
The Bitcoin Flaw: Monero Rising - qertoip
http://cryptoizzy.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-bitcoin-flaw-monero-rising.html
======
brndnmtthws
I agree with the premise that fungibility is important to Bitcoin's success,
but I disagree that Bitcoin is 'flawed' or has in some way lost to Monero.

There was an update yesterday on the progress being made on privacy features
in Bitcoin: [https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-
dev/2017...](https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-
dev/2017-December/015346.html)

On a related note, I am happy about the conservative and careful pace of
development of Bitcoin. I don't want my store of value to undergo risky
development.

~~~
madamelic
Bitcoin may not be dead but it is certainly being destroyed on its original
purpose (being money).

The only reason to hold Bitcoin is the naive hope that more suckers (not even
a better word for them) pay you to hold something they think will go higher
(again: suckers)

There are networks that are faster / more secure than Bitcoin and therefore
more valuable as usable money (which is what Bitcoin was supposed to be)

Bitcoin may be worth _something_ , but it certainly isn't worth $11k in my
opinion since it is just a community-decided value-store currently.

The same could be said for USD but at least USD is backed by the United
States.

~~~
deweller
NOT being backed by any one country or central bank is Bitcoin's primary value
proposition.

~~~
madamelic
>NOT being backed by any one country or central bank is Bitcoin's primary
value proposition.

Absolutely.

But if no one is backing it and it has no purpose that supports its value, it
shouldn't be worth a lot.

Monero is underpriced because it is actually useful and can support that
price.

Bitcoin is worth _something_ , just not 11k in my opinion.

------
badloginagain
> How would you feel if you were required to print, in legible block letters,
> your full name on every dollar bill before you spent it?

I already do this with 99% of my purchases. I almost solely purchase through
credit card, which is a contractual obligation that my clearly identified
person will allow a financial institution to pay for this coffee on my behalf,
on promise I will pay that institution back at a later time.

I fully expect that institution to carry a full record of my purchases, and
these days I expect them to share some subset of that data with whoever they
see fit. It's just the world we live in.

I never carry cash with me, except for the rare occasions I know I'll be going
to a cashless enterprise, which is becoming exceedingly rare where I live.

~~~
simplify
Not entirely equivalent, since the coffee shop does not receive your purchase
history.

~~~
dcre
They probably will soon. Or the equivalent in the form of services backed by
that history, like rewards programs.

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3pt14159
If the argument is ever "the government could force X to do Y" then you need
to finish your thinking.

If the government taxes mixed coins they will extend that tax to coins where
it is impossible to detect. "Prove me they weren't mixed" is just as easy for
the IRS to say as "prove to me that you bought at $500/BTC".

If anything, Bitcoin's track-ability is likely going to give it some thin
veneer of government acceptance, even if I think that people underestimate how
careful the truly evil can be.

------
KaiserPro
The author fails to understand that fungibility is tangential at best to
anonymity.

fungibility is based on the equality of a unit of stuff. short selling works
with fungibility, you hire some shares of IBM. Once you have them you sell
them, when the price drops you buy them back. The hire period ends and you
return the same _number_ of shares, but not the _same_ shares. This works
because it is agreed that shares of the same time in a company are all agreed
to have the same value.

but, this principle works with anything that has uniformity of price. This is
determined by the trading environment, and not the thing being traded. Stocks
nominally have unique IDs, at least for accounting purposes (otherwise how do
you stop unauthorised re-issuing, and distribute dividends)

Gold is fungible, as pointed out, but anonymous gold is worth less than gold
with provenance. To prove that gold hasn't been messed with is expensive, so
keeping accurate and verifiable chains of custody is required for fast trade
of gold.

Sure one can melt down gold and make it anonymous, but thats expensive. You
can barter with your local drug lord using physical gold bullion, but you'll
need to be damn sure its verifiably pure, so you'd better hope the serial
number and foundry stamped on the front checks out.

Its far quicker to just transfer the ownership of bullion in a known vault,
and that has certain guarantees about custody, purity and security of product.

In short, the author fundamentally fails to understand basic commerce, let
alone post enlightenment stock markets.

~~~
tehlike
one stock is the same as others, but you can have tainted coins that you
obtained through legal means (it is just that the source was invalid). With
BTC exchanges can block cashing out, for example.

~~~
KaiserPro
Thats the same for stocks, trades can be reversed, this happens quite often.

------
milesf
What are the current crop of cryptocurrencies that are truly anonymous? The
list I have so far is: Aeon, DASH, Komodo, Monero , NAV Coin, PIVX, Verge,
Zcash, Zcoin, and ZenCash.

Any others?

Edit: Added Aeon

~~~
snirp
These coin all employ some anonymity features. Some real shallow (such a Verge
only routing traffic over TOR) and some more elaborate (such as ZCash with
zero knowledge proofs).

If you define truly anonymous as having no way to see transaction addresses
and amounts, no way to check balances and history and these features all
active by default... it would leave you with Monero and Aeon.

Of course other differences exist, such as vulnerable crytography (Zcoin), a
potentially flawed "trusted setup" (ZCash, ZenCash), etc

~~~
ianmiers
Truly anonymous would mean if you bought $100 worth of anoncoin under your own
name from an exchange and then played two hands of poker at an online casino,
there would be no way for the casino and the exchange to collude and
identifier you. Is that the case for any of the systems you listed?

~~~
tehlike
Exchange gives you coin, and then have no way of telling what you did with it.
Exchange just knows you are given 300 coins at the time of transaction,
nothing more.

------
srge
I have been looking into Monero for a few months. As a Bitcoin enthousiast I
find the Monero community very friendly, hard working and seemingly
disinterested.

------
olalonde
For another perspective (from a Bitcoin Core developer):
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/77atgv/what_do_you_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/77atgv/what_do_you_guys_see_as_the_biggest_competitor_to/doks8zr/)

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elihu
Is there any particular reason why, assuming that the author is correct and
that people will eventually want to migrate to a more anonymous currency, that
Monero will be the winner and not some other anonymous currency?

(I don't pay close attention to cryptocurrencies, so this is the first time
I've read of Monero.)

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thisisit
Here's the thing, with finite supplies in place most coins still have a risk
of some kind of blockchain analysis:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15849236](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15849236)

------
yuhong
If you are wondering why there is another shortage of RX Vegas...

------
simplify
Would Monero not eventually run into the same energy inefficiency problems as
Bitcoin?

~~~
defterade
People argue that this property is desirable:
[https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/1944/will-
monero-...](https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/1944/will-monero-ever-
move-to-proof-of-stake-pos)

------
unabridged
Bitcoin is still in beta, new features can always be added. They are building
something to last the rest of the century at least, so its going slow.

Plus even without adding anything, bitcoin -> monero -> bitcoin solves the
privacy problem.

~~~
mmanfrin

      Bitcoin is still in beta
    

W h a t.

~~~
milesf
What's so surprising about that? All cryptocurrencies are still very
experimental. Nothing shocking about that.

