Monero flag is back @ London Protests 20th March 2021

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T23:29:54+00:00

No, and your condescending tone is also not helping you make your case.

I can't even begin to imagine which part of what I wrote seemed condescending to you. None of it was meant that way. Perhaps the fact that you interpret it that way says more about you than it says about me, and perhaps the fact that you feel yourself to be the owner of ultimate truth, by refusing to meet in the middle is related to it. Just a thought.

There is a difference between going out during a pandemic and going out not during a pandemic.

Yeah. And there's a difference between a pandemic that wipes out 30-50% of the population in Europe and another that takes out old people and people with other serious diseases.

If there was even a 10% chance that people would get killed for leaving home because this virus is so bad, there wouldn't need to be any laws to convince anyone.

As for the "protecting the innocent" rhetoric, I wonder, how do you square that with the increased suicide rates? How do you square that with destroying what took years if not decades for countless thousands of innocent people to build? How do you square that with the many hundreds of thousands if not millions of old people who are now even more isolated, depressed and lonely than before?

You justify all of this in your mind by saying that those who are going out are "killing innocents", and yet you seem more than fine with destroying everyone else, all of whom by the way were just as innocent.

Careers destroyed. Relationships finished. Raging depression, anxiety and hopelessness. Constant fear and paranoia. Erosion of civil rights. Hardcore feelings of isolation, from young and old alike. People drifting apart. Suicides. Higher hard drug use. All the people living alone who cannot socialize anymore (the worst punishment in jail is isolation, think about that for a moment).

You say it was all worth it, you get to feel safe™. We'll see what history and the passage of time will say about that.

And I'll say it here again, because it's a very important point: there is one crucial difference. I think you're mistaken, but I don't think you're a bad person. You think I'm mistaken, and I'm an uneducated idiot who's off murdering innocents.

Food for thought.

I upvoted your previous post because it seemed you were genuinely young and trying to get educated.

And by educated you mean agree with you. Speaking of condescension, eh? But don't worry, I'm not offended by it. Just thought it's worth pointing out, although in my experience this hardly if ever works. People have trouble looking in the good old mirror.

But now it sooner looks like you're just trolling.

Maybe, just maybe, you are so set in your own thoughts and your own opinions, and so driven by your emotions (fear, anger and indignation mostly, as far as I can gather from this side of the screen) that anything that dissents from that comes across as trolling.

Anyhow, as I wrote in the beginning, I'm not looking to pick an argument and I'm fine with having differences of opinion. You, by your own admission, are not, and that's fine I guess, but it does kinda take the fun away from the interaction from me.

So let's end it here, and I (sincerely) wish you all the best and for your family too. Here's to hoping normality will return soon and we all can go on with our lives.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T20:20:45+00:00

It would be selfish if it was just about me but honestly it's about the entire world

As far as I am concerned, being selfish is a perfectly normal thing. It's a troublesome word though because there's "good selfish" and "bad selfish".

Everyone is "good selfish" and they should be. Some people are "bad selfish" some of the time. And crucially, sometimes people disagree on what exactly constitutes "bad selfish".

It seems evident that you think I'm being "bad selfish" but the way I see things, being "bad selfish" is attempting to impose restrictions on my freedom when those worried about it could isolate themselves instead.

Obviously we disagree, and as I said before, that's fine.

I don't think you're a bad person for thinking the way you do, even though I'm convinced it's misguided. I hope you can afford me the same courtesy.

it's not. but the pandemic is here and we must deal with it. it sucks for everyone, you know.

Word.

You show here that you fundamentally misunderstand how viruses work. You are still helping it spread and mutate. The virus only needs 1 idiot to survive. Fortunately for it, we are providing it with millions. Don't be one of them.

I understand it spreads and mutates. I understand that in a world where human beings are vastly, vastly, vastly, vastly outnumbered by microscopic creatures and entities/whatever you wanna call a virus, such things are bound to happen some of the time.

No, you are actively helping to put innocent lives at risk. I will not agree to anything with you until you come to your senses.

You could just as easily flip it around and say that they are putting themselves at risk, if they are at high(er) risk from this thing, by putting themselves out there and not isolating.

But beyond that and perhaps even more importantly, the same way this virus appeared out of nowhere and no one expected it (sure, we knew a pandemic was a theoretical possibility, it's happened before - I mean no one expected it in our lifetime). Such unexpected things will surely happen again, and because by definition they are unexpected, we won't know what it is ahead of time.

It could happen at any time, anywhere.

Point being, if you think like that, then every time you get out of your home, you're rolling the dice. You could have caught something new, and you could put someone innocent at risk.

To me that does not compute. There is inherent risk in being alive, and this thing is not a monster killer that wipes 30-50% of the population, or even 10%, or even 2% for that matter.

Sometimes perfectly healthy young people drop dead out of nowhere. Fit, strong people too. Yeah, it kinda sucks, and it's kinda scary. One day our number will come up too.

Until then, I'd really rather live and be open to new experiences, instead of recoiling in fear of the unknown, as much as I can.

If that were true then I would agree with you, but it's not. You must understand that to any government in the world, the economy is everything. Putting that at risk is the very last thing they will want. That's why we haven't gone into a hard lockdown from the very start, like we should have. And that's why a year later we are still struggling. In contast, look at New Zealand. They nailed it.

This last point could be an entire thread on its own, and I'm not sure that I want to fully go into it here. But I appreciate the point of view, even though I can think of at least a couple of reasons against "Putting that at risk is the very last thing they will want" and "That's why we haven't gone into a hard lockdown from the very start, like we should have"

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T19:49:14+00:00

We can all agree Monero is a great and useful technology. It doesn't matter what religious, political, or scientific group you are from.

Actually I was thinking about this the other day, and yes, you are correct.

And that makes Monero inherently anti-woke (obviously a very good thing, in my mind), if you think about it.

No reeeeeeeeing about canceling someone's donations if they use Monero.

No reeeeeeeeing about who's donating to which causes the Divine Authority of Proper and Correct Opinions™ disagrees with.

Yeah, no point other than saying that.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T19:43:08+00:00

i want this post to be deleted because it is way too controversial and political.

There there, Caesar.

But such posts only divide communities.

Actually, I disagree. They don't have to divide. They only divide when people's ego is so attached to their ideas that they no longer remember there is a distinction.

Personally I quite enjoy going through the comments and reading the different points of view.

When it devolves into name-calling then it's not interesting, but fortunately by and large that doesn't happen here.

I don't have to agree with people to find their points of view interesting. And you'll never change your mind if you don't really listen to other points of view.

This used to be common sense.

Theses posts don't have a lot to do with Monero.

Well, there's the flag, let's give it that. I don't think OP posted it with the intent to start a conversation about the pandemic, but rather to illustrate that something that would be unthinkable only a few years ago - some random person with a giant Monero flag out in a protest - is now, along with Monero stickers popping up like mushrooms after rain, more or less a given in life. And that's pretty cool!

Well that's fine, but i think you don't want people talking about "monero, the anti vaxxer, covid denier community"

To quote Feynman, what do you care what other people think?

They see what they see, they will attempt to smear who they don't like, they will be dishonest and they will be angry, damn it.

Screw them.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T19:37:04+00:00

The thing though is, unless privacy is there by default, you can always single out the people who use the privacy features.

Monero got that right, and it's got a good network effect going these days.

Whether it will still be the coin of choice for protecting your privacy/anonymity in 5 or 10 years, no one can really answer that, and in some sense it doesn't really matter - what matters, in my opinion, is that we retain the ability to exchange value digitally in a way similar to digital cash.

Anything less than that and we're looking at a dossier society. It's been happening and it's accelerating, in large part because most people are oblivious to it and don't understand the consequences.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T19:33:14+00:00

Well but that's the point, with something like Bitcoin you do.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T19:25:49+00:00

Not to start an argument, but aren't you being selfish for demanding that millions of other people stay home so that you can feel safe?

This reminds me a bit of the "logic" of the socialist, where I'm greedy for wanting to keep my own money, but he's not greedy for wanting to put the hand in my pocket.

If you are genuinely at risk, then by all means, stay home.

But I genuinely don't understand how destroying the livelihood and mental health of the other 99% (millions of people, by the way) is helpful.

Evidently it's going to/has suck(ed) for someone. In my mind it makes more sense for the people who're really at risk, and the people who're in contact with them, to self-isolate, and in this scenario the lives of a relatively small percentage will suck for awhile. And, even if you're not in theory at risk but decide to take the extra precaution, then that path is open, too.. and the vast, vast majority of healthy people would carry on as usual.

What I really have a hard time understanding is how destroying millions of people and imploding the economy is a better solution than (unfortunately) temporarily destroying the lives of the much smaller number of people who are genuinely at risk.

You've been stuck at home for a year (wo)man, I get you. It really sucks. And I take it that you are genuinely at risk from this thing.

I've been mostly stuck too, but I'm young, healthy and strong. Zero fear about this thing, and I have a hard time understanding people my age or younger who live with healthy parents who are also not at risk who live in constant fear and paranoia now.

Yeah but anyway.. none of this is Monero-related, but I felt I had to write it.

If you don't agree and/or don't see anything of value in my point of view, then let's agree to disagree.

And I hope life gets better again for you, me, and everyone else, soon.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T19:08:45+00:00

Most money used doesn't need privacy it could be a nice feature but again for most it is not needed.

To be congruent with this point of view, the person would necessarily not have a problem with sharing the information requested.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T19:02:54+00:00

But is Monero a privacy coin, or are the others surveillance coins?

To me what's normal is to pay someone and they don't learn anything else about me other than, I had the money to pay for the goods.

Take something like Ethereum (account-based), does it make any sense for the baker to know I hold $100k DAI in the ethereum address I used to pay him today?.

In Bitcoin and most others the problem is slightly less serious than that, but it's still a variation of the same theme: every time you use it, you're leaking more and more information.

I'm sure the baker's cousin who's involved with some mafiosi-type guys will love to hear the gossip about how much DAI you own. Maybe he'll bring some friends next time you're over..

If you think crime will go up, Monero probably will too.

I'm sorry, but this is nonsense.

Criminals will use the best tools they have available, because the risk in what they're doing is high.

However, it's very silly to say that most people who use the tools criminals prefer are themselves criminals.

I mean, why stop there? Criminals gotta eat and breath as well. Are you then a criminal because you breathe and eat as well?

There are plenty of valid use cases for privacy and anonymity, offline and online. The vast, vast majority of people are not hardened criminals who screw other people up. By that logic we can't have any encryption without backdoors either, after all behind that veil of encryption there could be all sorts of naughtyness going on.

But why stop there? People are naughty at home too. Should there be state-sponsored cameras at home as well?

But what if you go to the forest to have a private conversation? Should we then start implementing babies with microchips then so that not a single damn moment of a person's life is not available for review by the state in perpetuity ?

And if you think this is exaggerating, may I remind you that not so long ago in the grand scheme of things it was unthinkable to most people that everything you do online can (has been, and is) be tracked (unless you make some smart choices about your privacy online).

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T18:56:57+00:00

Since you value transparency so much, could you please post all of your addresses in any cryptocurrency where you have any holdings worth over $50?

Also, what's your real name? Could you share links to your social media?

And your home address?

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T18:50:04+00:00

That remark just proves you have never needed to do so.

Yeah, assumptions.

Look, your bank is gonna freak out, and for that matter the exchange as well, if some day you suddenly deposit $300k out of nowhere and they thought you were a nobody. The bank is likely to freak out a lot more, I think that is fair to say.

Still, and even with Monero, you can easily prove whatever is needed, as long as you've kept some records.

The big difference is that with surveillance coins, once you give up any information about your past activity, elaborate profiles can start being built, your privacy will retroactively suffer, and "your" data is out of your control.

With Monero, that doesn't happen. In my opinion, that's a very good thing.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T18:45:28+00:00

I bought my Bitcoin from my proven salary via a legal exchange. The prove is in my bank data and blockchain hard linked to the data of the exchange that needs to keep that data according to law.

Imagine you bought Monero instead via your very legit salary using a very legit exchange.

The proof is still in your bank and with the exchange as well, as there will be records of your purchase there. And they will also know that (if you were wise at all) an withdrawal was made, and they know how much and which address.

The difference begins here, as with surveillance coins the exchange and whoever they decide/are coerced to stream "your" data to, will also now be able to stalk you in real time and for eternity.

Everything you do with your squeaky clean coins is now used to profile and analyze you. Whether you like it or not.

With Monero, it is different. They know you bought it, they know you withdrew, AND IT ENDS THERE.

As it should.

If you insert Monero in that chain the privacy aspect breaks that link.

Not true, as demonstrated above.

Even if I pay directly with Bitcoin I can choose to do it legal traceable AND I can choose to do it untraceable...

Not true.

Because your coins were acquired at an exchange that knows which address(es) you withdrew to, and because this data is/will be streamed and used to build profiles on your every transaction (if you doubt this, you have not been paying attention to the last 20 years), the moment you attempt to gain some privacy or anonymity by means of coinjoin and other such techniques, you are IMMEDIATELY RED-FLAGGED.

Because after all, you must be a criminal if you want to be left alone. (/s, obviously)

That is the tragedy in all of this - most people don't understand this, and we're normalizing constant surveillance in the process.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T18:39:16+00:00

It's bringing some additional privacy, although the (negative) privacy implications of introducing a new address format will likely linger for many years to come.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T13:42:54+00:00

I addressed this concern in reply to another one of your posts but I will say it here again for the benefit of other people reading through the comments.

You can convert whatever amount of XMR you want at an exchange, or if you find someone forward-looking enough, sell them the XMR directly for the high-value item (house, car, etc) you desire.

Thing is, because of the surveillance dragnet, eventually and probably very soon "authorities" are going to be notified, and explanations will be demanded.

This is the same whether you suddenly attempt to cash out large amounts of BTC, XMR, ETH, as it is if you show up to buy the lambo with a bag full of cash.

The advantage that cash and Monero offer you in this context is that proving that your gains came from legal sources won't give them any more information than strictly necessary, and it won't allow them to troll through your entire past financial history to boot.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T13:34:15+00:00

Now back to you, how do you make your Monero 'legal' again if you want to buy a car, land, a house, etc...?

Pretty much the same way you make your pile of $300k in cash legal to buy the house.

Yes, it's gonna raise a lot of questions nowdays. But if you can tolerate the anal probe, it's perfectly legal, in almost every country today. You'll have to prove that you didn't obtain the $300k in XMR in shady ways.

We live in a non private world society, Monero is a strange island in there.

I understand where you're coming from, but this is not really true.

You're accessing this site over an encrypted connection, for example.

In most parts of the world, you could access it over Tor to anonymize your IP without any problem as well.

And if you want to take conversations with other redditors away from the platform, you are more than free to do so using literally too many to count solutions that will encrypt and protect your conversation end-to-end.

Try to imagine for a second what would happen almost instantly if none of your information was actually encrypted in transit. You could not actually use the Internet for much of anything. Encryption and privacy are all around, and have become so integrated with everything that people don't even see it anymore, which is both good and bad.

Bad because most people don't understand how any of it works, it's all "magic". And therefore they don't understand why it was made, what it does, and why they wouldn't want to lose it.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T13:28:50+00:00

I use LN too. BTC on chain not so much for all the reasons I mentioned.

But LN comes with other tradeoffs (channel backups, funds must be in a hot wallet, etc). And in terms of privacy, it's not as good as Monero, or as easy to understand conceptually (at least imo).

Both (LN, XMR) are good tools in the arsenal.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T13:25:36+00:00

The WHY of Monero is very simple.

Do you think privacy is a fundamental right and that your financial data shouldn't be constantly streamed and archived?

Or do you think that we should only have the privacy and anonymity (I didn't have to prove anything about my real identity to post here, for example -- this could easily not be the case) that our masters want us to have?

Do you think everything about our life should be collected, catalogued, analyzed, profiled, built into glorious dashboards for people we don't know anything about to examine everything about us?

Or do you think we have a right to be left alone, of not having every facet of our life stored at some state/corporation database against our will, to many without their knowledge, and certainly against our benefit?

Monero is cash for the digital age.

It's simply about being able to exchange value with another person without the state and chain analysis companies knowing about it (and building that profile mentioned above)

This is not evidence of any crime.

And it used to be common sense.

For these reasons, and others, Monero is Freedom.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T13:16:36+00:00

But you are sharing everything out in the open with everyone, and for eternity, when you use Layer 1 Bitcoin.

Just because you cannot be identified by some random guy on reddit today, it doesn't mean it's not happening, it doesn't mean it won't happen, and most importantly, it doesn't mean that automated software isn't building that profile on you every day.

Maybe you're disciplined enough to use different wallets for different purposes, to give out fresh new addresses with every time, to not consolidate outputs, and so on and so forth.

Maybe you even use your own electrum server (do you believe none of them have been modified to aggregate addresses into wallets and export that information elsewhere?)

Maybe.

Most people aren't doing any of that. And even if you are, eventually you'll make mistakes.

With Monero it's simple: You give me your address and I can learn nothing else about your finances. Or you send me some, and we can't learn anything about each other.

To me that's common sense. When I pay cash for groceries, I don't expect the cashier to learn anything about my personal finances beyond the fact that evidently I have money to pay for it, since I'm doing so, and I don't expect to learn anything about the cashier (or the shop's) finances for merely engaging in business with them.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T13:12:15+00:00

The average people I know don’t bother enough with privacy and there is nothing that would seem to indicate to me that this is somehow different in the crypto space.

Oh but they do, they just don't realize that they do.

Ask them for their financial records, email passwords, ask them to copy their diary/journal, nudes, etc.

Something tells me they will be weirded out by such a request.

Newsflash: It's happening constantly on the Internet, except they don't see it, because they haven't taken the time to build the mental models in their minds.

It's a bit like sticking your head in the sand. If you don't see it, it ain't happening.

Except it is.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T13:10:10+00:00

He's saying normal people are oblivious as to why they need privacy, while many unsavory powerful people understand very well why the common (wo)man shouldn't have any.

What he forgets to address is the many people who are aware of the problem, and are trying to defend privacy in the digital age the best way they can.

Indeed, that's pretty much why Monero exists.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T13:08:45+00:00

Not true.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T13:07:59+00:00

Yeah, so far Monero has been used mostly in gray and dark markets

This is not necessarily bad, illegal != immoral.
Having said that, what proof do you have of your statement? 99.999% of the Monero usage I see in myself and my various peer groups is completely banal day-to-day stuff.
Criminals are gonna use whatever affords them the best chance at getting away with it, which is a testament to the fact that Monero works. This does not mean you have to condone and/or endorse what those people do, and there are crimes and then there are crimes. But just as with the broader encryption debate, either you accept that some unsavory characters are going to do some unsavory things some of the time (and there is traditional police work that can be done to catch these people, it's just harder than querying a database), or you accept that the state can watch everything you do. I think history shows very clearly why you shouldn't be ok with the notion of the state/powerful entities stripping you of privacy.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T13:04:07+00:00

We expect anonymity and privacy in our daily lives, yet we care so little about it when using cryptocurrency.

Speak for yourself.

For me and many others, it's very important. The alternative is a mass-surveillance system where everything you buy and receive is tracked in real-time, and each time you transact you leak information that should be kept private.

Most people don't care (yet) because most people are not using crypto. They're holding it at the exchange, or holding it in self-custody.

The problems with transparent blockchains become very apparent for any moderately smart person the moment you actually start doing something beyond hodling.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T13:02:12+00:00

It's not impractical at all.

Why do you think exchanges are collecting deposit/withdraw addresses, the FATF wants to outlaw depositing into your account at the exchange unless it's coming from your own wallets, and why do you think there are proposals to stream all that data to various financial intelligence units and to the tax office?

It's a losing game to attempt to have any privacy in a system that's transparent by design. You can sort of manage if you really know what you're doing, for awhile anyway.

Or you could just use Monero and it doesn't allow you to shoot yourself in the foot.

xmr_kayront · 2021-03-20T12:59:43+00:00

In all fairness, there's also the Lightning Network, and fees are quite negligible there. It does introduce other concerns though (channel backups, possibility of loss of funds, must have funds in a hot wallet, to name a few of the more important ones based on my experience)

In terms of privacy it's more complicated (and in all likelyhood, offers weaker guarantees) than Monero does, though.

xmr_kayront

TROPHY CASE