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Great article, and I'm glad to see privacy being a focus in a cryptocurrency, but I would like to see some other sources that aren't also promoting the token.

Great article, and I'm glad to see privacy being a focus in a cryptocurrency, but I would like to see some other sources that aren't also promoting the token. That said, I do think it's got the brightest future of any coin besides BTC for the very reason.

stuxnet79 1y ago
> That said, I do think it's got the brightest future of any coin besides BTC for the very reason. Brightest future in terms of what? Traction? Market cap? This is what I thought 7 years ago, and I beefed up my XMR position as a result. Meanwhile, Bitcoin an objectively inferior technology, has 25x since then.
candiddevmike 1y ago
Preface this by saying I am not a fan of any cryptocurrency, but I really struggle to understand why Monero has a smaller market cap than BTC. It has to be inertia related right? Monero just seems like a fundamentally better piece of technology. Are there scaling issues with Monero, similar/worse than BTC?
- dboreham 1y ago
  > better piece of technology Technology quality is uncorrelated with market cap. This would be like saying Frontier Airlines should have a higher market cap than United because one uses Linux and the other is still on mainframes..
- PokedBear 1y ago
  It doesn't need a lot of speculative value in order to be useful. It just needs enough value to make the transactions meaningful. And that means people are a lot less likely to drive up the price via speculation.
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
  BTC is not about usefulness. The Bitcoin community has abandoned all of the original principles that made them. It is now just about line goes up and make money.
  - MoneroDotForex 1y ago
    The Monero community is the one that at least tries to emulate to Satoshi's Bitcoin.
- tromp 1y ago
  Yes, it scales much worse: * node resources scale with the size of the UTXO set (unspent outputs), which in Monero's case balloons to the entire TXO set (all outputs, orders of magnitude larger) * a typical 2-input 2-output transaction is 4 times larger * wallets have to track all outputs to choose random decoys for transaction inputs One can argue that this is the price to pay for significantly better privacy, but the largest benefits come from having no visible amounts or addresses, which can be achieved with significantly better scalability than BTC [1]. [1] https://forum.grin.mw/t/scalability-vs-privacy-chart/8114 https://forum.grin.mw/t/scalability-vs-privacy-chart/8114
  - coldblues 1y ago
    Tari uses Mimblewimble (privacy coin developed by previous Monero devs with a focus on privacy), so we're not far from being able to benefit from it.
  - proxynoproxy 1y ago
    Don’t forget that opaque blockchains can have invisible inflation. Transparent blockchains will always be worth more, as the user can verify that inflation has not occurred. This applies to grin as much as xmr.
    - beeflet 1y ago
      In opaque blockchains, the mechanism that prevents inflation is the same mechanism that prevents double-spending. The user can verify that inflation has not occurred by running a monero node. Everything considered, I don't think that the risk of a monero inflation bug is greater than a bitcoin inflation bug when you consider the complexity associated with scripting.
    - tromp 1y ago
      Indeed that is one downside of hiding amounts, as shown in row "Fully auditable supply" in [1]. Finding out just one discrete log (log_G(H)) can collapse the whole system with undetectable inflation. [1] https://phyro.github.io/grinvestigation/why_grin.html https://phyro.github.io/grinvestigation/why_grin.html
- short_sells_poo 1y ago
  Mindshare and hype tend to be self reinforcing and create their own gravity. BTC has the largest market share because it has the largest market share. The moment it got derivatives and ETFs listed and traded on major US exchanges (e.g. CME futures), it became the clear winner because if you are a hedge fund and want to get on the crypto bandwagon, it's easily accessible, liquid and doesn't require extra paperwork. So you trade that instead of going on some unregulated exchange where you might end up as a news headline of "Hedge Fund loses money in crypto exchange exit scam".
- im3w1l 1y ago
  One important factor is that Monero are printed at a constant rate, unlike BTC that are printed at an exponentially slowing rate. A constant rate of printing means the supply is uncapped but the inflation rate will approach zero. Monero's choice is arguably better for actual use as a currency, as the printing will prevent deflation from lost coins. But it makes it less attractive as an investment.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    > But it makes it less attractive as an investment. For me that's a feature not a bug. The investor cryptobros have thoroughly killed the interest in BTC as a real payment method and made it just a vaporware pyramid scheme. They have accumulated a lot of influence. Also they corrupted the whole idea behind bitcoin which was independence from the old centralised banking system where others control your money. To guarantee their investments they've rebuilt the whole old system in bitcoin with the exchanges and some regulators even demanding you use them to store your BTC.
    - piracyrules 1y ago
      [dead]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- sfjailbird 1y ago
  Isn't BTC privacy achievable these days with coinjoin, lightning network etc.? In that case no much reason for monero.
  - tsimionescu 1y ago
    It still seems fantastical to me that lightning network is presented as "something running on BTC", when it is "something running completely separately, instead of BTC". Transactions on Lightning network are not transactions on BTC, and have none of the guarantees of BTC (and in fact have no reliable guarantees of no double spending). The only way to get BTC-like guarantees of no double-spending for Lightning network transactions is to put every transaction on the BTC block chain ("close the channel" after every transaction). And then, of course, you get back all of the problems of BTC (minuscule TPS not enough for a small village, 0 privacy, huge energy costs).
    - swores 1y ago
      If what tsimionescu says about Lightning is wrong, can somebody kindly reply to them explaining why rather than just downvoting which doesn't help anyone. (Maybe there's a reason they were downvoted that isn't their being wrong, but I don't see what that would be.) (And sorry for going against the guidelines and talking about downvotes, but I'm really just asking for someone to either confirm what they said is right or explain why it isn't, I'm not caring about the votes themselves.)
      - tromp 1y ago
        See https://blog.breez.technology/lightning-btc-iou-62e3a712c913 https://blog.breez.technology/lightning-btc-iou-62e3a712c913 for instance.
        tsimionescu 1y ago
        As that post makes clear at the end, if you don't monitor the BTC block chain actively (with an app or by paying a third party you trust to hopefully do it for you), you can be cheated out of your BTC with Lightning.
- lawn 1y ago
  > Are there scaling issues with Monero, similar/worse than BTC? While there are scaling issues with BTC it's severely worsened by the fact that BTC had refused to scale on-chain. Monero is technically much harder to scale but since it doesn't have the same self-imposed restriction it can handle more transactions than Bitcoin can.
- protocolture 1y ago
  >It has to be inertia related right? Consider that a lot of Bitcoin is assumed to be locked up. If an old satoshi wallet started moving funds, the price would probably halve.

stuxnet79 1y ago

> That said, I do think it's got the brightest future of any coin besides BTC for the very reason. Brightest future in terms of what? Traction? Market cap? This is what I thought 7 years ago, and I beefed up my XMR position as a result. Meanwhile, Bitcoin an objectively inferior technology, has 25x since then.

candiddevmike 1y ago

Preface this by saying I am not a fan of any cryptocurrency, but I really struggle to understand why Monero has a smaller market cap than BTC. It has to be inertia related right? Monero just seems like a fundamentally better piece of technology. Are there scaling issues with Monero, similar/worse than BTC?

dboreham 1y ago
> better piece of technology Technology quality is uncorrelated with market cap. This would be like saying Frontier Airlines should have a higher market cap than United because one uses Linux and the other is still on mainframes..
PokedBear 1y ago
It doesn't need a lot of speculative value in order to be useful. It just needs enough value to make the transactions meaningful. And that means people are a lot less likely to drive up the price via speculation.
ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
BTC is not about usefulness. The Bitcoin community has abandoned all of the original principles that made them. It is now just about line goes up and make money.
- MoneroDotForex 1y ago
  The Monero community is the one that at least tries to emulate to Satoshi's Bitcoin.
tromp 1y ago
Yes, it scales much worse: * node resources scale with the size of the UTXO set (unspent outputs), which in Monero's case balloons to the entire TXO set (all outputs, orders of magnitude larger) * a typical 2-input 2-output transaction is 4 times larger * wallets have to track all outputs to choose random decoys for transaction inputs One can argue that this is the price to pay for significantly better privacy, but the largest benefits come from having no visible amounts or addresses, which can be achieved with significantly better scalability than BTC [1]. [1] https://forum.grin.mw/t/scalability-vs-privacy-chart/8114 https://forum.grin.mw/t/scalability-vs-privacy-chart/8114
- coldblues 1y ago
  Tari uses Mimblewimble (privacy coin developed by previous Monero devs with a focus on privacy), so we're not far from being able to benefit from it.
- proxynoproxy 1y ago
  Don’t forget that opaque blockchains can have invisible inflation. Transparent blockchains will always be worth more, as the user can verify that inflation has not occurred. This applies to grin as much as xmr.
  - beeflet 1y ago
    In opaque blockchains, the mechanism that prevents inflation is the same mechanism that prevents double-spending. The user can verify that inflation has not occurred by running a monero node. Everything considered, I don't think that the risk of a monero inflation bug is greater than a bitcoin inflation bug when you consider the complexity associated with scripting.
  - tromp 1y ago
    Indeed that is one downside of hiding amounts, as shown in row "Fully auditable supply" in [1]. Finding out just one discrete log (log_G(H)) can collapse the whole system with undetectable inflation. [1] https://phyro.github.io/grinvestigation/why_grin.html https://phyro.github.io/grinvestigation/why_grin.html
short_sells_poo 1y ago
Mindshare and hype tend to be self reinforcing and create their own gravity. BTC has the largest market share because it has the largest market share. The moment it got derivatives and ETFs listed and traded on major US exchanges (e.g. CME futures), it became the clear winner because if you are a hedge fund and want to get on the crypto bandwagon, it's easily accessible, liquid and doesn't require extra paperwork. So you trade that instead of going on some unregulated exchange where you might end up as a news headline of "Hedge Fund loses money in crypto exchange exit scam".
im3w1l 1y ago
One important factor is that Monero are printed at a constant rate, unlike BTC that are printed at an exponentially slowing rate. A constant rate of printing means the supply is uncapped but the inflation rate will approach zero. Monero's choice is arguably better for actual use as a currency, as the printing will prevent deflation from lost coins. But it makes it less attractive as an investment.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  > But it makes it less attractive as an investment. For me that's a feature not a bug. The investor cryptobros have thoroughly killed the interest in BTC as a real payment method and made it just a vaporware pyramid scheme. They have accumulated a lot of influence. Also they corrupted the whole idea behind bitcoin which was independence from the old centralised banking system where others control your money. To guarantee their investments they've rebuilt the whole old system in bitcoin with the exchanges and some regulators even demanding you use them to store your BTC.
  - piracyrules 1y ago
    [dead]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
sfjailbird 1y ago
Isn't BTC privacy achievable these days with coinjoin, lightning network etc.? In that case no much reason for monero.
- tsimionescu 1y ago
  It still seems fantastical to me that lightning network is presented as "something running on BTC", when it is "something running completely separately, instead of BTC". Transactions on Lightning network are not transactions on BTC, and have none of the guarantees of BTC (and in fact have no reliable guarantees of no double spending). The only way to get BTC-like guarantees of no double-spending for Lightning network transactions is to put every transaction on the BTC block chain ("close the channel" after every transaction). And then, of course, you get back all of the problems of BTC (minuscule TPS not enough for a small village, 0 privacy, huge energy costs).
  - swores 1y ago
    If what tsimionescu says about Lightning is wrong, can somebody kindly reply to them explaining why rather than just downvoting which doesn't help anyone. (Maybe there's a reason they were downvoted that isn't their being wrong, but I don't see what that would be.) (And sorry for going against the guidelines and talking about downvotes, but I'm really just asking for someone to either confirm what they said is right or explain why it isn't, I'm not caring about the votes themselves.)
    - tromp 1y ago
      See https://blog.breez.technology/lightning-btc-iou-62e3a712c913 https://blog.breez.technology/lightning-btc-iou-62e3a712c913 for instance.
      - tsimionescu 1y ago
        As that post makes clear at the end, if you don't monitor the BTC block chain actively (with an app or by paying a third party you trust to hopefully do it for you), you can be cheated out of your BTC with Lightning.
lawn 1y ago
> Are there scaling issues with Monero, similar/worse than BTC? While there are scaling issues with BTC it's severely worsened by the fact that BTC had refused to scale on-chain. Monero is technically much harder to scale but since it doesn't have the same self-imposed restriction it can handle more transactions than Bitcoin can.
protocolture 1y ago
>It has to be inertia related right? Consider that a lot of Bitcoin is assumed to be locked up. If an old satoshi wallet started moving funds, the price would probably halve.