resultant business models) which are no longer viable (or profitable).

The dream of stuffing every Starbucks and Wal-Mart purchase on the Holy Ledger is dead.

That yet-another-retail-payment-rail vision has been thoroughly rubbished, starting here...

There will always be a practically unlimited demand for cheap unforgeable, immutable, highly deduplicated key storage. If transactions are cheap enough, people will use them for dice games, diamond registrations and botnet control; uneconomical uses that externalize their costs to every peer on the network.

These are not spam as long as they pay the fee, and there is no way to stop them in a permissionless system. However, that constitutes an uneconomical demand that works as long as bitcoins have any strictly positive value. It does not increase Bitcoin's value, and so it would not be rational to support it with larger block sizes.

...and ending with the definitive repudiation here.

There’s a permeating sense of entitlement amongst certain Bitcoin entrepreneurs that leads them to try to make the Bitcoin network liable for the profitability of their business models.

Many companies are built on the premise that they can provide competitive financial services by piggybacking off the most open and secure blockchain available. Unfortunately, they often ignore the tradeoffs they chose to make when adopting this solution and too often display an arrogance that is unbecoming from people who owe their entire business to a protocol largely supported by others.

Traditional payment service businesses have stitched themselves on top of Bitcoin in an attempt to externalize their operation costs to the network, irrespective of the fact that the latter is a public good provided by voluntary participants. This dynamic is more commonly known as the free-loader problem

By using their influence to promote design changes that increase the cost of validating nodes through coercion, they are effectively attempting to tax peers in order to continue subsidizing their business models.

If users give up on their ability to coordinate through a fixed block size limit, they invite transaction providers to further increase the load externalized to the network until diversity is lost and validating services become specialized and prohibitive.

For the many reasons explained above, it should be clear to everyone that the current block size limit is hardly artificial. It is, rather, a conscious, voluntary, decision by network participants everywhere to preserve the trust minimization feature of Bitcoin.