I really think Monero in particular deserves way more criticism for their practice. Bitcoin is one thing, Monero is created for and marketed towards cybercriminals, you don't need to be a communications expert to get that premise. I haven't seen it used once for any legitimate purpose. Atleast with Bitcoin and Ethereum you can get buy some legitimate things like VPNs or NFTs

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/06/moner...

I thought the goal of NFT was money laundering with something of fake value?

Doesn't TorBroswer also deserve more criticism by that logic? Here is their reply to this:

https://support.torproject.org/abuse/

People abandon all analysis when it comes to Tor. Yes, Tor serves a legitimate purpose (in contrast to Monero, noone has changed my mind yet), but I'd argue that value would also be fullfilled without onion services. If I have to gess 99 % of onion services are illegal activity. The only exception to this rule is SecureDrop which I am certain could be realized with just a regular server too. You need to self host it anyways.

I use Monero to donate to FLOSS software projects and as a way of paying friends without surveillance capitalism demanding I tell them what my private transactions are for. If these aren't "legitimate purposes" then there no point in engaging in this conversation. Maybe you're happy with being subject to corporate panopticons of Venmo/Cash App/whatever but I'd rather not engage with companies that seek to demand an ever larger pool of information from me.

Onion services provide authentication and NAT traversal while maintaining security and anonymity. Just because you aren't using that functionality doesn't mean it doesn't have a use.

How do you intend to have a clearnet application that can stand up to the same threat model that SecureDrop does?

> Maybe you're happy with being subject to corporate panopticons of Venmo/Cash App/whatever

Get this, I've never used either of these services before. And the even crazier part is that if I did, they wouldn't know what I'm giving my friends money for anyways. And lastly, just use cash if your decision making is being opressed by the surveillance capitalism. Monero serves no purpose that hasn't already been fullfilled by a non-dubious measure

> How do you intend to have a clearnet application that can stand up to the same threat model that SecureDrop does?

I don't know, ask Stripe maybe how they haven't gotten any customer data stolen yet with their massive threat profile while not using Tor in any capacity

Silly me, I didn't realize that I can send cash over the Internet.

Stripe's threat modeling is nothing like SecureDrop's. Stripe has plenty of identifying information that they would be forced to surrender upon subpoena that SecureDrop simply wouldn't be able to furnish because it never has that information to begin with. How is this not apparent? Comparing the two reeks of bad faith.

> just use cash if your decision making is being opressed by the surveillance capitalism

This is morally equivalent to:

- "just send a letter through the post if you don't like EU's chat control"

- "just read the newspaper if you don't like Google's Federated Learning of Cohorts"

I'd like to believe we can get the benefits of 21st century tech without giving up our privacy to get it. Thanks to Monero that belief is a reality. You're welcome to stick with cash and the pony express if you like, but it's not a great look painting everyone who disagrees with your values as a criminal.

Monero was built and used for privacy purposes but it gets abused by cybercriminals for malicious purposes. Just like all cryptocurrencies and even plain paper cash.

> Monero was built and used for privacy purposes

So was Encrochat

You could say exactly the same thing about any form of encryption.

I haven't bought much with Monero, but I always offer it because I adore the premise. I personally think its great, one of the few truly valuable cryptocurrencies.

+1 for Monero.

"Monero is created for and marketed towards cybercriminals..."

"You could say exactly the same thing about any form of encryption..."

That seems very untrue. I like my credit card details to be encrypted when I send them for the exact opposite of assisting cybercrime.

> > I haven't seen it used once for any legitimate purpose

> You could say exactly the same thing about any form of encryption.

Maybe YOU could, and maybe you'd even be telling the truth, if you're going to this site over http and and not https.

So Tor and I2P also should be criticized? IMO, something being away enough from the government that it starts to get abused shows how secure/private it is.

Ironically Tor is mostly funded by the US government. 80% in 2012. They are still a significant donor however I'm not sure if the percentage is still so high.

Tor and I2P allow the free flow of information, which is a net good for society. Monero allows the free flow of money which is a net negative; it effectively destroys the rule of law because those with enough money can freely commission crimes that benefit them.

Today you are on the right side of the fence. You buy things that are permitted so its all good. I wonder if you would keep the same opinion, once that changes.

But lets hope for our sake, we never get there.

you can do the same with XMR. for example Mullvad accepts XMR and BTC.

Easier to do money laundering this way instead of selling trump a house.

The suffocating irony of this forum being called "Hacker News" when it is filled with comments like this never fails to amaze me. A truly unimaginative bunch.

Could you give some other concrete, practical examples of use cases for cryptocurrencies instead of the passive-aggressive snark?

Preserving privacy, reliable transactions with no, i repeat, no bank or govmnt involvement, no kyc. No/low fees (on some currencies), public immutable databases...

> Preserving privacy

Literally does not understand crypto.

cough monero cough

Got a frog in your throat, partner? :)

Somehow I'm living day to day without needing to think about being associated with a service I am paying for. I totally get your point about minimizing interference, but there is absolutely no way anyone thinks Monero is a good solution to this problem who isn't involved in some shady business.

Monero is used everyday by people living under oppressive regimes.

Wasn't able to find a single article mentioning use under opressive regimes. It does seem to be the most popular ransomware crypto now though so there is that

> Wasn't able to find a single article mentioning use under opressive regimes

Well, that's the point.

Doesn't the article talk about how they're adding centralized KYC?

Yet most blockchains do the opposite of all of these things?

These feel more like theoretical selling points, not documented uses of.

How is having every transaction on the blockchain considered private? If someone knows your wallet address they can see everything you've done

Well, you are - and I mean this with as little offense as possible - only entertaining the blockchain from a likely incredibly privileged position. Consider people living under an oppressive regime. Things you are considering perfectly normal, like freely living as a homosexual, may be a punishable offense and illegal for its citizens. "Illegal nonsense" uses of the blockchain may be live-saving privacy for them.

You can generate this list yourself.

Take your favorite payment provider (PayPal, Stripe, whichever bank provides your Visa/MasterCard, etc.), and look at their terms of service. Enumerate all the prohibited usages. From that list, delete illegal activities, of course.

The remaining items on the list are your practical examples of use cases. It's roughly the set of things that are legal, but that big corporations have decided you can't do because they're morally questionable or financially risky.

Stripe has an excellent list of examples (https://stripe.com/legal/restricted-businesses). Here is a selection:

* Pornography and other mature audience content (including literature, imagery and other media) depicting nudity or explicit sexual acts

* Online dating services

* Bankruptcy attorneys and bail bonds

* Sports forecasting or odds making with a monetary or material prize

* Charity sweepstakes and raffles for the explicit purpose of fundraising

* Unauthorized sale of brand name or designer products or services

And so on. All these are legal, but in a cashless society without decentralized currency, they might as well be illegal because no centralized payment processor will allow them.

But hey, Bitcoin can also be used for CSAM, unlike VPNs, Tor, or cash, which is why the HN cognoscenti condemns it.

Out of interest, why cant VPNs, Tor or cash be used for CSAM? My intuition is that those 4 have more or less the same use cases.

You ain't good at sarcasm (obvious one)

He's right. There's no reason, for instance, that CSAM media can't go on the blockchain as a block - and then everyone plays plausible deniability because the "blockchain is immutable". The internet is written in ink, the blockchain is written in unwashable graffiti that many people are taking pictures of to save their own copy of it at any given time.

I'm pointing out a longstanding inconsistency on HN. Every think-of-the-children argument against cryptocurrency also applies to many privacy-focused tools. The loudest commenters in the HN community are anti-censorship, but they espouse the belief that anyone against censorship of money must be a criminal.

Besides the payment processor I use allowing these things afaik(but that might be an EU vs USA thing): isn't the point of blockchain that everything is immutable and a full history of every transaction is kept? That means that if your wallet(or w/e you use to pay) is ever connected to you as a person, everyone will know what "morally questionable or financially risky" things you did in the past, which unless you don't care about that will still cause you to be really careful using your money on these type of things(honestly: even more careful than right now probably).

You could be careful to not leak your wallet address of course, but if we'd truly be a cashless society without decentralized currency you'd want to buy your groceries with it too, or order computer parts. What prevents these shops you buy from from having a security issue and leaking your wallet address? You could have a separate wallet per shop, but you need to get money into it somehow which can be traced as well(because it's the blockchain).

Note: I'm not an expert on blockchain/crypto, there might be ways to mitigate this, I'm just legit curious as to how this would be solved in a world like this.

I have two answers, one snarky.

Answer #1: relax, they already know everything about you. With every interaction in society, you leave some combination of name, email, address, purchase history, security-camera footage, license-plate footage, IP address, cell-tower history, credit-card number, Venmo likes, etc. The history of a unit of digital currency certainly helps fill in gaps. But whoever "they" are to you, they already know.

Answer #2: No single tool is a one-size-fits-all answer to privacy. TCP/IP needs TLS for transport-layer privacy, DNSSEC and TLS certs for authenticity, VPNs and Tor for protection against traffic analysis, throwaway accounts to segregate one's personal workstreams, and so on. The privacy of the internet results from an ever-evolving collection of tools.

Bitcoin is TCP/IP for money. It's a pipe that allows transfer of value from one place to another -- that's it. It doesn't provide anonymity, but unlike centralized payment-processing systems, it allows the creation of tools on top of it that could provide a practical level of anonymity. A Bitcoin mixer, for example, is comparable to a VPN.

Note that if VPNs or TLS were invented today, rather than decades ago, the Hive Mind would be demonizing them as tools for criminals and/or the kind of person none of us admits to being (purchasers of porn, etc.). We take a lot of internet privacy tools for granted, mostly because we're accustomed to them, but also because they were grandfathered before September 2001.

> But hey, Bitcoin can also be used for CSAM, unlike VPNs, Tor, or cash, which is why the HN cognoscenti condemns it.

Straw man much?

Pretty sure it's just sarcasm.

I’m biased because I work on payments at Solana Labs, but IMO international payments is the most promising so far.

AFAIK there’s nothing competitive with sending an international payment of any amount in half a second for a tiny fraction of a cent in fees.

For example, Visa recently expanded their pilot of USDC settlement to include Solana, citing its speed and low fees: https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.rele...

They refer to it as “modernizing cross-border money movement” and I think that summarises the potential pretty well!

i like the Gridless Compute [0][1] project. check them out. crypto is not all just crime and environmental destruction IMO.

[0] https://news.rublex.io/gridless-uses-mining/ [1] https://africancrypto.com/gridless-enables-cheap-renewable-e...

The cart is driving the horse, and has been for a decade. People are tired of it.