aldalire

Crap, i forgot about last week. Time for another Skepticism Sunday!

Stay on topic:

• This thread is only for comments discussing the uncertainties, shortcomings, and concerns some may have about Monero.

• NOT the positive aspects of it.

• Discussion can relate to the technology itself or its economics.

• Talk about community and price is not wanted, but some discussion about it maybe allowed if it relates well.

• Be as respectful and nice as possible. This discussion has potential to be more emotionally charged as it may bring up issues that are extremely upsetting: many people are not only financially but emotionally invested in the ideas and tools around Monero.

How it works:

1. Post your concerns about Monero in reply to this thread.

2. If you can address these concerns, or add further details to them -- reply to that comment. This will make it easily sort-able.

3. Upvote the comments that are the most valid criticisms of it that have few or no real honest solutions/answers to them.

4. The comment that mentions the biggest problems of Monero should have the most karma.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.

• Richard Feynman

I’m taking on the mantle this week.

Stay on topic:

• This thread is only for comments discussing the uncertainties, shortcomings, and concerns some may have about Monero.

• NOT the positive aspects of it.

• Discussion can relate to the technology itself or its economics.

• Talk about community and price is not wanted, but some discussion about it maybe allowed if it relates well.

• Be as respectful and nice as possible. This discussion has potential to be more emotionally charged as it may bring up issues that are extremely upsetting: many people are not only financially but emotionally invested in the ideas and tools around Monero.

How it works:

1. Post your concerns about Monero in reply to this thread.

2. If you can address these concerns, or add further details to them -- reply to that comment. This will make it easily sort-able.

3. Upvote the comments that are the most valid criticisms of it that have few or no real honest solutions/answers to them.

4. The comment that mentions the biggest problems of Monero should have the most karma.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.

• Richard Feynman

With localmonero shutting down, what would be the challenges of creating a federated version of localmonero? Traders and buyers can have accounts at different servers but still be able to trade each other and see each others' listings.

The pros i can see are: It would be harder to stop without a single point of failure, and brave server maintainers can host their services in different jurisdictions to prevent legal troubles. And it would be very difficult to prosecute server admins, as they aren't the creator but merely hosting a site.

No shade at the person Michael Fitzgerald (or Stoic.xmr). He's probably a good person

But clearly a better quality book with the same name can be written by a person that understands that the average paragraph contains at least three or four sentences. I can write one. I've never written a book before, but fuck it.

What topics would you like to be included in a book titled "Monero Standard"?

The monero community is building a lot of infrastructure to build a circular economy, and there is a lot of recent developments in that regard, such as xmrbazaar which is a sort of ebay and the sellers accepts monero. This is great. However, how can we penetrate markets outside of the monero economy? I fear that Monero still has the "dangerous hacker crypto which funds terrorism and north korea" reputation, and although while not true, could severely pause monero adoption and hurt us as a community as a whole.

We as a community value privacy, but i feel like we need to work together as a community to forge an alternative to the mainstream narrative about privacy coins. I'm thinking something revolutionarily positive, at least in the USA, such as making a charity that gives directly to homeless people, or setting up a decentralized network of people that work together to distribute life saving drugs for cheap (because drug prices are really fricking high here). Privacy coins tend to attract privacy minded people, and privacy minded people won't even touch twitter with a 10 foot pole because of all the injected ads and the tracking, and i respect that. But, one of these days we gotta do something big to break the mainstream narrative.

I personally am locked in, I have a girlfriend and two pets and a full time job, but for those that have less to lose and more time and resources to spare for the cause, i say let's fking do it. Anything, man. Let's change society with this thing.

I've been contemplating about Monero's place in society. If Bitcoin is (debatable) "Digital Gold" then Monero is a non-custodial Digital Offshore Bank Account.

There has never been a point in history when there's been a means to hide your wealth perfectly. The possiblities are endless (i've also drank too much coffee this morning). It is a way to break free from the chains of debt.

Struggling to pay off your medical debt? Hide all your money in Monero, tell the banks to screw themselves, declare bankruptcy, and rebuild your credit score after the dust settles. Too much student loan debt and afraid they'll come after your money after you default? Hide your money in Monero and tell those vultures in Sally Mae to fuck off. (I skipped a couple steps and important details here and there)

Credit card debt? Chapter 7 their asses and they can't touch your money when it's protected by ring signatures lmao get fucked.

Of course, you still have to protect your assets such as your house. I haven't tried these strategies out yet, as I still haven't been forced to the brink with my finances. But when the time comes, instead of waiting for the government to implement more robust social safety nets, Monero can protect the wealth I have rightfully earned through my labor.

Personally, my father is getting crushed by credit card debt. I think he's paid more interest than the principal amount to those lowlife banker scumbags. Fortunately he's able to survive, but he could be in a better place.

Any other scenarios where people can adopt an adversarial strategy against the system? More ways out for people suffering as an economic debt slave? I would like to see a "guide" for this too, a way to more perfectly say fuck you to debt collectors.

Let's just all stop and appreciate that libgen is a thing in the internet. It has saved me so much money with very overpriced math textbooks during college when my family was low-income. It contains virtually all the books, and even obscure ones. It provides low barriers to entry for knowledge for people wanting to advance their career, and perfect for finding epubs for books to send to my kindle. (I buy physical copies of books, it's just convenient to have a kindle instead of volumes of lord of the rings while travelling)

Overall, this is what the internet promised. Fast, easy, universal access to information. It sucks that governments are trying to take it down, and do what governments do best which is to restrict the flow of information and restrict freedom.

10/10, libgen is the best thing in the internet. Long live libgen

I’m posting this on the Monero sub because ya’ll are chill, the BTC community are occasionally peppered with nuts

My friend who’s a Bitcoin maxi has took all his savings and put it in bitcoin, i believe 10k USD more or less. He’s very (almost religiously) certain that bitcoin will skyrocket. I talk, debate and question his beliefs for weeks now, trying to take a nonjudgmental stance (although sometimes i falter), and there are three pieces of “evidence” that he believes Bitcoin will eventually 100k or even 1M

1. The bitcoin standard by Saifadean Ammous, a watered down textbook on Austrian economics that I’ve been reading recently actually.

2. The “Power Law”, basically a regression analysis on Bitcoin’s historic price and adoption, mainly esposed by this dude https://x.com/Giovann35084111 (here’s a youtube vid https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=NxAkZ2tHQko)

3. The “Energy Hypothesis” of bitcoin, he thinks that bitcoin will allow society to capture excess energy generation and make it profitable through mining bitcoin

I’ve reviewed these and think it’s flimsy at best. It is under my belief that a store of value can only be feasible when either it is a medium of exchange or if it is backed by something (like fiat paper money, for example) that allows it to be an efficient medium of exchange, none of which applied to bitcoin right now.

I even try to suggest him books like Roger Ver’s Hijacking Bitcoin (that I converted from epub to pdf just for him) and he wouldn’t read it because “Ver’s a scammer and got fooled by BCH”. Although I really just think it’s heavy confirmation bias, Ver is indisputably a knowledgeable source for bitcoin (he was an early adopter, he’s “Bitcoin Jesus” for god’s sake, and has a lot of knowledge of the economics behind bitcoin given that he’s a businessman who’s built his businesses on top of bitcoin). Hijacking Bitcoin is an excellent book btw go check out the pdf I posted it a while ago on this sub

I’m just looking for advice on how to proceed. It was fun debating and dunking on him but at this point i’m just worried that the bitcoin bubble will burst and he’d lose his savings.

It’s one of those occasions where I kinda don’t want to be right in the debate