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Thoughts on Cryptocurrency?

I was wondering what viewpoints and opinions this community has when it comes to cryptocurrency.

Personally, I'm not against it, but I'm not for it either. I like the concept of bringing back cash anonymity, and also decentralization (obviously). Although I don't think it will be viable for at least another decade.

makeasnek , (edited )
@makeasnek@lemmy.ml avatar

I use it on a regular basis. I also run a non-profit that funds open source tools for scientists, it makes accepting donations a lot easier for us among other benefits for our donors (they don't have to pay capital gains on the coins they donate, just like stocks).

Bitcoin is pretty incredible and offers decent anonymity which continues to improve, Monero offers more. Lots of scams in the "crypto world", but Bitcoin has faithfully kept its fiscal policy promises for 15 years:

  • Fixed supply of 21 million coins. Your money's value is not diluted by supply inflation.
  • You can send funds to anybody in the world with a smartphone and a halfway reliable internet connection in under a second for pennies in fees (with Bitcoin lightning). And you can do it from your couch, no banks required.
  • It has operated 24/7, 365 days a year for 15 years without a single hour of downtime, bank holiday, or hack, and has survived attacks from many angles including nation-state actors.
  • At every possible turn it has chosen decentralization and security. I can't say the same for most other coins.
  • And it has done this with < 1% of global electricity usage, mostly from renewables and other "stranded" supply. Pretty powerful stuff.

Monero's privacy features can be absorbed into the Bitcoin protocol whenever Bitcoin decides it wants to, that is the biggest long-term risk to Monero IMO. That and centralization of block production due to increased block size. Bitcoin worked around this block size problem with L2s like lightning, Monero chose bigger blocks though of course it could always add an L2 if it wants to.

LemmyHead ,

"Monero’s privacy features can be absorbed into the Bitcoin protocol whenever Bitcoin decides it wants to"

I think that's the biggest flaw in your thinking. Monero has this built-in from the start and everyone using it knows it and supports this approach. It affects how legislators can manipulate the coin because they can't, it will keep on living. It already affects the true value of the coin with all privacy included, because you can see how exchanges are unwilling to list it or are delisting it if they already did so, so there are no (or hardly any) institutions or billionaires manipulating the price because of the high risk factor of losing their money. You're forgetting that people in power nowadays are brainwashing us to accept that a wanting a fundamental right like privacy equals you're doing criminal activity or have plans to do so. There are A TON of reasons why bitcoin will never include such strong privacy features, because there are so many factors that influence this decision to make it possible, and the dominant reason you see that matters to btc holders (or any other crypto token for that matter) is NUMBER GO UP. Privacy is not a number go up reason. So it's not a tech issue, it's a people issue

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

I think a lot of us first heard about bitcoin when Paypal shut down donations to Occupy Wall Street and later WikiLeaks.

Both of them turned to bitcoin to accept permissionless donations.

Bitcoin was just the first majorly successful coin. I think most orgs should accept Monero these days, for Privacy reasons.

Tanoh ,

The original idea was to take back control of our money from greedy and corrupt banks and politicians. Very very very few people use it as that now though. Most just see it as a get rich quick scheme.

As we are in the privacy sublemmy: All of the privacy issues have already been solved, those that keep saying that it is a log of everyone you ever paid kept forever have no idea what they are talking about. Just simple thing like that you should (almost) never use an address twice removes a lot of the privacy concerns. There are also other ways to obfuscate and stay anonymous.

actual_patience OP ,

Most just see it as a get rich quick scheme.

It sucks, I don't see how it could ever get past this.

makeasnek ,
@makeasnek@lemmy.ml avatar

Wait till you hear about stocks and derivatives. No way are they ever gonna make it big time. Only used by sleazeballs trying to get rich.

taladar ,

Just simple thing like that you should (almost) never use an address twice removes a lot of the privacy concerns.

Then how do you connect the incoming money to the outgoing money (and split it up or combine it in the process assuming most income flows do not exactly match a spending flow exactly in value)?

voracitude , (edited )

edit: since the well-akshullies are out already, I'll say this is massively simplified because anyone who cares about the actual cryptography or terminology can go read the fuckin docs; it's detail that isn't necessary here.

Wallet addresses are just the public part of a public/private key pair. You can generate another public key with the private key so the address is different, but your private key can still sign transactions for both addresses.

taladar ,

That is not how public/private keypairs work in most algorithms but even if it was, the fact that the public key is used to verify the signature comes from a specific private key means that both (or all) public keys could validate all transactions signed with that private key.

voracitude ,

I recommend you read BIP-44 since this has been a standard for years in Bitcoin. Your other crypto knowledge seems woefully out of date as well, from your questions in your other post. Time to brush up, I think.

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Yes, its the change that makes block chain analysis so effective

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

You're misinformed. I recommend reading Traces in the Dark.

rambos ,

Its awesome if you have some, its basically all time high price these days 😉

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Well it was until today. It just went on sale

frogmint , (edited )

BTC, ETH, and XMR are the only ones that matter. Some stable coins (USDC, GUSD) are okay, too.

BTC (Bitcoin) is good because it's the most widespread. If a vendor accepts crypto, odds are they accept BTC. However, the blockchain is easily traceable.

ETH (Ethereum) is good because its blockchain is far more versatile, so it can be used for other things than just crypto payments. However, it's less widely used for payments than BTC and is also easily traceable.

XMR (Monero) is excellent. It's extremely difficult to track an individual user. Your transactions are private. There are some possible attack vectors for the future, but they'd require that you be an actual target to be worthwhile. Someone that's going to track you is going to find a different way than XMR to do it. XMR isn't as widely used as the others, though, and it's also not on as many crypto exchanges. Kraken has it.

However, crypto as an investment is not a good idea. Spend your crypto.

banghida ,

Ethereum is unregistered security token.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

No as it pretty much a scam

BrightCandle , (edited )

I have used Bitcoin a number of times for international purchases. Its not really got to the point of currency so much as a medium mostly of speculation and often interchange for crime but it can improve your privacy. The user experience of the payments isn't the best but international transfers are often hard to do anyway and in that particular field it can often be a lot quicker, cheaper and easier.

SomeBoyo ,

I dislike it being misused for gambling on it's value, but see the importance of currencies like Monero.

hellfire103 ,
@hellfire103@lemmy.ca avatar

To be frank:

  • Good idea in theory
  • Ancaps and cryptobros ruined it for the rest of us
  • Monero is okay
furzegulo ,

fuck that utterly horrible shit

GolfNovemberUniform ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

It's a nice technology that should exist as an alternative to personally identifyable and government-ID-connected transactions. It's not perfect in any way though

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