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Comment by user-the-name | Hacker News Reader

Where "right to financial privacy online" translates as "ability to pay for illegal goods and services".

Also, do you shut the door in a public toilet? If so, you must be snorting coke, I guess. Why on Earth would you shut the toilet door otherwise?

I mean you publish all Bitcoin transactions on a global ledger so I suspect in this metaphor you’re the one with the stall door open. My bank doesnt share my transactions except as required by law in the event of suspicious activity.

But if we’re going to play this game, if everyone walking into the bathroom came out with a renewed sense of self esteem, a nose bleed and a sudden urge to dance, yes, I think you would be looked at sideways for closing the door. What’s lacking from your rhetorical question is context.

Are you of the opinion that people shouldn't have the right of financial privacy online? Or is this just a quippy way of dismissing cryptocurrency as a concept?

It is a way of pointing out that hardly anybody uses Monero for anything other than crime.

How do you know that? And even if it was true, what is the underlying point? I don't see the "hardly anybody uses Monero for anything other than crime (right now)" -> "cryptocurrency is useless" argument working.

It's not exactly a secret, is it. Come on, you're not that naïve.

I feel like my point is getting ignored and I dislike this type of reasoning via "common sense, obvious, irrefutable narrative".

I don't see much of a point other than "I don't want to believe this because it makes Monero look bad".

The point is people have a right to financial privacy and cryptocurrencies are one possible way of achieving this. Therefore, cryptocurrencies are not a priori useless.

I'm not even talking about Monero or the particularities of its current dominant usage as I think this is irrelevant for the above point.

They are indeed very useful to criminals.

That may be your case and so your bias.

No, that is just the case with Monero. It is used mainly for criminal activity.

That's objectively your assumption. You really have no way of knowing what it's mainly used for.

It's crime, though.

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