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.

The main use case for crypto is for peer to peer transactions that do not require the permission of any third party (or government). A secondary use case for crypto is the enablement of self-executing smart contracts.

The problem is that the financial speculation aspect of crypto has eaten everything else. "Number go up" is now the main use case, and people do t actually transact much with crypto anymore. And the only type of smart contract that has gained any popular use whatsoever is the type that makes more shitty crypto tokens. Any general utility it had years ago evaporated when it became too valuable to transact with.

Except for those criminals and fraudsters you mentioned: they do put crypto to good use evading government oversight of their transactions. In this respect, crypto is no different than a briefcase full of cash. Yes, you could legally stash a briefcase full of cash in your house, but there are so many better (trackable) places to keep that cash that if the cops found that briefcase in your house wbile executing a search for other reasons, they would cite the existence of that briefcase as proof of sometnig nefarious.

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).

i'm not saying i'd use it or want it; i just meant it could have been had it not basically been relegated to the fringes by the cryptobros that made it unlikeable.

I've heard such arguments before, I don't find them convincing in the least. I don't believe you've thought this through.

You bring up cash? So what? You can use banks for crime as well. I believe one of the major US companies that got rescued in 2008 had several billion USD on the books that no one came to pick up because of disclosure rules.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, there are multiple massive red flags with your arguement that don't require specialist education/experience/knowledge.

That's fair. I do agree it has some properties to potentially be used in payment infrastructure systems.

I would argue something like India's UPI (we don't have a name for it in Ukraine) is better in every possible respect than a payment infrastructure based on blockchain tech.

And:

• privacy friendly transactions

For example, think of:

• activists and political dissidents
• victims of domestic abuse
• people who don't want banks and governments tracking their purchases

Bitcoin ain't it, bit privacy coins like Monero exist and tend to not have as much fraud spam since they don't have as many crazy spikes. I want Monero to be a thing because:

• low fees, and no foreign transaction fees
• privacy, so my bank can't sell my transaction data to advertisers
• fast transactions

I wouldn't use it for everything since it has no purchase protections, but I'd absolutely use it for a lot of small stuff if it was possible.

Have to disagree on this one.

How would this even work? You transfer monero to a person in an authoritarian state and then what? What do they do with Monero? You think an authoritarian state is going to allow you to pay for utilities with Monero? Buy food?

Monero doesn't allow for private transactions as this issue is a social and political problem, not a technology issue.

I wouldn't be surprised if your transactions would be less private with monero than a bank payment (because of Monero's unlicensed nature).

Trump

Epstein

What do they do with Monero?

• buy other things with it
• exchange for cash through the black market

This exact same thing happens w/ a lot of other things, such as:

• US dollar (or perhaps Euro) transactions in countries that manipulate their currency
• drug smuggling - the drug dealer "launders" the money to whatever currency they want

Basically, the same thing that works for illicit transactions protects activists, political dissidents, etc in authoritarian regions. All privacy coins provide is a convenient digital medium of exchange, how that gets turned into another medium of exchange is up to the merchant.

For things like utilities, authoritarian regimes tend to be pretty corrupt, and they already do under-the-table transactions. Using Monera vs drugs, foreign currency, etc isn't going to change that.

I wouldn’t be surprised if your transactions would be less private with monero than a bank payment (because of Monero’s unlicensed nature).

How so? Monero explicitly hides transaction details, so even if a large actor like the Russian, Chinese, or US government wanted, they can't track transactions, even if they compromise one end of the transaction. The wallet ID you use when buying something is ephemeral, the protocol creates a ton of misleading transactions so tracking down the correct one is very difficult, and even if they did, they'd have to break the crypto to link two transactions from the same wallet. Transactions are also very inexpensive, generally costing under a penny, so even if you wallet gets compromised, you can inexpensively move it to a new wallet.

The only way Monero would be less private than a bank is if government regulations make it so and under-the-table transactions are blocked effectively. But that would require a heavy surveillance state, and the heavier the surveillance state is, the more attractive under-the-table transactions become.

Privacy coins get pushback from governments because they're effective at protecting privacy. It turns out, governments like spying on transactions, and would get rid of cash if they could get away with it. They get used a lot for illicit transactions because they're effective at it, and that's why governments have started to restrict their use (i.e. banning Monero from exchanges).

I'm not a crypto fan boy by any stretch, and I don't think anyone should "invest" in them because they don't generate any form of value (I feel the same about precious metals). But I do think privacy coins have a place in society as a digital cash replacement, because I'd really rather not have my transaction details spied on by governments. If you want practical reasons for this, look no further than the Mastercard/Visa scandal w/ porn gaes on Steam and other platforms.