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Comment by olah_1 | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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>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.

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