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How can anyone think this is a good thing? At least other crypto projects have a degree of transparency going for them. I don't understand how people can possi

• api 5y ago
  It’s also possible to argue that your perspective comes from a place of privilege, namely the privilege of living in a country with some respect for human rights and the rule of law. That is an anomaly in human history. Much of the world still lives under governments that are hostile to many of their people, and we can easily slide back to that condition. I also have to point out that cash is largely opaque and we have used cash for centuries. Laws were still be enforced. While cash can be exchanged with no knowledge of anyone but the participants, large scale movements and usage of money requires interactions that are very noticeable and traceable. It’s easy to move money anonymously but very hard to use it that way. Monero doesn’t change this very much.
  • enragedcacti 5y ago
    I don't have a horse in this race, but one difference between cash and monero is that the sheer physical size of cash can cause lots of problems for organized crime[1], to the point that some people advocate for eliminating the $100 bill to make moving large amounts of cash more burdensome [2]. As far as I am aware its irrelevant how much money you are moving in monero until you get up to transaction sizes that effect the price of other monero you hold. [1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/still-using-cash/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/still-using-cash/ [2]https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/opinion/getting-rid-of-big-currency-notes-could-help-fight-crime.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/opinion/getting-rid-of-bi...
• 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  You know what else is similarly opaque, hard to trace, anonymous and still legal tender? Cash.
  • darau1 5y ago
    True, but the key difference is that cash must be physically transported.
  • MichaelMoser123 5y ago
    I am not sure about the 'hard to trace' part. they could track the serial numbers on banknotes, for example when an ATM is dispensing the banknotes. Also there are people who persue the tracking banknotes as a hobby: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_bill_tracking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_bill_tracking
    • 0des 5y ago
      It's comparing apples and oranges though isnt it? Monero is fungible, cash is not.
      • gojomo 5y ago
        Except for the de minimus overhead of making-change/breaking-big-bills, physical cash is usually described as 'fungible' in the sense meaningful for economics: each $N is completely equivalent to any other $N – na matter its history or how the tally was subdivided/recombined over time.
        • 0des 5y ago
          That's not what fungible means though. When you start printing numbers on them, they're no longer fungible.
          • gojomo 5y ago
            Perhaps pedantically from a particular viewpoint, & if banks used a blacklist of certain bill numbers. But to financial economists, cash is a textbook example of a ‘fungible’ thing. So a statement like – “Monero is fungible, cash is not.” – implies you’re using peculiar definitions.
• heavyset_go 5y ago
  Cash exists and can change hands without there being a record of transactions. At the lower end of the economy, many people are paid in cash and transact in cash, and as you've said, society hasn't imploded. The government tends to go after lower and middle class people when enforcing laws. I think the benefits of preserving privacy outweigh the IRS collecting the $600 someone who makes $30k owes.
• ofrzeta 5y ago
  The current trend in Europe is even more transparency in the financial affairs of private customers. There's a new law in effect in Germany that prescribes some document of origin if you deposit more than 10.000 Euros of cash in your account. While I am all for measures against laundering money I don't like being continously watched and monitored.
• ianmiers 5y ago
  Because Bitcoin is twitter for your bank account. It exposes everything you do to anyone who can download the blockchain. You can argue that some gov/regulator should have access, though good luck finding one country everyone trusts. More realistically, and practically, you could require that, as many jurisdictions do with cash, we should have reporting requirements for when a merchant sells something for large amounts of cryptocurrency. But its pretty hard to argue everyone should be financially naked and exposed to anyone who wants to look. To fix that, even if you're government surveillance friendly, you first need to make the blockchain zero-knowledge (which Monero actually isn't good at, but thats irrelevant here).
  • minsc__and__boo 5y ago
    Right? The whole "I don't understand how people can possibly think that identity obfuscation at scale is a good thing for a financial system" can be answered by, "Will you share your entire transaction history and account balances with the entire world? Why not?"
    • colinmhayes 5y ago
      Most people agree that financial regulations regarding money laundering are a good thing. You're arguing a strawman, no one is saying everyone's banking transactions should be on a blockchain.
      • logicchains 5y ago
        >Most people agree that financial regulations regarding money laundering are a good thing Not people who've done any research on the matter. Regulations on money laundering have been almost completely ineffective at reducing crime (the end goal); the drug market is bigger than ever. What they do achieve is imposing a significant burden on individual and small businesses, while large banks like HSBC can get away with money laundering by paying a nominal fine. Money laundering regulations are like the financial version of the war on drugs: completely ineffective at what they set out to do, succeeding only at giving the government more power and making life harder for the powerless.
• gojomo 5y ago
  Rule of law & democracy began when people had far more privacy than today. The founding motivations for the USA included resisting privacy abuses like 'general warrants' – the state peeking into everyone's business, without specific suspicion, to find criminals. The modern level of financial surveillance – KYC, etc – is only a few decades old, and collects more info for the state than any 'general warrant' could. Even in fairly-free countries, the burdens & murky liabilities created by turning every financial agent into a part-time police informer has the effect of persecuting & impoverishing disfavored individuals & groups – even those who've been convicted of no crime. In unfree states the same surveillance helps quash all kinds of dissent. A blind faith in authorities' use of financial surveillance ignores history & the current reality of billions living under untrustworthy regimes. Many hardly even pretend to offer "rule of law & democracy".
  • enumjorge 5y ago
    I don't quite follow your logic. The parent comment pointed out that obfuscating financial transactions makes it hard to enforce laws. You responded by saying Monero improves privacy. That might be true, but it doesn't really address the concern about illegal/harmful activity that a current like Monero would enable. I do agree that financial surveillance is an issue, but I'm not sure Monero is the best way to curtail it. Why not try passing strong consumer protection laws that ban companies from collecting and selling data on financial transactions as well as tighter restrictions on the access that law enforcement has on this data? If the problem is a government that is abusing its power, it wouldn't be too hard for them to crackdown on any cryptocurrency they consider a threat. Monero feels like a band-aid rather than a long term solution, and one with some pretty significant downsides.
    • ByteJockey 5y ago
      > tighter restrictions on the access that law enforcement has on this data I get your point here, but once someone has already lost trust in the government, having the government regulate itself isn't really a viable counter to that person's concerns.
    • gojomo 5y ago
• ajkdhcb2 5y ago
  It is not safe to use Bitcoin and other traceable cryptocurrencies. I for one don't want to be tortured with a drill and there is a long list of such events: https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks Some people say the same things about encryption, but it is a very accurate parallel that it actually makes society safer, and the technology can't be taken from "criminals" so you just have to deal with its existence.
  • ryan_lane 5y ago
    Use a bank account, then?
    • InvertedRhodium 5y ago
      Why would I when there are methods that afford me more privacy? For example, Monero.
    • ajkdhcb2 5y ago
      Unnecessary intermediaries should be removed. Especially intermediaries with a horrendous corruption track record that coerce you to let them hold your money. Money that can be printed at will by some people in power is also quite a joke; cryptocurrency provides a new unit of account in addition to a payment system.
      • ryan_lane 5y ago
        Those intermediaries replace your money if it's fraudulently stolen, and have protections in place from allowing your accounts to be fully drained (and have ways to let you control those protections). For the vast majority of people, banks do more good in their lives than harm. Cryptocurrency isn't a bank. It's a virtual mattress to stuff your money into, and one that lends itself very well to torturing you until you unlock the wallet.
        • ajkdhcb2 5y ago
          All of those points seem invalid to me when you consider that people have the option for custodial multi-signature systems and time-delays etc. If you want certain behaviour you can do it, often without giving a corrupt organisation complete control over your money Further, many people live in countries where the people simply cannot trust their institutions or the value of their currencies, to the point where they are better off storing USD under their mattress, so the technology should be there for those people
• bgibson 5y ago
  > I don't understand how people can possibly think that identity obfuscation at scale is a good thing for a financial system. There's an important side-effect to an anonymous financial system which doesn't get much attention, but is worth noting. An anonymous financial system is a debt-less financial system, since without identity you can't do credit ratings or other means of enforcement of repayment. Everything is either a commodity or equity/security, not a debt instrument. And there is no debt-financing, only equity-financing (similar to the VC industry). No debt means no leverage, or in the case of the Global Financial Crisis, no over-leverage [1]. Without debt and leverage you can't have a systemic credit collapse, the most destructive type of financial crisis (GFC, Great Depression). I've seen one estimate that if central banks and govts hadn't bailed out the financial system in 2007/2008 GFC, there was so much leverage that the collapse would have lost the banking system more money than it had cumulatively made over its entire ~300yr modern history. That would have been Mad Max time for sure, and why the bailouts were the lesser evil. By eliminating identity from the financial system you've deterministically eliminated the worst possible outcome that system could incur, and materially changed the expectation value for the system (and society) over time. In the short-term, a highly leveraged, debt-based financial system will likely outperform an equity/commodity-only financial system. But over the medium to long term, when periodic credit collapses are factored in to the former, probably not. In blockchain financial systems, any activity that requires collateral must be over-collateralized [2], resulting in significantly increased systemic robustness and reliability. If we care about deterministically eliminating the most destructive type of financial crisis from the table of possible outcomes, then we must acknowledge this is a useful side-effect of an anonymous financial system. Finally, the comparative damage to society of a GFC-style collapse is greater than things that are enabled by untraceable money, like money laundering and sex-trafficking. The latter can be horrible, but the former is potentially a different order of magnitude, if bailouts are not possible (which may be the case next time). * Notes & Clarifications: 1. High volatility due to price discovery activities is not the same as systemic collapse. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are highly volatile, losing and gaining ~80% of their value multiple times over their first decade of existence. But such volatility is not the same as a systemic collapse. 2. Atomic debt like flash loans are still possible, where the loan is atomically made, invested, liquidated, and repaid all in the same smart contract. If any part of that contract fails, or the loan can't be repaid, then the entire thing is rolled back and the loan never even happened. But that can't result in a collapse in the same way the traditional banking system can. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008#Increased_debt_burden_or_overleveraging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80... [2]:https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/overcollateralization.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/overcollateralization.a...
• kongin 5y ago
  >This is a blindness that can only come from a lifetime of extreme privilege. The system is already that for everyone rich enough. I just want to have the same privilege as the Clintons and Trumps when it comes to ~~bribes~~ voluntary contributions.
• nickthemagicman 5y ago
  Some would argue that your comfort in allowing the government to see all of your transactions is borne of a lifetime of privilege. Almost all governments throughout history except for now would have abused that privilege.
• blueprint 5y ago
  when a monetary system lacks privacy it also gives up fungibility (meaning soundness goes out the window too)
• InvertedRhodium 5y ago
  > How can anyone think this is a good thing? Easily - I value my ability to remain private more than I do your ability to enforce laws.
  • colinmhayes 5y ago
    > This is a blindness that can only come from a lifetime of extreme privilege.
    • InvertedRhodium 5y ago
      I guess extreme privilege is a relative concept, so depending on where you sit it might very well appear that way to you. The beauty of that particular accusation is that you can't really defend against it - as any disagreement can simply be used to infer an even higher degree of privilege.
      • colinmhayes 5y ago
        Which financial crimes have you been a victim of?
        • deft 5y ago
          This line of questioning is pretty silly. Of course your pet cause needs to be solved through legislation immediately.
• zapataband1 5y ago
  the rule of law that lets white collar criminals go routinely, in which police seize more property than the amount of robberies in a year? In which warmongers go free and activists are routinely murdered? You really question why people value their privacy from autocracies, it's not from a place of privilege but extreme fear.
• mattwilsonn888 5y ago
  You must be ignorant to how crypto currencies and Monero in particular as a project is structured. Monero as a financial system is not as you say "completely opaque" - that's laughable. All the code that runs every Monero client is completely open source. Now some more savvy people will still complain: "If we can't see any of the balances then how do we know """they""" aren't minting coins out of thin air or defrauding other users?" The truth is that you can simply read the code and determine that that is impossible. Or more accurately, someone very smart can (I for example can't give that guarantee first hand). But that's why open source software is beautiful - the code is not obfuscated or unclear, if there were any flaws in the system a single white hat could easily sound the alarm. Long story short, you are confusing transaction privacy with protocol obscurity, the genius of Monero is that its protocol is completely in the open but it retains privacy for its users - that's the genius your ignorance is taking for granted.
  • frank_nitti 5y ago
    Clearly they are not questioning the ingenuity of the authors of the source code, that seems like an attempt to misrepresent their position. In fact, they are directly calling out the "transaction privacy" component as a net negative for modern civilization, since it effectively facilitates transactions among criminal enterprises.
• sealaska 5y ago
  What do you think of E2E encryption in apps like Signal? Does the same logic apply?
• sumedh 5y ago
  > make it impossible to enforce laws. Rich people already have that advantage, why not give the same advantage to the little guy?