Hidden amongst all your bullshit (which Bobr has dissected) you do have a few reasonable points
barely handle the transaction throughput of Visa
Firstly that’s a non-sequitur, you don’t need Visa throughput to be a currency, but scalability is a genuine issue in the long term. That will need a 2nd layer technology, probably using sharding or other approach for more parallelism and throughput.
Monero is confusing for average people
Generally true. Any self-custody solution will be more complex than just trusting a bank service, but substantial UI improvements can be made and some trusted simple apps will develop.
Monero is centralized
There is currently a small group of developers and researchers, but they are distributed geographically and not connected except by their involvement in the project. All hosting and communication occurs on multiple platforms, including distributed ones like this one. It’s one of the most decentralized open-source projects around, certainly far better than BTC or ETH for example.
will not be allowed to be hard-forked
Bullshit, no-one can prevent hard-forks. Both source-forks and chain-forks can be created by anyone. That is a concern actually as bad actors can cause confusion.
community can’t decided unilaterally … technical stagnation
It will be the reverse. Unanimity or a centralized foundation would cause stagnation. Monero has had forks in the past, and it will have more in the future. That guarantees technical innovation. Customers will choose their preferred version. It’s a free market for currency innovation.
I don’t see a clear upward trend. If anything Litecoin seems to be doing better: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactions-btc-ltc-bch-xmr-sma7.html#log&3y
US hegemony is over. Get used to it.
How naive do people have to be to believe a political party when it reverses an agenda during an election campaign?
Over-photoshopped, tiny ribcage and huge elbows
You should read about relatives trying to help victims of romance scams on reddit /r/scams. Generally its hard or impossible to convince some who is emotionally invested. I recommend you point out past BTC volatility and drops, and suggest he diversifies a bit if that’s all his savings. He could put some in gold, some in shares, leave some (maybe 50%) in BTC. He will still win big if it “goes to the moon”, and will have some protection from a crash. Often you need to make a mistake before you can learn this lesson. Eggs in baskets.
The first 3 letters are unique for the English seed words, so you just need to encode 25*3 = 75 letters.
I also think it is worth writing them down in a way that is not obviously a crypto address. You can place 75 letters in a 9x9 square (with maybe some extra dummy letters) that looks like a common word puzzle, eg sudoku or crossword, in a specific order, eg a spiral. You can custom print a template or copy one from eg https://puzzlestream.com/sudoku/blank-grid.php .
The US dollar has lost about 98% of it’s value since 1971 yet people still use it in trade rather than gold or silver or a better fiat like Swiss Franc. Don’t underestimate the power of inertia. Just because USD has inflation problems doesn’t mean XMR is about to take off. It will take hyperinflation or a currency crisis and even then better-known cryptos like BTC or LTC will be the first choice for normies.
Isn’t there an equilibrium or oscillatory cycle: fees higher -> smaller wallets stranded -> fewer viable transactions -> lower block demand -> lower fees?
BTC has no use-value any more, there are better functional crytpos and so it is a pure speculative “asset”. I think it’s price will increasingly fluctuate and eventually collapse for the same reasons as Beanie Babies or tulip bulbs. The power costs of mining set a lower bound on fees+price tho. Once block rewards are ended we could have a negative feedback where fees take an increasing fraction of tx value and price continues to drop to reducing liquidity.
One scenario is BTC becomes the “Rai stones” of crypto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones which are not used directly but “ownership” is transferred by convention
I’m curious how he passed on the seed words to you. Did he write it down, give you the password for a password manager, put the info in his Will, transfer to your wallet address, or give you a hardware wallet? Did he just trust you with access to his computer data before he died?
So I installed Gossip, created an identity but did not publish it, and added some relays and followed your public key. Now Settings says my “public key not set” while Account>Keys says “ready to sign events” and your follow says “relay list not found” and Inbox is empty. What else do I need to do?
If averages are published by a reputable website, shops can choose to use the average rather than “spot” price. In any case as XMR is more frequently exchanged for more stable goods or assets, the natural actions of buyers and seller will moderate fluctuations. However if you create a trading platform to trade averages vs spot prices that will tend to increase volatility, as short-term speculators benefit from volatility.
I already have done some rough work on the idea and have a bit of an idea what a good spec would look like.
Can you expand on that? Is the idea being actively discussed/developed anywhere?
KYC is being used by many businesses as a convenient gatekeeping tool
The more important point is that the state has the gatekeeping and tracking power, they can see your transactions and refuse access because of “suspicious activity”. The business is just “complying with regulations”. If it was a business decision you could just find another.
Would you exchange your newly-mined BTC for the same amount from a MtGox or other theft?
There’s a problem with audio balance towards the end (left channel only at 3:40). It would be a longer video but you could go into more OpSec - cookies/browsers, 2FA and password managers
Lots of prepper channels on Telegram with pdfs, eg https://t.me/PrepperCollective
With non-kyc exchanges and shops, and growing the XMR economy.
This is the only explicit mention of companies applying “risk assessment”:
(Knox suspects she has ended up on a blacklist at Plaid, a provider of technology plumbing to large crypto exchanges like Gemini, Kraken, and Robinhood, leading to the repeated bans. Freya Petersen, spokesperson for Plaid, says no such list exists, but that all firms that wish to use its services are subject to a standard risk assessment process, factoring in the industry in which they operate.) -Wired
Be aware of the EABE pattern/attack which can leak information: https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/12479/solutions-to-the-monero-eabe-attack . Avoid repeatedly sending exchange-received funds directly to a regular business without churning and changing your identity for the business