With all due respect, you don't understand what you are talking about. In a sense, your arguments (and their complete disconnect from reality) just proves that monero is not a viable use case for value exchange in authoritarian countries (or even democratic countries).

Your monero for drugs for local cash idea is idiotic and that's not how any of this works. Have you ever given an "under-the-table" payment for utilities? Of course not! You are just making shit up, I can't put this in a more diplomatic manner.

Because of what I mentioned, I won't go into an in-depth discussion around how you would be tracked (I trust you have sufficient common sense to think this through).

That being said I will point out two things:

1. I never challenged the technical merits of monero (vis a vis cash, bitcoin or drugs).
2. The world does not exist on the blockchain, you don't have to break the monero protocol to enable tracking. That's arguably the most inefficient way possible of getting what you need.

Make of this what you will.

Have you ever given an “under-the-table” payment for utilities?

Of course not, because I don't live in an area that manipulates its currency, nor have I needed that level of privacy. I have, however, lived in an area where that type of thing was commonplace. I paid for rent, utilities, and groceries with cash, and you'd have to be incredibly naïve to believe that everyone paid taxes on that money. If I wanted to "go dark" there, I could've, all I'd need is a stash of cash.

If you want to live off the grid, you operate in untraceable arrangements, and that protects both you and the service provider.

My point here is that whether you can easily liquidate the medium of exchange isn't nearly as important as the benefits that medium provides. If you need the protections that privacy coins provide, both sides of the transaction will find a way to make it work.

I won’t go into an in-depth discussion around how you would be tracked

I wish you would, because then we'd have something to discuss.

I assume you're talking about the $5 wrench idea (i.e. this xkcd), as in get people to rat out the dissidents. Or maybe you're talking about hacking users devices, or some other side-channel attack (i.e. packet snooping). None of that has nothing to do with the medium of exchange, and there are ways to mitigate that risk.

My point is that Monero has uses today, and it can be more useful if people actually start trying to use it. I see it as similar to Tor, the more people use it, the safer it is for the people who truly need it.

That's some pretty big (rude) talk for someone who isn't willing to back their opinions with any sort of argument. Saying things like "Your idea is idiotic", "You don't understand what you're talking about", "You are just making shit up" but then proceeding to say "Because of what I mentioned, I won't go into an in-depth discussion around how you would be tracked" is a pretty cowardly stance in my opinion. "I will discredit your arguments with ridicule and no counter points".

I for one do see the value in privacy protecting crypto currencies. I concede that they are not a viable option for utilitarian and common practices since the use of crypto is not common and does require specific know-how. However, they do have their usecases. Whistleblowers, for example. Regarding the second point you made: I guess you are implying the main vulnerability is the humans involved in the transaction. If that is the case, the responsibility on handling the transactions anonymously falls onto the interested party i.e. the one who is interested in keeping the transaction anonymous will also need to devise a scenario that is compatible with anonymity.

On the other hand, if anonymity isn't imperative and the users just want a more privacy friendly solution to payment transactions, I think it also makes sense. You can prefer the banks not monitoring everything you do but also not need to live in anonymity and accept the fact that, if interested, the governing entities will most likely have the means to track down your transactions. But that is most likely only going to affect criminals, not privacy conscious citizens.

You don't need crypto as an alternative to MasterCard/Visa. There are multiple national payment systems that de facto work on a public benefit basis or offer no fees or very low fees.

One major example is India's UPI:

Unified Payments Interface - Wikipedia

(en.m.wikipedia.org)

Even in a medium sized developing country like Ukraine, I can send anyone money (P2P, business payment, business transaction) with minimal or no fees on a near instantaneous basis off my phone.

I am not on top of recent payment infrastructure developments, but from memory this is relatively common.

No need for scam services like PayPal, Venmo.

And this has been avaible for half a decade minimum (was living in another country before then).

Sure sure, is it a sound, decentralized bottom up monetary network built by the people for the people on cryptography rails on an uncensorable network?

There are only two good use cases for crypto:

1. Financial speculation
2. Criminal activity and fraud

sad thing is that it could be great as an alternative to mastercard/visa but crypto fash have just ruined any attempt to make it appealing to anyone other than crypto fascists.

As I understand it, cryptocurrency funnily enough works awfully as a means of transaction, because the amount of processing power required to make transactions is ridiculously high.

What about paying for censored games?

What about it?

It's a 3rd use case.

No, it's not a viable use case.

Developers of such games what the broadest market possible and consumers want easy accessibility and stable updates/support.

The groups outlined above are interested in the product and not promotion of some cryptocurrency.

Both these goals are best served using real currencies, not monero. Such payment systems (using real currency, aimed at content with erotica/porn) are widely available and haven in use for 30+ years.

If you don't want to deal with such payment systems directly (e.g. setup an LLC and other such matters), there are multiple easy to implement distribution approaches that one can launch in ~15 minutes.

This is why I don't trust crypto promoters.

You would use real currencies for everything except the transfer. The consumer only sees USD. The provider swaps back to Fiat as soon as necessary.

The use case is enabling payment over the Internet while avoiding traditional, censoring providers.

This does not make sense.

What you're saying is that it's impossible to buy porn/erotica online without monero. This is clearly wrong.

You most definitely could do that before blockchains were a thing.

You would use real currencies for everything except the transfer. The consumer only sees USD. The provider swaps back to Fiat as soon as necessary.

The use case is enabling payment over the Internet while avoiding traditional, censoring providers.

What you're saying is that it's impossible to buy porn/erotica online without monero

I haven't said anything like that.

I'm saying crypto is an additional, uncensored payment channel.

Only for PoW crypto.

the venn diagram of crypto nerd assholes and tiny dicks is a circle.

If a cryptocurrency concentrates into the hands of a few, as assets tend to do in capitalism, then wouldn't proof of stake mean those few control the cryptocurrency anyway?