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No, people just use monero and convert to bitcoin last minute through xmr.to . Bitcoin is used because it's the most popular cryptocurrency. What's a better alt

No, people just use monero and convert to bitcoin last minute through xmr.to . Bitcoin is used because it's the most popular cryptocurrency. What's a better alternative, credit cards?

arcticbull 7y ago
Not doing illegal things, then paying with your Visa card.
- beerandt 7y ago
  People buying masks in Hong Kong might disagree.
  - pwinnski 7y ago
    People buying masks in Hong Kong do so in person using cash.
    - bufferoverflow 7y ago
      Do you speak for all the people who buy masks?
    - VMG 7y ago
      cash will be banned in the future
      - pwinnski 7y ago
        Part of me thinks this is definitely something an authoritarian government would try to do, but then I wonder: how has this not happened already? Has it happened somewhere I've missed? I suspect that banning cash would result in an ad hoc barter system for goods and services. If people are engaging in economic activity they want to hide from the government, and find others willing to engage in the same activity, they'll probably work something out, right? Whether it's masks that could potentially hide someone from facial-recognition cameras or something else.
        vageli 7y ago
        Yeah but then using a barter system is probably outlawed in those societies, which would have a chilling effect because you don't know if someone is safe to ask about the alternative method for fear of being reported. A casual interaction between shopkeeper and customer would never be facilitated by barter in such a hostile environment.
        catalogia 7y ago
        > "I wonder: how has this not happened already?" It's the sort of thing you spend a few years normalizing instead of implementing in one fell swoop. Rapid changes unnerve people and a rapid elimination of cash could cause civil or economic unrest. I believe India has experimented with demonetizing larger bills, and in Sweden businesses that accept cash are becoming increasingly uncommon, as are people who use cash. When the majority no longer consider cash important, eliminating cash becomes safer. More people adopt the mentality that cash users are criminals with something to hide or generally just paranoid weirdos, and are consequently less likely to object when the use of cash is further restricted. Moreover, with fewer people using cash, the government has largely achieved their objective already. When few people use cash the haystack the needles are hidden in becomes much smaller.
        VMG 7y ago
        > I suspect that banning cash would result in an ad hoc barter system for goods and services. Regular people who don't care about privacy or censorship resistance will use credit cards. This is in the interest of the powerful because you can easily disable service for undesirables. The rest will use Bitcoin
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    Is the Hong Kong protests sponsored by Visa? If so I look forward to Morgan Freeman's next commercial. Even then it would seem to make sense to pay cash.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Well, as this article points out, Bitcoin transactions aren't anonymous, they're pseudonymous. If they became popular, automated de-anonymization tools would sort this out. Further, nobody accepts Bitcoin for anything material, so you're going to get caught at your on-ramp and off-ramp.
    - ryanmercer 7y ago
      > Further, nobody accepts Bitcoin for anything material, That's partially true. Off the top of my head you can convert it to bullion fairly easily [1][2] and there are DNM cash out services on most DNMs too, a lot of trust there but if you spread it out over multiple vendors and smaller transactions you could convert it to physical cash. Each transaction increases your risk of detection by postal police and by just getting ripped off by the seller or the mail carrier though. [1] for example JM Bullion (and others) accept bitcoin https://www.jmbullion.com/buying-gold-silver-bitcoin-faq/ https://www.jmbullion.com/buying-gold-silver-bitcoin-faq/ [2] some sellers on /r/pmsforsale will accept bitcoin occasionally.
- capableweb 7y ago
  Problem is that what "doing illegal things" mean changes over time, and in different places. What someone assumes to be legal everywhere, could be illegal in most places, and vice-versa
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Luckily for us, most "western" jurisdictions don't allow for ex post facto prosecutions. They're actually unconstitutional in the United States. And when they are incidentally permitted outside the US, it's usually for something egregious. Further, if something's illegal in a different jurisdiction than you are in, you aren't usually exposed to any liability, as any tourist to Amsterdam will tell you. And not having a payment record doesn't change the fact you did it and will undoubtably have left other evidence. Once again, these are social problems that magic beans won't solve.
    - aianus 7y ago
      > Further, if something's illegal in a different jurisdiction than you are in, you aren't usually exposed to any liability, as any tourist to Amsterdam will tell you. You may not be exposed to liability back in the US, but that doesn't mean your Visa/Mastercard will necessarily work if you're doing something illegal in the US: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/square-canada-1.5303143 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/square-canada-1.53031...
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        Definitely, but that wasn't the question. For instance, I wouldn't expect UnionPay to allow me to fund pro-democracy organizations. I similarly wouldn't expect Visa and MasterCard to allow me to buy drugs legal in Canada or Portugal. These are again, very much, social and not technological problems that require cryptocurrency. In Canada for instance, you can easily get a merchant account with Moneris (a Canadian payment processor) and take card transactions over Interac (the Canadian debit network). Yeah, Square's bound by their US banks, because they're a US company with an overwhelmingly US product being sold internationally.
- hinkley 7y ago
  Thank you. This whole thread reminds me of the early South Park episode where all the Catholic diocese...s? meet to figure out how to stop getting caught molesting children. You could stop molesting children. That would definitely work.
notlukesky 7y ago
Monero is also traceable. https://www.wired.com/story/monero-privacy/ https://www.wired.com/story/monero-privacy/
- steveeq1 7y ago
  No, Monero is not traceable in any real-world, common-sense way. This "attack" is academic and theoretical.
  - RandomBacon 7y ago
    And outdated (when it was published). This is the HN discussion when that article was posted a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16687008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16687008 This is the r/Monero discussion where people much smarter than myself talked about the article's shortcomings: https://old.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/87hr28/hn_discussion_of_wireds_article_monero_is_less/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/87hr28/hn_discussio...
    - steveeq1 7y ago
      If blockchain analysis companies can't trace monero, I doubt the government can either. Hell, wasabi bitcoin wallet can't even be traced by chainalysis.
      - RandomBacon 7y ago
        Other than a suposed chainanalysis employee attempting an AMA on reddit, is there any proof that they can't trace it? It's hard/impossible to prove a negative.
        steveeq1 7y ago
        If someone CAN prove it, I'm all ears. . .

No, people just use monero and convert to bitcoin last minute through xmr.to . Bitcoin is used because it's the most popular cryptocurrency. What's a better alternative, credit cards?

arcticbull 7y ago

Not doing illegal things, then paying with your Visa card.

beerandt 7y ago
People buying masks in Hong Kong might disagree.
- pwinnski 7y ago
  People buying masks in Hong Kong do so in person using cash.
  - bufferoverflow 7y ago
    Do you speak for all the people who buy masks?
  - VMG 7y ago
    cash will be banned in the future
    - pwinnski 7y ago
      Part of me thinks this is definitely something an authoritarian government would try to do, but then I wonder: how has this not happened already? Has it happened somewhere I've missed? I suspect that banning cash would result in an ad hoc barter system for goods and services. If people are engaging in economic activity they want to hide from the government, and find others willing to engage in the same activity, they'll probably work something out, right? Whether it's masks that could potentially hide someone from facial-recognition cameras or something else.
      - vageli 7y ago
        Yeah but then using a barter system is probably outlawed in those societies, which would have a chilling effect because you don't know if someone is safe to ask about the alternative method for fear of being reported. A casual interaction between shopkeeper and customer would never be facilitated by barter in such a hostile environment.
      - catalogia 7y ago
        > "I wonder: how has this not happened already?" It's the sort of thing you spend a few years normalizing instead of implementing in one fell swoop. Rapid changes unnerve people and a rapid elimination of cash could cause civil or economic unrest. I believe India has experimented with demonetizing larger bills, and in Sweden businesses that accept cash are becoming increasingly uncommon, as are people who use cash. When the majority no longer consider cash important, eliminating cash becomes safer. More people adopt the mentality that cash users are criminals with something to hide or generally just paranoid weirdos, and are consequently less likely to object when the use of cash is further restricted. Moreover, with fewer people using cash, the government has largely achieved their objective already. When few people use cash the haystack the needles are hidden in becomes much smaller.
      - VMG 7y ago
        > I suspect that banning cash would result in an ad hoc barter system for goods and services. Regular people who don't care about privacy or censorship resistance will use credit cards. This is in the interest of the powerful because you can easily disable service for undesirables. The rest will use Bitcoin
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  Is the Hong Kong protests sponsored by Visa? If so I look forward to Morgan Freeman's next commercial. Even then it would seem to make sense to pay cash.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Well, as this article points out, Bitcoin transactions aren't anonymous, they're pseudonymous. If they became popular, automated de-anonymization tools would sort this out. Further, nobody accepts Bitcoin for anything material, so you're going to get caught at your on-ramp and off-ramp.
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    > Further, nobody accepts Bitcoin for anything material, That's partially true. Off the top of my head you can convert it to bullion fairly easily [1][2] and there are DNM cash out services on most DNMs too, a lot of trust there but if you spread it out over multiple vendors and smaller transactions you could convert it to physical cash. Each transaction increases your risk of detection by postal police and by just getting ripped off by the seller or the mail carrier though. [1] for example JM Bullion (and others) accept bitcoin https://www.jmbullion.com/buying-gold-silver-bitcoin-faq/ https://www.jmbullion.com/buying-gold-silver-bitcoin-faq/ [2] some sellers on /r/pmsforsale will accept bitcoin occasionally.
capableweb 7y ago
Problem is that what "doing illegal things" mean changes over time, and in different places. What someone assumes to be legal everywhere, could be illegal in most places, and vice-versa
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Luckily for us, most "western" jurisdictions don't allow for ex post facto prosecutions. They're actually unconstitutional in the United States. And when they are incidentally permitted outside the US, it's usually for something egregious. Further, if something's illegal in a different jurisdiction than you are in, you aren't usually exposed to any liability, as any tourist to Amsterdam will tell you. And not having a payment record doesn't change the fact you did it and will undoubtably have left other evidence. Once again, these are social problems that magic beans won't solve.
  - aianus 7y ago
    > Further, if something's illegal in a different jurisdiction than you are in, you aren't usually exposed to any liability, as any tourist to Amsterdam will tell you. You may not be exposed to liability back in the US, but that doesn't mean your Visa/Mastercard will necessarily work if you're doing something illegal in the US: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/square-canada-1.5303143 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/square-canada-1.53031...
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      Definitely, but that wasn't the question. For instance, I wouldn't expect UnionPay to allow me to fund pro-democracy organizations. I similarly wouldn't expect Visa and MasterCard to allow me to buy drugs legal in Canada or Portugal. These are again, very much, social and not technological problems that require cryptocurrency. In Canada for instance, you can easily get a merchant account with Moneris (a Canadian payment processor) and take card transactions over Interac (the Canadian debit network). Yeah, Square's bound by their US banks, because they're a US company with an overwhelmingly US product being sold internationally.
hinkley 7y ago
Thank you. This whole thread reminds me of the early South Park episode where all the Catholic diocese...s? meet to figure out how to stop getting caught molesting children. You could stop molesting children. That would definitely work.

notlukesky 7y ago

Monero is also traceable. https://www.wired.com/story/monero-privacy/ https://www.wired.com/story/monero-privacy/

steveeq1 7y ago
No, Monero is not traceable in any real-world, common-sense way. This "attack" is academic and theoretical.
- RandomBacon 7y ago
  And outdated (when it was published). This is the HN discussion when that article was posted a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16687008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16687008 This is the r/Monero discussion where people much smarter than myself talked about the article's shortcomings: https://old.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/87hr28/hn_discussion_of_wireds_article_monero_is_less/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/87hr28/hn_discussio...
  - steveeq1 7y ago
    If blockchain analysis companies can't trace monero, I doubt the government can either. Hell, wasabi bitcoin wallet can't even be traced by chainalysis.
    - RandomBacon 7y ago
      Other than a suposed chainanalysis employee attempting an AMA on reddit, is there any proof that they can't trace it? It's hard/impossible to prove a negative.
      - steveeq1 7y ago
        If someone CAN prove it, I'm all ears. . .