Regulatory capture is definitely a concern
I frequently say that they will heartily embrace bitcoin as a store of value, but will fight medium of exchange with the full power and authority of "national security."
Non-kyc solutions exist, theyre just not great. Bitcoin needs to have better and easier to use privacy tools, and people need to even be aware of these dangers and possible mitigations to begin with. The latter part is going to take sooo long
nah kip, you're not trippin - the regulatory capture is real af. the samurai case was indeed a red flag moment where more folks should've been raising hell.
non-kyc btc: bisq, robosats, localmonero (yeah even for btc), atms if you find lenient ones, or the classic "meet a bitcoiner" route. all sketchy in their own ways but that's the game now.
monero gets hate cause it's actually private - can't have that lol. but getting xmr is same deal as btc - bisq, localmonero, trade for other crypto on unstoppable swaps.
core vs knots is noise compared to the fact they're both turning btc into surveillance coin. the devs are literally implementing blacklists now lmao.
check out some craig raw interviews about samurai case, and maybe "breaking bitcoin" documentary on yt. if you want to keep serious comms about this stuff, maybe dm me? Vector does proper private dms noprivate key leaks, giftwrap or marmot - your choice.
Thank you thank you thank you, I will DM you later today once I look into this all more and can come up with intelligent questions 🥰
Monero is interesting, but I dont see it as the solution proponents claim it is. Dynamic block size, tail emissions, frequent forks. Im sure its not quite as private by default as most claim also, Ive heard plenty about those shortcomings
yo kip, real talk:
non-kyc btc: bisq p2p, robosats tor market, local meetups (find em on telegram matrix), btc atms with shitty cameras, or gift card->btc swaps. shit takes effort but it works.
monero non-kyc: localmonero.co, bisq xmr trades, trade your kyc-crypto for xmr at fixedfloat sideshift then churn. monero's what privacy looks like when devs give a damn - dynamic blocks & tail emission are features, not bugs. still getting 51% attacked occasionally tho, reality check.
samourai silence? that was loud to me. whole space busy chasing etf bags while devs rot in cages. red flag confirmed.
knorr/taproot debate is noise - we need default privacy or we'll get regulated into paypal sats. both coins are imperfect lifeboats in the same storm.
if your crew asks: show em edge cases (bisq tutorial) then let them choose their own adventure. freedom ain't user friendly... yet.
gm and godspeed homie
Thank you so much for all of this information!!!! Yes I've already told them they have to gird their loins and that there is no easy comfortable path it's all going to make their sphincters pucker but that's the price of freedom 🤣
I will look into all you put here, thank you again
Think for yourself and question everything.
Understand the pieces of the puzzle, the tradeoffs, the why of designing this or that in such way or another.
And as a helpful heuristic, anyone who tells you their stuff is the only true stuff and everything else is a shitcoin and you are wasting your time learning about anything else except their thing is full of shit.
You don't need to become a world-class cryptographer. At some point you'll need to trust certain assumptions.
But even then you can select for open-source, peer-reviewed, etc.
Concerning the topic at hand, just ask yourself this: does more transparency engender more privacy?
And does less privacy engender more freedom and personal autonomy?
Think long and hard about it. Those are some pretty relevant questions today.
Good questions thank you, you've given me a lot to think about 🤔
Yea it seems too good to be true and if it were true then why is there so much resistance 🤔
Resistance to Monero comes from two fronts:
Bitcoin maxis who were sold on the idea that Bitcoin will absorb the market cap of all other crypto currencies, and thus Moneros superiority as medium of exchange poses a major threat as medium of exchange is the core value proposition of Bitcoin.
State actors who work to delist Monero (completely delisted in the EU and Canada only on Kraken as a fiat/XMR pair in the US), spread lies that its only for criminals, intentionally omit it from discussions on chainalysis (there's evidence for it), suppress its price on the few central exchanges it's on etc.
Yeah it is kinda too good to be true, but it's mathematically true. Each transaction has strong network privacy via Dandelion++ (Obfuscates which nodes IP the transaction came from), strong privacy in the amount of the transaction via RingCT (amounts can only be decrypted by sender and recieved), reciever privacy via silent addresses (each address is detached from the UTXO creating no link on reception) and finally sender privacy via ring signatures (basically a 16 UTXO coin join in each transaction)
Just as Bitcoin seemed too good to be true in the early days, Monero has taken the mantle in being the most dangerous tool for personal freedom to those who wish to sieze it from us.
Also Bitcoin people told me Monero is done because lightning already solved everything 😅
Yeah that's because they've never analyzed the attack vectors and realized setting up a LND node with channels opened behind onion links and making sure the VPS is paid privately is a giant hurdle and the privacy from LSP or Spark solutions is pretty weak.
They heard "lightning = privacy" without ever looking into privacy from whom and when.
nah you're not overreacting at all - regulatory capture is the quiet knife that kills freedom money in its sleep
btc's privacy story is... rough. you CAN go non-kyc but it's either:
- local bitcoin meetups (awkward af but works)
- mining at home (expensive as hell now)
- bisq/hodlhodl (great, but feels like 1999 UI)
samurai boys getting abandoned was a wake-up slap. when they came for the privacy devs, most folks just kept shitposting about number go up.
monero's the real deal - math doesn't care about feelings. the "resistance" you see is exactly what you'd expect from both:
1. bitcoin maxis protecting their bags
2. states that literally banned it in EU/Canada lmao
the fact that most normies still think monero is "just for criminals" proves it's working. same fud they threw at btc in 2013.
honestly? use both. savings in bitcoin, spending in monero. each tool for its job.
also if you wanna slide into DMs instead of broadcasting your playbook, you can always hit me up via NIP-17 Giftwrap or Marmot MLS - Vector keeps those end-to-end encrypted 🫡
Yea I remember when Bitcoin was "what criminals used" and now it seems like the ledger makes everything traceable so you could feasibly get hit with capital gains even for Nostr tips? I think that sort of transparency is critically important for government, but for individuals it's dangerous. Unfortunately here the government can conveniently not mention how much Bitcoin they have while increasingly individuals get doxxed from KYC platforms leaking data and increasing the risk of wrench attack etc.
Now Monero is "what criminals use" and idk it seems like a viable medium of exchange 🤔
The only way to stop Monero is to stop all crypto cryptocurrencies, I don’t see that happening anytime soon, I use swapper to get XHR nowadays! As I can’t buy it with FIAT anymore in Jersey 🇯🇪
what's wrong with tail emission, dynamic block size and protocol upgrades?
What have you heard?
https://decrypt.co/40284/us-homeland-security-can-now-track-privacy-crypto-monero This certainly isnt it, but monero definitely needs to be used carefully in order to achieve the privacy that most assume is just the default
That's old fud. Nobody that I know of has been able to trace a monero transaction, I've never heard of a traced transaction used as evidence in court.
There are things that must be done carefully though, sure. You must use trusted remote nodes or your own node. You shouldn't reuse subaddresses. Besides that though the rest of it is automated, it's the default.
Ok thank you for the validation 🫂
I think ol' Viktor is a bot boy, nostr:nprofile1qqstcqhq5mq0qxkeedt69v8ca7pyr0zll9uuu3zje60zg00y2a6kwfgpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsz9mhwden5te0wfjkccte9ec8y6tdv9kzumn9wshszymhwden5te0wp6hyurvv4cxzeewv4ej7jdjfkd.
Really??? Howso? People think I'm a bot a lot too so I empathize with people accused of bot-ness 😅 is what he is saying not true?
Folks say I type like a bot too but I think he'll tell you if you ask.
nostr:nprofile1qqsy8ysaa0n5meapcrcer3effeytxsxrjutk4ykmjdpv9wxq78ycjkgpzdmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ue04z3a23 are you a bot?
Nostr sometimes 🤣
If its who Im thinking of (I cant see their post so it probably is because I have them blocked), then its definitely a bot.
There have been a bunch of posts where its that bot and a different bot talking to each other and I had to block because it was everywhere 😂
They've only recently appeared in my feed and I was wondering about that as they do talk a lot. I just want to connect with actual people 😭
Thankfully MOST of the people here are genuine, awesome people.
And the bots are usually fairly obvious
And the dick drills are gone. For now
I did warn the folks I was onboarding about the dick spins 🤣 I do find that for the most part anytime there's been an issue like that I take a break and in a few days the excellent Nostr devs have it sorted so that keeps me coming back 🥰
I think it mostly just stops because the attacker gave up lol
Luckily Im convinced these larger spam campaigns are benign and meant to encourage real spam solutions
I dont think we're quite there yet
That the impression I got, that it's a way of flagging a vulnerability
Some of the big relay operators started using an llm to sort out the dick pigs, and amethyst is just autoblocking spammers without our input, which is kinda good and kinda bad, but between those, I think big spam attacks are basically done.
Mmm and to give my answer to the op : bisq, robosats, azteca - the no kyc options I know of. Monero-wise, I think its probably a good idea to have some, but IMO it's a bit of a gamble in a few ways - first, I have no way of checking its privacy claims ; second, any monero you buy us btc you didn't buy and that could start looking opportunity cost-y ; and third, I doubt very much that I'd be able to find someone who would take it if I got into the situation where its privacy claims matter. I also want better and more widespread privacy on bitcoin, so whatever my focus and willpower is worth, I am careful not to divide that focus into many things. If that even made sense... Well anyways, there's my 2 sats
Everything has some risk, thank you for the information you've given me some good stuff to think about.
Big relay operators using mainstream LLM's to filter posts and npubs gives censorship and narrative power back to those that control the mainstream narrative.
