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News like this is proof that cryptocurrencies like Monero are necessary. It’s proof (not that we needed any) that centralized finance does not have your best i

News like this is proof that cryptocurrencies like Monero are necessary. It’s proof (not that we needed any) that centralized finance does not have your best interests at heart, and they can and will abuse their power.

skrowl 5y ago
Monero + Distributed Exchanges will go a long way to fix these kinds of online payment problems. Unfortunately, at least near term you'll still need fiat-tether "on ramps" to convert your local currency back and forth to tether before you move them to a distributed (or at least a non-KYC) exchange to Monero, then sending to your local wallet, then use online.
- xvector 5y ago
  Yup. It’s worth checking out LocalMonero [1] and the Haveno DEX [2]. The former already works and lets you buy Monero without relying on a KYC exchange. [1] https://localmonero.co/ https://localmonero.co/ [2] https://github.com/haveno-dex/haveno https://github.com/haveno-dex/haveno
  - CapricornNoble 5y ago
    Thanks for sharing Haveno. Sounds like it's not a mature app though. I would recommend Bisq as a more refined alternative: https://bisq.network/ https://bisq.network/
    - xvector 5y ago
      Yeah, Haveno is a WIP fork of Bisq for Monero that doesn't require BTC as a middleman and will have a much better UI/UX for newbies. Bisq doesn't even work on my M1 Mac, and the interface is kind of a nightmare.
- liquidify 5y ago
  Not touching tether with a 10 ft' pole. Stay away from that junk. Use USDC or something else to on ramp.
  - not_really 5y ago
    Yikes. Why not get a little usdt while you're at it.
teclordphrack2 5y ago
Nothing keeps an exchange from taking your money and running or not receiving the goods/service you pay for.
- xvector 5y ago
  Businesses are legally obligated to deliver your goods, so they will do that anyways, just like if you pay in cash today and go back to the store asking for a refund.
  - richardwhiuk 5y ago
    Paypal are legally obligated to hand back the money after 180 days. Nothing stops an exchange refusing to do business with you.
    - xvector 5y ago
      At least cryptocurrency prevents censorship when sending funds, unlike centralized solutions. Ideally, in the long run, cryptocurrency takes on a value of its own, reducing the need to use exchanges.
      - richardwhiuk 5y ago
        Cryptocurrency will still have payment processors for sending money.
      - unionpivo 5y ago
        > At least cryptocurrency prevents censorship when sending funds, unlike centralized solutions. right now, because it's not widely used. If it ever gets mainstream, people will give governments whatever power they need to censor and try to stop things like child pornography. And once they can censor that, they can censor other stuff as well. And I am sure you can come up with technical reasons why monero can't be censored. But i remember when China started their big firewall of china, people where laughing how trivially easy it was to bypass. And that their strategy will never work. Now 15-20 years later, nobody is laughing anymore. In fact a lot of countries seem to be moving into same direction.
swensel 5y ago
Why Monero specifically though, with all the options in crypto available? If you want privacy there are also Zcash shielded transactions. Or if all you want to do is eliminate central parties then why not just Bitcoin? My understanding with Monero is if you don't run your own node there's not that much privacy guarantee anyway (otherwise you have to trust the third party node you point to). Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken about that.
- xvector 5y ago
  Monero is much more private than Zcash. The issue with Zcash shielded transactions is that something like 14% of transactions are shielded, but only 1% are truly private. Optionally shielded transactions make chain analysis much easier and immediately make said transaction suspect. So you cannot comfortably use Zcash for private transactions. See the report by Chainalysis [1]: > 14% of the ZCash transactions use a so-called "shielded pool", but in only 6% of all cases both the sender, recipient and the number of transactions are fully encrypted. The report states: “So even if the concealment on Zcash is stronger due to the zk-SNARK encryption, Chainalysis can still provide the transaction value and at least one address for over 99% of the ZEC activities.” Clearly, optional privacy is not privacy at all. It needs to be on by default, which is the philosophy behind Monero. Re. Monero nodes - if you’re using a remote node you can just use Tor, which I believe is soon to be baked in by default. Otherwise, Monero is still quite private. Your transaction history, transaction amounts etc are not revealed to nodes. Some metadata like restore height is, but that’s not a big deal. [1]: https://www.kryptokumpel.de/en/kryptowaehrungen/chainalysis-lediglich-09-der-zcash-transaktionen-sind-vollstaendig-privat/ https://www.kryptokumpel.de/en/kryptowaehrungen/chainalysis-...
  - reedjosh 5y ago
    Arrr or Pirate is Zcash, but with always on privacy BTW. I like it a lot, but it's relatively new. Also, the ZKSnark method that provides the privacy requires that the devs threw away their initial PKs. If you trust they did, then it's a great option.
    - 5y ago
pessimizer 5y ago
If it were government crypto (or centralized government money transfer), you'd have recourse in the courts.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- reedjosh 5y ago
  But if it were just crypto, nobody would be able to hold your funds. I don't think transferring the power to an even more inscrutable bureaucracy makes this problem any better. Most people already acknowledge that the little guy doesn't have the funds to hire the lawyers for a protracted court case.
AussieWog93 5y ago
Decentralised currencies just open up a whole new can of worms. How do you reverse fraudulent transactions? What happens if your wallet is stolen? Who do you speak to when you need help setting up an account? On a macroeconomic level, it prevents the government from setting certain types of monetary policy that benefit the economy as a whole (although I may be biased there, as the Australian government bailed out the economy as a whole through economic stimulus in 2008 and prevented the spread of the GFC to here). This is all assuming it's pegged to a stable asset like the USD. Bitcoin's average annual inflation over the past 5 years is around 3,000%. For comparison, Zimbabwe's inflation rate in the early 00's was around 500%.
- xvector 5y ago
  > How do you reverse fraudulent transactions? How do you reverse paying someone with cash? You don't. You can ask for a refund and hope they give it to you. If you're transacting with a trusted business, you can expect them to adhere to the law and reverse the payment. In this sense, crypto transactions are no different than how humans have transacted for thousands of years. Chargebacks and reversals are a convenience - they are not necessary. > What happens if your wallet is stolen? What happens when your wallet is stolen in real life? You lose the cash inside. So you keep most money secure in a cold wallet, airgapped and password-protected, and some money secure in a hot wallet, PIN-protected. Usually losing a hardware wallet isn't a big deal anyways, since they wipe themselves after a few PIN tries. The UX around securing wallets will get better over time, but if you pick up a Ledger X today it's actually already quite easy to use. > Who do you speak to when you need help setting up an account? Just like using a wallet with cash in a secure manner took time to become cultural knowledge, using a hardware wallet with cryptocurrency will to. Obviously, there are places where it could become easier to use, but using a Ledger these days is already pretty damn easy. You just connect it to your phone via Bluetooth and you're ready to go. > it prevents the government from setting certain types of monetary policy that benefit the economy as a whole For some, lowering government control over your finances is a pro, not a con, but I can understand that this is up for debate. > This is all assuming it's pegged to a stable asset like the USD. I can agree with this, I think currently the price of cryptocurrency is volatile due to rampant speculation. Eventually it will settle into something stable, and if it doesn't, we can just use alogrithmic stablecoins like DAI that track the value of the dollar to within +/-1% and don't need to be backed by a central institution.
benja123 5y ago
I know this is a popular belief but it’s actually the exact opposite… The reason PayPal holds funds is that a consumer is allowed to reverse a bank and credit card transaction for a few months after the transaction happened. This ability exists to protect consumers from fraudsters, scammers and bad businesses (ones that don’t provide service etc.) which is much more common than people realize. With crypto, the ability to reverse a transaction disappears and with that the ability to protect consumers. Now who do you think will thrive in a world where a consumer has no protection? Scammers, bad businesses and criminals..
- xvector 5y ago
  > With crypto, the ability to reverse a transaction disappears and with that the ability to protect consumers. Now who do you think will thrive in a world where a consumer has no protection? For thousands of years humans have transacted with physical currency, in which transactions cannot be "reversed" once the payment is made. Even today, many people pay and transact with cash. Second-layer financial institutions provide holds, reversals, and chargebacks but they are by no means necessary for a robust financial system. Too many times "protecting consumers" turns into "censoring transactions we don't like" and "restricting your financial freedom to maintain our brand image." (Case in point - sex work payments, even in countries where it is legal, can not be processed by any of the major payment processors. Brand image and all.) Not to mention the privacy concerns that come with a central authority knowing all of your transactions - no thanks, I think I and many others would prefer an electronic cash-equivalent over PayPal.
  - unionpivo 5y ago
    > For thousands of years humans have transacted with physical currency, in which transactions cannot be "reversed" once the payment is made. Even today, many people pay and transact with cash. Second-layer financial institutions provide holds, reversals, and chargebacks but they are by no means necessary for a robust financial system. That is simply not the case. Even in old ancient civilizations and feudal systems you usually had a way to reverse a transaction by going to court (in the old times literal court of the king, nowadays judge). This was and is possible because when you pay in cash you know who you pay to, and authorities (king and/or police) can lay hand on them. So even if you pay cash in brick and mortar shop you can get refunds (usually :) ). One of the reasons why a lot of people are comfortable buying online is easy refunds. And if crypto can't provide that, I don't ever see it catching on in mainstream. And if you want refunds and you are marketplace like eBay , the easiest way to offer refunds is to keep money in escrow which is what is happening here.(Except that their home brew escrow algos seem to not be that great, but crypto won't change that either. ) Bottom line is, crypto either won't go mainstream or will be co-opted by mainstream and will have all of the same problems/features as current currencies. And it's not because governments. It's because people want and expect their government to be able to protect them. And government don't censor things because they don't have nothing better to do. At least in democracy's they start censoring, when enough people cry to them to start censoring. Don't expect that to ever change with or without crypto.
DavideNL 5y ago
The main problem is politics and laws; Whenever a solution pops up that has a negative impact on the finances of the richest 5%, like cryptocurrency, politics/laws will come up with a new method/law to suppress it.

skrowl 5y ago

Monero + Distributed Exchanges will go a long way to fix these kinds of online payment problems. Unfortunately, at least near term you'll still need fiat-tether "on ramps" to convert your local currency back and forth to tether before you move them to a distributed (or at least a non-KYC) exchange to Monero, then sending to your local wallet, then use online.

xvector 5y ago
Yup. It’s worth checking out LocalMonero [1] and the Haveno DEX [2]. The former already works and lets you buy Monero without relying on a KYC exchange. [1] https://localmonero.co/ https://localmonero.co/ [2] https://github.com/haveno-dex/haveno https://github.com/haveno-dex/haveno
- CapricornNoble 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing Haveno. Sounds like it's not a mature app though. I would recommend Bisq as a more refined alternative: https://bisq.network/ https://bisq.network/
  - xvector 5y ago
    Yeah, Haveno is a WIP fork of Bisq for Monero that doesn't require BTC as a middleman and will have a much better UI/UX for newbies. Bisq doesn't even work on my M1 Mac, and the interface is kind of a nightmare.
liquidify 5y ago
Not touching tether with a 10 ft' pole. Stay away from that junk. Use USDC or something else to on ramp.
- not_really 5y ago
  Yikes. Why not get a little usdt while you're at it.

teclordphrack2 5y ago

Nothing keeps an exchange from taking your money and running or not receiving the goods/service you pay for.

xvector 5y ago
Businesses are legally obligated to deliver your goods, so they will do that anyways, just like if you pay in cash today and go back to the store asking for a refund.
- richardwhiuk 5y ago
  Paypal are legally obligated to hand back the money after 180 days. Nothing stops an exchange refusing to do business with you.
  - xvector 5y ago
    At least cryptocurrency prevents censorship when sending funds, unlike centralized solutions. Ideally, in the long run, cryptocurrency takes on a value of its own, reducing the need to use exchanges.
    - richardwhiuk 5y ago
      Cryptocurrency will still have payment processors for sending money.
    - unionpivo 5y ago
      > At least cryptocurrency prevents censorship when sending funds, unlike centralized solutions. right now, because it's not widely used. If it ever gets mainstream, people will give governments whatever power they need to censor and try to stop things like child pornography. And once they can censor that, they can censor other stuff as well. And I am sure you can come up with technical reasons why monero can't be censored. But i remember when China started their big firewall of china, people where laughing how trivially easy it was to bypass. And that their strategy will never work. Now 15-20 years later, nobody is laughing anymore. In fact a lot of countries seem to be moving into same direction.

swensel 5y ago

Why Monero specifically though, with all the options in crypto available? If you want privacy there are also Zcash shielded transactions. Or if all you want to do is eliminate central parties then why not just Bitcoin? My understanding with Monero is if you don't run your own node there's not that much privacy guarantee anyway (otherwise you have to trust the third party node you point to). Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken about that.

xvector 5y ago
Monero is much more private than Zcash. The issue with Zcash shielded transactions is that something like 14% of transactions are shielded, but only 1% are truly private. Optionally shielded transactions make chain analysis much easier and immediately make said transaction suspect. So you cannot comfortably use Zcash for private transactions. See the report by Chainalysis [1]: > 14% of the ZCash transactions use a so-called "shielded pool", but in only 6% of all cases both the sender, recipient and the number of transactions are fully encrypted. The report states: “So even if the concealment on Zcash is stronger due to the zk-SNARK encryption, Chainalysis can still provide the transaction value and at least one address for over 99% of the ZEC activities.” Clearly, optional privacy is not privacy at all. It needs to be on by default, which is the philosophy behind Monero. Re. Monero nodes - if you’re using a remote node you can just use Tor, which I believe is soon to be baked in by default. Otherwise, Monero is still quite private. Your transaction history, transaction amounts etc are not revealed to nodes. Some metadata like restore height is, but that’s not a big deal. [1]: https://www.kryptokumpel.de/en/kryptowaehrungen/chainalysis-lediglich-09-der-zcash-transaktionen-sind-vollstaendig-privat/ https://www.kryptokumpel.de/en/kryptowaehrungen/chainalysis-...
- reedjosh 5y ago
  Arrr or Pirate is Zcash, but with always on privacy BTW. I like it a lot, but it's relatively new. Also, the ZKSnark method that provides the privacy requires that the devs threw away their initial PKs. If you trust they did, then it's a great option.
  - 5y ago

pessimizer 5y ago

If it were government crypto (or centralized government money transfer), you'd have recourse in the courts.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
reedjosh 5y ago
But if it were just crypto, nobody would be able to hold your funds. I don't think transferring the power to an even more inscrutable bureaucracy makes this problem any better. Most people already acknowledge that the little guy doesn't have the funds to hire the lawyers for a protracted court case.

AussieWog93 5y ago

Decentralised currencies just open up a whole new can of worms. How do you reverse fraudulent transactions? What happens if your wallet is stolen? Who do you speak to when you need help setting up an account? On a macroeconomic level, it prevents the government from setting certain types of monetary policy that benefit the economy as a whole (although I may be biased there, as the Australian government bailed out the economy as a whole through economic stimulus in 2008 and prevented the spread of the GFC to here). This is all assuming it's pegged to a stable asset like the USD. Bitcoin's average annual inflation over the past 5 years is around 3,000%. For comparison, Zimbabwe's inflation rate in the early 00's was around 500%.

xvector 5y ago
> How do you reverse fraudulent transactions? How do you reverse paying someone with cash? You don't. You can ask for a refund and hope they give it to you. If you're transacting with a trusted business, you can expect them to adhere to the law and reverse the payment. In this sense, crypto transactions are no different than how humans have transacted for thousands of years. Chargebacks and reversals are a convenience - they are not necessary. > What happens if your wallet is stolen? What happens when your wallet is stolen in real life? You lose the cash inside. So you keep most money secure in a cold wallet, airgapped and password-protected, and some money secure in a hot wallet, PIN-protected. Usually losing a hardware wallet isn't a big deal anyways, since they wipe themselves after a few PIN tries. The UX around securing wallets will get better over time, but if you pick up a Ledger X today it's actually already quite easy to use. > Who do you speak to when you need help setting up an account? Just like using a wallet with cash in a secure manner took time to become cultural knowledge, using a hardware wallet with cryptocurrency will to. Obviously, there are places where it could become easier to use, but using a Ledger these days is already pretty damn easy. You just connect it to your phone via Bluetooth and you're ready to go. > it prevents the government from setting certain types of monetary policy that benefit the economy as a whole For some, lowering government control over your finances is a pro, not a con, but I can understand that this is up for debate. > This is all assuming it's pegged to a stable asset like the USD. I can agree with this, I think currently the price of cryptocurrency is volatile due to rampant speculation. Eventually it will settle into something stable, and if it doesn't, we can just use alogrithmic stablecoins like DAI that track the value of the dollar to within +/-1% and don't need to be backed by a central institution.

benja123 5y ago

I know this is a popular belief but it’s actually the exact opposite… The reason PayPal holds funds is that a consumer is allowed to reverse a bank and credit card transaction for a few months after the transaction happened. This ability exists to protect consumers from fraudsters, scammers and bad businesses (ones that don’t provide service etc.) which is much more common than people realize. With crypto, the ability to reverse a transaction disappears and with that the ability to protect consumers. Now who do you think will thrive in a world where a consumer has no protection? Scammers, bad businesses and criminals..

xvector 5y ago
> With crypto, the ability to reverse a transaction disappears and with that the ability to protect consumers. Now who do you think will thrive in a world where a consumer has no protection? For thousands of years humans have transacted with physical currency, in which transactions cannot be "reversed" once the payment is made. Even today, many people pay and transact with cash. Second-layer financial institutions provide holds, reversals, and chargebacks but they are by no means necessary for a robust financial system. Too many times "protecting consumers" turns into "censoring transactions we don't like" and "restricting your financial freedom to maintain our brand image." (Case in point - sex work payments, even in countries where it is legal, can not be processed by any of the major payment processors. Brand image and all.) Not to mention the privacy concerns that come with a central authority knowing all of your transactions - no thanks, I think I and many others would prefer an electronic cash-equivalent over PayPal.
- unionpivo 5y ago
  > For thousands of years humans have transacted with physical currency, in which transactions cannot be "reversed" once the payment is made. Even today, many people pay and transact with cash. Second-layer financial institutions provide holds, reversals, and chargebacks but they are by no means necessary for a robust financial system. That is simply not the case. Even in old ancient civilizations and feudal systems you usually had a way to reverse a transaction by going to court (in the old times literal court of the king, nowadays judge). This was and is possible because when you pay in cash you know who you pay to, and authorities (king and/or police) can lay hand on them. So even if you pay cash in brick and mortar shop you can get refunds (usually :) ). One of the reasons why a lot of people are comfortable buying online is easy refunds. And if crypto can't provide that, I don't ever see it catching on in mainstream. And if you want refunds and you are marketplace like eBay , the easiest way to offer refunds is to keep money in escrow which is what is happening here.(Except that their home brew escrow algos seem to not be that great, but crypto won't change that either. ) Bottom line is, crypto either won't go mainstream or will be co-opted by mainstream and will have all of the same problems/features as current currencies. And it's not because governments. It's because people want and expect their government to be able to protect them. And government don't censor things because they don't have nothing better to do. At least in democracy's they start censoring, when enough people cry to them to start censoring. Don't expect that to ever change with or without crypto.

DavideNL 5y ago

The main problem is politics and laws; Whenever a solution pops up that has a negative impact on the finances of the richest 5%, like cryptocurrency, politics/laws will come up with a new method/law to suppress it.