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▲ Cider9986 3 days ago

Monero has consistently exceeded the rest of crypto in community, integrity to mission, and use-case. True digital cash.

FCMP++ upgrade will be huge for sender privacy bringing Monero's technical strength in line with ZCash.

The new site[1] looks great as well; it was funded by the CCS.

[1] https://getmonero-redesign-impl.vercel.app/

▲Dig1t 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Very awesome set of replies you’ve left in this thread. So nice to see.

I will be buying some Monero for the first time because of this thread.

▲Cider9986 2 days ago | parent [-]

I'm glad you gained something! Welcome to Monero!

Drop a Monero address here and I'll send you a tiny amount for your first transaction.

I recommend CakeWallet, which is cross-platform, user friendly, and does a lot of good for the community, but any of the wallets recommended on the official[1] website are fine.

p.s. you or anyone can reach out via my contacts in bio if you have any questions about Monero.

[1] https://cakewallet.com/

[2] https://www.getmonero.org/downloads/

▲zhouzhao 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I would actually recommend to just use a hardware wallet. The monero-cli or the Monero GUI-Wallet are sufficient. Just drop your wallet onto an USB stick with LUKS encryption. Get your recovery seed + wallet height written by hand and bury them somewhere in your garden, or your parents garden in safe box.

Drop me your address, and I will also send a little bit your way, to get you hooked!

▲arcmutex 2 days ago | parent [-]

Cypherpunks write code.

45nQZrXEDSL8UPj7DeJRrcdFkAteCajG4bGGsQP7cmWwiZU63dpfWe9RPpas38BAU4Kwv5NSKBsnacXewQszMhrx7fgTQLe

▲rationalist 2 days ago | parent [-]

Your username does not match with the person the offer was made to. Please do not beg for money here.

▲qingcharles a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I used the Monero GUI wallet, but it has always historically got flagged as malware by Windows, which I'm sure puts a lot of people off.

▲Dig1t 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Thank you for that offer, that's very kind of you.

My new address is

49jUau1t16ZPtBNFaJ2o5eW79x6Fui14AbqwQyovBe2V6LdwgWrHkniWTV9dj7tAY8SRxsshkmQEwLCBYUvPFEkZBJGZt6n

Where do you recommend trading dollars -> Monero?

▲Cider9986 a day ago | parent [-]

KYC[1] methods are the easiest and what I recommend for everyone. I will only go into detail with KYC methods in this post.

A. Determine where you are. Are you in a jurisdiction that has CEXs[2] that allow you to purchase Monero with Fiat? If so, Continue to B; otheriwse, continue to C.

B. If you are in the USA/Country where you can buy Monero directly:

1. Open a Kraken[3] account. You will need to prove your identity through a service like Persona.

2. Send money into Kraken from your bank or credit card.

3. Purchase Monero on Kraken with your deposited funds.

4. 7-day hold and then you will be able to withdraw to your self-custody wallet.

Conclusion: You now own Monero. You have payed minimal fees. The government and entire financial system knows you have purchased Monero.

This may or may not be a concern depending on your threat model[4]. Many people overstate this threat—Monero is the 14th largest Cryptocurrency by market cap, it is not particularly suspicious to purchase it. It does not compromise your future Monero transactions—it is just like withdrawing cash from an ATM, the financial system and government know that you now hold cash, but what it is used for is opaque.

C. If you are not in the USA/are in a jurisdiction where you can't buy Monero directly:

1. Open an account on any KYC CEX, I recommend Kraken. You will need to prove your identity through a service like Persona.

2. Purchase any coin. I recommend Litecoin[5], but Bitcoin or anything works.

3. Create a self-custody wallet for Litecoin, I recommend CakeWallet.

4. Withdraw your Litecoin to CakeWallet.

5. Go to Trocador[6].

6. Create a swap from Litecoin to Monero.

7. Give Trocador one of your Monero addresses to send the converted Monero to.

8. Choose the exchange with the best fees/privacy to your liking (these change throughout the day).

9. Send your Litecoin from CakeWallet to the Litecoin address provided.

10. You will shortly receive Monero to the address you gave Trocador.

Conclusion: You now own Monero. You have payed a small amount of fees. Depending on the pervasiveness and intelligence of blockchain surveillance, the financial system and the government knows that you have purchased Monero, or has the ability to figure out that you have purchased Monero.

All your future transactions are anonymous. Remember, Monero is just patching one hole in making an anonymous transaction. It does not magically make you anonymous if any of these other things are not anonymous: OS, browser, IP address, identities, etc.

[1] Know-your-customer — they say it's to stop crime.

[2] Centralized Exchange

[3] As respected of a CEX as you will get. They support Monero while most other CEXs have removed it.

[4] https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/threat-modeling/

[5] Low fee POW (proof of work) crypto. The second crypto to be created after Bitcoin. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HDyfsemWoAAOLVM.jpg

[6] [https://trocador.app Highly reputable instant exchange aggregator. They do not touch your funds, they just aggregate other instant exchanges and provide a guarantee for no-KYC. Excellent customer support. You will pay about a 1% fee converting your crypto through an instant exchange. Instant exchanges are CEXs, but since they deal only in Crypto and not Fiat, they can afford to easily be no-KYC.

▲mothballed 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

▲matheusmoreira 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> regulatory and political challenges

Not bending down to the financial arm of warrantless global mass surveillance is a feature, not a bug.

> being tradeable on central exchanges

Central exchanges are banks in disguise. They should not exist.

▲mothballed 3 days ago | parent [-]

A key feature of cash is its ability to pass through and into the KYC/AML panopticon where (edit: to make it clear what the "KYC/AML panopticon" meant -- after being deposited in a bank) you can buy things like real estate and heavy capital equipment. If you can't prove chain of custody of source of funds and source of wealth, you're effectively shut off from a wide amount of transactions.

At least in the West. If you go to someplace like Dubai it is no problem.

▲estearum 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm confused

your argument is that Monero fails at doing a thing that cash also fails at, which is making large purchases without chain of custody/source of funds?

▲mothballed 2 days ago | parent [-]

No my argument is Monero fails in practice relatively worse than similar 'weight class' crypto currency assets at actually spending 'digital cash' (presumably a desirable quality of 'cash') to make legal purchases from crypto accepting sellers. This is quite evident if you survey available offerings -- vendors are far more likely to accept even the lower cap litecoin than monero (even the 'cryptwerk' website advertised by getmonero shows 2x as many vedors accepting LTC).

I do postulate that the fact it is easier to show chain of custody to the point it satisfies banks and regulated entities as part of this (even if through chain-analysis mumbo jumbo), thus other crypto currencies have lent more towards accessing more purchases in a way cash idealizes to do.

At no point was my argument simply monero fails at the same thing a pile of cash dropped through the sky might fail at and that's the end of it. I think that's a pretty silly portrayal of what I've said, made in bad faith. Although in reality I've had my cex account frozen almost every single time I've tried depositing very low, 3 digit amounts of XMR (including frozen for years) whereas you can somewhat reliably put $200-$1000 in a bank in place like USA and then use that as part of purchase that goes through KYC/AML channels.

Now if you do want to compare, say, a pile of cash falling out of the sky, vs a pile of bitcoin, vs a pile of monero and you wanted to spend it on something big that went through KYC/AML compliance. In order of what would be easiest to spend, assuming the money actually came from a legal source. Bitcoin would be the easiest to spend because you have some chance at showing it came straight from a KYC'd source because of the plaintext blockchain, next would be cash (largely for historical reasons), the hardest to actually spend would be the monero. Now if we presume matheusmoreira point about banks was just a red herring, then your follow on is just one too, since the bit regarding KYC/AML compliance purchases/transactions was a response to that.

▲estearum 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Right but isn't the point of Monero that once you have it, you don't have a public, immutable ledger of all subsequent transactions, just waiting there for when you become persona non grata to some entity with significant time or computational resources to fuck you?

The relevant similarity to (unbanked) cash is the post-facto privacy.

And yes, this feature does dramatically increase the KYC posture of institutions that need to be afraid of those same computation-rich entities, but obviously the point of the currency is you don't functionally need them the way you functionally need a bank to do anything similar with cash.

▲mothballed 2 days ago | parent [-]

Most basic economics academic reviews show a few main qualities of cash[0][1].

(1)durability

(2)portability

(3)divisibility

(4) uniformity

(5) acceptability

(6) limited supply

Monero beats plaintext chain coins at uniformity, as BTC for example is non-fungible because there are tainted and non-tainted coins. Monero is truly fungible. It loses to even similar weight class coin at acceptability.

I suppose you can argue the gains in uniformity overcome the losses in acceptability. I'm not sure reality has bore that out if you actually want to use your cash. In practice BTC/LTC can shed their taint and public trail by being mixed and this seems to make up for this weakness enough for acceptance while still allowing a public chain for the last few transactions before it enters/leaves the KYC/AML panopticon, which is highly desirable for 'acceptability' (this is probably also why ZCash is far more easier to access than XMR, as it has a feature to disable anonymity so it can go to/from central exchanges and KYC/AML'd vendors).

Note: if you go to some cryptocurrency shilling website, you can find 'anonymity' as a trait, but this deviates from the more common definition.

[0] https://inomics.com/terms/characteristics-of-money-1545438 [1] https://illinoistreasurergovprod.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net...

▲doctorpangloss 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You: "everybody is autistic but me!"

Also you: proceeds to rant about "heavy equipment," a beloved pastime of everyone, including the neurodivergent

I don't think what you are saying is that complicated honestly, but surely you see that, there can be many successful niches.

▲matheusmoreira 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> A key feature of cash is its ability to pass through and into the KYC/AML panopticon where you can buy things like real estate and heavy capital equipment.

My country is in the process of criminalizing the purchase of real estate with cash. Laws have been proposed to that end. Politicians have also proposed restricting the amount of "unexplained" physical cash the population is "allowed" to hold.

This is your future if you don't resist.

> If you can't prove chain of custody of source of funds and source of wealth

You shouldn't have to "prove" anything. What a bunch of nonsense.

▲Cider9986 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Cash would "fail horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges challenges today". And some countries are trying to make it harder to use.

▲mothballed 3 days ago | parent [-]

Yes but fortunately we have other points of comparison and I was making a relative analysis. Legal vendors who take crypto are more likely to accept even the lower market cap LTC in most cases than XMR. XMR is one of the weakest performers as spending cash on legal goods and service amongst crypto assets of similar financial "weight class."

The technical superiority and features on many points seem to be unable to overcome this.

▲stavros 2 days ago | parent [-]

That's because anonymity is the entire point of Monero. Of course legal vendors don't like anonymity, every government wants to be able to track every transaction anywhere.

Saying Monero hasn't been able "to overcome this" is like saying boats have been unable to overcome driving on roads. Technically true, but very much not the point.

▲Cider9986 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For business acceptance, I see how it would be hard if it is impossible to use on a CEX. I think that Haveno/RetoSwap will eventually become the preferred and more convenient Fiat-->Monero method instead of CEXs for the avg user.

Overall though I would even prefer to use a stable than a bank or fiat p2p app to send money.

>They've failed horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges of being tradeable on central exchanges and as a result has met weak acceptance from crypto-friendly legal vendors making it harder to use as actual digital cash.

Despite this, everywhere it is accepted, it becomes the largest marketshare crypto payment method, excluding whales.

▲loloquwowndueo 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Pardon, the “autistic” point of view?

▲mothballed 3 days ago | parent [-]

In this case, I mean a narrowed focus (in this case, on technical qualities) to the point it is maladaptive for the underlying stated goal ("digital cash").

A survey of cryptocurrencies showed monero has failed to achieve this goal of being a superior form of digital cash, relative to most other crypto currencies in similar 'weight class' of market cap and years available. This failure isn't technical, it's due to relative weaknesses in the realms of politics and soft social influence. Even the lower market cap LTC is more accepted as 'cash' by most legal vendors.

-----------

re: below muh sources

getmonero.org, OPs referenced website, advertises cryptwerk as a good directory.

Go to https://cryptwerk.com/pay-with/xmr/ and compare it to https://cryptwerk.com/pay-with/ltc/.

There are ~twice as many for LTC for example, and that's being charitable with something with a lower market cap rather than BTC which is like 3+ times as many.

▲Cider9986 3 days ago | parent [-]

Do you have a source to back up this claim? There are thousands[1] of legal businesses that accept Monero.

[1] https://monerica.com, https://kycnot.me

▲mothballed 2 days ago | parent [-]

(1) Go to the monero website you cited.[0]

(2) The top merchant directory recommended was 'cryptwerk'. Follow that through

(3) Compare https://cryptwerk.com/pay-with/xmr/ to https://cryptwerk.com/pay-with/ltc/.

(4) Note there are 2x vendor for lower market cap LTC, 3x as many for higher market cap BTC. Note this directory was chosen by monero people themselves, so I'm not cherry picking something gaming the merchant list against monero.

There is a pretty consistent survey of XMR performing weaker than similar class assets in spending at crypto accepting vendors. (Note I had to reply above earlier because my account was throttled)

[0] https://getmonero-redesign-impl.vercel.app/get-started/merch...

▲GolfPopper 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I had not paid any attention to Monero amid the storm of cryptocurrencies and related scams, but thanks to your recommendation here, I will be checking it outmn

▲Cider9986 a day ago | parent [-]

Drop an address and I will send you a small amount for your first transaction.

▲hypeatei 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> of being tradeable on central exchanges

That's a good signal that the privacy guarantees are real, no? It's no secret that the main use-case for crypto is skirting the legal system; I'm not sure I understand this desire to make it anything bigger than that. For example, it's extremely hard to Be Your Own Bank because one mistake means you've just lost all your funds whether it's from a scam, malware, or losing your wallet seed phrase. Large amounts of people "being their own bank" by putting their life savings into crypto would be a disaster.

▲Acrobatic_Road 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What are they supposed to do? How can they make governments happy without sacrificing privacy?

▲ 3 days ago | parent | next [-]
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▲mothballed 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Regulatory capture would be the traditional way

▲matheusmoreira 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> How can they make governments happy

That's the wrong question. Nobody cares how the elites in the government feel. They exist to serve us. That is the only reason they have any power at all.

The right question is: how can we make it mathematically impossible for the government to oppress us in any way, regardless of how much they seethe and rage about it? Their happiness does not matter. In fact their anger is probably a good sign that the technology is working as intended. The angrier they get, the freer you are.

▲lynx97 2 days ago | parent [-]

> The angrier they get, the freer you are.

The angrier they get, the higher is the chance that they make your technical solution illegal. What, you're using technology that might endanger children? All the concerned parents are suddenly your enemoies, democratically speaking. What? Your technology can be used to do money laundering? And you're using it still? You can now anonymously pay only darknet vendors and other shady bussinesses. Have your anonymity, but cut off from the rest of "good" society.

Given the original motivation to actually invent crypto, I am surprised it wasn't outlawed a long time ago. No goverment likes to be overthrown...

▲matheusmoreira 2 days ago | parent [-]

It's just the usual politico-technological arms race. Governments make laws, people make technology that works around the laws in such a way that the government can do nothing about it.

Governments must continuously increase their tyranny in order to maintain the exact same level of control they used to have before. There are two possible outcomes: a free and uncontrollable population emancipated by ubiquitous subversive technology, or a totalitarian government so oppressive that even your concerned parents feel the weight of its boot on their faces.

It's my sincere hope that we'll discover the true limits of the government's tyranny in the process. The harsh truth is people need to accept the existence of some amount of crime if they want to live with basic human dignity. It's just like how the banking industry accepts some degree of fraud as a business expense. They could stamp it out, but the security requirements would add so much friction to everyday transactions nobody would buy anything.

▲ 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]
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▲s5300 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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