p2p, gift cards, online shopping, and several businesses nearby that I monero-pilled (it's a lot easier than explaining non-custodial lightning).
Basically any and every opportunity. You believe in financial privacy or you don't.
It's silly what people often say, that if you want privacy you're up to no good. No. It's just none of their business where I spend my money.
Pretty much no one in Monero cares about NGU. It's great as digital cash, that's why it was invented, that's why I use it.
Am I safe to assume you use both bitcoin and Monero for different purposes? I think they are complimentary not competitive. What’s your take?
I see bitcoin as digital cash and a store of value. So I disagree they are competitors. I think of money as having a store of value factor otherwise you’ll have to trade in and out of it to not be debased. No long term financial decisions can be made with a currency that isn’t keeping up with inflation. While I commend the monero community for being “in it for the tech and not caring about NGU” this price appreciation piece is extremely important to everyone else that isn’t in it for the tech, such as the normies.
Furthermore having two digital cashes doesn’t sound right to me, there’s always a winner throughout history of a better money and typically it was one with the scarcest supply. While I agree privacy is a fundamental right and tip my hat to you for trying at the base layer, I don’t believe monero is the answer.
I just hodl bitcoin. It's not good money because it lacks fungibility.
It's a pretty decent digital commodity that I am fairly confident will continue to increase my purchasing power over the medium & long-term.
It is good money, and it is fungible. The blockchain doesn’t care. 1 Btc= 1 btc
Yeah, but the blockchain doesn't exist in a vaccuum.
If 1 BTC = 1 BTC, why does depositing coinjoin coins at an exchange get your account suspended?
Because 1 BTC != 1 BTC. Every satoshi has a history. That allows you to discriminate between them.
For now it's at exchanges. One day it might be any utxo not known to be associated with an identity cannot be legally accepted by a legal merchant (you know, 99.9% of businesses).
Another day it might be you being unable to open a legal lightning channel without prior permission, and if you do you will be fined for money laundering.
If those seem preposterous to you, just know that some of us have been here for long enough where the idiotic clueless majority swore that exchanges would never block anyone's account because BTC is fungible.
No. Your collective stubborn ignorance has created a financial surveillance system far more insidious than anything that existed before. It's amazing to see that same stubborn ignorance 16 years into the experiment.
The AML/KYC nightmare has only expanded because of this. No need for warrants, no need for suspicion, no need for complicated international arrangements, oh no.
They just put it online forever on "the blockchain". And as long as NGU they don't really care.
Actually it's even worse than that, since most don't even use the blockchain, they use an exchange like a bank thus negating any advantage this technology had in the first place.
It's just incredible, the whole shitshow.
I’m not here to argue but Merchants don’t check your KYC or conjoin status at the door they show you a bitcoin address and you send to them. There is no precedent for merchants being responsible for what bitcoin you can or can’t spend. Not sure how lightning would be stopped either any one can spin up a lightning node and accept bitcoin, it’s open source there is no permission. We can agree to disagree, have a good one!
They don't check it NOW. One day they MIGHT be COMPELLED to. In the same way that exchanges didn't check THEN but do NOW.
And it was PREDICTABLE, because the AGONIZING LACK OF PRIVACY IN BITCOIN all but guaranteed it.
And here we are!
There is plenty of precedent for merchants, just not with bitcoin, YET. Why do you think there are legal limits that merchants can take in cash? To ensure that above a laughably small amount, they can trace it. You really think it will stop there? No, sadly it won't.
And we need tech that DISCOURAGES always-on mass-surveillance, not ENCOURAGES it. It's not just tech that's needed either, social change is needer as well.
As for lightning, reread my post (or don't), it's not that they can stop you from opening a channel, but they surely can FINE you after the fact, because the chain is TRANSPARENT.
Because all data is sitting there, forever, enforcement can be AUTOMATED.
Oh, pseudonymous sats you say, it won't affect you. Maybe. Until one day you make a small mistake. You were in a hurry. Or you needed a bit more than you thought you did. Or you used a public electrum server who just logged your IP and all your addresses and balances. Whichever way. You make a small mistake, and boom, you're rectroactively deanonymized.
Anyway, as you said, let's agree to disagree.
Hey nostr:npub1r5yzptzufjehaduv3du9tlrav4ws9edwuu338s2a06haamc6xlfsf333vz , calm down with those minority of Bitcoiners who have short minds. They are moved by greed. Period.
They don't seem like a minority from where I stand, unfortunately.
Pretty much all the oldschool bitcoiners I know (including myself) value Monero because it complements Bitcoin in a much needed way, but for the moonbois it's a black and white thing and an us-vs-them mentality (they seem unable to grasp that most of us explaining and defending #monero here are bitcoiners too).
This is something I deeply care about (because I don't like the implications of a total surveillance society) and to see the same fallacious arguments spun over and over again does grind my gears somewhat.
I'm just trying to raise awareness about this topic and not let fallacious arguments go unchallenged. Sometimes it can be tiring, but don't worry, everything is calm and good 💪
I completely agree with you. That legend of “BTC Privacy and/or BTC Anonymity” created in the past really is a real pain in the ass (I think 99% of the average people in my country believe that is the truth). Good to know you are calm and good Following you, bro! 😎
