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.

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.

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.

Yes, banks are used for crimes on a massive scale. Usually that’s not available to small time people.

Crypto can be used for criminal activity with a low barrier to entry. There are several use cases where things maybe should not be illegal in the first place. Like buying drugs for example.

Banks too are available for crimes for "small time people" if you know what you are doing.

The direction of this discussion is a red herring. My point was that beyond financial speculation and crime/fraud, crypto has no viable (not purely theoretical) use cases.

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.

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.