Is it possible to destroy Monero (XMR)?

[klee]

Fair launch. It is just so precious. And never before happened as well. So that the largest holders are not there by accident (or more likely planning by the dev), but because they wanted to buy a crappy coin at a high price. Monero's history is special.

I can only say that if something should happen, but has not yet happened, there is a good chance that it will happen.

I want to say this with as much respect as possible.  But how many alt coins have you been involved with?  How many have you seriously taken a close look at?  I've seen you saying you have had no use for alt coins until Monero which leads me to believe you never took a serious look at previous alt coins.  

I want to say this with as much respect as possible. Show me a coin where the dev holds less than 1% of the coins in circulation.

Of course I respect the devs, but I have to say that equally important is that the devs respect the whales. The whales make the economy. Economy is the reason why the coin exists. I can support Monero without even having a functioning wallet (wrong OS), because the distribution of coins is right.

Disagreed: Whales don't "make" the economy. If they were to, the whole economy would be a cartel, or at best a club.

Whales (if clever enough) just profit the most from a working economy. Don't forget "with great whale comes great responsibility"--

That devs hold >=1% of the currency is probably due to accessibility (first-come first-served) and economic thinking paired with an emotional attachment (love your growing child).

Whales = passive, developer = active:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Graham

Graham distinguished between the passive and the active investor. The passive investor, often referred to as a defensive investor, invests cautiously, looks for value stocks, and buys for the long term. The active investor, on the other hand, is one who has more time, interest, and possibly more specialized knowledge to seek out exceptional buys in the market.

[Melbustus]

I think it's possible that we'll look back on this time, when the main threat to Monero is other alts, as a honeymoon period. When an anonymous coin separates from the pack, it will become a lightning rod for the enemies of financial privacy and freedom. This may take some of the heat off of Bitcoin, which will be seen as more friendly to the powers that be. Monero is Promethean, and may be subjected to the same punishment as that Titan, but it may also endow humanity with the fire of freedom.

+1

[rpietila]

Disagreed: Whales don't "make" the economy. If they were to, the whole economy would be a cartel, or at best a club.

Whales (if clever enough) just profit the most from a working economy. Don't forget "with great whale comes great responsibility"--

That devs hold >=1% of the currency is probably due to accessibility (first-come first-served) and economic thinking paired with an emotional attachment (love your growing child).

Whales = passive, developer = active:

Maybe we need to redefine the terms. In my parlance, "dev" is somebody who knows how to code but that's it. Whales are the wealthy and well-connected businessmen that make things happen. With this definition, the more whales, the better.

The devs need to do their job, they don't have time for the economy, and they are not competent in it (also whales often suck at coding, like me).

If too large % of coins are in dev hands, the whales never get interested. This is the situation with most coins, they have no investors that have outside-crypto assets worth $1M or more. If a coin totally lacks such people, its economy lacks an essential component.

When talking about Monero, it has quite a handful of such "whales" and therefore the possibility for a very vibrant economy. Whales are in a unique position to drive projects because of their business acumen, connections, and financial backbone (a typical whale does not need to change the brand even after losing an entire altcoin stake).

Monero is starting a new workgroup for "whales" under this definition. It will rock 

[robinwilliams]

Monero is starting a new workgroup for "whales" under this definition. It will rock  Grin

Blah blah blah - do u know how to kill xmr?  KEEP fkn scamming the front page with SELF MODERATED threads.

If Monero is 100% different than bitcoin why not start ur own forums?  this is what all the big coins do (pos PoS coins that have bigger market caps everybody is active on their own forums.  u can post as many of these threads as u want without turning this into the "official Monero forums"

or just keep spamming and kill ur own coin castle guy  

OT - did u ever sell all those goxcoins u were trying to sell for 90% of their value way back in the day?

[rpietila]

Monero is starting a new workgroup for "whales" under this definition. It will rock  Grin

Blah blah blah - do u know how to kill xmr?  KEEP fkn scamming the front page with SELF MODERATED threads.

If Monero is 100% different than bitcoin why not start ur own forums?  this is what all the big coins do (pos PoS coins that have bigger market caps everybody is active on their own forums.  u can post as many of these threads as u want without turning this into the "official Monero forums"

or just keep spamming and kill ur own coin castle guy  

OT - did u ever sell all those goxcoins u were trying to sell for 90% of their value way back in the day?

Monero is not a big coin and the devs have made a decision to stay here instead of moving to own forums. Now we the "whales" are slowly starting our own forum as well as a result of the Workgroup.

[rikkejohn]

Are there any Whales in Monero?

Maybe, but the term is used so readily. Mark Karpeles was a Whale, someone that could affect big markets on a whim (or scam).

Maybe these Whales spoken of today are people with a fair amount of money, but really nothing more than sharks in a big pack.

This thread stays on 4 pages forever. i wonder why?

[rpietila]

Are there any Whales in Monero?

Maybe, but the term is used so readily. Mark Karpeles was a Whale, someone that could affect big markets on a whim (or scam).

Maybe these Whales spoken of today are people with a fair amount of money, but really nothing more than sharks in a big pack.

This thread stays on 4 pages forever. i wonder why?

A whale in Monero would be one with at least 50k XMR, we have about 7-10 such players. Monero differs from some coins in that for the big holders Monero is still a portfolio investment, they have not gotten "rich" via Monero. They were wealthy, and put the required BTC200 and now own Monero. If you are dev-rich, you don't have other wealth and are not a "whale".

Bitcoin is bigger than the players. Monero, at least now, is smaller than many people who are playing it. That makes it interesting.

[Nxtblg]

"Why is this coin not taking off when so many big names are supporting it"

I can only say that if something should happen, but has not yet happened, there is a good chance that it will happen.

My own take is simpler. This is a locale that's supposed to prize peer-to-peer and decentralization. The ideals, admittedly given a lot of lip service, neverthess attract people far less likely than most to defer to the opinions of the old reliables.

So, even the best endorsements more-or-less fizzle around here. When "it" does happen, Monero itself will capture people's imaginations.

[rikkejohn]

Are there any Whales in Monero?

Maybe, but the term is used so readily. Mark Karpeles was a Whale, someone that could affect big markets on a whim (or scam).

Maybe these Whales spoken of today are people with a fair amount of money, but really nothing more than sharks in a big pack.

This thread stays on 4 pages forever. i wonder why?

A whale in Monero would be one with at least 50k XMR, we have about 7-10 such players. Monero differs from some coins in that for the big holders Monero is still a portfolio investment, they have not gotten "rich" via Monero. They were wealthy, and put the required BTC200 and now own Monero. If you are dev-rich, you don't have other wealth and are not a "whale".

Bitcoin is bigger than the players. Monero, at least now, is smaller than many people who are playing it. That makes it interesting.

like  party for greedy people? I guess this is a project for people that made money by doing nothing very much in 2011.

[Nxtblg]

What are these features you talk about?  No gui wallet, huge blockchain, forking from attack, etc?

Congratulations you just destroyed your remaining credibility, you can cease posting as your opinion wont really be considered more than FUD.

If you don't mind, what would you recommend as the best GUI Monero wallet for Windows 7 64-bit? I'm afraid I'm not technically adept, at least for now, and I'd deeply appreciate it if you could drop a link to a binary that you think would be best for the likes of me.

[kennyP]

Are there any Whales in Monero?

Maybe, but the term is used so readily. Mark Karpeles was a Whale, someone that could affect big markets on a whim (or scam).

Maybe these Whales spoken of today are people with a fair amount of money, but really nothing more than sharks in a big pack.

This thread stays on 4 pages forever. i wonder why?

A whale in Monero would be one with at least 50k XMR, we have about 7-10 such players. Monero differs from some coins in that for the big holders Monero is still a portfolio investment, they have not gotten "rich" via Monero. They were wealthy, and put the required BTC200 and now own Monero. If you are dev-rich, you don't have other wealth and are not a "whale".

Bitcoin is bigger than the players. Monero, at least now, is smaller than many people who are playing it. That makes it interesting.

like  party for greedy people? I guess this is a project for people that made money by doing nothing very much in 2011.

There are some true believers here, but you're right, some guys who made a load of paper wealth through nothing more than luck and good fortune hearing about bitcoin earlier than others do seem to think that their success was actually due to their above average investing abilities. A bit like taking investment advice from someone who won powerball jackpot lottery.

[othe]

Same can be said about the ones who bought Apple shares or bought gold in 2001 when it was 260 usd/oz while it gone up to 1767usd/oz in june 2012.
Investing is about investing into something at the right time.

I also had Bitcoin in 2011 and sold most for cheap, way too cheap. Risto was way more clever, he profited from people like me.
There were a shitton of people with Bitcoin in 2011 but most of them were like me, so its not only about knowing about something, its about making the right decisions.
Even if you guys did know about BTC in 2011 i bet you didn´t hold them through all the bubbles, like most people.

Go away with your straw man arguments...

[Melbustus]

...

There are some true believers here, but you're right, some guys who made a load of paper wealth through nothing more than luck and good fortune hearing about bitcoin earlier than others do seem to think that their success was actually due to their above average investing abilities. A bit like taking investment advice from someone who won powerball jackpot lottery.

I've responded to this sort of ugliness before, but I'll do it again now because it's so offensive. Yes, there are probably a few people who bought hundreds or thousands of bitcoin on a whim in 2011, properly secured it, completely forgot about it, then came back years later, remember they had it, remembered their passwords/whatever, etc...

But most of the people who held (or bought) through the 2011 crash were different. They did the math on the potential bitcoin represented, and continued to hold a *very* unpopular position, and a 90% mark-to-market loss for many. That's really not easy at all. And contextualize yourself to the timeframe: the media was declaring bitcoin dead (yes, quite more strongly than now), it was almost embarassing to talk about in polite company, no reputable public figures, VCs, or tech people had come out with much support, and it wasn't *that* hard to think that the experiment was just that... Most of the "whim" people bailed. It took considerable vision (and risk-tolerance), backed by solid analysis, to hold or buy more.

But I guess if you hang around the alt-forum too long, you just auto-assume that everyone is a shallow-thinker making snap-decisions...


It's been theorized for years that if bitcoin achieves its success case, we're going to get scads of people dismissively calling the early folks "lucky". Well, bitcoin's volatility actually strongly minimizes the luck factor vs other really high ROI assets... It's *much* harder to psychologically hold through massive down-up-down swings than it is to hold through stocks like Apple and Google which may go down 10-20% then up 50%. Bitcoin has been far more brutal (and that's just price-action; nevermind the public/professional opinion and social forces one must overcome). It's taken real analytical conviction to make the right call all these years. Don't bloody call it luck.

[kennyP]

...

There are some true believers here, but you're right, some guys who made a load of paper wealth through nothing more than luck and good fortune hearing about bitcoin earlier than others do seem to think that their success was actually due to their above average investing abilities. A bit like taking investment advice from someone who won powerball jackpot lottery.

I've responded to this sort of ugliness before, but I'll do it again now because it's so offensive. Yes, there are probably a few people who bought hundreds or thousands of bitcoin on a whim in 2011, properly secured it, completely forgot about it, then came back years later, remember they had it, remembered their passwords/whatever, etc...

But most of the people who held (or bought) through the 2011 crash were different. They did the math on the potential bitcoin represented, and continued to hold a *very* unpopular position, and a 90% mark-to-market loss for many. That's really not easy at all. And contextualize yourself to the timeframe: the media was declaring bitcoin dead (yes, quite more strongly than now), it was almost embarassing to talk about in polite company, no reputable public figures, VCs, or tech people had come out with much support, and it wasn't *that* hard to think that the experiment was just that... Most of the "whim" people bailed. It took considerable vision (and risk-tolerance), backed by solid analysis, to hold or buy more.

But I guess if you hang around the alt-forum too long, you just auto-assume that everyone is a shallow-thinker making snap-decisions...


It's been theorized for years that if bitcoin achieves its success case, we're going to get scads of people dismissively calling the early folks "lucky". Well, bitcoin's volatility actually strongly minimizes the luck factor vs other really high ROI assets... It's *much* harder to psychologically hold through massive down-up-down swings than it is to hold through stocks like Apple and Google which may go down 10-20% then up 50%. Bitcoin has been far more brutal (and that's just price-action; nevermind the public/professional opinion and social forces one must overcome). It's taken real analytical conviction to make the right call all these years. Don't bloody call it luck.

Sorry you see my opinion as 'ugly', I didn't mean to offend anyone. What I am saying is someone who looked at bitcoin in 2011 and invested 1-2 thousand dollars, and had sense to hodl doesn't automatically become an investment guru. Maybe some do have useful skills, but risking 1K USD is nothing to get too excited about.

I'm more impressed with a guy like jl777. He discovered bitcoin when it was ~1000USD, and during the period its dropped by more than half, he's turned 2 bitcoins worth of capital into a few million dollars worth. He did that by creating very useful software, and from organising many useful projects, some finished, but many in the works. Some of the people you're defending (the bitcoin hodl'ers from 2011) have very blatantly tried to smear him as a scammer. That most definitely is ugly.

Let me put my opinion right before you. I think jl777 is a far better person to take advice from than many of the people you are defending.

[AnonyWince]

This is too important to not make 100% clear.

The devs need to do their job, they don't have time for the economy, and they are not competent in it (also whales often suck at coding, like me).

I for example am competent at both. You were just lucky that I had been too sick to code.

Whales are the wealthy and well-connected businessmen that make things happen.

They were wealthy, and put the required BTC200 and now own Monero. If you are dev-rich, you don't have other wealth and are not a "whale".

Your model of the hackerdom, crypto-currency, the knowledge age, the future, and investing in decentralized technology is fundamental flawed.

Precisely Bitcoin and Monero are rich boy clubs and this is why they are going no where. It doesn't matter if Paypal accepts Bitcoin because users who are not investors (e.g. especially females and the billions of impoverished) have no incentive to convert from their unit-of-account (dollars) to BTC just to pay for something. They might as well just fund their Paypal transactions with their credit card or bank account. Bitcoin will not become the unit-of-account without the blessing of the government, because it has no distribution scale. Bitcoin and Monero are driven by investors, not by users. They are investment pumps, not currencies. Perhaps all of the crypto-currencies to date have been investment pumps. Perhaps BBR and James are experimenting to create features and try to discover what will drive user adoption. I am not saying they will succeed, because I am not following their work.

Lazy capital that wants to smoke a cigar while instructing the busy-bee worker devs doesn't build a damn thing. Here follows my canonical references. Ignore them at your peril. This is will be my final warning. I am doing this as a service to you and to try to earn the donation you made to me. A true friend is one who speaks up when he thinks you are wrong.

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3514 (Those who can’t build, talk— Eric Raymond, the creator of open source)

http://www.coolpage.com/commentary/economic/shelby/Demise%20of%20Finance,%20Rise%20of%20Knowledge.html#FinanceabilityofKnowledge (2010)

Financeability of Knowledge

As explained in the “Economy of Knowledge” and “Energy of Knowledge” sections, knowledge doesn't exist now if it isn't dynamically adaptable in the future. The only systems in nature which can do this, are those that are composed of autonomous agents without top-down control, e.g. ant colonies, the neurons and synapses of the human brain, free markets, and unregulated social networks.

Due to aggregating and concentrating capital via an interest rate, as opposed to dispersing and scattering capital, finance mathematically must over time reduce the quantity of autonomous decisions (at least decisions about who receives funding to produce). Thus if financing were the predominant long-term trend, knowledge could not be.

The more potential energy in the knowledge capital, the more priceless it is sell its future. There are knowledge producers such as the creator of the open-source software movement, who absolutely refuse to work at any price where they don't have sufficient ownership of their knowledge, so as to prevent limitations of its potential future use. Due to the transactional cost Theory of the Firm which provides for the economic existence of the corporation, corporate capital accumulates by defending or increasing the transactional cost between otherwise autonomous knowledge producing actors. Thus increasing corporate control of knowledge is the antithesis of increasing knowledge. Knowledge can only increase by increasing the autonomy of the knowledge producing actors. This tension is depicted graphically.

Thus, finance and corporations are inherently ownership centralization paradigms. Whereas, knowledge ownership can not be centralized without destroying it.

For example, if a corporation purchased a huge library of software modules or books, written by different authors, the managers could create nothing with this without the authors (or others) who are knowledgeable of these modules or books. If these authors were not already organically interacting, then they would not be able to at any price, unless there was interoperability knowledge potential enumerated by some knowledgeable person(s). Thus always the knowledge is owned by the knowledge producers. When a knowledge producer is gone, the knowledge previously produced is destroyed, if it was not adopted by another sufficiently knowledgeable producer.

The Inverse Commons explains that unlike sharing of hard resources, the sharing of knowledge increases the value of the shared knowledge. Current knowledge becomes more valuable as it gains more future potential uses, and only autonomous knowledge actors can maximize diverse use cases of interoperability.

Software has minimal financing requirements, e.g. one or two humans with computers can write software that launches a $millions start-up. I did this once or twice by myself with no employees (e.g. CoolPage.com by 2001 if in Shadowstats inflation-adjusted dollars).

http://unheresy.com/Information%20Is%20Alive.html#Algorithm_!=_Entropy (2013)


P.S. I am grateful to see the AnonyMint account is indeed inaccessible. Thank you to theymos.


Edit: I am reading the pulse of the community-at-large and I think you are Monero's worst enemy. You should recuse yourself from writing about it, because your model (world view) is the antithesis of open source, community development, and decentralization. Perhaps this is why the hacker attacks against Monero have been so expert. You are insulting the hackers. Big mistake. They are now very motivated to prove you wrong. They will come out of the woodwork like unending worms if you persist with this feudal-era (Dark Age), aristocrat model of the future with Monero knights. There is a lot of work to do on the Cryptonote code base, so you need to show your respect for developers, not insult them. We don't work for a King and his court!

The Satoshi hacker is giving a warning to the powers-that-be such as Paypal.

Note I am not that hacker.

[jubalix]

I posit that with the shear number of coins out their, some coins will be attacked just for the "hell" of it.

Some one will screw with it just barbecue they can, They will feel sorta powerful and then get invested in doing it, even though it take over a good portion of their time.

People are like this they over invest for psychological reasons in a project, Hell this feature of the human psyche is probably what allows humans to discover things and get a head.

The propensity to do something as a net dis benefit to ones self, just for the shear kick of it, allows lifetimes to be dedicated to aracne, abstruse etc. Then just so often a discovery is made and thier is a huge pay off for the individual and society.

It is probably genetic trait that is selected for to some extent.

in fact i view "autisim" to some extent [not going into the debate of what that means], to be a necessary trait in a good proportion of males for them to get ahead. I mean consider this age of specialization you almost have to go full "autistic" into a particular subject.

On a side an unrelated note I found out to day that using one ear bud head phone for sound over 4 hours can make your other ear desntitzed to sound after you take the earbud head phone off, to the point of the other ear almost being deaf.

This is not only a surprising discovery to me but the speed of the neural plasticity in a pathway I thought was set is quite amazaing. Or their may be a particular pathway to do this. This implies that we are not only hearing in at least stereo but can up-regualte and down regulate the gain on each ear.

[ExtremeFacials.com]

Whales are the wealthy and well-connected businessmen that make things happen.

I'm embarrassed for you, do you realise how ridiculous that sounds coming after your recent XMR pump fest? What you should be saying is whales are the corrupt exploiters that have almost destroyed our planet and human civilisation.

I do respect that you are not anonymous, and you say these things using your real identity. That is admirable, but crazy IMO.

Most people (the bottom 99% on the wealth scale) respect talent and ethical behaviour more than your definition of 'whale-ness', which to most people sounds vile and arrogant. Whales make things happen, mostly bad, and they try and use their position to exploit more money from the 'system', like you have been with your monero pumping.

The true followers of this coin will be glad to see you stop posting on monero.

The greedy 1% that owns most of the world's wealth are the whales you speak of, but most people hate them with a passion.

[AnonyWince]

communism doesn't work.

Look up the definition of communism—common ownership of the means of production—then re-read what I wrote about knowledge producers autonomously owning their work inherently and can't be financed. I will not reply again as you (and any others who) continue to make idiotic posts.

Edit: dga did not do the PoW work on Cryptonote for free. He made himself $150,000 for a week of work. He did not share his mining secrets.

[jubalix]

Bitcoin will not become the unit-of-account without the blessing of the government, because it has no distribution scale

I know this is hard for so many to understand because Gov itself is all most have ever known.

Bitcoin is the tech that allows a knew form of "government" in a decentralized way, an new kind of society and life. For most it will be better, for some, eg a large percentage of government "workers" they will be looking for new streams of income, as their host just found a way to be immune to much of their parasitic nature

It inverts that paradigm and the organization of capital.

The current form of government has no discretion in the issue.

It is not a question "will they allow" it is a question of if they wish to survive will they be able to adapt in time.

Already we are seeing the arbitrage of jurisdictions. Some make anti BTC laws some are pro BTC. The pro ones attract capital, talent energy.

Look at email, and what it has done to the postal service, indeed no gov could probably function without email now.

put simply the law of thermodynamics ensures that the fittest and most adaptable model wins. Any system including governments that are not the most efficient die and or are replaced. It not a choice or a decision anyone or thing has.

Its hardwired into the laws of physics of this universe at least in this local part of it at a macro scale.


Bitcoin, or bitcoin tech is over and order of magnitude more efficient than centralist banking/stateist model.

US, UK, EU, China they see this and are building a large stock of BTC just in-case, as well as every other nation that can. It cheap, on the table and why would you not do it?

Consider just one aspect. Banks themselves, their must be of the order of 1 million bank branches in the world. BTC tech replaces at least 10% of their reason for existence if not 50%. That 10% of the cost of running those branches, the IT costs, the staff the property cost, the ATMs, the maintenance. A branch would cost near $1 million a year to run.

That 10%~50% of 1T, a year in savings right their BTC tech arbitrages out. So at 10% circa 100B, a year in savings, thats per year. That there just by itself underwrites a market cap in the trillions.

And that is just one part of the whole picture that BTC tech is more efficient in.

People keep going on and on about intrinsic value, there it is, 1T plus market cap of intrinsic value.

The Byzantine generals problem that BTC solves is not just some small thing, it defied the collective ability of the human race until Pre-Satoshi. The applications and implications cannot be understated.

Another source of value is the un-seizable form of wealth. This is the first time in history you can store wealth against force

before this no matter what sort of wealth you had, it could be seized, by force, of, the state, through their "laws", eg tax, or whatever, by the invader, even by decay. Yes I know the lead pipe argument. But people would just send thier coins to a bitcoin eater if this happened to much makeing it an untenable model or thier would me some other n of m solution.

Now reason must be applied not force to make people part with their wealth. Full anonymity is coming. Bitcoin holds out the opportunity for the first time in human history to cross the threshold from brute force, blunt instruments of the blanket state laws, barbarism, to reason.

If I could encapsulate it in one phrase it is the "elision of sovereignty to the state/community to individual"

the only question remains is who or what will that individual be.

[AnonyWince]

Bitcoin will not become the unit-of-account without the blessing of the government, because it has no distribution scale

Bitcoin is the tech that allows a knew form of "government" in a decentralized way...

My statement holds, because Bitcoin (and Monero and all the others) are not decentralized. Adoption for use as a currency (without being an investor) is almost non-existent.

The idea (PoW) was noble and idealistic, but the overall design sucks.