I like the idea, but I tried to send some Monero to a friend who had just paid my bill in a shop (using Exodus wallet, Android) and we couldn't settle because, it turned out to I hadn't synced the blockchain down to my phone and it wouldn't be possible there and then. Not a great experience. Can you suggest a better/quicker/simpler wallet to try instead? 

 Cake Wallet, and then you can rescan wallet from a date or block height.  

 Frequent rescans are crucial for good usability in limited bandwidth situations, i e poor cell signal. 

 Check out the new Polyseeds upgrade for Monero. Cake Wallet adopted it and so are other wallets.

Drops down seed words from 25 down to 16 words and you no longer have to worry about remembering your creation date/block height. You'll have to create a new wallet to benefit from it though. 

 What do you think of the MyMonero on IOS? @SaberhagenTheNameless 

 I would avoid personally. If I remember correctly they eliminate sync times for you, but they have full insight into your transactions which kind of defeats the purpose of Monero. Double check me on that though

I would go with Cake Wallet or Stack Wallet for iOS 

 Try out Cake Wallet. 

It has an auto-sync feature while your phone is charging so you're always caught up quick and never far behind. 

 I’ll do it. Thank you. 

 There is also stack duo wallet they have a btc/ xmr only wallet that is on par with cake / monerujo  

 Who is Satoshi? Nothing wrong with Bitcoins privacy.  

 Every transaction being perfectly visible is an issue. There's plenty wrong with it. Monero is inherently more private and I find that useful.  

 He doesn't understand the difference between anonymity and privacy, apparently 

 Oh please. Elucidate. Help us, the clueless morons who cannot comprehend your blinding intellect. Is talking down to people all you do well? 

 Problem with the way I use this platform: without naming the recipient of the comment in a thread, anyone could be the intended target. I pledge to do better at being clear. 

 It’s not as private as you think 

 How so? As private as cash? 

 It depends. 

In some ways it can be more private than Cash, but a small user base means a small anonymity set and there have also been a few vulnerabilities in the past which have done damage to moneros privacy assurances.

Ultimately, the bigger problems are all the metadata which exists when using any form of digital money as well as the trade-offs made with ring signatures and decoy inputs/outputs which make it nearly impossible to verify the supply. Not to mention problems like data efficiency, mining clarity, or constant inflation.

If we said no to KYC, and used Bitcoin in a circular fashion and with the lightning network, its privacy would already be (pretty) good. 

Monero is an interesting shitcoin and lots of ideas in it could make for a cool side chain, but it shouldn’t be taken to be 100% private without considering other factors and it will never be money on any large scale. 

 So astute. XMR accepted here, you can buy your food elsewhere. 😏 

 Bro, take it easy on the Monero maxis.

They are THE ONLY other ethical community in this whole space.

They are wrong, but they remain true to cypher punk principles. Often better than we do. 

 CPU-minable only.

The algorithm is called RandomX. Its a bitch, and very clever.

https://monero.org/ 

 With bot-nets that steal CPU time from massive numbers of insecure random internet users. 

 Exactly. 

Without Monero around to monetarise lazy security practises, they'd be ransomware victims instead.

Is that really better?

This way, at least the crooks are using some if the stolen power to do some good (securing a private payment network). 

 It kills the main advertised benefit of random x, which is that an average user can mine some at home. 

 I do mine #monero at home (using solar).

Returns would be negative if I was paying for grid power, true, but that's mostly about my government's very foolish energy policies. 

 I do the same, for similar reasons. 

 ALL commodity returns (including the mining of digital assets) will fall to the marginal cost of production.   Which is necessarily less than the overall per unit cost of production because of capital costs.

In other words, it's impossible to remain profitable if you're producing commodities. 

 If the capital cost was already defrayed for another purpose (and mine was), the CAPEX to invest in mining Monero approachs zero.

That is the beauty of CPU-only algorithms. 

 Good point.

However, in practice, almost everyone for whom this would be a benefit is paying retail electric rates.

This also ignores the bot-nets that drive the difficulty much higher because the operators are passing off the capex AND electricity costs. 

 True enough, on all points.

But almost everyone in Western countries ought to invest in a little solar anyway, purely to have some electricity during those periods when poor policy choices make the grid unstable and/or unaffordable.

If you also use your surplus solar for mining, some beautiful synergies are to be had. 

 Surf on over to getmonero.org first, get a full node set up. There is a small miner built into the wallet. It’s a good place to start. Be sure to check the shasums on the download, you never know how much value you may eventually have. 

 Thanks.

Will do when at PC 

 gupax.io

Gupax is probably the easiest way to get started 

 I like LN a lot. If I’m a trafficker in schedule I substances or I live under an oppressive regime however, is LN really private? Are you willing to bet your life and freedom on it? 

 Sender privacy is real good with just some simple best practices.

Receiver privacy is crazy hard to avoid leaking data. 

 We all just have to do our best in a digital world, or go back to bartering and exchanging sea shells. At least the government can’t print those. 

 But be damn sure the market would suck all the monetary value out of sea shells immediately by harvesting them in every way imaginable 

 Won't get a chance to wait for the government. The free market is much more efficient extracting any premium as fast as it arrives 

 If your life is on the line swap sats for something engineered to be fully private. No brainer. But 99.9999% of people’s lives aren’t on the line from a tx so it’s a different calculus. 

 That depends entirely on the government. Have you read about social credit in China? Personally I enjoy being an asshole and having enough to eat. 

 No one is stopping you from using monero but there are valid technical reasons it’ll never be global money 

 There is a lot of competition in the space, a new frontier. I never advocated putting your life savings in it, much like you wouldn’t stock your wallet with millions in cash, that is what Bitcoin is for! For spending money though…..it’s worth a shot. 

 Yeah I’m sure it’s easy enough to swap sats for xmr (never done it though) if you want to tx privately and your counter party will accept the xmr. Spend it how you see fit, the beauty of permission-less money. 

 Yet 

 I don't know why this is said so often. Lightning is not private. Network incentives for optimal routing lead it to grow less private over time. Literal lightning devs telling you it isn't private.
bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/state-of-bitcoin-lightning-network-privacy

You're listening to a maxi who has casual knowledge of Monero explain why he thinks it's bad in a few minutes.
If you're really open to steelmanning the case at least have a Monero user there, who knows what they're talking about, to give some pushback.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1PRKKlI-Jo 

 We can agree to disagree. Care to qualify your statement? Not capitalizing on volatility in the shit coin market is like not buying oil company or banking stocks on principal. While admirable, you are probably just condemning yourself to some degree of scarcity, and perhaps even poverty. Suit yourself, I’ve made a boatload of money from watching excited stupid people closely and buying what they think they want. 

 Yea we can agree to disagree for sure. 
Bitcoin is the currency 
Bitcoin is the money
Sats are the standard
U a scammer lol 
GFY 

 Bitcoin fees are trending upwards as well 📈 😅

That along with no privacy make it not so useful as digital cash