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Oh no, it works like cash! People will do things with money that you're uncomfortable with. If it's criminal, then laws and enforcement and investigation will

Oh no, it works like cash! People will do things with money that you're uncomfortable with. If it's criminal, then laws and enforcement and investigation will have to evolve. That doesn't mean "well, I guess we have to give up privacy now. " Not your money, not your business. Privacy is important, and it's a binary proposition. It's either part of the currency or it's not. You can't have any gray area because people are fallible, malicious, and stupid. You design the system to disempower human foibles as much as you can. Monero does a good job of that.

colinmhayes 5y ago
Cash is much more difficult to take across borders... Monero is superior to cash for criminal activity in just about every way, the only downside is that it's a bit less liquid. This deflection about it being used in crime less than cash is weak to the point of bad faith. The privacy argument has more to stand on though. Although I will say "not your money, not our business" is a pretty controversial take.
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  Criminals send illegal goods from Colombia to Europe through amateur submarines [1]. Doesn't require much thinking to guess what submarines come back filled with. It's not that they can't move money illegally already. We wouldn't advocate the usage of horses in modern cities because cars make it easier for criminals to escape law enforcement. I also don't think it's reasonable to not support Monero just because you worry it might be used for criminal activity. [1] https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/colombia-narco-submarines-europe/ https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/colombia-narco-submar...
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  There should be absolutely nothing controversial with that. What I spend my money on that doesn't harm anyone is nobody's business but mine and whoever I'm paying. If it does harm someone, well, that's why we have laws and law enforcement. It's the harm - the crime - that gets punished or penalized. Just like someone who gets drunk and drives. The results can be heinous, so the action is appropriately and severely punished. Anonymity, or fungibility, doesn't interfere with that. It simply requires that evidence of harm or crime not depend on an abstract exchange of information.
loeg 5y ago
Cash doesn't burn a bunch of electricity on a PoW scheme.
- bigger_inside 5y ago
  The dollar system is built on eternal growth and the oil economy, and its proof of work is endless wars. I'll take bitcoin and monero any day; they're much, much greener than what we currently have.
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  A wasteless means of payment and accounting is wishful thinking, from my point of view. We don't really use cash anymore, but a digital representation of it. This comes with a lot of electricity consumption on datacenters, among other waste. For example: financial institutions have to waste a lot of resources just to keep the system "safe", for you, the government, etc. Requires extensive cybersecurity, bureaucratic and legal spending.
- bartvk 5y ago
  The amount of electricity spent on creating and maintaining cash must be pretty big, right? Am I misunderstanding you?
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    How much of a carbon footprint does the global traditional cash and banking industry produce per usd relative to the equivalent footprint of a cryptocurrency? It's not just electricity, it's concrete and steel for banks and parking lots, employees driving to and from work, armored cars transporting cash, etc. Traditional cash is many, many orders of magnitude dirtier than even the worst cryptocurrency. If you could assess the cost in pollution and other harms, you'd also want to assess the value in jobs and infrastructure and other utility. I'd bet cryptocurrency ends up being a far better tool all around, especially if institutional protections can be emulated - some sort of fraud insurance and so on. Anyway, it's silly to neg on crypto because it uses lots of power. Total red herring. It's a good ambition to make crypto more efficient, but the fuss is all FUD memeing from the usual suspects.
forty 5y ago
Monero (and others) does make ransom collection much more convenient/safe to do. Isn't it its main use case, with probably purchasing drugs and arms? I'm not saying that in theory people wouldn't want to privately purchase their baguette (sorry I'm French), it's just that in practice they generally don't care, unless they are doing something illegal. I'm curious, for those of you who do, what do you actually purchase with monero that's legal? (And why?)
- kibbleble 5y ago
  You want to tip people on Twitter with BTC and have your address exposed to everyone? You want people to be able to trace how much you have in that wallet? Why not let people see the transactions going through your checking account? You got nothing to hide, right?
  - forty 5y ago
    It's a good point, but I was not thinking of using some other crypto currency instead, but just normal money (I don't have to make the amount on my account public to pay by credit card)
- Forbo 5y ago
  I have paid for splitting a ride share, tipping open source projects, donating to development funds, etc. I use it because I hate the trend of surveillance capitalism you see with crap like Venmo and even credit cards.
- quantumBerry 5y ago
  What if your wife hates your baguette habit and she reads your joint bank statements.
  - forty 5y ago
    Well I would use my personal account for my baguette :) Also I'm not sure she would like my purchasing of cryptocurrency much more ;)
pjc50 5y ago
> Privacy is important, and it's a binary proposition. It never used to be a binary proposition, it used to be somewhat proportionate because (a) there was a cost to surveillance and (b) there was a cost to acting covertly - crime was inherently local and hard to scale. So you wouldn't have the police surveilling everyone unless that was critical to the stability of the state (Stasi etc), and it was infeasible to track cash transactions so a certain amount of crime and evasion was tolerated. But it was limited because cash is inherently bulky. Even a few million dollars is hard to carry around. Now the internet has falsified both of those. Both crime and surveillance can be scaled up and globalized. So it has become binarized, with one of two outcomes: anonymous transactions + frictionless crime, including evasion of tax and currency controls; OR omnipresent surveillance of everyone and every transaction. Cryptocurrency is accelerating towards one of those two outcomes. I just don't think it'll be the first one.

colinmhayes 5y ago

Cash is much more difficult to take across borders... Monero is superior to cash for criminal activity in just about every way, the only downside is that it's a bit less liquid. This deflection about it being used in crime less than cash is weak to the point of bad faith. The privacy argument has more to stand on though. Although I will say "not your money, not our business" is a pretty controversial take.

rmbyrro 5y ago
Criminals send illegal goods from Colombia to Europe through amateur submarines [1]. Doesn't require much thinking to guess what submarines come back filled with. It's not that they can't move money illegally already. We wouldn't advocate the usage of horses in modern cities because cars make it easier for criminals to escape law enforcement. I also don't think it's reasonable to not support Monero just because you worry it might be used for criminal activity. [1] https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/colombia-narco-submarines-europe/ https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/colombia-narco-submar...
robbedpeter 5y ago
There should be absolutely nothing controversial with that. What I spend my money on that doesn't harm anyone is nobody's business but mine and whoever I'm paying. If it does harm someone, well, that's why we have laws and law enforcement. It's the harm - the crime - that gets punished or penalized. Just like someone who gets drunk and drives. The results can be heinous, so the action is appropriately and severely punished. Anonymity, or fungibility, doesn't interfere with that. It simply requires that evidence of harm or crime not depend on an abstract exchange of information.

loeg 5y ago

Cash doesn't burn a bunch of electricity on a PoW scheme.

bigger_inside 5y ago
The dollar system is built on eternal growth and the oil economy, and its proof of work is endless wars. I'll take bitcoin and monero any day; they're much, much greener than what we currently have.
rmbyrro 5y ago
A wasteless means of payment and accounting is wishful thinking, from my point of view. We don't really use cash anymore, but a digital representation of it. This comes with a lot of electricity consumption on datacenters, among other waste. For example: financial institutions have to waste a lot of resources just to keep the system "safe", for you, the government, etc. Requires extensive cybersecurity, bureaucratic and legal spending.
bartvk 5y ago
The amount of electricity spent on creating and maintaining cash must be pretty big, right? Am I misunderstanding you?
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  How much of a carbon footprint does the global traditional cash and banking industry produce per usd relative to the equivalent footprint of a cryptocurrency? It's not just electricity, it's concrete and steel for banks and parking lots, employees driving to and from work, armored cars transporting cash, etc. Traditional cash is many, many orders of magnitude dirtier than even the worst cryptocurrency. If you could assess the cost in pollution and other harms, you'd also want to assess the value in jobs and infrastructure and other utility. I'd bet cryptocurrency ends up being a far better tool all around, especially if institutional protections can be emulated - some sort of fraud insurance and so on. Anyway, it's silly to neg on crypto because it uses lots of power. Total red herring. It's a good ambition to make crypto more efficient, but the fuss is all FUD memeing from the usual suspects.

forty 5y ago

Monero (and others) does make ransom collection much more convenient/safe to do. Isn't it its main use case, with probably purchasing drugs and arms? I'm not saying that in theory people wouldn't want to privately purchase their baguette (sorry I'm French), it's just that in practice they generally don't care, unless they are doing something illegal. I'm curious, for those of you who do, what do you actually purchase with monero that's legal? (And why?)

kibbleble 5y ago
You want to tip people on Twitter with BTC and have your address exposed to everyone? You want people to be able to trace how much you have in that wallet? Why not let people see the transactions going through your checking account? You got nothing to hide, right?
- forty 5y ago
  It's a good point, but I was not thinking of using some other crypto currency instead, but just normal money (I don't have to make the amount on my account public to pay by credit card)
Forbo 5y ago
I have paid for splitting a ride share, tipping open source projects, donating to development funds, etc. I use it because I hate the trend of surveillance capitalism you see with crap like Venmo and even credit cards.
quantumBerry 5y ago
What if your wife hates your baguette habit and she reads your joint bank statements.
- forty 5y ago
  Well I would use my personal account for my baguette :) Also I'm not sure she would like my purchasing of cryptocurrency much more ;)

pjc50 5y ago

> Privacy is important, and it's a binary proposition. It never used to be a binary proposition, it used to be somewhat proportionate because (a) there was a cost to surveillance and (b) there was a cost to acting covertly - crime was inherently local and hard to scale. So you wouldn't have the police surveilling everyone unless that was critical to the stability of the state (Stasi etc), and it was infeasible to track cash transactions so a certain amount of crime and evasion was tolerated. But it was limited because cash is inherently bulky. Even a few million dollars is hard to carry around. Now the internet has falsified both of those. Both crime and surveillance can be scaled up and globalized. So it has become binarized, with one of two outcomes: anonymous transactions + frictionless crime, including evasion of tax and currency controls; OR omnipresent surveillance of everyone and every transaction. Cryptocurrency is accelerating towards one of those two outcomes. I just don't think it'll be the first one.