[XMR] Monero Speculation

[cAPSLOCK]

I'm going to take a moment to briefly whine/vent/pontificate.

I'm still a little disheartened by Monero's performance this year. In BTC terms, we're still down 50% from Oct. 2020. We're still down ~85% from the 2017-2018 peaks. Meanwhile, I'm seeing shitcoins hit new USD ATHs, though not against BTC.

However, I'm optimistic in that Monero seems to be on it's own cycle, loosely correlated with the cycles of BTC and altcoins. 2017 was a good example of this, with Moreno pumps largely unaligned with ETH and other alt pumps. Also, from a TA perspective, the long term cup pattern seems to be continuing nicely. Finally, we may be on the cusp of a broader market focus shift to "privacy" coins, with the specter of totalitarianism haunting the globe, and the recent market successes of newer "privacy" coins like Pirate Chain and Mobile[scam]Coin, and older ones like Horizen, ZEC, etc.

Yes.  This has been the curse of Monero from fairly early on.  

I am pretty much one step down from a BTC maximalist.  I see virtually NO REASON for the existence of almost all alts.

Smart Contract coins - ETH LINK TRON EOS etc etc etc  - These coins are making a fundamental design mistake.  It is the "cram everything onto the base chain" mistake.  There is no reason to use the base monetary chain to record "all the things".  Smart contracts can be done on layers, or sidechains.  And I believe they will be.

Big Block chains - we all know this one, and have our own opinions.  You can always spot a Monero big-blocker because they like to work the "peer to peer cash" angle.  In fact Monero does this one of the best ways so far.  But the big block coins make the same fundamental mistake as the smart contract coins.

Copy-pastas. LTC DOGE etc.  Why?  "Well fees are cheaper!! blocks are faster!! Etc."  Fees will stop being cheap when these coins begin to be seriously used, and the friction of going from BTC to LTC is a non-starter.  In tghe end these projects have an existential problem.  The only reasn they are useful, is they are not used.  *POOF* vanishes their purpose in a small puff of logic.

Loyalty/Purpose tokens  BNB STX and so on. Now we get to see something useful.  Centralized.  Often built on top of one of the smart contract mistakes.  These coins have value because they have a unique purpose.  That value is kind of dubious, and I think most of them are unnecessary, but some will survive.  They are the "green stamps" or coupons of crypto.  Eventually these will be built on a sidechain of whatever chain is strongest (umm BITCOIN).  Liquid is a good bet here.  Because again.  Why build this on one of the gargantuan monstrosities like ETH in the longrun?
 
Stable Coins Much like the above.  These are serving an actual purpose and therefore will attract value.  But it is temporary, and trades crypto-stability for SIGNIFICANT counter party risk.  These too will most likely be built on a BTC sidechain like Liquid, until the die off from lack of use.

Privacy coins And actual iron clad use case for crypto that the BTC base layer will never do.  A tradeoff that has a STRONG use case argument.  And as we here know, nearly ALL of them are scams. Pre-mines, not 'always on' privacy, or privacy theater. Trusted setups, founder's rewards, and so on.  Some projects try to combine privacy with one of the above mistakes.

Monero is WAY out in front of that pack, and will be for the forseeable future.  The market has SOLIDLY integrated Monero into real world battle scenarios.

I would love to see some data, but I think it is arguable that Monero is at LEAST in the top 3 crypto assets if you were to measure REAL non-speculative transactions.  Yes BSV has a LOT of transactions going on.  But what coin is ACTUALLY being used more in real commerce.  I would say only a handful, and NONE of them has Monero's privacy guarantees.

So why the hell is it not more expensive?

Three reasons, and one nightmare

1. It is, and always has been difficult to use.  It has a weighty blockchain and lack of very many wallets etc are a serious barrier.  Drug addicts are incentivized to go through a lot of trouble to make it work , but the average joe, less so.  Just look at hardware wallets.  Getting monero to work with those is pretty damn hard still.

2.  It might be one of the least hyped projects in the entire space.  For the longest time it's 'official' marketing was "Don't buy Monero".  So not hyped that a lot of idiots (that weatherman jackass for example) figure that whole thing was reverse psychology.  Which would be the second stupidest way to market it.  There are no glossy claims.  There is no "founders reward" to pay exchanges to list it, ad so on.  It has just quietly been staying on the razors edge

3.  The bad boy angle.  Monero is one of the riskiest crypto projects to hold value in.  I sort of assume that at some points governments will most likely clamp down on it.  Or at least they could.  So that makes it risky.  To be honest I do not think this is a major factor.

Nightmare. Inflation bug.  If that exists that would most definitely be having a dampening effect on the price of Monero.  I think this is the least likely.

All that said... As the world wakes up to why Bitcoin is important, the smarter ones are going to realize why monero is important, just as we did, but earlier.  It's like every halving cycle a new crew comes in... and they fall for all the same scams, and always a percentage of them end up realizing why Monero is important.  

That number will be very big this time around.

[coinits]

He did it again. Just this time he did not just said privacy by default, but he directly named Monero.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rise-of-cryptocurrencies-after-covid19-pandemic-by-brian-armstrong-2-2020-04

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1247963017179836416




It makes very little sense why Monero is not listed on Coinbase.

What if he is afraid that to much transactions would be made from Coinbase. So Coinbase could record those transactions and when USA government would demand the list they would have to give it to them. That list could help unmask other transactions. Maybe that is a reason for a delay and he hopes that number of Monero transactions will grow and he hopes that Monero will increase ring sizes and then he will list Monero, since it will matter much less or none.

I know this is more wishful thinking that everyone cares about Monero well being. But it just crossed my mind when he first mention privacy by default.

My conspiratorial mind thinks that the security features of Monero are exactly why it's not on Coinbase. Coinbase is the closet thing to the "Establishment's" involvement in Crypto. It's a threat to their kleptocracy as they can't track you.

It truly is the coin of freedom.

[Febo]

My conspiratorial mind thinks that the security features of Monero are exactly why it's not on Coinbase. Coinbase is the closet thing to the "Establishment's" involvement in Crypto. It's a threat to their kleptocracy as they can't track you.

Maybe governments still dont get it, but their best chance is that people trade Monero on centralised exchanges where they KYC. So they know who enters into Monero and who exits of Monero. When everyone will use decentralised exchanges governments will be blind. And if they already start pushing people off centralised exchanges now would be super dumb for every government.

[Hueristic]

Guess they ran out of weak hands to shake out?

[Febo]

Guess they ran out of weak hands to shake out?

Price is way to volatile to bother with it   It changes 5% every half hour. Deep pockets are now trading Monero.


https://txstreet.com/v/xmr

Originally when there was idea for txstreet to add Monero I thought is silly since Monero blocks are never full, but now I see is educational and fun. 

[phishead]

Guess they ran out of weak hands to shake out?

Price is way to volatile to bother with it   It changes 5% every half hour. Deep pockets are now trading Monero.


https://txstreet.com/v/xmr

Originally when there was idea for txstreet to add Monero I thought is silly since Monero blocks are never full, but now I see is educational and fun. 

I LOVE this site and can't believe it's my first time seeing this.  What a shit show btc is right now... hahaha

[tokeweed]

Guess they ran out of weak hands to shake out?

More like those people who bought BTC thought they bought something like XMR...  And lo and behold, they discovered that such a thing as XMR exists.

XMR to 5k or how much it takes to bring it to top 5 at CMC.

[Globb0]

[infofront]

$400 breached!

[TheKoziTwo]

Starting to build a margin position here. From 0.0035 to 0.007 is 2x your BTC. It's inconceivable that this won't happen, and it will likely happen in Q1. Even if we only recover to 0.0053 that's 50% return. XMR has been going down almost consecutively since mid December with no recovery in sight. There's no fundamental reason that I can see for this complete wreckage. We're back to 2016 levels. Before the alphabay pump when XMR struggled to break out past 0.0042. Not that other altcoins are doing great, but for XMR this is the kind of blood in the street and full on capitulation that's perfect for entry. I can't think of any better purchase than monero at the moment. Not a big fan of margin, but just can't help it at these levels.

STRONG BUY

So, who else bought the bottom?

[explorer]

   Good to see $400 again!  When $4000?  transactions booming, mining moving right along, won't be long.  2020 sucked ass on so many fronts, 2021 can't help but be better 

[cAPSLOCK]

Starting to build a margin position here. From 0.0035 to 0.007 is 2x your BTC. It's inconceivable that this won't happen, and it will likely happen in Q1. Even if we only recover to 0.0053 that's 50% return. XMR has been going down almost consecutively since mid December with no recovery in sight. There's no fundamental reason that I can see for this complete wreckage. We're back to 2016 levels. Before the alphabay pump when XMR struggled to break out past 0.0042. Not that other altcoins are doing great, but for XMR this is the kind of blood in the street and full on capitulation that's perfect for entry. I can't think of any better purchase than monero at the moment. Not a big fan of margin, but just can't help it at these levels.

STRONG BUY

So, who else bought the bottom?

Well i got most of mine at ~$4.  I didn't enter much when it went to $0.25.  Always regretted that.

Oh you mean Jan '21?  maybe a little.  I actually dipped my toe in a little back when i had the earthquake feeling on 4/9.  Certainly not the BOTTOM, but still not bad.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=753252.msg56750042#msg56750042

[Hueristic]

Starting to build a margin position here. From 0.0035 to 0.007 is 2x your BTC. It's inconceivable that this won't happen, and it will likely happen in Q1. Even if we only recover to 0.0053 that's 50% return. XMR has been going down almost consecutively since mid December with no recovery in sight. There's no fundamental reason that I can see for this complete wreckage. We're back to 2016 levels. Before the alphabay pump when XMR struggled to break out past 0.0042. Not that other altcoins are doing great, but for XMR this is the kind of blood in the street and full on capitulation that's perfect for entry. I can't think of any better purchase than monero at the moment. Not a big fan of margin, but just can't help it at these levels.

STRONG BUY

So, who else bought the bottom?

I still remember buying the Top!

.03, fuck what was I thinking!

In retrospect I must have been FOMO.

[cAPSLOCK]

By the way...  most of us here are battle hardened enough to have lived through LOTS of those:

--Monero is pumping!
--Monero has completely retraced!
Then sometimes: (--Monero is now even LOSING more value.)
Scenarios.

But I feel like (and that's all i got... feel) this one might not be the same.  Not that we will not get retraces, of course we will... probably one here soon.  But I think we might be entering a new era price wise.

The extent to which I think people are waking up to Monero's use case is still under the surface, but it is becomming harder and harder to ignore for most folks.  In fact I personally expect, though they may not want to admit it, there may be some fairly hardened maximalists hedging a little in XMR as we move forward.

As to XMR:BTC vs. XMR:USD?  I know the latter will be a magnified version of the former.  And as long as this is not the Bitcoin top for this cycle, which I think it is not, then the question is simply how much of the former are we going to get.

Recently, most of monero's movement has been keeping SOME amount of stability in USD.  So it wants to be $80, and as BTC rises XMR:BTC drops so we hold ~80.  That kind of thing.

I do not see us in that realm as much now.  The pressure in this cauldron is building.  Monero does not only offer an extraordinary privacy, but it's adjustable block size as well as RandomX position it to be in a very unique spot during the remainder of this BTC epoch.

By the way, I am also of the mind that this BTC epoch stands a VERY strong chance of being significantly different than the last ones...  but that's another story.

[cAPSLOCK]

I kinda can't wait to see the bus get a little bigger... wonder when that will happen?

[infofront]

By the way, I am also of the mind that this BTC epoch stands a VERY strong chance of being significantly different than the last ones...  but that's another story.

Actually, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about that sometime too.

[cAPSLOCK]

By the way, I am also of the mind that this BTC epoch stands a VERY strong chance of being significantly different than the last ones...  but that's another story.

Actually, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about that sometime too.

Well most of my thoughts are more feel than science, as usual... but that's also just me.  But I think this is Monero related enough to yammer in here a little about it.

I think I am sort of in the camp that this might be Bitcoin's "supercycle".  I do not like that nomenclature a lot because it is very binary.  But what I think is there are MULTIPLE reasons that this 'halving epoch' is not likely to be an echo of the previous three (2011, 2014, 2017).

1.  We have a SIGNIFICANT difference in the buyer so far in this cycle.  As far as I can tell the vast majority (volume) of purchases are being made at the OTC desks by large $$ buyers.  On the small end we are talking "family offices", and the big end goes as far as Central Banks but includes Commercial Banks/Institutions (fidelity) Corporate Treasuries (MSTR, TSLA, etc etc) and prime time whales.  Retail is STILL barely getting on board in my opinion.

2.  Infrastructure is WAY different this time.  We have Bitcoin being integrated into things like Square/CashApp, Paypal etc.  The lightning network is gaining MORE and MORE traction in spite of it's (even worse than good old monero) UX.  Strike is a ridiculous game changer, and a real sleeper, because what it will do is incentivize retail to integrate lightning.  Liquid is another underappreciated diamond in the rough.  And the fact is all of this infrastructure has been built has the capacity to start providing liquidity outflows from the base layer.  These are ways to transact with BTC that do not require the base layer.

3.  BTC based financial products are in their toddler years now.  The BTC derivatives market is FAR more mature than past bulls.  This will dampen volatility as well as possibly give folks more ways to manipulate the market.  This one has a sort of surprise train wreck waiting in the wings though.  It will be a magnificent explosion when the first big money actor goes down in flames when they end up getting a run on their rehypothicated BTC product.  Unlike previous forms of "money" there is no release valve for this kind of shenanigans.  There are no bail outs.  The GME thing was a warm up prelude for this.  It might hurst the BTC price when it happens, in fact it COULD invalidate this whole supercycle theory, as it could force a >50% bear.  But in the end it will make people understand that you cannot fuck with the honey badger.  Also, ETFs are really almost here now.

4.  EVERYONE.  And, I mean nearly EVERYONE is CURRENTLY pontificating on how BTC is going to 500k-3mm and then will do it's 80% retrace to teach the noobs.  I have been watching market patters for decades.  I am no expert.  But it NEVER works this way.  it invalidates "Max Pain".  And I think 2017 was really a bonus cycle.  We should already have learned our lesson.  It is rare that markets will just do the same pattern over and over, because once it is an established pattern the smart folks exploit it, and it becomes a sel UNfullfilling prophecy.  Eventually trying to frontrun the pattern invalidates it.  We are overdue.

5.  There is no situation in which the bitcoin price takes such a big hit without huge buyers moving in to take advantage of it at this point.  Enough smart people have realized that "in hindsight it is inevitable".  So it can;t really drop without recovering.

This bull so far is bearing out my theory.  It is too early to declare victory, but I expect Saylor might be sort of right, that it's going up forever Laura.  I think it is more likely we crash NOW than do another 6 months of parabolic bull and have the traditional 80% retrace.

To keep it on topic... the influx of thinking money into Bitcoin is just BOUND to funnel at least hedges into Monero.  ALT friendly folks like Raoul Pal will figure it out.  And even hypermaxis like Matt Odell will also eventually break down.

So... in conclusion.  I think there is a SIGNIFICANT chance we see a much dampened dip this time, and possibly a little less parabola, but just a steady UP UP UP of bitcoin, and that trickles down to Monero.  Or even no dip, and still some parabolic action...  I also think it's an outside chance, but I think Monero has a SERIOUS chance with all the infrastructure upgrades to take it's place back in the top 10, if not higher... when?  Not sure.  I think other members of this thread are much better at those details.

[cAPSLOCK]

Wow!  The bus stop is ALREADY kinda looking busy!  Does this actually mean anything?  Slow blocks maybe?

[phishead]

Wow!  The bus stop is ALREADY kinda looking busy!  Does this actually mean anything?  Slow blocks maybe?

Since our block time is x4 faster and we have dynamic blocks, did you notice the median costs per transaction spike?? Just curious.

But yeah, people are starting to wake up to Monero... and a lot of people are probably smacking their heads that they didn’t buy the lows like Kozi was suggesting

[Febo]

Wow!  The bus stop is ALREADY kinda looking busy!  Does this actually mean anything?  Slow blocks maybe?

Sometimes just takes a bit more between two blocks. It can take even 6 minutes and then can be few blocks one after another. But today Monero will reach new transactions ATH, so blockchain was never so busy as it is right now. Hopefully for first time over 30k transactions in a day.  

I kinda can't wait to see the bus get a little bigger... wonder when that will happen?

This is tricky to answer since everything can be changed when triptych happen at next hard fork. We will have to wait some more time before all will be decided and cast predictions while considering actual numbers. I dont believe Monero could have such growth of transactions to get blocks full before the protocol upgrade will happen.