You’re logically correct but people aren’t…at least not in a straight forward way. There are lots of thing that have zero value but are tremendously overvalued because they get value “in other ways” which are downplayed. Take fine art. Some “fine art” is used in influence peddling. For instance, it may be illegal to give a politician 1 billion dollars, but perfectly legal to buy the politician’s back of the envelop scribble as “art” for 1 billion. “Fine art” is also a common way money laundering happens and creating tax writeoffs out of nothing. As for BTC, it would not matter if there was no retail usage. As long as it can be a unit of account that can get shuffled once a month between megabanks, all legit transfers of value can happen on L2s. Banks have been at this for thousands of years. They know how to control, capture and keep the value of any commodity. What counts is trust and BTC, even after the megabank takeover will still be decentalized enough to preserve trust across banks, and if there is an issue, BTC could be swapped with something like wrapped BTC on Solana and the original BTC coins can be burned, leaving BTC as a burnt out relic. Thankfully Monero is currently free of “the system”, but if privacy is ever accepted as necessary by the mass portion of the population, we need to be vigilant.

One should never invest more than one is willing to loose. If he’s willing to lose it all, then there’s no problem. Let him be. In the long term, it’s uncertain whether Bitcoin will stay above the current price. As the ETF expands, Bitcoin usage will decline and it may eventually become a HODL-only asset that is very unprofitable to mine and mined only by the Blackrocks of the world to get their transactions approved. In the mid term, Bitcoin is now a “store of value” asset for the finance industry, meaning it can be fractionally reserved and effectually there will be far more than 21 million BTC once you include paper BTC, so the same sort of inflation tricks that’s done with any digital assets can be done on BTC. That being said, in this cycle, it’s not unreasonable to expect it to go to 100K based on past trends and current hype and the fact that large BTC purchases from slow moving funds like retirement funds have yet to approve BTC purchases. But if most purchases are done OTC, that might not affect the price and paper BTC might absorb BTC’s price increase. So your friend will have to accept that the current price might the the all time high of BTC forever, and it can only go down from here. But, IMO, it won’t go down too quickly or too much in the short term. So I don’t imagine that the downside risk is more than 30%. In sum, I think that in the short term, the upside and downside risk will be 30%, with a higher chance that the 30% upside will happen. Be prepared to intervene at the end of next year when it’s supposed to be the top since that will be the time your friend should collect his 30% gain or accept his 30% loss.

I don’t like CEXes and the whole transfer money in and transfer out process and Kraken appears to require an account. and I see a sign in. If ChangeNow or any other instant exchanges that don’t require 3D KYC/AML, I’ll use it. I haven’t purchase XMR in the last few months since I have enough for a major emergency and I can’t tie up more money, so I don’t know the current state of instant exchanges. But when I do need to buy again, if I can’t find an instant exchange with low KYC out there to buy XMR, I know that they still exist for the popular POW coins so I’d go the DEX route. But if those don’t exist, I will be more open to explore other options like Haveno or Kraken.

I’ve never understood the attraction to CEXes. IMO, they’re confusing, slow, require you to put funds into them and take funds out and wait for each to process, and have heavy KYC/AML. I gave up on then the first time I tried them. My first purchase of Monero was on the ChangeNow instant exchange. It was simple and at the time the KYC/AML was only a document. There’s no way I’d ever give a 3D video Selfie with the modern state of AI. Changing between cryptos on DEXes was even easier since there was no KYC/AML. I’ve never used LocalMonero but was willing to try it before it was shut down, but I’m looking forward to Serai. I’m not yet comfortable with Haveno but if I were to buy Monero now, I’d likely buy DAI or LTC or BCH on an instant exchange (depending on the exchange rate) and then swap with XMR immediately so it doesn’t cause a taxable event from the government’s perspective. Yes, it would be registered with the government that you had crypto, but unfortunately I love boating and things happen.

Sorry, I disagree. Yes inflation makes things worse, but for most of human existence for all of the world, except for the era of prosperity that started in the 1950s, the standard was closer to 60 hours a week of back breaking work, with Abrahamic religions giving people one day of rest. Also, for most of human existence in all the world, a tiny fraction of people were actually rich, except for modern times when there was a legitimate middle class. Inflation is just the way the ultra rich return us back to the historical norm. Getting rid of fiat and getting rid of inflationary banking systems are our only hope, but they won’t return us back before the modern norm. 40 hours is the best we can do for the foreseeable future even if we’re successful.

There is no “we”. Like fiat, Monero is used by activists and persecuted people on all sides of any issue or normies in messed up countries where banks prevent you from getting your own money or normies who long for something better (either new or from the before times).

I’d be perfectly happy if the fiat system returned to the 1980s when you could get a bank account without ID, banks had to bribe you to share purchase history with “partners”, banks didn’t censor you because of your politics, you weren’t asked questions or restricted when you wanted to remove your money from the bank, MMT did not exist, and governments provided fewer services so they taxed you less. But that world isn’t coming back (at least not without a collapse). A 1960s world when fiat was still tied to gold would be better. But that’s even more unrealistic without a collapse. There are still a number of people who still remember the before times, and many have a similar vision and we can reach them. Bitcoin isn’t good enough…it’s too public…the information on it is too permanent. Showing the account balance and purchase history of an arbitrary Bitcoiner to a normie is the surest way to turn him off to crypto, especially when that normie learns that you can find out the purchases made during their younger years. People don’t want to be financial exhibitionists. So privacy coins like Monero are our only hope and our only hope to reach the normie.

People who do not remember the before times tend to either accept he current state or lean to a form of libertarianism or anarchism or agorism.

IMO, it’s a good thing there is no “we”. It means Monero is for everyone.

While I do admire the pledge and I hope it succeeds, IMO, it’s a bit too idealistic given how few people currently accept Monero. My suggestion is to have three tiers…platinum (the above)…gold (add “where possible” to each level) and bronze (add “or other crypto” but not fiat when not possible).

Note with this federated approach it would be possible for some instances to add plug-ins for haveno and basicswaodex and serai.

I agree in principle but in practise it would be a disaster without a plan. Localmonero.co works because it is THE P2P XMR place. If there are 100 versions, the liquidity on each would be so low that Noone would use it, especially for non USD trades. Having 100 localmoneros is good but you need a federated login like nostr and when you search for offers you would see offers for all instances of localmonero, or at least the most reputable ones. With this approach, the new localmonero would be unstoppable.

Here’s instruction on use: https://learn.robosats.com/read/en/

I think the key issue is the lightning network and the lack of user state so they user doesn’t know how many steps there are or where they are in process. Getting rid of lightning solves parts of the issue. The user state issue is a newbie UI mistake that most DEXes have solved by including something basic like providing the steps involved in the sidebar, highlighting where you are in the process and how to get to the next step. What I found intimidating on LocalMonero was the openness of it and the fact that may ads requested either KYC or to use Telegram (which I have no need of installing). The two extra layers on anonymity in robosats discourages KYC or use of 3rd parties to discuss the transaction. The discussions can take place on an ID-less chat like SimpleX which is integrated. I believe that SimpleX supports plugins to allow for automation, so crypto-to-crypto trades can be done without user intervention.

The point I’m trying to make is that in the absence of LocalMonero, it is possible to build a replacement using existing technologies (Tor,Robosats,SimpleX,Haveno,BasicSwap,Serai, etc), in a more private, anonymous, an easier and less intimidating to understand technologies.

While I agree, it’s not impossible. MimbleWimble has proven itself on Litecoin and it was implemented (I believe) using a soft fork. So just as Ordinals was forced on the maxis, MimbleWimble can be forced on the maxis as a payment channel if the demand is there. Note, MimbleWimble isn’t as private as Monero, and the fact that it’s possible to know when something goes into and out of MimbleWimble may make you targeted as a “money launderer” makes it risky. But at least its a step forward.

It doesn’t need to be on a device. You can create a “book” at the local binding store containing 200 samples of “Vogon poetry” ( http://spaceinvaders.epizy.com/vogon.html?i=1 ) . Your seed phrase can be scattered in a memorised pattern within the book. You can bring that book with you anywhere and have multiple copies in different locations.

An old school method is to write a note with every fifth word being a seed word. Keep that note among 20 others so you cannot know what is relevant.

Mining isn’t a transmission service. All mining does is validates a transmission that already happened. If validation equals doing, then you could send all auditors and detectives and judges to jail for the crimes they investigate and convict.

It’s nowhere near as complicated as this. Anarcho-Capitalism inevitably leads to Crony-Capitalism since some people out-compete others and eventually you arrive at a state where its possible to 51% attack any system (e.g. Cantillon Effect). There is only one solution, complete decentralisation in everything so that no-one person can dominate. Bitcoin’s main weakness was the lack of privacy (so real life attacks such as censorship, KYC regulations, etc could happen), lack of ASIC resistance (so power centralises), transaction speed so you have to rely on L2s, and the inability to mine your own transactions to push them forward. Monero is far better but it is not free from these issues. Mining should be so light that all wallets do it and the chance of centralisation is near zero.

I’m not american, but it’d take this report with a grain of salt since Politico is left leaning, the former advisers were selected at a time when Trump was more naive wrt the deep state and more dependent on neocons (first term Trump was indifferent to FISA, now he opposes it since it targeted him). What we do know is that Trump wants a strong dollar since if the US looses its reserve status, it’s a disaster. He wants to stop the haemorrhaging of US debt by stopping the wars and rebuilding US financial relations which were damaged due to the war and sanctions that forced many countries that tried to wean themselves off the dollar and SWIFT. His stance on Bitcoin has softened, so I don’t think he’ll be antagonistic to it. A lot depends on who he picks for VP and the military and FBI/CIA. If he picks Vivek Ramaswamy as VP and Tulsi Gabbard in charge of the military and FBI/CIA, he’ll focus on government and military reform and he’ll be very friendly to crypto, possibly using it along with gold to help to support the US dollar. If he does the reverse, you’ll likely see more social programs and reigning in of the FBI/CIA. If both are excluded and MAGA conservatives are selected to those spots, expect him to continue pre-COVID policies which appeared to work.

I agree to an extent, but banning from CEXes is the only way for Monero to truly become digital cash since cash is P2P. If everything depends upon CEXes, all Monero has done is replicate the existing financial institution. We might as well adopt anonymous repaid debit cards. It would have been best if this happened after Haveno, Serai, Serai integrating with the Maya Protocol, Seraphis, and FCMP (Full Chain Membership Proofs). But realistically, Haveno was taking forever, as was Serai, and FCMP were supposed to be done after Seraphis, and Seraphis might take 5 years to complete. IMO, because of the pressure with the delisting, Haveno and Serai have accelerated their development as has the interest in using them. FCMP may arrive before the end of the Bitcoin bull run. People from the Maya Protocol have also eyed Serai as a possible hub into the privacy space (since Monero proved that it won’t go away or be bow to regulation) and an integration like the Cosmos integration might be possible, making Monero integration into the whole DeFi world convenient and possible.

Instead of POS (see my previous post), it would make much more sense to adapt the Nimble Wimble approach of making it so that validation is P2P whenever both parties are online. If I buy from you and you agree, then the purchase should been validated with 2 confirmations. Since we both agree that the transaction is made, it’s no-one else’s business if the transaction is valid. This would be much less resource intensive than even POS and be faster. If only one party is online at a time, it should be possible to have 1 confirmation and the other confirmation can be delegated to a miner. If neither are online at the time, then the usual POW takes place. Of course, that would mean that all wallets would have to be validators, but since you’re only validating your own transactions, it should be light weight.

POS is fundamentally flawed. It increases centralization because people won’t want to validate themselves and instead delegate their stake to “trusted institutions”. Essentially, you’re recreating the existing financial system. POS is also less secure since you only lose X dollars for misdeeds but have the power to do far more than X dollars of damage. And if all you want to do is damage, that slashed stake is just the cost of doing business. And if people are staking with you, you don’t even risk losing your own money. And although the “guarantee” that the validator is doing right comes form the slashing of the stake, the enforcement of that slashing is political (i.e. others have to gang up on you to take your stake). When enforcement is political, wrongful slashing is inevitable. Finally, when a 51% attack is possible with validators, it’s imposible to undo it…unlike POW which can call on the community to start a few miners on their PCs.

Note that when you first deposit money into a wallet, you would prepay the cleanup fee and you would pay the cleanup fee on any transaction made after the N months. This would ensure that only N months of records are present. And if you do not touch you account for 20 years, no problem. You still have all your money and you only have N months of payments