Replying to Avatar boston wine

What do you mean by “where it’s going”? Are you referring to price, adoption, development?

Again, my experience here is minimal, but one thing I’ve noticed that’s very different about Monero is that I rarely hear proponents suggesting that you should “invest” in XMR, or that the price matters, or any of the other scammy marketing stuff that shitcoins are known for.

Instead, it seems like the only reason Monero users care about adding more users is that it adds to the anonymity set (just like with Tor users, or coinjoin participants) to enhance the privacy in transactions.

It also seems like Monero peeps don’t really care if the fiat price goes up — in that yes, asset appreciation is always preferred, but the point of the currency is a cash-like spending function, rather than an “investment” or a savings account.

Now, it’s not Bitcoin. That’s for sure. It’s not the “best store of value the world has ever seen”, and it’s probably not going up forever Laura 😉

But when I think about what defines a shitcoin, I think of:

1) a centralized issuer, usually holding their pre-mined coins to dump on new buyers

2) lots of marketing about why it’s a “good investment” or solves some techy/obscure problem that doesn’t really exist

3) Hype about what the token “will do” on a roadmap full of empty promises

And when I think honestly about it, I don’t think Monero checks the shitcoin boxes. If I needed to purchase something online or through a digital medium, and wanted easy, near-perfect privacy (or secrecy), Monero seems like a really good way to achieve that purpose.

It’s not how I would store my wealth. And it’s not something I would recommend to people, because I don’t know nearly enough about it. I only recommend Bitcoin because I have spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours studying and using it. So I feel confident in recommending it.

But if it’s simple question of, “Is Monero a shitcoin?”, defined by the numbered list above (or as a silly crypto/blockchain token created for the primary purpose of extracting wealth from retail investors under false premises of a made-up use case)… I’d argue it’s probably not.

My two sats 🫡
Avatar
BitBurn 1y ago

I appreciate your thoughts but could you give me a half dozen examples of any well known shop or chain that accepts XMR in any kind of circular economy?

Oh, and...

https://localmonero.co/blog/announcements/winding-down

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Avatar
boston wine 1y ago

And thanks for engaging! I appreciate the opportunity to think more deeply about this, question our assumptions and premises, try to be as intellectually honest as I can when evaluating the concepts here.

Re: Agora Desk, if understand the press release, it’s namely due to better options being out there to acquire Monero..?

As for businesses that accept Monero, I would imagine there’s probably at least one rather large, international industry (for starters) that perhaps used Bitcoin in the past and prefers Monero ne… but it’s not one that I feel particularly comfortable discussing on a public, permanent protocol 😂

But more importantly, the “only XYZ uses this tool” argument is the same logical fallacy that gave rise to the Bitcoin meme of “only small countries own it”. It’s just so damn early and, perhaps more importantly, I don’t think Monero would require widespread adoption to be useful to those who want it. Again, why I don’t *think* it qualifies as a shitcoin. It doesn’t matter much, whether it’s widely adopted or accepted, as long as people and businesses who wish to use it for private/secret transactions are able to do so. Like one could almost think of it as an “invisibility cloak” over your fiat cash, to spend money with excellent privacy, and not ever need it to be more than that, for it to “succeed” at what I understand its purpose to be.

Not an investment, not a store of value, not a token to sell to the next idiot in order to stack more fiat. Just a bunch of code that helps people make purchases in private.

Again, I say this not as a holder or proponent of Monero, but as someone with a genuine interest in digital privacy, and a personal interest in the wellbeing of my friend who sparked these questions in the first place 🫡