I consider Web3/NFTs to be a scam and the only utility I see in cryptocurrency is the anonymous and decentralized transfer of value. However interestingly the coins that do this well like Monero are not seeing wide adoption.
The vast majority of people don't seem fazed about their credit card company knowing they've bought a sex toy. Hell, if Amex offered double-cashback at PornHub I expect they'd be inundated.
For those which do want a bit more privacy, it's dead easy to buy a single-use gift card or cash card. Will that stop the police from tracing you? No, but it makes it harder for a company to build a profile or a spouse to snoop.
So you're left with things which are (rightly or wrongly) illegal. Or incredibly taboo.
Is there a huge market for those things? If so, what are the customer benefits of Monero against cash? Or barter? Or owing a favour?
How easy is it - for both sides - to get set up? I can check cash isn't forged to a high degree of accuracy very easily. How much hard work do I have to do for Monero? How much educating my customers do I have to do? If Monero is restricted to shady stuff - how much of a target am I painting on my back?
It's possible for a company to stimulate and create user need. But that's a lot harder than tapping in to a currently unsatisfied niche.
It’s no small irony that the simplest answer is the right answer here: you can’t force consumers to use your product. They need a reason to use it, and none of the current ones are sufficiently compelling.
> How easy is it - for both sides - to get set up?
I suspect this is a huge sticking point. The last time I tried to pay for something using bitcoin, I failed. I tried again with monero and, once again, failed. Zelle worked just fine.
1 - A tiny percentage of crypto holders regularly use crypto as a currency, most people just use it as a store of wealth (ie digital gold) or a way to speculate/gamble.
2 - You can't buy it on Coinbase, because the US government can't track its usage so Coinbase would lose their regulatory advantage if they allowed it on their exchange.
So that means it's more difficult for the average person to acquire, and at this point most people are using crypto more like stocks than currency so they'll just speculate on something that's easier to get their hands on.
So I agree that transferring of value and for payments is where the usefulness is, but I think there are two reasons why the adoption is lagging:
1. Most people only care about speculation, and don't care at all what cryptocurrencies are or what they can do. And Monero doesn't do much for these people.
2. Monero is more inconvenient to use than Bitcoin is. SPV wallets aren't possible, so you need to rescan all outputs since you last opened your wallet which is very time consuming. Also you need to wait 10 blocks (~20 min) before you can spend an input, but with other cryptos you can spend a 0-conf transfer immediately.
It's unfortunate because Monero really is a better Bitcoin.
You probably just described 99% of the crypto market. If the buyers of crypto actually cared about the features and usage you wouldn't have so many random shit coins getting pumped then dumped.
Because blockchain-based cryptocurrencies have a terrible UX and don't scale for shit.
Even if someone hand-delivered a smart-phone that had a Monero wallet on it to facilitate me paying for a banned_book_123, it's still an order of magnitude fussier and slower than, say, using a Visa gift card. Or cash.
And what happens if I somehow fuck up the transaction? It has none of the protections offered by the Visa gift card, with all of the shit-out-of-luck properties of physical cash.
On the other hand, it doesn't scale well and thus cannot be used for digital microtransactions.
Any of the solutions I see for scaling could just be used without having a blockchain-based cryptocurrency on the backend.
Anyhow, when it's this difficult to use, it seems perfectly logical that it only gets used in niche cases where the sender/receiver is willing to eat the cost of all the friction, headache, and risk-of-loss of using it (not to mention price fluctuations). So ransomware, paying for illegal goods... what else is there?
Related: I think the motto of blockchain should be: A Solution Begging for a Problem. All these HN posts about it make me think of "The Herlihy Boy" from SNL:
There are basically two compelling reasons to use a privacy coin:
- You are doing something illegal and don't want to get caught.
- Powerful actors in the economy are abusing their power, and you want to avoid/prevent that abuse.
Most people are not criminals, so let's focus on the second use-case.
If the government created a 1000% tax on all person-to-person transactions, you can bet nearly everyone would switch off of Venmo or Cash App and onto something like Monero. Or if Apple/Google said "we are now going to monitor your bank accounts, and we will be taking a share of all purchases made from your phone," you can bet people would switch.
Another type of abuse might be political. "We will be compiling a list of everyone who donates to the opposing party."
One might argue that those abuses of power already exist, and are already actively harming the average consumer. For example, Experian's multiple data breaches[0]. But the thing is, the average person doesn't feel very affected. If you came after their Venmo or their bank account, they'd feel it.
In a way, I think privacy coins are already benefiting all of us. The "powers that be" know that it's possible for us to switch, and that we will switch if they push us too hard. So they don't push us as hard as they could.
I also want to point out: MobileCoin. Your premise seems to be that privacy-focused coins aren't in wide use, but I don't think that's a certainty. Signal has deployed MobileCoin to potentially hundreds of millions of people. But they are secretive about their numbers, so we don't know how widely it's really used. I've tried MobileCoin with friends who use Signal and it works great. They will surely beat out Monero and others, simply due to the ease-of-use they've created, and the integration with an already-widely-used private messenger.
There are a bunch of people that want to send cash to family in Cuba/Russia/Iran. Also Chinese people want to get foreign currency. I guess they are combinations of 1 & 2.
I can see some really good uses for something like Monero - for example, purchasing a VPS anonymously. I would definitely consider that a desirable thing to be able to do. And I know at least a few VPS providers take Monero, so we're all good right?
No. Here's the rub... the problem I see, and what makes Monero less usable to my way of thinking, is the "last mile" problem of getting value in and out of the Monero ecosystem. In my case, specifically, the question of how I transfer value I currently hold - which is almost 100% in fiat currency (USD) - into Monero, in an anonymous fashion. Yes, it can be done. No, it's not easy. And then for the merchant who accepts Monero, they probably have the inverse problem of exchanging their Monero for the desired fiat currency (which you still need to buy most things) without revealing information they may not want to reveal.
Already commented elsewhere but this is called the oracle problem. It is essentially the tragedy of the commons w.r.t. bureaucracy; i.e. why should I be truthful about the state of the world if I can lie and make a profit because what I say will get recorded as truthful in the bureaucracy... this is the same as "corruption" and "fake news" etc.
We already know how to solve this problem fyi but it seems no one is interested in helping me implement it.
Agree with this. Exchanging for fiat is hard. Most people will go cash->other crypto via centralized exchange -> monero via decentralized or p2p exchange. Then back the same way.
It’s not really that complicated if you are comfortable managing wallets and making on-chain tx’s, but your average person in crypto is probably just buying crypto on a centralized exchange (most of which don’t support monero, though some do) and also selling it there.
From what I've read, some of the online drug markets only take Monero. So it would seem people who realize they need anonymity are indeed embracing it.
I'm not going to say they are the most technologically sophisticated marketplaces per se. Not doubting that this might be some obvious "litmus" test.
However, I'm willing to bet this is simply due to face value claims around Monero and not because the last mile problems are solved or its provably anonymous was considered in earnest and thereby vetted deeply.
As a huge fan of monero, I see several reasons the general public may not want to adopt it:
1. To securely use monero you need to at the very least locally download the blockchain. The secure way of doing this takes fucking forever. You don’t need to do this, but monero’s current users are very security conscious and most tooling/the ecosystem assumes you did this.
2. Most consumers may passively want privacy but they want it to be completely frictionless. Monero has a learning curve, slight difficulty exchanging for fiat, etc. - not frictionless.
3. Monero has whales but it’s not new, so it doesn’t have a big team of centralized devs/investors trying to pump it up. As a result it doesn’t have a lot of marketing or mindshare among people who are less technical.
4. Tail emission is a perfectly valid way to incentivize POW over long time periods, but it scares off moonboys and speculators at the very least (because you’re not purchasing a piece of a fixed size pie).
5. Even if most consumers passively want privacy, in practice it’s not important enough to go out of your way for it. How many technically-able people still transact in cash in developed countries? Yes, I know you Mr HN contrarian might, but I’m talking about the general public.
6. The least important factor is that Monero does have technical drawbacks and limitations. It’s not super important but it may be a reason privacy-conscious people don’t promote it as the end-all-be-all solution to private transactions. Some examples: auditing supply, de-anonymizing correlated transactions, POW, how the blockchain could scale with more transactions, quantum-safety.
Are you serious? I'm starting to wonder if this whole "Ask HN" was posted to dissuade people from buying crypto.
1. False. There are mobile wallets that download only part of the blockchain.
2. This applies to all crypto, not only Monero.
3. True!
4. The number of coins added by the tail emission is too small to affect the size of the pie. The inflation rate from tail emission is asymptotically zero.
5. Privacy or no privacy, it's still crypto, which protects your fiat from inflation.
6. Monero can scale on the lightning network to millions of transactions per second. The more technical reasons, like auditing supply and POW aren't big enough problems for consumers to worry about.
I think the fiat on/off ramps are a large problem for Monero, I say this as someone who is a huge proponent of Monero and would like to see adoption rise.
It is only offered on one exchange (Kraken) which inherently limits availability, there are certain vendors who do accept Monero such as Mullvad, and a popular wallet for iOS (CakeWallet) will soon allow you to redeem Giftcards for Monero.
Right now, if I gave my friend 1 XMR, what could he do with it?
I have always wondered how much money laundering is in mining.
It seems pretty benign to buy a whole bunch of CPU/GPUs on the used market and then have them mine you cryptocurrencies (not just monero, but notably monero is CPU favorable). This might be a massive onramp for fiat to cryptocurrencies.
A quick google talks a lot about tumblers and other buy/sell strategies, but I'm curious about mining.
I would hate to be the lackey who suggested it to their boss last fall only for them to see their laundered money fall > 50% though.
They have to do all of that and do it better than physical currency. I can hand you an envelope with $10 in it and I don't have to record it in a centralized ledger that everybody can see. I'm waiting for a cryptocurrency that is decentralized to that extent.
Because there's no need for them. Your average person, even your average tech savvy person gets by comfortably with a credit card, checks, cash, and Venmo.
Why would anyone use a less well understood, harder to use, less ubiquitous, and unstable currency?
No one is backing them. Users don't care about how crypto works they care if the product works. Take applepay for example, majority of merchants use it because users want to pay with it. Users don't care about a lecture on privacy and government overreach. Tell them it does 2 tap/click payment and also it manages your cc and then give merchants free crypto payment terminals. You can onlh use it online and only if the site owner cares enough.
Tell site owners "here is a service that manages all payments including a ton kf crypto and converts it to uour local currency, also, users can sign up with us and use as an idp so they don't have to register on your site" .
In other words, an Oauth2 extension for payment processing providers + federated identity and services that provide easy integration into your registration+payment workflow might be lacking. Also, with any crypto it is a PITA to just obtain crypto without KYC laws, so more accessible exchanges that are somewhat anonymous without needing Tor that let you barter cash or other payment with them (not other users, it's a mess) might help too.
I watched as Monero was gradually dropped from a lot of the major exchanges over time with no real reason being provided. Same with zcash. My conspiracy theory is that there is a coordinated effort to make truly anonymous coins unusable.
Indeed. But I wouldn't consider ZCash to be in the same category as Monero, not with the way it was pre-mined, the sketchy key ceremony, the developers' willingness to co-operate with law enforcement, and the unshielded-by-default transactions.
That coordinated effort is not some big mystery; the exchanges that operate in major jurisdictions cannot offer Monero due to AML/KYC compliance rules.
Monero is only available on the exchanges operating on the fringes of the banking network, or which don’t connect to banks at all.
Thats not a conspiracy theory, they're about to implement mandatory flagging of non-exchange addresses. If you want to send or receive from one you'll need to provide the name/address of the counterparty.
Is there any nice DEX that lets you trade Solana for Monero and vice versa?
I want to do some commerce in Monero but since Monero is banned on most/all marketplaces, it'd be nice to get it easily via decentralized exchange swapping it for Solana. Doing commerce with Monero and then swapping it back to Solana and later FIAT.
I assume the issue with this setup even if one builds it, you still have to tell the government what happened and how exactly you earned your coins? Or maybe you can build another DEX converting Monero to FIAT 'cash' avoiding such questions?
It's not a /nice/ DEX but amoveo exists, almost no liquidity but in theory it works.
It's not hopeless but it is important to understand how impactful solving the oracle problem would be. The implications are IMMENSE. Literally obviates the need for governance.
So idk, monero is too small (in some sense) to really be useful and the oracle problem is too big (in some sense) for a solution to it to be "one of many" - it'll transform everything and it can't happen unless people make it happen.
Reason this is interesting I think is that such a setup can let you avoid paying tax to totalitarian regimes such as Russia/China that use the money to crush opposition or wage war. As well as minimize fees in general such as Mastercard/Stripe.
I think it's because women haven't integrated the technology yet. Please let me explain :)
Women are high consumers of luxury goods across the world. The luxury goods market was estimated at more than $400b in 2020, and increasing. If you take into consideration the fact that a large portion of these transactions undergo banking fees at around 2%, that makes more or less $8bn of revenue turned into smoke, which luxury companies lose to banking intermediaries.
The two main reasons why these companies agree to pay banking fees is insured transactions (the buyer pays with a credit card then fails to reimburse the bank) and convenience (most luxury goods customers carry more than one credit card with them).
Pseudo-DeFi offers a good replacement to the first cost (insurance). However, first, most luxury clients actually don't need the credit card: they simply cannot pay easily without pulling out a bag of cash (and look like crooks) or use a credit card.
Second, crypto payment is not yet convenient: we need to offer women an attractive, portable and easy to use wallet mechanism that can easily withstand loss/theft of mobile device, easy to top up, and in the correct cryptocurrency that is accepted across luxury brands. Think of it as the iPhone problem: there were many smartphones with a touch screen before the iPhone, but none of them looked attractive.
Once luxury brands solve this problem (or Apple, I can easily imagine Apple solving this problem, because 94% luxury clients have iPhones), in my opinion, crypto payments will take off worldwide and there will be no looking back. They will reduce costs to both sellers and shoppers, which qualifies quite well to the "why" question.
People don’t actually care about privacy. For those that do, they see a differentiation between privacy (for themselves) versus anonymity (for everyone else).
Let me correct that for you. People are willing to exchange their privacy for safety. If it was possible to have both i doubt anyone would choose nonprivate
I tried to mine it a few years ago on a couple of machines. The net benefit was close to zero and I realized even if I rented a lot of them, it was simply not worth the hassle. So this is from the "creator's" point of view.
As an user, I simply don't need it. Most of the time I buy physical products so I have to give them my real address anyway (I could set up an alternative way but again too much hassle for almost zero benefit). For these few times when I actually buy digital products, I simply don't care enough and I pay via Paypal. So yes, they can profile me using my Paypal address, but that's the price I'm willing to accept.
As a merchant, I simply wouldn't accept it because of high volatility and related problems. Also, in my country there are certain rules for entities of certain size and I'd need to do additional bookkeeping just for that.
Having worked for a startup designing cryptographic privacy protocols, I think I can say that it's simply not something most consumers are interested in.
Anonymity in particular over pseudonymity only has compelling use cases for frankly, illegal activities. There are others of course, they're just not compelling.
Because there is a small group of people that care enough to use it. Most anti-crypto people do not want anything to do with it. Neutral-crypto people don't see the reason for enhanced privacy, or are afraid it might put them into trouble with regulators.
Pro-crypto people can be broken into different tribes. Bitcoin maxis feel that only Bitcoin is worth using, and they might think the privacy of Bitcoin is "good enough." Ethereum maxis want to use applications and smart contracts for DeFi, escrow, exchanges, lending, stablecoins, and Monero does not support that. Ethereum maxis also feel that privacy is solvable with ZK proofs and private rollups. Then there are other tribes like Solana users who are looking for scalability for games and apps, and don't care as much about privacy.
What do you mean privacy coins aren't seeing wide adoption? Are you deliberately being wrong on the Internet to have someone correct you to draw attention and increase adoption?
[+] [-] edent|3 years ago|reply
The vast majority of people don't seem fazed about their credit card company knowing they've bought a sex toy. Hell, if Amex offered double-cashback at PornHub I expect they'd be inundated.
For those which do want a bit more privacy, it's dead easy to buy a single-use gift card or cash card. Will that stop the police from tracing you? No, but it makes it harder for a company to build a profile or a spouse to snoop.
So you're left with things which are (rightly or wrongly) illegal. Or incredibly taboo.
Is there a huge market for those things? If so, what are the customer benefits of Monero against cash? Or barter? Or owing a favour?
How easy is it - for both sides - to get set up? I can check cash isn't forged to a high degree of accuracy very easily. How much hard work do I have to do for Monero? How much educating my customers do I have to do? If Monero is restricted to shady stuff - how much of a target am I painting on my back?
It's possible for a company to stimulate and create user need. But that's a lot harder than tapping in to a currently unsatisfied niche.
[+] [-] woodruffw|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PainfullyNormal|3 years ago|reply
I suspect this is a huge sticking point. The last time I tried to pay for something using bitcoin, I failed. I tried again with monero and, once again, failed. Zelle worked just fine.
[+] [-] Semaphor|3 years ago|reply
While I mostly agree with what you wrote, I take exception to this. Wanting more privacy can be an ends in itself.
Of course, as I said, I agree with you, this doesn’t really broaden the pool of people who need Monero by a meaningful amount ;)
[+] [-] concordDance|3 years ago|reply
I presume giving money to Canadian protestors is the former?
[+] [-] yucky|3 years ago|reply
1 - A tiny percentage of crypto holders regularly use crypto as a currency, most people just use it as a store of wealth (ie digital gold) or a way to speculate/gamble.
2 - You can't buy it on Coinbase, because the US government can't track its usage so Coinbase would lose their regulatory advantage if they allowed it on their exchange.
So that means it's more difficult for the average person to acquire, and at this point most people are using crypto more like stocks than currency so they'll just speculate on something that's easier to get their hands on.
[+] [-] lawn|3 years ago|reply
1. Most people only care about speculation, and don't care at all what cryptocurrencies are or what they can do. And Monero doesn't do much for these people.
2. Monero is more inconvenient to use than Bitcoin is. SPV wallets aren't possible, so you need to rescan all outputs since you last opened your wallet which is very time consuming. Also you need to wait 10 blocks (~20 min) before you can spend an input, but with other cryptos you can spend a 0-conf transfer immediately.
It's unfortunate because Monero really is a better Bitcoin.
[+] [-] wnevets|3 years ago|reply
You probably just described 99% of the crypto market. If the buyers of crypto actually cared about the features and usage you wouldn't have so many random shit coins getting pumped then dumped.
[+] [-] tromp|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://phyro.github.io/grinvestigation/why_grin.html
[+] [-] jancsika|3 years ago|reply
Even if someone hand-delivered a smart-phone that had a Monero wallet on it to facilitate me paying for a banned_book_123, it's still an order of magnitude fussier and slower than, say, using a Visa gift card. Or cash.
And what happens if I somehow fuck up the transaction? It has none of the protections offered by the Visa gift card, with all of the shit-out-of-luck properties of physical cash.
On the other hand, it doesn't scale well and thus cannot be used for digital microtransactions.
Any of the solutions I see for scaling could just be used without having a blockchain-based cryptocurrency on the backend.
Anyhow, when it's this difficult to use, it seems perfectly logical that it only gets used in niche cases where the sender/receiver is willing to eat the cost of all the friction, headache, and risk-of-loss of using it (not to mention price fluctuations). So ransomware, paying for illegal goods... what else is there?
Related: I think the motto of blockchain should be: A Solution Begging for a Problem. All these HN posts about it make me think of "The Herlihy Boy" from SNL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXyW5w5RRFY
[+] [-] apeace|3 years ago|reply
- You are doing something illegal and don't want to get caught.
- Powerful actors in the economy are abusing their power, and you want to avoid/prevent that abuse.
Most people are not criminals, so let's focus on the second use-case.
If the government created a 1000% tax on all person-to-person transactions, you can bet nearly everyone would switch off of Venmo or Cash App and onto something like Monero. Or if Apple/Google said "we are now going to monitor your bank accounts, and we will be taking a share of all purchases made from your phone," you can bet people would switch.
Another type of abuse might be political. "We will be compiling a list of everyone who donates to the opposing party."
One might argue that those abuses of power already exist, and are already actively harming the average consumer. For example, Experian's multiple data breaches[0]. But the thing is, the average person doesn't feel very affected. If you came after their Venmo or their bank account, they'd feel it.
In a way, I think privacy coins are already benefiting all of us. The "powers that be" know that it's possible for us to switch, and that we will switch if they push us too hard. So they don't push us as hard as they could.
I also want to point out: MobileCoin. Your premise seems to be that privacy-focused coins aren't in wide use, but I don't think that's a certainty. Signal has deployed MobileCoin to potentially hundreds of millions of people. But they are secretive about their numbers, so we don't know how widely it's really used. I've tried MobileCoin with friends who use Signal and it works great. They will surely beat out Monero and others, simply due to the ease-of-use they've created, and the integration with an already-widely-used private messenger.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experian#2015_data_breach
[+] [-] fl0id|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rr888|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mindcrime|3 years ago|reply
No. Here's the rub... the problem I see, and what makes Monero less usable to my way of thinking, is the "last mile" problem of getting value in and out of the Monero ecosystem. In my case, specifically, the question of how I transfer value I currently hold - which is almost 100% in fiat currency (USD) - into Monero, in an anonymous fashion. Yes, it can be done. No, it's not easy. And then for the merchant who accepts Monero, they probably have the inverse problem of exchanging their Monero for the desired fiat currency (which you still need to buy most things) without revealing information they may not want to reveal.
[+] [-] openfuture|3 years ago|reply
We already know how to solve this problem fyi but it seems no one is interested in helping me implement it.
[+] [-] opportune|3 years ago|reply
It’s not really that complicated if you are comfortable managing wallets and making on-chain tx’s, but your average person in crypto is probably just buying crypto on a centralized exchange (most of which don’t support monero, though some do) and also selling it there.
[+] [-] retrac|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] no_wizard|3 years ago|reply
However, I'm willing to bet this is simply due to face value claims around Monero and not because the last mile problems are solved or its provably anonymous was considered in earnest and thereby vetted deeply.
[+] [-] opportune|3 years ago|reply
1. To securely use monero you need to at the very least locally download the blockchain. The secure way of doing this takes fucking forever. You don’t need to do this, but monero’s current users are very security conscious and most tooling/the ecosystem assumes you did this.
2. Most consumers may passively want privacy but they want it to be completely frictionless. Monero has a learning curve, slight difficulty exchanging for fiat, etc. - not frictionless.
3. Monero has whales but it’s not new, so it doesn’t have a big team of centralized devs/investors trying to pump it up. As a result it doesn’t have a lot of marketing or mindshare among people who are less technical.
4. Tail emission is a perfectly valid way to incentivize POW over long time periods, but it scares off moonboys and speculators at the very least (because you’re not purchasing a piece of a fixed size pie).
5. Even if most consumers passively want privacy, in practice it’s not important enough to go out of your way for it. How many technically-able people still transact in cash in developed countries? Yes, I know you Mr HN contrarian might, but I’m talking about the general public.
6. The least important factor is that Monero does have technical drawbacks and limitations. It’s not super important but it may be a reason privacy-conscious people don’t promote it as the end-all-be-all solution to private transactions. Some examples: auditing supply, de-anonymizing correlated transactions, POW, how the blockchain could scale with more transactions, quantum-safety.
[+] [-] charadeyouare|3 years ago|reply
1. False. There are mobile wallets that download only part of the blockchain.
2. This applies to all crypto, not only Monero.
3. True!
4. The number of coins added by the tail emission is too small to affect the size of the pie. The inflation rate from tail emission is asymptotically zero.
5. Privacy or no privacy, it's still crypto, which protects your fiat from inflation.
6. Monero can scale on the lightning network to millions of transactions per second. The more technical reasons, like auditing supply and POW aren't big enough problems for consumers to worry about.
[+] [-] Aaronstotle|3 years ago|reply
It is only offered on one exchange (Kraken) which inherently limits availability, there are certain vendors who do accept Monero such as Mullvad, and a popular wallet for iOS (CakeWallet) will soon allow you to redeem Giftcards for Monero.
Right now, if I gave my friend 1 XMR, what could he do with it?
[+] [-] maerF0x0|3 years ago|reply
It seems pretty benign to buy a whole bunch of CPU/GPUs on the used market and then have them mine you cryptocurrencies (not just monero, but notably monero is CPU favorable). This might be a massive onramp for fiat to cryptocurrencies.
A quick google talks a lot about tumblers and other buy/sell strategies, but I'm curious about mining.
I would hate to be the lackey who suggested it to their boss last fall only for them to see their laundered money fall > 50% though.
[+] [-] root_axis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|3 years ago|reply
Stable value
Fast finality, low fees, high throughput
Privacy/anonymity/fungibility
Usability
No cryptocurrencies meet these requirements so far.
[+] [-] criddell|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] washbrain|3 years ago|reply
Why would anyone use a less well understood, harder to use, less ubiquitous, and unstable currency?
[+] [-] badrabbit|3 years ago|reply
Tell site owners "here is a service that manages all payments including a ton kf crypto and converts it to uour local currency, also, users can sign up with us and use as an idp so they don't have to register on your site" .
In other words, an Oauth2 extension for payment processing providers + federated identity and services that provide easy integration into your registration+payment workflow might be lacking. Also, with any crypto it is a PITA to just obtain crypto without KYC laws, so more accessible exchanges that are somewhat anonymous without needing Tor that let you barter cash or other payment with them (not other users, it's a mess) might help too.
[+] [-] charadeyouare|3 years ago|reply
There are many patents by Visa and Mastercard backing crypto. Paypal lets consumers buy products with crypto.
Do you seriously believe big payment processors have as one of their goals to never, ever, under any circumstance use blockchain?
[+] [-] bergenty|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] salawat|3 years ago|reply
Non-cash anonymous financial transactions have been no-no for a long while, in particular under AML/KYC.
Over a certain amount, even cash transactions get wrapped in KYC/AML papertrail for law enforcement facilitation.
[+] [-] bestbuyer__|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nextstep|3 years ago|reply
Monero is only available on the exchanges operating on the fringes of the banking network, or which don’t connect to banks at all.
[+] [-] wolongong942|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikivi|3 years ago|reply
I want to do some commerce in Monero but since Monero is banned on most/all marketplaces, it'd be nice to get it easily via decentralized exchange swapping it for Solana. Doing commerce with Monero and then swapping it back to Solana and later FIAT.
I assume the issue with this setup even if one builds it, you still have to tell the government what happened and how exactly you earned your coins? Or maybe you can build another DEX converting Monero to FIAT 'cash' avoiding such questions?
[+] [-] openfuture|3 years ago|reply
It's not a /nice/ DEX but amoveo exists, almost no liquidity but in theory it works.
It's not hopeless but it is important to understand how impactful solving the oracle problem would be. The implications are IMMENSE. Literally obviates the need for governance.
So idk, monero is too small (in some sense) to really be useful and the oracle problem is too big (in some sense) for a solution to it to be "one of many" - it'll transform everything and it can't happen unless people make it happen.
[+] [-] nikivi|3 years ago|reply
Maybe it’s just a hopeless dream.
[+] [-] Aaronstotle|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nokya|3 years ago|reply
Women are high consumers of luxury goods across the world. The luxury goods market was estimated at more than $400b in 2020, and increasing. If you take into consideration the fact that a large portion of these transactions undergo banking fees at around 2%, that makes more or less $8bn of revenue turned into smoke, which luxury companies lose to banking intermediaries.
The two main reasons why these companies agree to pay banking fees is insured transactions (the buyer pays with a credit card then fails to reimburse the bank) and convenience (most luxury goods customers carry more than one credit card with them).
Pseudo-DeFi offers a good replacement to the first cost (insurance). However, first, most luxury clients actually don't need the credit card: they simply cannot pay easily without pulling out a bag of cash (and look like crooks) or use a credit card.
Second, crypto payment is not yet convenient: we need to offer women an attractive, portable and easy to use wallet mechanism that can easily withstand loss/theft of mobile device, easy to top up, and in the correct cryptocurrency that is accepted across luxury brands. Think of it as the iPhone problem: there were many smartphones with a touch screen before the iPhone, but none of them looked attractive.
Once luxury brands solve this problem (or Apple, I can easily imagine Apple solving this problem, because 94% luxury clients have iPhones), in my opinion, crypto payments will take off worldwide and there will be no looking back. They will reduce costs to both sellers and shoppers, which qualifies quite well to the "why" question.
[+] [-] bitxbitxbitcoin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seydor|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dvfjsdhgfv|3 years ago|reply
As an user, I simply don't need it. Most of the time I buy physical products so I have to give them my real address anyway (I could set up an alternative way but again too much hassle for almost zero benefit). For these few times when I actually buy digital products, I simply don't care enough and I pay via Paypal. So yes, they can profile me using my Paypal address, but that's the price I'm willing to accept.
As a merchant, I simply wouldn't accept it because of high volatility and related problems. Also, in my country there are certain rules for entities of certain size and I'd need to do additional bookkeeping just for that.
[+] [-] MattPalmer1086|3 years ago|reply
Anonymity in particular over pseudonymity only has compelling use cases for frankly, illegal activities. There are others of course, they're just not compelling.
[+] [-] tatertots1234|3 years ago|reply
Pro-crypto people can be broken into different tribes. Bitcoin maxis feel that only Bitcoin is worth using, and they might think the privacy of Bitcoin is "good enough." Ethereum maxis want to use applications and smart contracts for DeFi, escrow, exchanges, lending, stablecoins, and Monero does not support that. Ethereum maxis also feel that privacy is solvable with ZK proofs and private rollups. Then there are other tribes like Solana users who are looking for scalability for games and apps, and don't care as much about privacy.
[+] [-] charadeyouare|3 years ago|reply
Over the past 3 years the number of Litecoin transactions increased 5x. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/litecoin-transactions.h...
What do you mean privacy coins aren't seeing wide adoption? Are you deliberately being wrong on the Internet to have someone correct you to draw attention and increase adoption?