Five

Why organize a labor union to keep the tyrants from paying you poverty wages when you could just submit the name of the tyrant to the assassination market and let somebody take care of it?

The more unpopular you are as a human being, the shorter your expected lifespan, because the reward for you not existing would increase proportionally to how much of an asshole you were.

What are some ways that you can think of where a scheme like this could have undesirable results?

How big would a country need to be before it is too big, and what mechanism or entity would effectively enforce it from reaching or exceeding that size?

Bitcoin = Monero in your mind. They aren’t the same, not even close.

LOL. I understand they are very different entities.

| Bitcoin | Monero | |

|

| | Proof of work | Proof of work | | Uses a blockchain ledger | Uses a blockchain ledger | | Extremely volatile exchange rate | Extremely volatile exchange rate | | Unregulated | Unregulated | | Price easily manipulated by wealthy investors | Price easily manipulated by wealthy investors | | "HODL" - unrealistic expectation that the endgame is general use as currency | "HODL" - unrealistic expectation that the endgame is general use as currency | | Heavily driven by FOMO | Heavily driven by FOMO | | Uses obscene amount of energy per coin | Aspires to use an obscene amount of energy per coin to prevent another 51% attack | | Ledger has become so large it is unwieldy to store and transfer | Ledger 200+ GiB, constantly expanding | | Represents an ecological catastrope | A currently smaller part of the ecological catastrope | | Most popular currency used to facilitate human trafficking | Has features that should make it more attractive for use in human trafficking | | Difficult and annoying to use | Even more difficult and annoying to use | | Available on most cryptocurrency exchanges | Available on fewer exchanges | | Claimed by early proponents that transactions were 'anonymous' but now frequently the subject of blockchain analysis | Proponents claim transactions to be anonymous | | Pre-mining began January 2009 | Pre-mining began April 2014 | | Advocates behave like people in an MLM cult | Advocates behave like people in an MLM cult | | Represents the vain hope to individually escape catastrophe while the world burns by using theoretically clever but practically unworkable technological solutions that create further social problems, while the real, difficult though not intractable social problems of government abuse, economic instability, and authoritarianism continue to increase because resources for real social solutions are starved of resources | Represents the vain hope to individually escape catastrophe while the world burns by using theoretically clever but practically unworkable technological solutions that create further social problems, while the real, difficult though not intractable social problems of government abuse, economic instability, and authoritarianism continue to increase because resources for real social solutions are starved of resources | | $116,760 / coin | $270 / coin | | 20M coins | 18.5M coins | | Logo is a circle with the letter "B" | Logo is a circle with the letter "M" |

One of the hilarious details I discovered while researching this is that according to the US Government Accountability Office report "Use of Online Marketplaces and Virtual Currencies in Drug and Human Trafficking" in 2022,

Representatives of two analytics firms and one exchange also noted that illicit actors use privacy coins less frequently, as they are more difficult to obtain and are supported by fewer exchanges compared to Bitcoin, making it difficult to convert funds to government-issued currency.

So whatever benefits Monero claims to have in protecting the privacy of illicit activities, the people who could face real time in jail don't consider the benefits worth how extremely annoying it is to use.

What is Politics, and Why Should Anyone Give a $#&%?

Will the British Museum Ever Return These Stolen Artifacts?

Both the United States and the Soviet Union cracked down on organized labor. The corruption of the word 'socialism' was encouraged by both super-powers, one to falsely associate it with dictators and tyranny, and the other to claim its virtue for itself.

George Orwell wrote, "Rifles, muskets, long-bows, and hand grenades are inherently democratic weapons." Anarchists generally don't oppose safe recreational drug use, and see addiction not as a criminal act but instead a public health issue. Historically anarchists have flirted ideologically with assassination, but the modern consensus is that the means and the ends of revolution are too closely related to embrace political murder as a tenet.

It sounds like you're interested in becoming more politically literate. One question to ponder is if it may be moral for people to conspire to assassinate tyrants, is it also moral for people to organize a labor union to prevent tyrants from paying them poverty wages?

According to your definition, casinos and online gambling isn't a scam, because what they do is well-defined. If I use 'scam' to mean a reliable way for the downtrodden to become even more downtrodden, or 'bitcoin' as a shorthand for cryptocurrency, telling me I'm wrong because you have a different definition of those words is not an impressive rhetorical feat. And you claim I'm the bad faith actor in this conversation.

And as soon as you were challenged about statements you made on-topic, you disappear. I welcome your retreat. I would choose not to have more conversations with people like you.

I was curious what claims about Monero you thought specifically were defensible. Thanks for the clarification.

1. maximizes privacy
2. prevents third parties from committing human rights violations
3. stops rent seeking
4. financial autonomy to the downtrodden
5. refuge of last resort

How does Monero (1) maximize privacy between people who can't spend crypto directly and need to convert it to and from their national currency? How do you think this scheme would work in a privacy preserving way? We're talking about a non-tech savvy undocumented worker in the US playing the role of Alice, and Bob is his subsistence farmer wife in rural Mexico.

At least you admit implicitly that there is no known deanonymization attack on Monero.

There is very little overlap between respected cryptography researchers and bitcoin developers. The chain between theory to implementation to practice is difficult enough for state actors to handle reliably. The history of Enigma, Type B, JN-25, soviet one-time pads, and modern schemes like DES, 2-DES, FEAL, KASUMI, and BassOMatic, suggest not only that encryption isn't a guarantee, but conspiracies to keep a scheme popular long after it has been broken are common and widely successful.

I don't know a deanonymization attack on Monero. If that's all it took to make you feel Monero is secure, you're in for trouble. Encrypted or not, every transaction is immutably stored in the blockchain and replicated in millions of times to any bad actor who wants a copy. Even if there was no currently known deanonymization attack, that would not mean that a deanonymization attack is impossible for everyone and for all time.