Monero has done well from the autistic viewpoint of technical accomplishment and crushes most of the competition at meeting the technical goals of Satoshi.
They've failed horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges of being tradeable on central exchanges and as a result has met weak acceptance from crypto-friendly legal vendors making it harder to use as actual digital cash.
A key feature of cash is its ability to pass through and into the KYC/AML panopticon where you can buy things like real estate and heavy capital equipment. If you can't prove chain of custody of source of funds and source of wealth, you're effectively shut off from a wide amount of transactions.
At least in the West. If you go to someplace like Dubai it is no problem.
> A key feature of cash is its ability to pass through and into the KYC/AML panopticon where you can buy things like real estate and heavy capital equipment.
My country is in the process of criminalizing the purchase of real estate with cash. Laws have been proposed to that end. Politicians have also proposed restricting the amount of "unexplained" physical cash the population is "allowed" to hold.
This is your future if you don't resist.
> If you can't prove chain of custody of source of funds and source of wealth
You shouldn't have to "prove" anything. What a bunch of nonsense.
Cash would "fail horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges challenges today". And some countries are trying to make it harder to use.
Yes but fortunately we have other points of comparison and I was making a relative analysis. Legal vendors who take crypto are more likely to accept even the lower market cap LTC in most cases than XMR. XMR is one of the weakest performers as spending cash on legal goods and service amongst crypto assets of similar financial "weight class."
The technical superiority and features on many points seem to be unable to overcome this.
For business acceptance, I see how it would be hard if it is impossible to use on a CEX. I think that Haveno/RetoSwap will eventually become the preferred and more convenient Fiat-->Monero method instead of CEXs for the avg user.
Overall though I would even prefer to use a stable than a bank or fiat p2p app to send money.
>They've failed horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges of being tradeable on central exchanges and as a result has met weak acceptance from crypto-friendly legal vendors making it harder to use as actual digital cash.
Despite this, everywhere it is accepted, it becomes the largest marketshare crypto payment method, excluding whales.
I had not paid any attention to Monero amid the storm of cryptocurrencies and related scams, but thanks to your recommendation here, I will be checking it outmn
In this case, I mean a narrowed focus (in this case, on technical qualities) to the point it is maladaptive for the underlying stated goal ("digital cash").
A survey of cryptocurrencies showed monero has failed to achieve this goal of being a superior form of digital cash, relative to most other crypto currencies in similar 'weight class' of market cap and years available. This failure isn't technical, it's due to relative weaknesses in the realms of politics and soft social influence. Even the lower market cap LTC is more accepted as 'cash' by most legal vendors.
That's a good signal that the privacy guarantees are real, no? It's no secret that the main use-case for crypto is skirting the legal system; I'm not sure I understand this desire to make it anything bigger than that. For example, it's extremely hard to Be Your Own Bank because one mistake means you've just lost all your funds whether it's from a scam, malware, or losing your wallet seed phrase. Large amounts of people "being their own bank" by putting their life savings into crypto would be a disaster.
That's the wrong question. Nobody cares how the elites in the government feel. They exist to serve us. That is the only reason they have any power at all.
The right question is: how can we make it mathematically impossible for the government to oppress us in any way, regardless of how much they seethe and rage about it? Their happiness does not matter. In fact their anger is probably a good sign that the technology is working as intended. The angrier they get, the freer you are.
Privacy tools will be used in ethical and non-ethical ways. I get that it is annoying that crypto facilitates cybercrime, but that is the cost of privacy for everyone. Everyone gets those rights, because there is no other way. I will say that Monero is vastly used for ethical purposes[1].
I guess encryption shouldn't exist because cybercriminals use it to communicate privately. Privacy is a human right, and payments are essential to modern life.
Also, good luck on "crash and burn", Monero has been going steady, being the most freedom protecting crypto, for 12 years, celebrating its 12th birthday two days ago.
Monero has consistently exceeded the rest of crypto in community, integrity to mission, and use-case. True digital cash.
FCMP++ upgrade will be huge for sender privacy bringing Monero's technical strength in line with ZCash.
The new site[1] looks great as well; it was funded by the CCS.
[1] https://getmonero-redesign-impl.vercel.app/
Monero has done well from the autistic viewpoint of technical accomplishment and crushes most of the competition at meeting the technical goals of Satoshi.
They've failed horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges of being tradeable on central exchanges and as a result has met weak acceptance from crypto-friendly legal vendors making it harder to use as actual digital cash.
> regulatory and political challenges
Not bending down to the financial arm of warrantless global mass surveillance is a feature, not a bug.
> being tradeable on central exchanges
Central exchanges are banks in disguise. They should not exist.
A key feature of cash is its ability to pass through and into the KYC/AML panopticon where you can buy things like real estate and heavy capital equipment. If you can't prove chain of custody of source of funds and source of wealth, you're effectively shut off from a wide amount of transactions.
At least in the West. If you go to someplace like Dubai it is no problem.
> A key feature of cash is its ability to pass through and into the KYC/AML panopticon where you can buy things like real estate and heavy capital equipment.
My country is in the process of criminalizing the purchase of real estate with cash. Laws have been proposed to that end. Politicians have also proposed restricting the amount of "unexplained" physical cash the population is "allowed" to hold.
This is your future if you don't resist.
> If you can't prove chain of custody of source of funds and source of wealth
You shouldn't have to "prove" anything. What a bunch of nonsense.
Cash would "fail horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges challenges today". And some countries are trying to make it harder to use.
Yes but fortunately we have other points of comparison and I was making a relative analysis. Legal vendors who take crypto are more likely to accept even the lower market cap LTC in most cases than XMR. XMR is one of the weakest performers as spending cash on legal goods and service amongst crypto assets of similar financial "weight class."
The technical superiority and features on many points seem to be unable to overcome this.
For business acceptance, I see how it would be hard if it is impossible to use on a CEX. I think that Haveno/RetoSwap will eventually become the preferred and more convenient Fiat-->Monero method instead of CEXs for the avg user.
Overall though I would even prefer to use a stable than a bank or fiat p2p app to send money.
>They've failed horribly at meeting the regulatory and political challenges of being tradeable on central exchanges and as a result has met weak acceptance from crypto-friendly legal vendors making it harder to use as actual digital cash.
Despite this, everywhere it is accepted, it becomes the largest marketshare crypto payment method, excluding whales.
I had not paid any attention to Monero amid the storm of cryptocurrencies and related scams, but thanks to your recommendation here, I will be checking it outmn
Pardon, the “autistic” point of view?
In this case, I mean a narrowed focus (in this case, on technical qualities) to the point it is maladaptive for the underlying stated goal ("digital cash").
A survey of cryptocurrencies showed monero has failed to achieve this goal of being a superior form of digital cash, relative to most other crypto currencies in similar 'weight class' of market cap and years available. This failure isn't technical, it's due to relative weaknesses in the realms of politics and soft social influence. Even the lower market cap LTC is more accepted as 'cash' by most legal vendors.
> of being tradeable on central exchanges
That's a good signal that the privacy guarantees are real, no? It's no secret that the main use-case for crypto is skirting the legal system; I'm not sure I understand this desire to make it anything bigger than that. For example, it's extremely hard to Be Your Own Bank because one mistake means you've just lost all your funds whether it's from a scam, malware, or losing your wallet seed phrase. Large amounts of people "being their own bank" by putting their life savings into crypto would be a disaster.
What are they supposed to do? How can they make governments happy without sacrificing privacy?
> How can they make governments happy
That's the wrong question. Nobody cares how the elites in the government feel. They exist to serve us. That is the only reason they have any power at all.
The right question is: how can we make it mathematically impossible for the government to oppress us in any way, regardless of how much they seethe and rage about it? Their happiness does not matter. In fact their anger is probably a good sign that the technology is working as intended. The angrier they get, the freer you are.
Regulatory capture would be the traditional way
https://archive.is/Vhzng
Hope it crashes and burns, along with other ransomcoins.
Privacy tools will be used in ethical and non-ethical ways. I get that it is annoying that crypto facilitates cybercrime, but that is the cost of privacy for everyone. Everyone gets those rights, because there is no other way. I will say that Monero is vastly used for ethical purposes[1].
I guess encryption shouldn't exist because cybercriminals use it to communicate privately. Privacy is a human right, and payments are essential to modern life.
Also, good luck on "crash and burn", Monero has been going steady, being the most freedom protecting crypto, for 12 years, celebrating its 12th birthday two days ago.
[1] My emotional reaction to your comment, https://xmrbazaar.com/, https://monerica.com/
we're still doing the crypto thing in 2026?