Monero Community Crowdfunding System
ccs.getmonero.org76 points by OsrsNeedsf2P 10 hours ago
76 points by OsrsNeedsf2P 10 hours ago
Monero has consistently exceeded the rest of crypto in community, integrity to mission, and use-case. True digital cash.
FCMP++ upgrade will be huge for sender privacy bringing Monero's technical strength in line with ZCash.
The new site[1] looks great as well; it was funded by the CCS.
Very awesome set of replies you’ve left in this thread. So nice to see.
I will be buying some Monero for the first time because of this thread.
I'm glad you gained something! Welcome to Monero!
Drop a Monero address here and I'll send you a tiny amount for your first transaction.
I recommend CakeWallet, which is cross-platform, user friendly, and does a lot of good for the community, but any of the wallets recommended on the official[1] website are fine.
p.s. you or anyone can reach out via my contacts in bio if you have any questions about Monero.
I would actually recommend to just use a hardware wallet. The monero-cli or the Monero GUI-Wallet are sufficient. Just drop your wallet onto an USB stick with LUKS encryption. Get your recovery seed + wallet height written by hand and bury them somewhere in your garden, or your parents garden in safe box.
Drop me your address, and I will also send a little bit your way, to get you hooked!
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> regulatory and political challenges
Not bending down to the financial arm of warrantless global mass surveillance is a feature, not a bug.
> being tradeable on central exchanges
Central exchanges are banks in disguise. They should not exist.
A key feature of cash is its ability to pass through and into the KYC/AML panopticon where (edit: to make it clear what the "KYC/AML panopticon" meant -- after being deposited in a bank) you can buy things like real estate and heavy capital equipment. If you can't prove chain of custody of source of funds and source of wealth, you're effectively shut off from a wide amount of transactions.
At least in the West. If you go to someplace like Dubai it is no problem.
I'm confused
your argument is that Monero fails at doing a thing that cash also fails at, which is making large purchases without chain of custody/source of funds?
No my argument is Monero fails in practice relatively worse than similar 'weight class' crypto currency assets at actually spending 'digital cash' (presumably a desirable quality of 'cash') to make legal purchases from crypto accepting sellers. This is quite evident if you survey available offerings -- vendors are far more likely to accept even the lower cap litecoin than monero (even the 'cryptwerk' website advertised by getmonero shows 2x as many vedors accepting LTC).
I do postulate that the fact it is easier to show chain of custody to the point it satisfies banks and regulated entities as part of this (even if through chain-analysis mumbo jumbo), thus other crypto currencies have lent more towards accessing more purchases in a way cash idealizes to do.
At no point was my argument simply monero fails at the same thing a pile of cash dropped through the sky might fail at and that's the end of it. I think that's a pretty silly portrayal of what I've said, made in bad faith. Although in reality I've had my cex account frozen almost every single time I've tried depositing very low, 3 digit amounts of XMR (including frozen for years) whereas you can somewhat reliably put $200-$1000 in a bank in place like USA and then use that as part of purchase that goes through KYC/AML channels.
Now if you do want to compare, say, a pile of cash falling out of the sky, vs a pile of bitcoin, vs a pile of monero and you wanted to spend it on something big that went through KYC/AML compliance. In order of what would be easiest to spend, assuming the money actually came from a legal source. Bitcoin would be the easiest to spend because you have some chance at showing it came straight from a KYC'd source because of the plaintext blockchain, next would be cash (largely for historical reasons), the hardest to actually spend would be the monero. Now if we presume matheusmoreira point about banks was just a red herring, then your follow on is just one too, since the bit regarding KYC/AML compliance purchases/transactions was a response to that.
You: "everybody is autistic but me!"
Also you: proceeds to rant about "heavy equipment," a beloved pastime of everyone, including the neurodivergent
I don't think what you are saying is that complicated honestly, but surely you see that, there can be many successful niches.
> A key feature of cash is its ability to pass through and into the KYC/AML panopticon where you can buy things like real estate and heavy capital equipment.
My country is in the process of criminalizing the purchase of real estate with cash. Laws have been proposed to that end. Politicians have also proposed restricting the amount of "unexplained" physical cash the population is "allowed" to hold.
This is your future if you don't resist.
> If you can't prove chain of custody of source of funds and source of wealth
You shouldn't have to "prove" anything. What a bunch of nonsense.
Cash would "fail horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges challenges today". And some countries are trying to make it harder to use.
Yes but fortunately we have other points of comparison and I was making a relative analysis. Legal vendors who take crypto are more likely to accept even the lower market cap LTC in most cases than XMR. XMR is one of the weakest performers as spending cash on legal goods and service amongst crypto assets of similar financial "weight class."
The technical superiority and features on many points seem to be unable to overcome this.
That's because anonymity is the entire point of Monero. Of course legal vendors don't like anonymity, every government wants to be able to track every transaction anywhere.
Saying Monero hasn't been able "to overcome this" is like saying boats have been unable to overcome driving on roads. Technically true, but very much not the point.
For business acceptance, I see how it would be hard if it is impossible to use on a CEX. I think that Haveno/RetoSwap will eventually become the preferred and more convenient Fiat-->Monero method instead of CEXs for the avg user.
Overall though I would even prefer to use a stable than a bank or fiat p2p app to send money.
>They've failed horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges of being tradeable on central exchanges and as a result has met weak acceptance from crypto-friendly legal vendors making it harder to use as actual digital cash.
Despite this, everywhere it is accepted, it becomes the largest marketshare crypto payment method, excluding whales.
Pardon, the “autistic” point of view?
In this case, I mean a narrowed focus (in this case, on technical qualities) to the point it is maladaptive for the underlying stated goal ("digital cash").
A survey of cryptocurrencies showed monero has failed to achieve this goal of being a superior form of digital cash, relative to most other crypto currencies in similar 'weight class' of market cap and years available. This failure isn't technical, it's due to relative weaknesses in the realms of politics and soft social influence. Even the lower market cap LTC is more accepted as 'cash' by most legal vendors.
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re: below muh sources
getmonero.org, OPs referenced website, advertises cryptwerk as a good directory.
Go to https://cryptwerk.com/pay-with/xmr/ and compare it to https://cryptwerk.com/pay-with/ltc/.
There are ~twice as many for LTC for example, and that's being charitable with something with a lower market cap rather than BTC which is like 3+ times as many.
Do you have a source to back up this claim? There are thousands[1] of legal businesses that accept Monero.
I had not paid any attention to Monero amid the storm of cryptocurrencies and related scams, but thanks to your recommendation here, I will be checking it outmn
> of being tradeable on central exchanges
That's a good signal that the privacy guarantees are real, no? It's no secret that the main use-case for crypto is skirting the legal system; I'm not sure I understand this desire to make it anything bigger than that. For example, it's extremely hard to Be Your Own Bank because one mistake means you've just lost all your funds whether it's from a scam, malware, or losing your wallet seed phrase. Large amounts of people "being their own bank" by putting their life savings into crypto would be a disaster.
What are they supposed to do? How can they make governments happy without sacrificing privacy?
> How can they make governments happy
That's the wrong question. Nobody cares how the elites in the government feel. They exist to serve us. That is the only reason they have any power at all.
The right question is: how can we make it mathematically impossible for the government to oppress us in any way, regardless of how much they seethe and rage about it? Their happiness does not matter. In fact their anger is probably a good sign that the technology is working as intended. The angrier they get, the freer you are.
> The angrier they get, the freer you are.
The angrier they get, the higher is the chance that they make your technical solution illegal. What, you're using technology that might endanger children? All the concerned parents are suddenly your enemoies, democratically speaking. What? Your technology can be used to do money laundering? And you're using it still? You can now anonymously pay only darknet vendors and other shady bussinesses. Have your anonymity, but cut off from the rest of "good" society.
Given the original motivation to actually invent crypto, I am surprised it wasn't outlawed a long time ago. No goverment likes to be overthrown...
It's just the usual politico-technological arms race. Governments make laws, people make technology that works around the laws in such a way that the government can do nothing about it.
Governments must continuously increase their tyranny in order to maintain the exact same level of control they used to have before. There are two possible outcomes: a free and uncontrollable population emancipated by ubiquitous subversive technology, or a totalitarian government so oppressive that even your concerned parents feel the weight of its boot on their faces.
It's my sincere hope that we'll discover the true limits of the government's tyranny in the process. The harsh truth is people need to accept the existence of some amount of crime if they want to live with basic human dignity. It's just like how the banking industry accepts some degree of fraud as a business expense. They could stamp it out, but the security requirements would add so much friction to everyday transactions nobody would buy anything.
Monero needs to step up for quantum safety, not by replacing the existing encryption, but by adding a quantum safety encryption layer on top. Google's recent paper on quantum risks to cryptocurrencies had identified Monero as being at risk. This is not tomorrow's problem; it requires initiating action today, so these efforts can bear fruit by the time the quantum hardware is ready, perhaps by 2029.
Would someone please explain to me the pros and cons of this existing?
The US Federal Government specifically calls out Monero as one of the coins that it hates, which means that it must be quite effective at achieving its goals. So the pro is that you know it works. The cons are nothing specific to Monero, just general criticism of cryptocurrencies. Not being a deep crypto user myself, at least, I haven't heard anyone speak of any flaw specific to Monero that isn't shared by a significant portion of the remainder of all of these coins
Do you already know how a regular Cryptocurrency works and want to know about Monero specifically? Or do you not know anything about Crypto?
I am very aware of cryptocurrency, some of the intricacies, and possibly most of the use cases.
I asked an honest question about the pros and cons. Every technology has pros and cons, right?
Monero is the most anonymous of the mainstream cryptocurrencies. That's also the reason why it is increasingly outlawed (at least in the EU).
Maybe I did not state my orinignal question correctly.
What are the pros of Monero, and what are the cons?
Really up to you personally what is a pro and a con. For me this is a starting list. A lot of these are a result of the technical differences as well as I listed the technical differences.
Pros:
1% inflation
no fixed supply (makes it more of a currency than an asset)
privacy by default,
fungibility—every coin is the exact same, no coin history
prevents financial surveillance by corporations,
protects against government abuses,
useful tool for activists, journalists, minorities, useful for domestic abuse survivors,
useful for businesses sending money across borders,
protects against stalkers,
protects against advertisers profiling you,
reduces identity theft,
prevents databreaches of personal info,
pushes forward cryptography,
allows people to purchase drugs (you decide if this is good or bad),
prevents financial censorship,
allows anonymous donations,
low fees,
more decentralized than bitcoin due to RandomX CPU mining,
prevents crypto robbery,
allows you to buy your adult content without anyone knowing.
large developer community iirc 3rd after bitcoin, eth
less volatile than other cryptos
usually most used crypto for payments when accepted at merchants
Cons:
20 minutes to use funds again
hard to aquire
number go up slower
hard to convert back to fiat
hard to convert to fiat
used by "criminals"
lots of nazis like it
used for unethical purposes
pro: if the world devolves into an authoritarean hellscape, people will still have a form of undetectable currency until they find a way to get rid of this
con: this improves the chances if the world to devolving into an authoritarean hellscape
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Privacy tools will be used in ethical and non-ethical ways. I get that it is annoying that crypto facilitates cybercrime, but that is the cost of privacy for everyone. Everyone gets those rights, because there is no other way. I will say that Monero is vastly used for ethical purposes[1].
I guess encryption shouldn't exist because cybercriminals use it to communicate privately. Privacy is a human right, and payments are essential to modern life.
Also, good luck on "crash and burn", Monero has been going steady, being the most freedom protecting crypto, for 12 years, celebrating its 12th birthday two days ago.
[1] My emotional reaction to your comment, https://xmrbazaar.com/, https://monerica.com/
> I get that it is annoying that crypto facilitates cybercrime, but that is the cost of privacy for everyone.
Who decided this, was 'everyone' consulted on what they'd rather have? Because it seems to me like cyber-criminals and a handful of idealists got what they wanted, and everyone else can suck it...
> Privacy tools will be used in ethical and non-ethical ways.
Monero is not a privacy tool. It's a criminal money laundering tool.
So far, the *coin ecosystem has given us nothing _but_ negatives. It's kinda unique in that regard.
> I guess encryption shouldn't exist because cybercriminals use it to communicate privately. Privacy is a human right, and payments are essential to modern life.
Privacy is, money laundering isn't.
A tool should not be regulated based on what it can do. Regulating tools rather than the action or intention of a person or group is inherently backwards and wrong imo.
> A tool should not be regulated based on what it can do.
They should be regulated on their primary purpose in practice and the damage that they cause. And Monero is unwilling or unable to police itself, even as it does damage that dwarfs pretty much any other computing technology.
And not just nebulous "missed sale" damage, but very real damage that often results in dead people and ruined lives.
> Regulating tools rather than the action or intention of a person or group is inherently backwards and wrong imo.
We absolutely regulate tools that can inflict a disproportionate amount of damage. For example, I can't just buy high explosives even if I just want to do a cool video of me launching a manhole cover into the air. Or nuclear materials. Or surface-to-air missiles. Or....
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Monero is the only real CRYPTO currency.
Please look into the benefits. Consider the upsides. I have considered the downsides. Try to understand the importance of Cash and private money and its role in a free society.
I get that you were swept up in that period when crypto got bashed left and right. I agree, there are a lot of problems with crypto and 99% of cryptos are scams, but Monero has a huge use case for internet money. Monero is creating whole new parallel economies[1] and protecting activists and everyday people that value privacy.
Visiting those linked websites, they feel sketchy. It seems they are offering gift cards and different pirated digital goods in exchange for Monero. Red flags all around.
Monero is a community project. There are no official websites, only community contributions and consensus. Sure, some sketchy sites are inevitably going to be listed on Monerica, but it lists which have been verified as working by the site owner, and they show reports of scams. Here[1] you can see a list of projects that accept Monero donations.
xmrbazaar allows only legal listings, it is by no means a DNM, but it is a free market. There are multi-sig wallets with mediators to prevent scamming by either party, and there is a reputation system.
Yeah, some of the boosted listings are for financial services; I see plenty of sketchy listings on FB marketplace.
Examples of normal listings: See these eggs[2], real estate[3], italian meat[4].
[1] https://monerica.com/non-profits
[2] https://xmrbazaar.com/listing/yWKK/
Monero is the only real "private" way to send money to another party. And there is demand for that, so yes still a thing.
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Right, because if we can trust centralized control, we can't trust anything. Bring on the social credit!