Things could change but currently Nostr engagement is in decline (in terms of users), it is not growing. People who move stay a while are not sticking around.
Why do people zap jack for this? Do they feel he needs the money, just saying 'yes'? No disrepect to Jack but this is really strange !
Honestly, I don't know what the solution is. It seems inevitable now that Monero will be banned as a form of payment, bitcoin is becoming harder and harder to use privately and without declaring for tax purposes. It may be used on the darkmarkets but lawful use is not going to be an option soon. Even bitcoin is difficult to spend without documenting every transaction and necessarily handing all your financial details to govnts for capital gains purposes. XMR business will likely not be able to comply with laws soon.
No crypto is private unless you never want to spend it.
In the UK HRMC says crypto investors must declare the following:
The type of tokens
Date you disposed of them
Number of tokens youâve disposed of
Number of tokens you have left
Value of the tokens in pound sterling
Bank statements and wallet addresses
Records of the pooled costs before and after you disposed of them
That leave you with zero privacy from the govnt, unless you want to break the law.
the problem I foresee, even if monero becomes popular is that govnts can make it illegal to sell things ie accept payment for monero. You then have the problem of advertising your products legally. And the whole system collapses, back to the darknet where it currently is. This is true of all crypto. Privacy is great, but in the end to actually buy real world goods there is no privacy thats legal. Because the seller must be visible.
if you aren't interested in self custodial money then there's no reason to want bitcoin at all. What is the purpose of custodial bitcoin vs fiat?
'buying sats with fiat via apple is excellent'
apart from the privacy issue, encouraging users to use apple to buy bitcoin is not good.
Unbreakable encryption is irrelevant when an OS or computer chip can read your decrypted message at rest. Its not that encryotion isn't good enough, it is, but its all a misdirection. The problem isn't encryption.
Its all irrelevant when Apple (and google) provably knew its push notifications could be read by govnts but kept it secret until forced to disclose it by a legal loophole used by a right minded politician. How much does encryption matter at all on any OS's that are required by law (in UK at least) to provide backdoors to access encrypted information which in all cases does not involve breaking encryption. Trust in PlayStore/AppStore to install encrypted message apps is ludicrous, and any app developer that allows or encourages this cannot be trusted to secure your messages, 'unbreakable' encryption isn't the problem or solution to security on OS's run by 2-3 companies, all of them made in the US.
First the exchanges (thats not a bad thing, DEX's are better anyway). But next comes a ban on ACCPETING monero for services like VPNs. Thats when Monero is banished to live ONLY on the darknet. I don't see any way around that.
Having no centralized exchanges isn't an issue. The main problem for monero is that spending it on goods and services could be made illegal. In which case, even if spending monero is completely private, selling goods and receiving monero for them it is not, (except on darknet markets). This is a big problem for Monero. I can conceive that soon it will be made illegal to accept monero as payment for goods and services. Once that happens it's value is tied ONLY to dark markets. That's not great.
Agree, lightning is terrible on every level, not just because of poor privacy but because its more complicated to use than any other crypto. Which means Alby dominates lightning transactions like Visa does fiat. Theres not much point in having bitcoin if I use lightning , if there is little privacy gain for small transactions might as use visa/paypal that is much much easier/cheaper. So I still don't get why Monero isn't more popular as both a store of value and transaction currency. Why don't the people who speculate on bitcoin and shitcoins speculate on the privacy that monero offers? If it actually does offer something people want, if it can't be banned precisely because its private (unlike less private shitcoins) why not invest. Whatever way I look at it, seems to me that if you are a speculator or enthusiast or privacy advocate there is no reason not to invest in monero rather than all the other crap coins. I don't want speculators, i'm happy they aren't investing in it -I suspect that makes the fiat value more realistic - it just doesn't seem to make sense that you wouldn't if you want to profiteer of it.
There are zero ways it is worse than bitcoin. So anything bitcoin does Monero does better.
4 Reasons Monero Wonât Die like Tornado Cash
In this post weâll argue why Moneroâs price, and itâs overall use will NOT collapse and die like Tornado Cashâs did under similar circumstances.
Reason 4. Mixer vs Native Currency
Tornado Cash was a mixer for Ethereum. This means anyone can clearly see which funds are coming from it, making it easy to sanction. On the other hand, if any transparent crypto was traded for, or from Monero, the public blockchain wouldnât show it. When you combine this with privacy properties like hidden senders from Bitcoin Lightning, or even recent atomic swap developments with Bitcoin Cash using CashFusion [1], itâs not even clear whose trading into XMR, even if the government is an undercover direct seller.
Further, Monero has a vibrant ecosystem and community. What other ecosystem has such a focus on open source wallets? What other ecosystem has this level of Linux or networking knowledge?
Not only is XMR used on the darkweb, but beyond that it has clear use cases for the entire crypto ecosystem. Bitcoin Lighting Channels can be both clean and anonymous with XMR, as opposed to degrading your Bitcoins by first mixing it with drug dealers and hackers.
People in oppressive countries use XMR to coordinate, such as in Cuba, creating a peer-to-peer mesh internet to view censored content. [2a] And the Particl team with Basic Swap Dex has gotten completely decentralized atomic swaps. [2b]
Reason 3. Legal frameworks
Tornado Cash was a business, and not a completely decentralized crypto because the developers got a cut. [4] According to Monero Core Artic Mine, âyouâve got to keep your hands out of the tillâ. [3] By this he meant, you canât evade being a legal entity if you get a percentage of the profits. The US judge in the Tornado Cash sanctions case found similar points in the developerâs control through a DAO [4].
In sharp contrast, Monero has no owners or dividends. The community hard forks based on open and honest consensus derived from genuine merit based ideas.
Reason 2. US dollar is a dying empire
The question is not when Monero will die, itâs when the US dollar will stop masquerading as a safe haven. The United States is massively in-debt, but yet produces nothing of value to foreigners. Only through violence in the Middle East, has the US managed to force the sale of oil in US Dollars. [5] And the corrupt Biden administrationâs unwinnable war in Ukraine has bankrupted the nation. This Ukraine war, which originally started with Barrack Obama funding Nazis to do an illegal and violent coup of Ukraineâs Democratically elected leader, has morphed into a financial disaster. [6]
The US Treasury bond market is the largest bubble of all time. Because even just normal levels of interest, trigger a collapse in the banking system to cause the Fed to back off its hiking cycle. We all know these inflation numbers are lies. As John Williamâs Shadow Stats statistically demonstrates through methodical analysis that decades of the official numbers are propaganda. [7]
Reason 1. Price rise will mock politicians
Politicians have no control over blockchains with DNS using Tor Onions. The number 1 reason Monero will live on, is because its price will rise even if sanctioned. Bitcoin is like Marjiuana, in that itâs everyoneâs first gateway drug. Monero is like Cocaine, because once you try it, you realize politicians have been lying to you your whole life.
Eventually all the bad news will be baked in, and its undeniable utility to basic human needs will reflect its market value. This price rise will be referenced in the crypto media, and will serve as a constant Hunger Games style âMocking Jayâ of rebellion. Politicians fear banning XMR, because they fear a 24/7 economic ticker feed that reveals the emperor has no clothes.
So go ahead, deploy the automated bot army to spew dribble on Reddit to curse me out. But we will not go silently into the night.
Sources: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/monero-vs-tornado-cash/
OK, that is all fair reasoning, but can you answer me this:
Why isn't monero more popular/valuable than bitcoin or any of the other 30+ crypto altcoins right now? Why has it not come close to Bitcoin or even ethereum adoption? What reason is there for it not becoming more successful if what you say is correct?
Almost nobody uses nostr. People can talk to themselves freely without nostr. Even in the most repressive countries on earth.
US politicans won't tell their side. They just ignore questions or obfuscate. Because they think they are answerable to nobody. Putin at least gives the impression he understands he should be held accountable to the public
Not reusing addresses is actually difficult and complex to do, and still traceable. And if you manage to join mix your coins in several rounds, at greater expense, maybe, just maybe you are safe enough. But who wants to do that every time they buy something. And if you aren't going to do that then you might as well just use Swift/vise/paypal since you will be needing to do that anyway in day to day purchases., and -this is the saddest part - its cheaper!
Bitcoin privacy sucks so bad, there are still other advantages to Bitcoin, but nobody should be under any illusion thats its private or cheaper than fiat (unless you are using it to send large amounts and never cash out)
expensive and too complicated to use. Monero is simple