Oddbean

I have nothing against Monero, as you know, but is it a practical decision to stack Monero if the majority of places will not accept as payment? Our libertarian fantasy dream is never going to happen, unfortunately

What stats? Monero being used more for payments doesn’t necessarily mean that more places accept Monero as payment than Bitcoin. I’m just skeptical on its practicality if the world settles on Bitcoin as money, it wouldn’t seem relevant at scale to me. At the same time, yes I am a fan of the coin itself and I love the maximum privacy. My point basically is what good is your money if nobody uses it and it’s hard to obtain? These are completely fair and reasonable questions.

Why do you focus on state buying Bitcoin ? Yes they will probably buy it but that doesn't mean they will be Bitcoin friendly at all, they will eventually accept Bitcoin payment to pay your tax... but they will never incorporate Bitcoin in the system if they don't have regulation on it, it's all about control, the rest is smoke

This. I have been in the presence of a couple of MPs when the topic came up. They find the existence of permisionless _anything_ horrifying. The way normal people would react to waking up as a brain in a jar, or discovering we live in a simulation controlled by Yog-Sogoth. The cynicism is higher in the Public Service, but the power-hunger no different.

Look at how a typical Third World country treats USD. That's how they think of Bitcoin at best. Australian elites think of Bitcoin the way North Korea thinks of USD. There are a few other countries worse than Australia. Bangladesh comes to mind.

If you want to predict the adoption of Bitcoin-friendly policies in any State, you might want to look at the ratio between GDP and banking industry firms market capitalisation. Australia is one of the highest in the world.

Government is on it's way to ever more and more regulation / control We are on the early days of the censorship on Bitcoin, it's growing quickly, in 10 years something like that, Bitcoin will probably be fully controlled or close to be

Respectfully, you keep making statements like that based off assumptions but they’re also very generic and vague. Perhaps I’m just naive, but how can a decentralized network be fully controlled by a government?

They can't un-invent it, but they can try to convert it into something akin to the markets here for cocaine and child-molestation. Controlled by cronies and informants, but occasionally "harvested" anyway, after a double-cross attempt or just a desire to bump revenue and headlines with asset forfeiture.

To be less generic and vague, People don't understand something about Bitcoin. Bitcoin is working exactly like the banking network, where each miner is a bank the bank see A want to send X amount of $ to B the node see A want to send X amount of btc to B A bank can reject the transaction, the node can too. Like in the banks, there is rules to accept or deny a transaction, but Bitcoin is based on the majority following the same rules, if the majority want to reject your transaction, they will push a block without your transaction and you will don't be able to transact on Bitcoin. A big mining pool have rejected a transaction in the past, Bitcoin isn't truly censorship resistant because transactions are not anonymous, the node see address (identity) transact with address (identity), Bitcoin is pseudonymous, it's very different. On Monero, it's impossible to target a specific address, all transactions are anonymous, node see a transaction, but don't know who send to who nor the amount, all transactions are equal, that's fungibility, it's censorship resistant, your 1 dollar bill will be accepted like any other, it will not be refused because it came from these ATM or these location or it was used by someone in particular before you etc. Every btc have a unique history publicly disclosed on the ledger, we can trace it from the beginning and it's absolutely not a good thing. 1 btc =! 1 btc 1 xmr = 1 xmr

The strange part is Monero don't need to be accepted as payment, when banks & Bitcoin will be clearly censored, people will find an escape room, they will find Gold / Silver and Monero, PM & Monero are the exit, that's why Monero is highly valuable, it's the shadow chest of internet

“when banks and Bitcoin will be clearly censored” – Respectfully, what are you even referring to? Many governments are open to buying and some countries are buying, how will it be “clearly censored”?

censored doesn't mean banned, they will push regulatory pressures on miners to implement OFAC, probably the more easy way. Big miners are all identified for sure, it should not be too complicated, especially if you consider they are operating mining in big building which consume a lot of energy and are registered companies anyway

Exchanges and hosted wallets already seize Bitcoin that is accused of being "tainted", here in AU. Payment processors Western-world-wide are also noted for rejecting or seizing funds associated with disfavored causes and industries, without so much as a court order. The USA may still allow some financial freedoms for a while, but for the rest of us on the wrong side of the Rainbow Curtain, its getting dark.

Yup, and yup. They were paying others for the analysis, but from the ads I'm seeing they're building in-house mass financial surveilance too. Bitcoin is fully-auditable and tracable. If you use it and one of your counterparties takes it to an exchange, the government can trivially find you.