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Comment by jonathan-adly | Hacker News Reader

Monero is too good at evading government surveillance. It will never be allowed to reach critical mass of usage to survive as the premier cryptocurrency.

It will continue to have a role and prosper next to Bitcoin though. We need both. One to decouple from government control, and the other to evade surveillance.

It’s a well-known secret that you can change your Bitcoin to monero, then the Monero back to Bitcoin to “wash” your Bitcoin. Also, with enough time, all the Bitcoins would be dirty.

P.S. don’t bother responding if you are coming from the privilege of never having lived under a terrible government.

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> P.S. don’t bother responding if you are coming from the privilege of never having lived under a terrible government.

Please don't tell me whether or not to respond. If you want to point out that the question has much more salience for those who have to deal with terrible governments then I think that's a very important point to make and I appreciate you pointing it out. But I come to Hacker News to hear from everyone with insights -- NOT just the subset who happen to live under terrible governments.

To be fair with OP, it's very frustrating to read US-centric responses when you're talking about issues that are not present there. Comments like "it's against the law" or "that's not how the energy industry works" or "software engineers are overpaid" might seem innocent enough, but are really frustrating for those readers who understand that the fact we all speak English online doesn't mean we are all from USA.

Exactly. Relevant to this discussion, if you are living in a Euro/USD country where everyone will happily accept your currency and you can indirectly affect monetary policy then why would you care? Of course, cryptocurrency would seem useless to you.

It’s not the same everywhere though!

If you want a free society you have to live like you're in one.

Closing debate on any topic is not a free society.

I know of no country where the average citizen can affect the monetary policy of their currency.

Otherwise we wouldn't have had two full years of central bank-fueled upwards wealth redistribution almost everywhere in the world.

In abstract theory, in the US - you get to elect the president who nominates folks at the central bank and congress (again, elected) confirms them.

I agree with you in reality though. The average person have 0 input in the monetary policy in America or Europe.

You forgot one step (which further highlights the absurdity of this system): US citizens elect "presidential electors" who then elect the president.

> It will never be allowed to reach critical mass of usage to survive as the premier cryptocurrency.

Monero is getting to the point where it will not need permission.

It will soon be added to the decentralized exchange Thorchain. On top of that, the Haveno project is making great progress and will be a Monero version of Bisq.

Thorchain will be swaps that don’t require specific orders, much higher liquidity. Haveno is the traditional platform where someone puts out an order and someone buys that exact amount.

Oh and I almost forgot about regular atomic swaps which also exist today.

>Monero is getting to the point where it will not need permission.

If you're interested in actually using your currency for anything in the real world other than swapping it for other cryptocurrency you'll always need permission.

If I want to go to the supermarket and pay with Monero that will require that legislators deem Monero a legitimate currency.

https://xkcd.com/538/

> If I want to go to the supermarket and pay with Monero that will require that legislators deem Monero a legitimate currency.

A lot of people use giftcards. That's what people do with bitcoin too.

> https://xkcd.com/538/

Completely irrelevant to this conversation.

Actually it's relevant as a reminder of the importance of privacy coins, for they are the only way to avoid wrench attacks.

You can still get wrench attacked for your Monero in the same exact way.

It's just a risk of self-custody of keys and it's a good reason for the industry to push forward better key management solutions (multi-sig + shamir secret sharing, etc)

Can you not be wrenched into giving away your privacy coins?

You're still a single point of failure, aren't you? Apply wrench until you've given up all the privacy coins you have access to

Privacy coins give you plausible deniability. Attackers don't know what you own, because the balances are private.

Muggers on the street don’t know what’s in your wallet either. But they still want whatever is in there.

Until wallets gets smarter and safer, and these smart/safe features are so mainstream that even muggers understand it, this will always be a risk

So you give them dust contained in your decoy wallet.

The problem with cryptos with public balances is that attackers can know your net worth in advance, and thus know whether you're a valuable target, and exactly how much they can ask of you. And this is the reason why privacy technology likely won't be outlawed: high networth individuals use them constantly.

> The problem with cryptos with public balances is that attackers can know your net worth in advance, and thus know whether you're a valuable target, and exactly how much they can ask of you.

Not really... a mugger can read people well enough to know that they have more than $100. More than $1000, etc. A random person older than 30 can likely give you a lot more than $2000 even.

So this goes back to wallets needing to be smarter all around. I expect there to be companies/services that spring up specifically around this need.

However, one thing that I predict in the next 5 years is that people will simply stop having crypto wallets on their phones. They will either not have mobile access to their savings accounts at all or they will use something like a SatsCard that only has like $100 on it https://getsatscard.com/

Random attacks on the street are a problem, but the "wrench attack" trope relates more to targeted attacks against known victims, which are becoming increasingly common.

In many countries, kidnapping and torturing someone for $2000 is not worth the risk for anyone. But for amounts 6 figure and up, it makes good risk-adjusted sense to many people.

Given how few people have a proper security setup, cryptocurrencies with KYC'd accounts and public balances are lists of juicy extortion targets.

I've been paid for work in Monero before. It's not a far stretch.

As long as governments begin to accept Bitcoin, it becomes trivial to accept altcoins because they're often easily exchanged for Bitcoin.

> As long as governments begin to accept Bitcoin

Governments of small countries, maybe... but Bitcoin is already banned in China.

There are talks about a ban in Russia (Putin seems to be satisfied with taxing mining more harshly, though):

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/russian-cbank-propo...

It's not a case that it was first China, and now Russia (which is in the top 3 for mining).

In the top 3 for mining there's also Kazakhstan, and their recent crisis was also caused by energy prices, so I can see them tolerating bitcoin only in the short term.

That leaves the US, but that country is too corrupt... And it has too many bitcoin billionaires to allow the value of bitcoin to tank. But no one knows how long this will all last.

Russia and China have a long history of banning/blocking freedom-preserving technology.

Bitcoin continues to thrive despite their bans.

https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/shadow_economy/

A huge portion of many countries' economic activity happens outside the reach of their governments. This is the present reality, not some anarchist dream.

In this context, people are free to use the currency they prefer.

Which really says the USD needs to modernize to keep its popularity.

A US controlled internet currency is going to do better than any of the cryptos

> It will soon be added to the decentralized exchange Thorchain.

I've heard about XHV and Monero being added to Thorchain a year ago, described as coming soon. Somehow it feels more like marketing than a real thing.

El Salvador and China have shown us that Bitcoin is not sufficient to evade government control.

Also, exfiltrating value via crypto is not sufficient for most people in oppressive countries. The overwhelming majority need to be able to spend the crypto locally as cash, which isn't possible in any oppressive country except El Salvador.

Crypto is de facto banned in China and yet I see an incredible amount of chinese even those working for state owned corporations trading crypto. Even openly with their profile pics on Twitter. China is sometimes too ridiculous for me to understand.

largely due to the coverage of the press many people think China has superpowers when it comes to law enforcement, but that's obviously not the case. 1.4 billion people are hard to manage

It's the same way everywhere really. Technically Elon Musk is supposed to have his twitter activity supervised as per agreement with regulators. I don't think that's happening but somehow nobody cares

China doesn't need to 100% enforce the law to effectively make something illegal. Even if they catch and prosecute 1%, their justice system is dangerous enough that most people won't take the risk.

For crypto as currency, this is effectively a death sentence. If most people are afraid to hold or trade it, you can't use it locally.

It would only be useful to people hoping to exfiltrate value and then leave the country, which is not a majority of people.

Well tell that to the state employees openly trading crypto as mentioned earlier.

just because a few people, in positions of privilege or high risk takers, do it, doesn't mean the majority is capable or willing.

Maybe not majority but a very high % of people in China would do anything to make money. And it's not just a few people in positions of privilege. It's your regular people working in state corps.

China is a perfect example. A Chinese citizen only needs a VPN and USB drive to exit the highly-controlled digital yuan and put his savings in Bitcoin. When he needs to get to a local currency or USD, a P2P exchange like Bisq would do it.

The other person at Bisq would simply wash his bitcoins through monero - and that would be that.

Not only its good for Chinese citizens, it is very good for western democracies to funnel money to opposition figures in hostile countries (or plain old spies). In a world where the digital Yuan reigns supreme (where everything is monitored), would the US want to pay a Chinese spy in paper USD, washed bitcoins, or digital yuan?

How does exiting the highly-controlled digital yuan work?

I have x amount of savings of Yuan. I keep 6 month expenses in Yuan and the rest in Bitcoin.

When I need to make an unapproved transaction (donating to a Muslim charity if you are a Yighur for example). I go through the hassle of using Bitcoin, either directly or after changing to USD by P2P exchange.

This doesn't explain anything.

Who's buying yuan from you in exchange for Bitcoin?

Who's selling you yuan in exchange for Bitcoin?

Given that yuan is tightly controlled... How is Bitcoin hiding anything in this process?

Can you be more concrete? Here's what I'm imagining you're saying: first you take a month's paycheck out of the bank in yuan, in cash; then you walk down the street to a jeweler's shop that will exchange your yuan in cash for US$100 bills; then you send a WeChat message to a guy who sells Bitcoin, and the next day you take a taxi with your US$100 bills to a cafe, where he transfers you the Bitcoin and you give him the US$100 bills. Is that what you mean?

I'm wondering if somebody who spends all of their highly-controlled digital yuan in cash every month, and not on anything detectable, will draw suspicion.

I've appreciated your arguments so far, but how does "only needing a VPN" qualify as easy?

I live outside China and I am baffled about how you get a VPN that you trust. A VPN is a third-party who shields you and that you trust.

Everyone on HN recommends Mullvad because of their track record. Do you know that Mullvad is not compromised?

If you lived in China, how would you find a VPN that you trust?

I didn’t live in China, but lived in a Middle Eastern county where the vanilla internet is monitored.

The locals know what to use. Also, you don’t need a non-monitored VPN. Just one that’s not monitored by your own government.

> It will never be allowed to reach critical mass of usage to survive as the premier cryptocurrency.

Why? How are they going to keep it down?

I will keep talking about it and trying to use it. Actually managed to get paid with it once. Ironic that the one coin that's actually usable as currency remains obscure.

Did you manage to convert that pay to fiat?

Yes. Deposited it on Binance, left some XMR in the savings account, exchanged XMR/USD/BRL and withdrew to my bank.

If crypto currencies ever get large enough to be a bother they can just turn off any networked machine that supports crypto. They control the entire internet at the physical level. Until crypto currencies come with their own physical cables and machines, and the army needed to protect it from sabotage/alteration, then it’s going to need at least implicit permission from various governments.

This isn’t shadowrun, the digital realm isn’t one entirely separate from reality

Well, that's the general problem with the centralized internet we enjoy today. Telecommunications service providers have always been in bed with governments. I wonder if we'll eventually move towards a decentralized mesh network.

Another possible solution is to somehow get influential people to buy into these systems. That way, they won't want to stop it even if they could.

> I wonder if we'll eventually move towards a decentralized mesh network

What would they do? We still use address systems based on groups owned by the governments. I’m not even protesting that fact. I’m just amazed that a large group of people think they can have a direct dependency on someone else’s property, and pretend that they are completely independent.

Ah, you must not live in the US then.

> Also, with enough time, all the Bitcoins would be dirty.

This is a misconception. Coins are only associated with the last identified node. So for example if I sent tainted BTC to Coinbase, sure Coinbase would investigate my account obviously. But the coins can be used from then on as "clean" Coinbase coins, until they hit the next identified node by blockchain analysis companies.

If Coinbase accepts the deposit. If they refuse it then the hot potato is back in your hands.

Ironically, not necessarily.

If you sent funds to Coinbase's provided address and they wanted to refuse/refund it for some reason, your new owned output would likely be marked as clean and from Coinbase.

This may vary across circumstances of course. And they may decide to refuse to issue a refund.

> P.S. don’t bother responding if you are coming from the privilege of never having lived under a terrible government.

At first the argument was that BTC is transparent which means it's better than the banks. Now it's transparency that is the problem. And now we can't freely debate it on a forum like HN.

Money laundering for "good" is still money laundering, and that's what your advocating. And money laundering enables all the "bad" things like bribery, human trafficking, arms sales, drugs, and then nation-state sponsored terrorism.

E.g. I keep asking myself, would organizations like NAMBLA like this technology?

It would, I think, be a shame for all the "good" you're hoping to create instead ends up causing far more harm for the people you hope to free with it.

You can debate it, I just have nothing to say to you.

If you can’t see the problem with governments controlling and monitoring transactions and being able to confiscate private property, then cryptocurrency is not for you. It’s simple - you don’t have to use it and you can call your legislators to ban it. Luckily, it’s permissionless, so no one cares.

If it’s on the internet, it’s up to the permission of whoever owns the hardware which happens to be all these governments.

I feel like the crypto arena is conflating the fact that they are small enough to not be worth actually stopping with the idea that they can never be stopped.

The only way to shut down the Bitcoin network is to shut down the internet all over the world at once and even then - there is ham radio and satellites.

Remember, you can say it’s useless (for you.) and harmful. That’s all fair. But, it’s a verifiable, indisputable fact that there are Bitcoin nodes operating in China despite the government ban[0]. You can’t ban Bitcoin, which why the free market deems it valuable.

Smart governments know this and move to tax it heavily(India), or move it to work within the state-regulated banks (Russia). But, no you can’t shut the network down without shutting everyone else internet.

0. https://bitnodes.io/

Bitcoin without any way to exchange it to some other currency makes it worthless.

Ergo, a government would just need to go after the exchanges. Nobody wants BTC, they want something more stable.

> The only way to shut down the Bitcoin network is to shut down the internet all over the world at once and even then - there is ham radio and satellites.

That implies bitcoin, and I am making an assumption that all cryptocurrencies are in the same boat, is worth as much as the rest of the internet.

If crypto markets start threatening fiat currencies, I will be heavily surprised if ISPs choose to protect crypto markets instead of shutting them down when the government threatens their ability to do business.

Crypto is only dangerous to fiat in crypto bros minds right now. They 100% can shut down crypto once it stops being a novelty

> You can debate it, I just have nothing to say to you.

So you can't see the harm in money laundering support human trafficking? Because that's real tyranny. Not by governments, but by criminals who can project power to bribe government officials to look the other way with anonymous transfers.

Debate is what happens in a free society. If you can't debate it, you can't promote it in a free society.

That’s pretty much how authoritarian governments work. Surely you can’t have free internet because terrorists use it to communicate, surely we can’t have elections because criminals bribe the simple people to vote for them, surely you can’t trust outside media because it’s controlled by the evil Jews. You don’t want money that’s can’t be controlled by us, because criminals will use it.

Trust us. We know what’s good for you. The world is bad, and only us can fix it. /sarcasm

> Trust us. We know what’s good for you. The world is bad, and only us can fix it. /sarcasm

Ironically, that is exactly what you're saying.

Not at all. I said in an earlier response, no one cares if you hate or want to ban crypto, it’s permissionsless.

It have been you taking the weird authoritarian take of “we must ban a tech because some bad people may use it”. Which is literally true in every technology ever invented.

> It have been you taking the weird authoritarian take of “we must ban a tech because some bad people may use it”. Which is literally true in every technology ever invented.

If you're calling me an authoritarian for espousing views on why a particular technology that allows easy money laundering is bad, then I guess by a variation of Godwin's law, I win by default.

So you've got one side of the transaction hidden, but how are you hiding the things you buy from the government?

For those interested in mixers, I'm just starting this episode of the Zero Knowledge podcast myself:

Mixers with Tornado.cash

https://zeroknowledge.fm/111-2/

Allowed by who? The main problem I see right now are social propaganda attacks and successful attempts at sabotaging the evolution of its research and technology.

> P.S. don’t bother responding if you are coming from the privilege of never having lived under a terrible government.

I lived under an even worse government than you, and find this attitude offensive.

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