Oddbean new post about login | logout Which ecosystem is libertarian, #Bitcoin or #Monero? Libertarianism is a political philosophy that prioritizes individual liberty and autonomy, advocating for minimal government intervention in both personal and economic matters. Bitcoin is not considered libertarian because it lacks the anonymity and fungibility that Monero offers, and that is the main impediment to avoid regulation and intrusion by centralized regulators. We see more and more institutional money entering the BTC ecosystem and that brings more and more regulations and less and less market freedom. While Bitcoin was created to enable peer-to-peer transactions with transparency, on the other hand, Monero, developed by libertarian-minded individuals, prioritizes privacy, fungibility, and anonymity. That's why the Monero community is more philosophical in ideals than the prevailing Bitcoin idea of investment.
#Monero is not as decentralized as #Bitcoin, without decentralization it is not as secure and easily shutdown by govts when they feel threatened case in point tornado cash
Tornado Cash is still around. They shutdown a frontend. Just about anyone in the world can mine Monero - sounds more decentralized to me than Bitcoin in that aspect. Roughly similar node count as well https://monero.fail/map
Huh, Bitcoin is only mineable with specialized hardware (that requires KYC depending on where you live) and is being co-oped by Black Rock and other large corporations and governments, that doesn't sound very decentralized to me.
Assuming the majority of miners are compromised, they still must burn energy to operate. If they will start to censure transactions, those ones will start to grown in fee. Miners cannot simply start ignore big fee because, as they pay their bills. Even if they manage to do it, someone else will try to mine those transactions (as before, for high fee)
Again, it requires specialized hardware to mine.
Assuming the majority of miners are KYCed and legislators coordinate requirements, I imagine something like. Level 1: KYCed miners are required to not process transactions from list of banned addresses. Level 2: KYCed miners are also required to not build on top of block with transactions that break level 1 requirement. They can only build on such block if the last n blocks are all breaking this reqirement. This will strongly disinsentivise non-KYC miners from not obeying. Level 3: change from banned list to allowed list.
Expanding on Level 1: Bitcoin is miners can censor individual transactions. It's not possible to do that on Monero. You're forced to attack the entire network if you want to prevent a single transaction. All things equal - this censorship would be *much harder* to do and sustain (and it gives miners plausible deniability) if Bitcoin was private.
You can buy a Bitcoin miner for the price of a smartphone, so it is accessible to everyone https://d-central.tech/product-category/asics/
Very few companies produce them, you have to kyc depending on where you live.
You’re wrong. BTC mining os far more centralized than Monero’s. All that is need is couple of governments to seize BTC ASIC-based mining farms and the people with their CPUs and GPUs won’t stand a chance, government will own more than 51% of the hashrate. Meanwhile, Monero uses RandomX where no single entity has an unbalanced advantage by having specialized hardware. If BTC was a menace, mining farms would have already been seized and BTC de-listed. Only Monero could is a threat.
What if they own 51% of the Cpu hash for monero ?
What then? They still can't see what is in the blocks so censoring is not possible and P2P pool exists which means some transactions will always get through. A 51% attack is least effective on Monero and thanks to plenty of idle CPU it's the most easiest to fend off.
Black marble, censor anything that isn't one of yours`ish.
All govts have to do is get Monero delisted from exchanges and it will go to zero.
If that's is all it took to destroy a cryptocurrency Bitcoin would be in big trouble. Gov could just say "Bitcoin is banned from exchanges" and it's dead. I'm sure you don't believe that though do you. Monero was already delisted from the largest exchange in the world - Binance - a month ago and is already back around average price again. You can swap any major crypto from any exchange for Monero. Literally one extra step. It's unstoppable. https://image.nostr.build/aec9a824a2253f4702407ab906351d32c81d7f3f36163ea3fc6db51298d98182.jpg
Actually we are celebrating every delisting because we know it increases privacy and self-sovereignity. Bitcoin maxis and Monero cypherpunks are not the same.
we shouldn't be afraid, it's not about price, it's about control so we are right 😉
Might well send each other PGP messages, if price is irrelvant
Without adoption it is pointless, bunch of cyberpunks trading between themselves
Monero is fully adopted in the darknet. Monero already is at the centre of decentralised liquidity and it will only increase from here. And whenever Monero merchants or payment service providers publish their data, Monero ranks first or second. Monero is ready for those, who want to use crypto as currency and not just to increase their fiat stack, which unfortunately is >99% of the current market participants.
Dude seriously, if fiat price doesnt go up how are u escaping the rat race. If you save in Monero and everything around u is priced in fiat, u will end up homeless, monero might have usecase for private transactions, thats a utility not a solution to fiat debt slavery
So what is stopping you from saving with Bitcoin and using Monero to transact where you can? SoV is also just utility. Only one property for good money. You also need affordable transactions or it makes no economic sense to use as currency, fungibility, and privacy for freedom. Without those Bitcoin is just digital asset/real estate
Fiat price is an illusion. If you make economic decidions based on fiat prices you are already lost in the game. I have a very long time preference. So why would I care what short and mid term prices in a dying system, that fights with all its power against it, tells me to do or not to do. Growing as a medium of exchange also means more money will flow through Monero and the more money will at least temporarily be stored in Monero. So I don't see why Monero shouldn't grow against USD which is still the most used medium of exchange and store of value for billions of people who suffer from even weaker fiat currencies.
That the point you don't understand, it's not about money, it's about control. You are in the "rat race" if you can be controlled, you can have 1 million in bank, you are in the rat race because it's not really yours. Actually, lot of people don't see what's happening in Bitcoin, it's becoming more and more controlled, at some point, we can expect the government will enforce a blacklist or a whitelist, if they have the control over the majority of miners, the network itself, you will be fucked and you will stay in the "rate race", but ok with millions dollars in Bitcoin... I think Bitcoin is doomed to failed not in fiat but in sovereignty, what is the value of something you don't really own ? For me it's worthless. I'm not saving in Gold, Silver or Monero, I protect my wealth against government's robbery, this have real value, independently of the fiat value
I think it’s quite possible that Bitcoin is (and has always been) the WEF’s backup plan to institute a one world currency.
When you look the Bitcoin's price history, something is really strange, look on 2013, suddenly, Bitcoin skyrocket from 200$ to 1k$ at the speed of the light, who bought like that ? Starting 2017, price ATH above 1k, later in the same year, price did 10x already at 10k and there was an acceleration to 20k very quickly, again, who will invest at that moment ? I mean, something is not normal, no one want to buy something which already did 10x from the ATH in the same year, I'm thinking more and more it was a price manipulation, the real question is why ? Maybe you have right, to onboard many people away from cash, the master plan seems possible. Anyway, the perfect cycle repetition is a total nonsense, it's impossible to know what will happen, it seems like programmed, nothing else do something like that, it doesn't seems to be good
Indeed. That’s why only a fool puts everything in one basket.
I agree. Unfortunately the NPC masses are emotional thinkers and will not be able to accept your observations. And trying to reason with them when they’re filled with Hopium is akin to banging your head against a wall. Same as with the Covid common cold virus scam - when they were filled with fear.
White market adoption is at the mercy of regulations so is largely irrelevant if you're actually interested in permissionless transactions (entire point of Bitcoin). Anything they can impose on fiat transactions can also be done with Bitcoin transactions inside of white markets.
Monero is more decentralized than bitcoin my friend, who said that to you lied..
Bitcoin is more decentralized in terms of hashrate and nodes. Not sure what metrics you are looking at
How are you comparing hashrate? They have two completely different PoW algos. That's like saying 20 centimeters is longer than 5 feet because it has the bigger number. Not sure what makes you think Monero is less decentralized by nodes. Monero is only a fraction of a percent of Bitcoins size, yet it has similar node count to Bitcoin. https://monero.fail/map https://bitnodes.io/
