Monero FUD/Negativity Thread (Honest Discourse)

[rdnkjdi]

I would like to start a real FUD thread for Monero.  Unlike many here I LIKE to understand what the "cons" to what I own are & prefer objectivity.  I've seen a ton of negative and positive Monero threads but for the most part they are completely useless.  I have a few Monero shills on ignore.  

I see little honest discourse.  These are the downsides I see.  I would like to hear more opinions on why Monero is "A broken pile of crap" and also opinions on why the following are true/untrue/not quite true.  I'll modify OP from time to time.


1 - The original Cryptonote/Bytecoin devs are likely attacking Monero (see blockchain fork which didn't require a 51% attack - but a deep understanding of sourcecode) & the original code contains unsafe / undocumented C code.

2 - The devs are moving rather slowly from a perspective of what other coins provide (No official GUI, blockchain is still loaded into memory, etc).  This is likely due to the Cryptonote (non bitcoin) codebase.  

3 - Funding is a major issue.  Current developers are over down 50BTC funding outside assistance, reviews, website hosting, etc.  MEW (equivalent of Bitcoin Foundation) is attempting to resolve this. Discourse going on to embed fees into the coin release for development fund.

4 - BBR - (the primary cryptonote competitor without a massive premine) has a built in funding model (1% ongoing mining goes to dev) & has been chosen to be part of the SuperNET.  These could be viewed as bad things for BBR & good for Monero or vice versa.

5 - Monero is not user friendly.  At the point it becomes successful / gains market share it will likely be labelled as intentionally kept user unfriendly in the beginning to exclude non geeks.

6 - An outside entity had a period of a miner that was up to 5X faster than the publicly available miner.  

7 - Arguably it's inflated price is due to being shamelessly pumped by bitcoin whales.  If/when they remove their support - it tanks.

8 - Blockchain bloat

9 - SuperNET chose the other primary Cryptonote coin.

Edit:  

10 - Emission curve.  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=585480.0.  A high initial emission curve can be unfair to later adopters.  BBR's emission rate is more consistent/fairer to late adopters.  

11 - Three pools control over 50% of the hash rate.  In a way - this is trusting $600 a day to protect a $5,000,000 investment.  Pool owners could be bribed, probably are unable to afford the proper DDoS protection, etc.

*Monero is the only altcoin I own.  This is intended to be a high quality FUD thread.

[Moneroman88]

I think it is always important to make folks understand that Monero is a hedge to Bitcoin.

The Monero camp is composed of large Bitcoin holders and if those collectively withdraw their support, at this point it means a steep dive for Bitcoin. Not even mentioning the possibility that other honest bitcoiners might also want to switch allegiance. There are many. The 10-15k holders of XMR collectively trust it only $6 million. But the same guys trust Bitcoin up to $100s of millions. If they decide to sell this stash out of fear or retaliation, the price would be destroyed.

People mourn and whine that there are too many Monero threads, they say. I say those folks better get used to Monero posts otherwise they might have to face a severe mental breakdown. Monero is what Bitcoin always wanted to be and not a single shitcoin could ever possibly reach. Not far in the future we will all be posting on Monerotalk, when XMR is what BTC has been. The #1. I don't understand why some people dislike Monero. They are clearly - it is completely obvious to me - either influenced by delusion and/or their investments in other inferior cryptocoins. But why fear Monero? It is dirt cheap at 1.80$. How much do you regret not having bought Bitcoin at 1.80$? Very much so if you are in your right mind. Everyone who's buying Monero at this point will make returns like the 2010 Bitcoin holders, which is why ALL of them support and endorse Monero. It is THE coin and there is really nothing to discuss about that very fact.

[TrueCryptonaire]

If a bitcoin whale supports an altcoin - not to mention several such whales, it is inevitable fact that it will affect on the price.
However in case Monero it has affected the price stability which lack the most coins.

However, I agree with the "FUD" you posted here about monero.

I own a significiant stash Monero.
My strategy to accumulate more Moneros is to tell other competitors how the price might drop after a long decline. When they are frozen, I will scoop some cheap coins.  
Call me a scammer but I am never lying when I open my mouth about Monero.
When I want the price down, I will start speaking all the shortcomings of this coin which in my heart I know is the only alt that has true value.  

[rdnkjdi]

trolling

I unignored you long enough to say this for the benefit of anyone else visiting this thread.

I am unsure if you are anti Monero attempting to make Monero supporters look bad.  

Or you are attempting to make it look like those who dislike Monero are willing to stoop to your level of stupidity.

Either way it doesn't matter and nobody cares.  I'm sorry you don't have a girlfriend - buy a puppy.

/Backonignore.

[rdnkjdi]

Monero is only a sitting duck Coin that waits for the time like dogecoin /Quarkcoin had

Can you elaborate on this?  The only issue I'm aware of with dogecoin was the super low hashrate so they had to mergemine with litecoin.  Since Monero uses ASIC proof/resistant algorithm - I'm unsure of how this applies.

Everyone thinks just because Bitcoin catapulted it self and its Altcoins means this will happen again at the same date. Truly blind people that can't see the reality anymore.

No idea what you mean by this.

[rdnkjdi]

Dogecoin like Quarkcoin had the Uniqe time when Bitcoin rose there were lots of new people inside the Bitcoin scene so they jumped on the train of quark and Dogecoin. While only a few still think they could be get better or same value as Bitcoin.... this delusion was made through constant spam and shill tactics as we see again with Monero.

If I'm not mistaken the rise of Dogecoin was when bitcoin was at an all time high / hype.  Bitcoin is in a major slump when Monero was released.

Also the core idea behind Monero is true anonymity combined with cryptocurrency and market volume will increase overall efficiency in certain economic niches by decreasing transaction risk and/or transaction friction.  

Friendly shilling/circlejerking was pretty much the core idea behind doge.  And I believe quark's big selling point was the hashing algorithm included several different ones into one.  A bit of an X11 precursor.

I fail to see similarities between Monero's selling point & that of doge/quark

[Moneroman88]

Um, this guy (Moneroman88) was talking strongly against smooth, saying "we at Monero do something" (implying smooth was not in the "we"). Surely an actual monero supporter would have known that smooth is a core dev of Monero and that sort of talk was out-of-place.

So despite the many kind words received from him, I have to judge this guy to be a paid troll. A sockpuppet or anyone else longtimer would not have made such a mistake.

The shilling is quite elaborate because he is repeating my thoughts 90%, yet seems to be paid by the dark side  

@Moneroman88

Can you comment on rpietila labeling you as unwelcomed troll.


~BCX~

1. I never said "we" implying that I am *part of a team* or even similar, it is a lie which shocks me as I do support rpietila and learned most of my points of view on cryptocurrency from him. To me he is the most valuable member of Bitcointalk.

2. I replied to this baseless accusation earlier

He is a troll paid by the anti-monero group, obviously. If you don't notice this and attribute him to Monero instead, then the trolling is successful, and will proliferate.

You're breaking trust rpietiela. I hope you know that I'm a Monero supporter and I've been influenced by your very posts. All I am is posting what I learned from you and the XMR community through my own glasses. I am neither paid nor anti-Monero, this is a weird conspiracy theory you're proposing here now. It is beyond me why you'd think like that.

 Just because I put my opinions across in a strong manner? You do the same, don't hate on me. All smart ones know that Monero is the future of cryptocurrency because of it's remarkable community with all the big fishes of Bitcoin. There is nothing comparable, why should one not speak it out? That's all I do. Monero is the best coin, period. Even discussing this very fact seems dumb to me.

Calling me an anti-Monero troll is totally ridiculous as I'm stating the opinions of the XMR Community through my own glasses. You can read my posts and compare with what you find in all major Monero threads and you'll realize that I'm not posting anything significantly dissonant. I'm not doing anything else than posting what I believe, standing for what I assess to be the truth. I'm not trolling, I'm stating what I believe are the very facts. Monero is the best coin.

[freebud]

Thank you for this thread, it is really very hard to form an opinion with all the wars/trolling/shilling that is going on.. I also own Monero as a very large percentage of my alt portfolio.
Here is my take regarding your specific questions:
1. It is a fact that Monero have suffered two network attacks during the last month, but I don't think anyone can be sure who is behind the attacks. I think it is likely that more attacks will occur in the future, because obviously someone have both the skill and the motivation to do it, and I assume that the code is still far from booletproof.
2. It is also a fact that the code contains undocumented C code. It is also probably true that some of it is still not safe, I think the only way to make it totally safe is to let it run in the wild and anticipate attacks, and solve them as they occur. No matter how many rewritings, refactorings, and reviews, bugs will creep up in any system, and will be used by malicious agents until they are fixed.
3. I also feel that development is rather slow.. I follow the dev irc channel closely, and there is a lot of activity there, with many people contributing, and not only the core team. The explanations I heard include: insufficient funding & bad undocumented original code. But my feeling is that a "star" dedicated programmer is missing. I would really like to hear an honest answer from the core team regarding this.
4. Don't have much to say here..
5. This is also known to be true, but was certainly not the intention of the current core team, which fixed that as fast as they could. Personally, I don't see any problem with this, as no one currently hold a huge percentage of the supply.
6. Well, for me this is a plus, some of those entities I appreciate as having a lot of insight into technology and economics, if they remove their support they will probably have a legitimate reason for doing so, and I will better understand what it is..
7. This doesn't seem a real issue to me, and was answered thoroughly in many threads.

My real worry as an investor is what competing technologies may be in the works, which will prove themselves better than Monero. At the moment I don't see anything (yes I looked into Zerocoin/Zerocash) but that doesn't mean that someone isn't working on something..

[hodlmybtc]

I'm also a (small) Monero buyer and its pretty obvious that 90% of the new Monero threads lately are made by trolls, probably to make Monero look bad.

It's sad but in the end it shows that people are scared and resort to such things.

We will have the last laugh when Monero gets adopted by a wider public, remember the coin is still very young and hard to use for non tech savvy people.

[hodlmybtc]

I can ensure you that these are not "just" anti monero shills/trolls. If you knew the community (Not only Bitcointalk) then you would see how arrogant and childish their mentaliy is. This alone proofs that they are behind all these attacks on new coins.

Its not that this attack is their first one i noticed it started heavy since Monero grown into the top 20 Table. And when a coin just tries to steal Moneros wind they FUD and Shill it to the ground.

Yeah, see reddit for example hehe.

I agree with you that it's very childish behaviour but in my opinion it only shows the potential of Monero.

The more potential a coin has the more hate it will receive, it's sad but that's reality.

[Spoetnik]

well i read what the OP said and he / she raised some valid questions / points
and i too would like to see some no nonsense honest answers to these questions posed.

good luck trying coral all your animals into the "Topic Pen" here OP
As you can see any Monero topic will get derailed in a heart beat LOL

my initial reaction to this topic was.. great.. ANOTHER god damn Monero topic  

But i see you want answers and i bet the usual shills / cheerleaders probably censor and troll you if you ask.
The Monero guys have a notorious pattern of trying to silence and discredit people.
So what do you do when you want / need answers ? (When you know damn well they will delete your questions and attack you)

The next thing i seen is a high amount of Noob accounts spouting off like experts which tells me one thing..
They are almost certainly well known users here hiding and playing games..
I have a hard time wanting to take anything Fake Noobs say around here seriously.. their opinions don't count for squat as far as i am concerned.

We're talking about people that are so god damn deceitful they have to hide behind dummy accounts.
That says it all i think.

So good luck OP your going to need it.. i get the feeling your going to get the run around by the vortex of name changing Monero Shills.

[infofront]

I would like to start a real FUD thread for Monero.  I recently put some money in Monero.  Unlike many here I LIKE to understand what the "cons" to what I own are.  What's going to make it worthless?  I've seen a ton of negative and positive Monero threads but for the most part they are completely useless.  I have a few Monero shills on ignore.  I've also received flack when asking pointed questions.

I see little honest discourse.  These are the downsides I see.  I would like to hear more opinions on why Monero is "A broken pile of crap" and also opinions on why the following are true/untrue/not quite true.


1 - The original Cryptonote/Bytecoin devs are likely attacking Monero (see blockchain fork which didn't require a 51% attack - but a deep understanding of sourcecode)
2 - The original code contains unsafe / undocumented C code.
3 - The devs are moving rather slowly from a perspective of what other coins provide (No official GUI, blockchain is still loaded into memory, etc).  This is likely due to the Cryptonote (non bitcoin) codebase.  However it appears Zoidberg/BBR is moving faster in these areas than the Monero team.
4 - Monero is not user friendly.  At the point it becomes successful / gains market share it will likely be labelled as intentionally kept user unfriendly in the beginning to exclude non geeks.
5 - An outside entity had a period of a miner that was up to 5X faster than the publicly available miner.  
6 - Arguably it's inflated price is due to being shamelessly pumped by bitcoin whales.  If/when they remove their support - it tanks.
7 - Blockchain bloat
8 - SuperNET chose the other primary Cryptonote coin.

*Monero is the only altcoin I own.  This is intended to be a high quality FUD thread.

If you want a decent discussion, you should probably have a moderated thread, as this thread is already 85% trolling/nonsense.

Anyway, as a Monero holder myself, here's what I think about the issues you raise:
1. Yes, and there will likely be more attacks in the future. The team has handled the attacks very swiftly and professionally so far though.
2. Yes, and hopefully they can get all that sorted out. Bringing in outside help like Peter Todd was a good idea.
3. Agreed
4. This seems like a non-issue. As far as I'm concerned, all crypto-currencies are virtually unusable to non-geeks right now anyway.
5. There have always been private miners, and mining programs with varying degrees of efficiency. Monero still had the fairest launch of any coin to date, as far as I'm aware.
6. The price has been approximately the same since launch. I don't know of any pump.
7. Blockchain bloat gets really overblown. The same arguments were being used against bitcoin several years ago. Decreasing memory/storage costs, increasing processing power, and unforeseen innovations will keep the blockchain manageable.
8. There are so many reasons not to join the SuperNet, this would require it's own post to explain properly, but (1) The Monero devs may not have wanted to join. It's not simply a matter of being chosen, the coin devs have to work with James. (2) He says that he need so work out some "business" things with the coin devs. What he asks for may be unacceptable. (3) The Monero devs may be not want to give any control to an outside organization. (4) The SuperNet seems to be partially centralized and tied to at least one for-profit corporation. (5) Not enough details are known about James or the SuperNet project. (6) A relatively high market cap coin like Monero would see less benefit from the SuperNet. Monero is one of very few coins poised for explosive growth, and possibly even challenging bitcoin directly as the dominant crypto-currency.

[Spoetnik]

@infofront
I seen you slip this comment in on the end..

Monero is one of very few coins poised for explosive growth, and possibly even challenging bitcoin directly as the dominant crypto-currency.

care to elaborate ? that is one hell of a grand statement to make !
and maybe a reason why the poor coin is being attacked so often (if true ?)
oh and if you go and read the cryptonote topic i asked why they created cryptonote in the first place..
why create a platform for coin cloning ?
You know what i was told ? "To fix bugs" Cloning and making as many different coins as possible will help find and eradicate bugs i guess ?
So if people are "attacking" Monero isn't that the intention of the coin in the first place ? A bug finding platform ?

it seems to me the excuses for the existence of cryptonote and monero are all over the place..

and all i hear is random nobodies i don't recognize screaming buy Monero its the best coin ever in history.
i tell ya i have met a LOT of guys in the last year doing this stuff and it's kinda funny how none of the names i recognize are saying this..
just shadowy weirdos coming out of nowhere spouting off..

Attacks huh ? Wouldn't have anything to do with the fact you guys are pushing the coin so hard on the Altcoin scene eh ?
And "original" Monero devs ? What ?
What do you mean "original" ? that sounds like a rather interesting part of the story being side stepped..

You guys keep picking and choosing what is said about Monero and avoiding any negatives as the OP wanted to discuss !
Noticed the topic beside this one on page one about Cryptonote that you guys are all avoiding that talks about a premine and monero ?
Fairest launch of any coin ever you just said ?.. go read the cryptonote topic maybe ?
Kinda funny how some topics are dived on and bumped like crazy and others are ignored 100%

So your last grandiose statement does not add up.. i just don't get it.
How in the hell is Monero THAT good ?
They must have done some impressive coding on a cryptonote clone coin fork then huh ?
Parading it around as the Bitcoin killer is pretty impressive !
And what the hell is unsecure / undocumented c code ?
According to what ISO c standards ? like what are we talking here because that is as usual ultra vague.

When you add it all up you here a TON of negatives and no real specifics why this is THE Bitcoin killer.
There has been a LOT of talk about it and i don't get it.. all i hear is that it was a Cryptonote coin cloning platform "Fork"
SO explain to me why everyone on planet earth is going to drop Bitcoin like a Hot potato in favor of Monero.. a cryptonote clone / fork of sorts.
Because you say so ? (who ever you are)

[Ultros]

and all i hear is random nobodies i don't recognize screaming buy Monero its the best coin ever in history.
i tell ya i have met a LOT of guys in the last year doing this stuff and it's kinda funny how none of the names i recognize are saying this..
just shadowy weirdos coming out of nowhere spouting off..

I can at least give an answer to that. I never touched any altcoin until a bunch of old bitcoiners started to talk about XMR. I had an extremely bad bias about alts because of all the scams and trolling that poison this community, but I decided to fight my aversion due to their combined level of trust and decided to take a look. Maybe you're not really aware of the people in XMR community and just picking the troll-posts. Here's a chart I found on the Risto altcoin observer.



Now look at this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.0 and look at all the old members, heroes, legendary, and renowned seniors, some of them with great contributions and insights like Aminorex or Oda Krell or Articmine or Smoothie or Rptiela (I know alot of people don't like him but that's not a nobody) and so many more, all with high trust and an old forum activity. Now you might not know them and still think they are random nobodies... we're on internet after all, everyone is a random nobody including you and me, but then what you say here doesn't mak anye sense. Just don't read the trollish threads and forget about everything else. Ofc if you just pick one particular thread of that troll posting Nazi flags, you can easily believe all XMR supporters are nazis, and then yell about it everywhere...


Sorry OP my post isn't really made of quality FUD. It's not against you. I'm also genuinely interested by your questions and would be glad to read any educated answer, but I'm not the best suited to answer them. I'm just a "nobody shadowy weirdo coming out of nowhere" after all.

[CryptoCarmen]

*Monero is the only altcoin I own.  This is intended to be a high quality FUD thread.

You should sell. Waste to bother your nerves over it.

[pa]

I own BTC and XMR. I see Monero as having these significant downsides/risks:

1. It is the target of sophisticated, large-scale FUD and hacking attacks, likely originating from resentful Bytecoin (BCN) and CryptoNote scammers. (So far the Monero dev team and community have fended off the attackers.)
2. It may be more threatening to the-powers-that-be than is Bitcoin and therefore runs a greater risk of being banned.
3. Something better for financial privacy could come along, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum sidechains implementing Zerocash or Zerocoin. (Monero is the bird in hand. . . )

I've nevertheless invested in XMR because:
1. I trust GMaxwell who says CryptoNote's privacy technology is mathematically sound (though he has not done a detailed audit of the codebase and has not vouched for its quality).
2. The XMR devs also seem trustworthy, competent, and responsive.
3. XMR has several trustworthy BTCtalk members, who are usually focused on BTC, openly supporting it.
4. I like the name Monero.
5. I believe that financial privacy is needed and that many people will be willing to pay for it.

[btc-mike]

3 - The devs are moving rather slowly from a perspective of what other coins provide (No official GUI, blockchain is still loaded into memory, etc).  This is likely due to the Cryptonote (non bitcoin) codebase.  However it appears Zoidberg/BBR is moving faster in these areas than the Monero team.

5 - An outside entity had a period of a miner that was up to 5X faster than the publicly available miner.  

8 - SuperNET chose the other primary Cryptonote coin.

Nice post. A few comments.

3. CZ cut the ring-signatures off old transactions. He has not worked on blockchain database.

5. This is true, but even vocal critics of XMR (myself included) agree that this is minor.

8. Is not being in SuperNET really bad? SuperNET looks to be an elaberate system designed to make jl777's holdings increase in value.

[rdnkjdi]

Well all aware that Monero rather FUD and Shills other coins to the ground rather to work with them together. These action alone proof that Monero is in long term only a Pump and Dump coin. There where no real changes made to the Clone code they took.

While I welcome any honest discourse / fud.  Monero actually took the lead in dealing with the attack for their coin by sending Zoidberg their fixes, etc.  I do agree that there are legit shills who are irritating.  And shills that appear to have been paid by other coins.  And together they make it difficult to have a real conversation.  

There where no real changes made to the Clone code they took.

Um yes.  Yes there have been significant changes by both Monero and BBR.

8. Is not being in SuperNET really bad? SuperNET looks to be an elaberate system designed to make jl777's holdings increase in value.

 

Honestly I agree supernet is a bad thing for all coins involved.  I still am unable to comprehend how I can "use any feature used by any coin" to send NXT using BBR privacy.  It seems to me a way for jl777 to unload some of his holdings.  I've not really dug into it enough to know for sure - his writing style generally includes visions for the future, development philosophy & platitudes about working together rather than actual facts I can comprehend.

I just expect most people to view the BBR / SuperNET relationship as a good thing for BBR / bad for XMR.  

3. CZ cut the ring-signatures off old transactions. He has not worked on blockchain database.

Yeah I think I saw him saying he was going to see what Monero did as it was pretty boring work.  Not sure if Monero is going to implement his fixes for trimming the data down or not.

While we're talking about FUD - why did you quit the BBR team?  I'm honestly curious - not wanting to launch an attack on anyone.  I'm trying to hold same number of BBR/XMR.

[infofront]

3. CZ cut the ring-signatures off old transactions. He has not worked on blockchain database.

Yeah I think I saw him saying he was going to see what Monero did as it was pretty boring work.  Not sure if Monero is going to implement his fixes for trimming the data down or not.

One dev said that they will not. There are downsides to BBR's approach.

[CoinHoarder]

1 - The original Cryptonote/Bytecoin devs are likely attacking Monero (see blockchain fork which didn't require a 51% attack - but a deep understanding of sourcecode)

Possibly true, but there is a lot of infighting between all Cryptonote coins. Monero supporters also say bad things about all other Cryptonote coins, so it is a two way street.

2 - The original code contains unsafe / undocumented C code.

As do a lot of ALT cryptos.. nothing special about Monero in these regards. I think the original comment on this that got everyone talking about it was blown out of proportion, as he was only talking about a small portion of the codebase.

3 - The devs are moving rather slowly from a perspective of what other coins provide (No official GUI, blockchain is still loaded into memory, etc).  This is likely due to the Cryptonote (non bitcoin) codebase.  However it appears Zoidberg/BBR is moving faster in these areas than the Monero team.

I'm not sure about BBR moving faster, but I would say this certainly can't be helping Monero (only having a crude 3rd party GUI.) I think cryptocurrencies need to be as user friendly as possible, and not having an official build with a GUI is insane.

4 - Monero is not user friendly.  At the point it becomes successful / gains market share it will likely be labelled as intentionally kept user unfriendly in the beginning to exclude non geeks.

I can see how some would think along these lines, adding a GUI to the official build ASAP would go a long ways towards refuting these claims.

5 - An outside entity had a period of a miner that was up to 5X faster than the publicly available miner.

From the evidence I have seen, I think this is very likely to be true. Most Cryptonote coins seem to have sketchy histories.. There is so much FUD, trolling, and misinformation it is hard to tell what is actually true though. Even if it is true, it is not a huge deal as it was fixed early on, but people will always harp on Monero because of it.

6 - Arguably it's inflated price is due to being shamelessly pumped by bitcoin whales.  If/when they remove their support - it tanks.

I believe this to be true. I've seen a lot of old money investing and voicing support for Monero, there are both positives and negatives that stem from that. It has rather small volume and market cap, so they can likely influence the market greatly for the better or worse.

7 - Blockchain bloat

True from what I've read, but it is nothing that most anon coins won't suffer from unless they plan ahead.

8 - SuperNET chose the other primary Cryptonote coin.

Meh.. SuperNET is composed of primarily centralized services/assets with a lot of counterparty risk involved. Not my cup of tea, I prefer the decentralized DAC model over most of the assets contained in the SuperNET.

My answers are in bold above.

I'd also like to add:

9 - Monero and/or their community refuses to make their own forums, and that is a large reason for all of the Monero spamming (for and against) in this subforum. I think this is a slimy marketing tactic to make it seem as if Monero has much more interest/support than it actually has. Imagine what a clusterfuck these subforums would be if all Alt coins didn't have their own forums.

10 - Most Monero supporters seem to be pushing it as the only legit ALT coin, when in actuality there are several promising projects that should be supported. Like most Bitcoin/Litecoin supporters, all innovation is brushed aside as gimmicks if it does not involve anonymity.

11 - Monero's emission curve is rather aggressive, when people analyze it in a couple-few years it will look somewhat like a community instamine coin... kind of like Quark which mined a large portion of the money supply in 6 months. A more fair distribution curve would have been better for the long term success of Monero, but people are greedy and want profits sooner rather than later.

12 - I see all anon coins as risky plays within the alt coin scene. It is hard to tell which is best, and which one will rise among the rest. There are many different approaches to making a Cryptocurrency anonymous and if a better solution is achieved, I think Monero will tank. It is very likely at least one coin will implement Zerocoin technology, which would be more anonymous IMO, and there are likely solutions yet to be announced/developed/conceived. Basically the only thing interesting about Monero is that it is (one of) the best cryptocurrencies that is more anonymous than Bitcoin, if it loses this advantage I think Monero is in trouble.

13 - The promotion regarding the Devs not owning a large percentage of the money supply is not entirely true. I actually prefer the Devs have a sizable piece of the pie, as it motivates them to work hard and improve the Cryptocurrency.