[XMR] Monero Speculation

[CoinHoarder]

I think Zerocoin is better at this point in time seeing as though it can be implemented without having to trust a third party.

One big problem with Zerocoin was the massive bloat, as I recall.  It makes ring signatures look like an anorexic supermodel in contrast.

Thank you, this is the type of reply I was hoping to receive.. something that compares the two technologies on a technical level which is what I am really interested in. You are referring to block chain bloat? I think that is a valid criticism, but maybe not the worst thing in the world (see Electrum client, etc.) I guess it depend on if you like to run a full node or not as to whether that would be a big deal.

I am also wondering if the use of zero knowledge proofs can considerably slow down transaction times and/or confirmations due to the heavier computational power required, as compared to Monero's ring signatures.

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[Brilliantrocket]

Comparing Monero and Zerocoin, here is a post I made in the Anoncoin thread.

Ok, as an example let's consider ring signatures. A solution that provides cryptographically guaranteed anonymity without the risk of keys that can create unlimited coins. Who in their right mind would prefer Zerocoin/Zerocash? Let's use a gas tank in a car as an analogy. Would you prefer a gas tank that has a hole, which has a metal plate welded over it, or one without any hole to begin with? The metal plate should theoretically prevent leaks, but who would choose it over a tank with no hole to begin with?

[smooth]

I am also wondering if the use of zero knowledge proofs can considerably slow down transaction times and/or confirmations due to the heavier computational power required, as compared to Monero's ring signatures.

In the zerocoin paper they claim a block with 800 zerocoin transactions would take five minutes (they really said minutes, that is not a typo) to verify. That is 2.6 seconds per transaction. In a decentralized network every node must verify blocks before forwarding them. Monero gets criticized for a proof of work that takes about 20ms per block, although it remains to be seen whether that turns out to be a problem.

This orders of magnitude away from being practical for a decentralized network.

[canth]

4) Zerocash, should it ever be released, would Only offer anonymous transactions(Yes, that's pretty much a bad thing, since even private companies need to keep a record of their transactions etc, Ring Signature(Monero) allows both anonymous sending and regular sending, while Zerocash doesn't which means it likely won't be used by any legitimate companies/institutions)

I seriously doubt anyone in the black market cares about being able to prove a transaction took place, in fact I think they would rather the opposite. You and I know the importance of financial privacy and the bad things that can happen by practicing bad financial privacy methods, but most people are oblivious to this. The sheeple of this world that are still using FIAT, and even a lot of Bitcoin users, are oblivious to the importance of financial privacy. Therefore, it narrows the population of possible Monero adopters to the small group of people that understand the value of financial privacy and the black market. The black market is a much bigger and valuable subgroup, and more people within it will be adopting an anonymous cryptocurrency rather than the general public.

I also think it's silly to think that Monero will be used in a large way by "legit companies/institutions." That space is reserved to Bitcoin for the time being. For that to change, Monero would have to achieve greater liquidity and popularity than Bitcoin. I just don't see that happening... ever... because Monero doesn't provide enough of a benefit over Bitcoin for everyone to switch over.

The same goes with Zerocoin, Anoncoin, or Darkcoin. Anonymous cryptocurrencys will not overtake Bitcoin for the simple fact they are more anonymous, it will take much more than that. I think it is possible that another cryptocurrency eventually surpasses Bitcoin, but Monero is not that cryptocurrency. Simply making transactions more anonymous is not a big enough innovation to overcome the infrastructure and network effect of a crypto currency like Bitcoin. It will require better anonymity couple with many other features and/or improvements to do this.

There are private transactions, anonymous transactions and plausibly deniable transactions - each coming with tradeoffs. I could see situations where legit and illegit companies/persons would want to conduct private transactions but not necessarily anonymous nor impossible to prove transactions.

Organized criminal enterprises, high net worth individuals, intelligence assets (spies), etc all have reasons to want to prevent transactions from being discernible to outsiders but might want to be able to prove they made or received payments to certain 3rd parties. Even mobsters have accountants.

It's reasonable the feature set Monero offers could be superior to the one proposed by Zerocoin, under a broader set of circumstances.

Ask yourself this. Would someone looking to replace a swiss numbered bank account chosen for tax avoidance likely use a tool that will only be perceived useful to criminals or one that has broader purposes? I posit that Monero would be more palatable.

[CoinHoarder]

Comparing Monero and Zerocoin, here is a post I made in the Anoncoin thread.

Ok, as an example let's consider ring signatures. A solution that provides cryptographically guaranteed anonymity without the risk of keys that can create unlimited coins. Who in their right mind would prefer Zerocoin/Zerocash? Let's use a gas tank in a car as an analogy. Would you prefer a gas tank that has a hole, which has a metal plate welded over it, or one without any hole to begin with? The metal plate should theoretically prevent leaks, but who would choose it over a tank with no hole to begin with?

It seems that your analogy is broken if it is true that Zerocoin can generate the cryptographic accumulator in a trust-less manner using RSA UFOs. I am getting conflicting feedback on whether it is possible or not, but it does seem like to me that they have figured out a way to do it that doesn't require trust: https://wiki.anoncoin.net/RSA_UFO

I am about to do a write up on the remaining anonymous coins I have yet to review, so thank you all for the feedback. I have learned a couple things about Monero, and I do agree that it is probably the best anon solution that is currently in existence (although I need to look into what Darkcoin is doing though as well, because I have heard rumors that they are improving or have recently improved their anon tech. I agree ring signatures > coin join implementations though.)

[rikkejohn]

4) Zerocash, should it ever be released, would Only offer anonymous transactions(Yes, that's pretty much a bad thing, since even private companies need to keep a record of their transactions etc, Ring Signature(Monero) allows both anonymous sending and regular sending, while Zerocash doesn't which means it likely won't be used by any legitimate companies/institutions)

I seriously doubt anyone in the black market cares about being able to prove a transaction took place, in fact I think they would rather the opposite. You and I know the importance of financial privacy and the bad things that can happen by practicing bad financial privacy methods, but most people are oblivious to this. The sheeple of this world that are still using FIAT, and even a lot of Bitcoin users, are oblivious to the importance of financial privacy. Therefore, it narrows the population of possible Monero adopters to the small group of people that understand the value of financial privacy and the black market. The black market is a much bigger and valuable subgroup, and more people within it will be adopting an anonymous cryptocurrency rather than the general public.

I also think it's silly to think that Monero will be used in a large way by "legit companies/institutions." That space is reserved to Bitcoin for the time being. For that to change, Monero would have to achieve greater liquidity and popularity than Bitcoin. I just don't see that happening... ever... because Monero doesn't provide enough of a benefit over Bitcoin for everyone to switch over.

The same goes with Zerocoin, Anoncoin, or Darkcoin. Anonymous cryptocurrencys will not overtake Bitcoin for the simple fact they are more anonymous, it will take much more than that. I think it is possible that another cryptocurrency eventually surpasses Bitcoin, but Monero is not that cryptocurrency. Simply making transactions more anonymous is not a big enough innovation to overcome the infrastructure and network effect of a crypto currency like Bitcoin. It will require better anonymity couple with many other features and/or improvements to do this.

There are private transactions, anonymous transactions and plausibly deniable transactions - each coming with tradeoffs. I could see situations where legit and illegit companies/persons would want to conduct private transactions but not necessarily anonymous nor impossible to prove transactions.

Organized criminal enterprises, high net worth individuals, intelligence assets (spies), etc all have reasons to want to prevent transactions from being discernible to outsiders but might want to be able to prove they made or received payments to certain 3rd parties. Even mobsters have accountants.

It's reasonable the feature set Monero offers could be superior to the one proposed by Zerocoin, under a broader set of circumstances.

Ask yourself this. Would someone looking to replace a swiss numbered bank account chosen for tax avoidance likely use a tool that will only be perceived useful to criminals or one that has broader purposes? I posit that Monero would be more palatable.

Or they could just buy bitcoin instead in the knowledge that it is very easy to make it disappear and reappear at time and place of your choosing

[Joshuar]

To be honest.

1) I think Monero is the best privacy/anon coin out there.
2) My next favorite is Darkcoin.
3) All the other anon coins besides those 2 with the exception of boolberry, are Crap(Yes I've looked into them to determine that their crapness), and I avoid at all costs

[CoinHoarder]

I am also wondering if the use of zero knowledge proofs can considerably slow down transaction times and/or confirmations due to the heavier computational power required, as compared to Monero's ring signatures.

In the zerocoin paper they claim a block with 800 zerocoin transactions would take five minutes (they really said minutes, that is not a typo) to verify. That is 2.6 seconds per transaction. In a decentralized network every node must verify blocks before forwarding them. Monero gets criticized for a proof of work that takes about 20ms per block, although it remains to be seen whether that turns out to be a problem.

This orders of magnitude away from being practical for a decentralized network.

I agree that is pretty slow, but if I was a criminal doing something I could go to jail for a long time for doing, I wouldn't mind waiting longer for a transaction to confirm. For real life transactions it may make it unusable, but for things like deep web marketplaces or anything where 5-10 minutes (even hours) isn't a huge deal, then something like Zerocoin may be desirable over Monero.

I think canth explained it better than I could, and honestly it is something I haven't thought of before, but Monero would still have its uses if something like Zerocoin came to exist. He made a lot of valid points in his post. I don't believe in the "one coin to rule them all" dogma, but the dynamics for anonymous centric coins are a bit different and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I can see how some might be more desirable than others in certain situations and vice versa.

There are private transactions, anonymous transactions and plausibly deniable transactions - each coming with tradeoffs. I could see situations where legit and illegit companies/persons would want to conduct private transactions but not necessarily anonymous nor impossible to prove transactions.

Organized criminal enterprises, high net worth individuals, intelligence assets (spies), etc all have reasons to want to prevent transactions from being discernible to outsiders but might want to be able to prove they made or received payments to certain 3rd parties. Even mobsters have accountants.

It's reasonable the feature set Monero offers could be superior to the one proposed by Zerocoin, under a broader set of circumstances.

Ask yourself this. Would someone looking to replace a swiss numbered bank account chosen for tax avoidance likely use a tool that will only be perceived useful to criminals or one that has broader purposes? I posit that Monero would be more palatable.

[canth]

4) Zerocash, should it ever be released, would Only offer anonymous transactions(Yes, that's pretty much a bad thing, since even private companies need to keep a record of their transactions etc, Ring Signature(Monero) allows both anonymous sending and regular sending, while Zerocash doesn't which means it likely won't be used by any legitimate companies/institutions)

I seriously doubt anyone in the black market cares about being able to prove a transaction took place, in fact I think they would rather the opposite. You and I know the importance of financial privacy and the bad things that can happen by practicing bad financial privacy methods, but most people are oblivious to this. The sheeple of this world that are still using FIAT, and even a lot of Bitcoin users, are oblivious to the importance of financial privacy. Therefore, it narrows the population of possible Monero adopters to the small group of people that understand the value of financial privacy and the black market. The black market is a much bigger and valuable subgroup, and more people within it will be adopting an anonymous cryptocurrency rather than the general public.

I also think it's silly to think that Monero will be used in a large way by "legit companies/institutions." That space is reserved to Bitcoin for the time being. For that to change, Monero would have to achieve greater liquidity and popularity than Bitcoin. I just don't see that happening... ever... because Monero doesn't provide enough of a benefit over Bitcoin for everyone to switch over.

The same goes with Zerocoin, Anoncoin, or Darkcoin. Anonymous cryptocurrencys will not overtake Bitcoin for the simple fact they are more anonymous, it will take much more than that. I think it is possible that another cryptocurrency eventually surpasses Bitcoin, but Monero is not that cryptocurrency. Simply making transactions more anonymous is not a big enough innovation to overcome the infrastructure and network effect of a crypto currency like Bitcoin. It will require better anonymity couple with many other features and/or improvements to do this.

There are private transactions, anonymous transactions and plausibly deniable transactions - each coming with tradeoffs. I could see situations where legit and illegit companies/persons would want to conduct private transactions but not necessarily anonymous nor impossible to prove transactions.

Organized criminal enterprises, high net worth individuals, intelligence assets (spies), etc all have reasons to want to prevent transactions from being discernible to outsiders but might want to be able to prove they made or received payments to certain 3rd parties. Even mobsters have accountants.

It's reasonable the feature set Monero offers could be superior to the one proposed by Zerocoin, under a broader set of circumstances.

Ask yourself this. Would someone looking to replace a swiss numbered bank account chosen for tax avoidance likely use a tool that will only be perceived useful to criminals or one that has broader purposes? I posit that Monero would be more palatable.

Or they could just buy bitcoin instead in the knowledge that it is very easy to make it disappear and reappear at time and place of your choosing

The blockchain ledger is completely public. Coinjoin anonymity has proven insufficient. Mixing services aren't trustworthy nor liquid enough for serious volumes. Bitcoin privacy isn't non-existent, but it's not good enough especially with the expectations that transaction & network traffic analysis will only get more sophisticated in the years to come.

The biggest reason to not use a more private alternative would be liquidity. Right now moving $1m in Monero would be infeasible and BTC would be a better option. Give it time and the market will decide what alternatives are needed.

[smooth]

Deleted some back-and-forth posts about Zerocoin which had little substance and a fair amount of personal sniping, which added little to the discussion of Monero speculation. The point was made in the exchange that multisig with zerocoin is not explained in the paper but might be possible. In any case that is of tangential relevance to the topic, at best.

Let's say on topic. please.

[canth]

The following is only speculation about the price, and not intended to affect the trading decisions. Often trading decisions need to take into account volume, tax and other considerations.

Scenarios:

Fatal. Any of the following: Monero is found out to be a high level scam, Poloniex is hacked and coins stolen, tech breaks down etc. This would lead the supporters of Monero to stop their buying, and many speculators selling their coins. The exchange rate plummets to anything between 0 and 300. Going to zero in a short time is not likely unless the network totally crashes or even then (Goxcoins still have some value). The likelihood of this happening in the next 30 days is 1-5%.

Negative. Price turns down due to news or no news, coupled with great dumps that smash the support currently at ~400. If no support is found until 290, it breaks the rising bottoms trend, leading to further insecurity. Also Bitcoin starting to rise dramatically could lead to this outcome just because alts typically follow suit a little later. Likelihood 5-10%.

Slightly negative. Price fails to break 580 this week, and retreats back to 400, however the previous bottom in 290 is not threatened. Accumulation phase may continue in the sticky price area of 400-450. Likelihood 20-40%

Neutral. Slow grind higher continues with occasional spikes and dumps, 580 is taken but no definite push towards ATH. Likelihood 20-40%.

Slightly positive. The uptrend continues with a higher ascent, about 3-4% per day, leading to near 1000 before 30 days, which will likely to be a venue of some shuffling of the deck. Likelihood 10-20%

Positive. 1000 is destroyed and march higher goes on relentlessly (may also make a bubble top and come down in the space of 30 days, nevertheless only after making a new ATH). Likelihood 10-20%.

Stellar. Some external event means that investment capital flocks into Monero, and even $10 million compared to the market cap of about the same range means that a completely new range is established. Price can go to 5000 in an instant, yet will find its support level much lower. Likelihood 2-10%.

It's impressive that price speculation has come as far as it has what with XMR lacking some major ease of use features. I understand that there is a priority list for the developers and I'm not questioning that. However, how high can speculation really go without a large base of users that require things like SPV wallets?

I say that any of the bottom 3 scenarios are not plausible or sustainable until development progresses further. Bitcoin had Armory, Blockchain.info and mobile offerings before it hit a market cap of $100m (~ 15X today's XMR cap). Is it reasonable to expect Monero to do that with a CLI / desktop app that requires a more or less dedicated computer to run?

[smooth]

Slightly positive. The uptrend continues with a higher ascent, about 3-4% per day, leading to near 1000 before 30 days, which will likely to be a venue of some shuffling of the deck. Likelihood 10-20%

Positive. 1000 is destroyed and march higher goes on relentlessly (may also make a bubble top and come down in the space of 30 days, nevertheless only after making a new ATH). Likelihood 10-20%.

Stellar. Some external event means that investment capital flocks into Monero, and even $10 million compared to the market cap of about the same range means that a completely new range is established. Price can go to 5000 in an instant, yet will find its support level much lower. Likelihood 2-10%.

It's impressive that price speculation has come as far as it has what with XMR lacking some major ease of use features. I understand that there is a priority list for the developers and I'm not questioning that. However, how high can speculation really go without a large base of users that require things like SPV wallets?

I say that any of the bottom 3 scenarios are not plausible or sustainable until development progresses further. Bitcoin had Armory, Blockchain.info and mobile offerings before it hit a market cap of $100m (~ 15X today's XMR cap). Is it reasonable to expect Monero to do that with a CLI / desktop app that requires a more or less dedicated computer to run?

Speculation can go extremely high if the roadmap is clear and confidence it will be achieved is high (I'm not saying either of these is necessarily the case).

If you expect a $100 million market cap in six months when ease of use is improved, and you expect that to happen with 80% probability, then a fair value now is very roughly $40 million. All inputs here are hypothetical but the model is not.

[canth]

Slightly positive. The uptrend continues with a higher ascent, about 3-4% per day, leading to near 1000 before 30 days, which will likely to be a venue of some shuffling of the deck. Likelihood 10-20%

Positive. 1000 is destroyed and march higher goes on relentlessly (may also make a bubble top and come down in the space of 30 days, nevertheless only after making a new ATH). Likelihood 10-20%.

Stellar. Some external event means that investment capital flocks into Monero, and even $10 million compared to the market cap of about the same range means that a completely new range is established. Price can go to 5000 in an instant, yet will find its support level much lower. Likelihood 2-10%.

It's impressive that price speculation has come as far as it has what with XMR lacking some major ease of use features. I understand that there is a priority list for the developers and I'm not questioning that. However, how high can speculation really go without a large base of users that require things like SPV wallets?

I say that any of the bottom 3 scenarios are not plausible or sustainable until development progresses further. Bitcoin had Armory, Blockchain.info and mobile offerings before it hit a market cap of $100m (~ 15X today's XMR cap). Is it reasonable to expect Monero to do that with a CLI / desktop app that requires a more or less dedicated computer to run?

Speculation can go extremely high if the roadmap is clear and confidence it will be achieved is high (I'm not saying either of these is necessarily the case).

If you expect a $100 million market cap in six months when ease of use is improved, and you expect that to happen with 80% probability, then a fair value now is very roughly $40 million. All inputs here are hypothetical but the model is not.

Fair points. I was going to play devil's advocate and ask about concerns with someone forking the work done by XMR devs, while accelerating ease of use features - but then I caught myself. Open source works both directions and momentum of the first (fair) mover is not insignificant.

Are there a particular set of missives that describe anticipated dev work and any expected donation costs to accelerate the goals?

[Dotto]

We are losing steam. My newbie sense of TA says that we are going to rebound somewhere around the 61% fibo  @.00365 before breaking .00581 for good so this could be a good moment to short.

[iCEBREAKER]

The key holdings are:
64% of sharkfund0, which in turn owns 11% of BTCD and 10% of BBR, and other assets. I post the breakdown in the Sharktales thread about the sharkfund0. Most notably it has 20% of NXTprivacy, 10% of InstantDEX, 12% of JLH, ~10% of coinomat

Thats the reason, he holds a shitton of bbr and btcd.
No idea why BBR should even use that, it makes absolutely no sense as bbr already has anonymity.


Now back to topic dudes

I don't get the whole DarkPodTelePort idea (something about pirate maps  ) but I *think* the key advantage to subsuming BBR/XMR within James's convoluted ambitious trendy Blockchain 2.0 scheme is that we may be able to achieve the Holy Grail of distributed exchanges.

I'd love to use a P2P exchange, but we need to let the kids know doing that is a fuck of a problem and many attempts are in progress/have failed already.

It's possible that Ripple, Counterparty, and ViaCoin/Clearinghouse already did it, but nobody understood/noticed/cared WTF there are talking about  

I going to check out Joel Katz' recent posts and try to figure what's what and who's who in the brave new world of IntelliChains.

[ArticMine]

We are losing steam. My newbie sense of TA says that we are going to rebound somewhere around the 61% fibo  @.00365 before breaking .00581 for good so this could be a good moment to short.
...

It is certainly possible. I am not into day trading XMR at this time, being more a medium to long term holder, but 0.0036 - 0.0039 is certainly an attractive range to add to an existing XMR position.

[oda.krell]

To be honest.

1) I think Monero is the best privacy/anon coin out there.
2) My next favorite is Darkcoin.
3) All the other anon coins besides those 2 with the exception of boolberry, are Crap(Yes I've looked into them to determine that their crapness), and I avoid at all costs

I wouldn't go as far as pronouncing the rest of the pack 'crap', but my own investment mirrors your sentiment, it seems.

In the 'privacy enhanced crypto' niche (which I believe to be an important long-term investment) I currently consider it advisable to hold (and buy) XMR, DRK, and BBR (ordered by decreasing percentage of investment).

[rpietila]

There is an absolutely perfect 50% retracement just put into place in Poloniex: from 0.00510000 to 0.00400000, with previous bottom at 0.00290000. This means that regardless whether we just hit a mid-move bottom (which in this case will not necessarily ever be visited again) or a downward resistance that will be breached later, the next move is resolutely UP, and the fibonacci possibilities are:

38.2% = 442
50% = 455
61.8% = 468
76.4% = 484.

If these are cleared, it is good possibility that this was a bear trap in large proportions. If the price turns down from these, we may be in a downtrend going ultimately to the 175-231-290 line, which could mean a bottom in the 330-350 range.

[aminorex]

If the price turns down from these, we may be in a downtrend going ultimately to the 175-231-290 line, which could mean a bottom in the 330-350 range.

That would require that demand should run far below historical, or else a sudden large-scale liquidation, so I am skeptical.  The on-book supply is presently utterly inadequate to take it there unless bids are pulled massively. So far bids have been hit, not pulled. 160k is the ask low water in the recent era, and my core heuristic for estimating the ability of the current book to reach down is by subtracting that static ask size from the current ask size, checking how far that excess could sweep the book down, and multiplying that negative span by a factor of .75 to adjust for bids attracted by the price drop.  Its a very crude model and the parameters need frequent recalibration, but it seems to be pretty good guidance on the instantaneous support levels so far.  If you smooth that series, it's far better than any fixed Z bollinger lower bound at showing support, at least.

I do tend to a bullish bias because of my positive long-term fundamental views, but it's difficult to correct for that when the data is so bullish.  Clearly we are in a corrective downtrend from 51 still, but it hasn't managed to violate the larger uptrend band from 17 Aug, if you adjust the band width by the square root of elapsed time, as one certainly should, to account for stochastic volatility about the linear trend in central tendency.  40 is barely adquate to constitute a corrective wave 2 - one would like it to go between 388 and 374 and make a clear upturn, but if it turns up now, it's still a pretty well-formed EWA pattern, and intensely bullish.

[Jungian]

I'm very happy to see that the pool that donates most to the developers is increasing fast. Everyone who is mining for other than instant profit should mine there I think.