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BTC Nomad | 20 hours ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 This all seems pretty exaggerated. It just isn't that hard to get privacy out of Bitcoin. If everyone agrees on the simplest and scarcest and first asset, it really is reasonable that they wouldn't simultaneously give that up in favor of a value system that is infinite but more private by default. They may not even agree that it's a worthwhile tradeoff, since scarcity has always been the most important feature of money.

That could change in the future, when everyone is paying for their coffee with crypto, and mining Monero on their laptop just for funsies. But we're several years from that point at least. That's a monetary superhighway, while we're still on wagon trails. But this trail is being blazed by scarcity as a primary feature, not privacy. Scarce is the one thing all money has tried to be for thousands of years. That's why gold was money.
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SaberhagenTheNameless | 11 hours ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
  https://image.nostr.build/3d7a8b836098ef9b09f31bf7510fe0ca0fa8859b5f8b263dceeb42dfb2a497c8.jpg
 https://image.nostr.build/ccf181ed168942446d16535fa01942fcb9f471b7b689c9d9f8d12839df0b629c.jpg
 https://image.nostr.build/18459d728b1bbad4099cbb2f4980c06c22d12274dd46812fa098daf0fa16cca0.jpg
 https://image.nostr.build/0f0150dfab9b18705528d59b928e44fada6843c483f95cb5f4717ffb91140f85.jpg
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mbl007 | 9 hours ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 scarcity has never been the most important feature of money.

The most important feature of money is robustness.

A good money have no weakness, Gold have no weakness, it can't be created by humans, it can't be destroyed by a long period of time, it can't be burned, it doesn't care about politics or regulations, there is no risk at all, no hack, no bug, no shutdown, no printer go brrr, censorship is impossible, if you have a coin in your hand, it's all on you nothing else.

Crypto (even Monero) can be hacked, shutdown, captured by regulations (especially transparent ledgers), it depends on electricity and internet, it constantly require energy activity & consumption, that's probably the big danger after all.

 Bitcoin is not sovereign by itself, nodes are the third party and we need them to transact, what's happening with Ethereum ? It's actually censored, as I said many times, Bitcoin will probably be censored something like that because of the transparency, nodes and miners see A want to send x btc to B, if the majority of the network comply to OFAC, bitcoiners are fucked... 

That's the advantage of Monero (one of them), nodes can't see the sender, the amount, the receiver. Transactions are anonymous and can't be censored because of that, an address can't be specifically targeted, that's a big deal.

When you have a Gold coin, there is no third party at all, your transactions don't need to be accepted by someone else except the receiver, it's seems strange and funny to talk about that, we can say Bitcoin or Monero can't work otherwise, but it have big implications, nodes are the middle man, if the node can identify the transaction, censorship is possible, and we should expect it will happen soon or later, maybe am I excessive ?

Maybe the government don't spend hundred of billions to build secret infrastructures for spying on us without or consent ? 

Maybe the government isn't going to develop a CBDC, a programmable digital currency where they will be able to control at their will ? 

Of course Bitcoin is not a threat to the Government, when Wall Street launch a Bitcoin ETF, maybe we should ask serious questions isn't ? 

Even if I like Bitcoin as an idea, a concept, Bitcoin as it is today is a mess on many points, Monero is probably not the better version of what we need, but it's far closer than Bitcoin and probably the closer of all. Bitcoin is clearly is trap, it's worse than Gold, it's worse than Monero, what is the utility of it today ? 10 years ago yes I was saying Bitcoin was cool, no moonboys, no ETF, no ChainAnalysis, it's wasn't a casino, it's was a tool to transact outside of the banking system, it was used by the darknet markets, it had value, and it's now Monero, strange ? 

Probably the big advantage of Monero is not even the ability to transact anonymously, no, the bigger advantage of Monero is it's community, everyone on Monero is here for privacy, Monero will ever go trough that way, we don't care about regulations or wall street blessing, we care about privacy only, building an anonymous transactional system for everyone, that's all, Monero is nothing else, it's a tool. You can buy a coffee, a gift to your friend or a gun, drugs and illicit things, that's your choice, but at least, you can transact freely.

Crypto is not something we should HODL and use fiat, it's something to replace fiat, the purpose of Bitcoin was to be used, it's not a marketplace, not a casino, it's a tool to free us, that's all it's utility, that's why it was created and this is the only value of it.