Well, that leads to the other only issue I have, without doing some serious research - some of it pretty deep and technical, you can't tell which of the dozens of different cryptocurrencies are scams and which are real. If someone is putting time and money into promoting something, they probably have a stake in some sort of return. If it's not promoted, people aren't going to know about it - and it won't go anywhere. I love the concept of cryptocurrency, I really do, just - yeah - it's not basically intuitive.
I'll research it. I think I remember when it first came out. It looked interesting. I get the trade, get rich stuff. I've never been good at that. I don't value money the way smart money people do. No matter how hard I try to convince myself it's something meaningful, I can't seem to do it. But, that doesn't mean that I don't like eating, it's more that I have difficulty getting into the mindset of an investor. Sad for me, in ways, it would be fun to be rich sometimes. Though, money investor people tend to be forced to have less fun because of the way they think, so double edged sword. But if Monero is what you say, it's a good thing.
Ok, did some research. Monero's stated goal is fungibility. That's good, but from what I can see they have some methods for tracing transactions, which is - for the most part - what ruins the fungibility of cryptocurrencies. This could probably be fixed better than it is in future patches.
Which leads to my biggest concern - fungibility needs to be maintained. It must be constantly kept in that state. Which means if the devs maintaining the code decide they no longer want to develop it, or if they decide that fungibility isn't the most important thing on their plate, or if a new algorithm doesn't work or is exploited, etc., it instantly loses that property. The whole blockchain could, just instantly, become as bad or worse than Bitcoin.
That's not saying there's better out there, I haven't found better. Just that there are major weaknesses in the whole thing that frustrate me.
What we need are bill transporters, lol. A scanner that scans and destroys a regular dollar bill, and spits one out the other end instantly. It's easy to make physical objects fungible, not so much with crypto. The problem, really, comes back to everything in the digital world requiring an identifier in order to separate it from everything else, and requiring places for that identifier to be stored.
Real money has serial numbers, but those serial numbers are not copied down and stored for every transaction they are used in. It's impossible. Meanwhile, with crypto, the serial numbers ARE the currency, and they must be written down and stored for every transaction. Some crypto is coming along that allows the deletion of the blockchain. That's closer, but I haven't dug into it. Really, if block chains could be completely deleted, it would be an improvement. It would require the coin to be manually tracked. Dunno.
Most people don't understand how privacy and fungibility are fundamentally linked. I lose a dollar, someone else picks it up off the ground, they have a dollar - I no longer have a dollar. Another concept that people don't understand is a good thing.
From what I've read, Monero is still traceable with about 80% or more accuracy through the blockchain, even after the changes. I'm not saying it's not the best we've got, but it's not perfect. Again, what if one of those devs isn't on board with fungibility? What if they all decide to abandon the project? These things can and do happen. It's why I don't trust crypto in general. It's inherently exploitable. A computer cannot hold a block of something, or 10 blocks of something, that aren't identified in some way. Which means Monero, essentially, isn't fungible. It gains some fungibility through obfuscation. If someone can find a way through that obfuscation, then it's non fungible nature is directly apparent.
A block of gold, however, is fungible by nature. It has to be made nonfungible by external means, and even then it's very difficult. You could put a chip in it, but then someone can melt it down and take the chip out. You can't melt and reforge any bitcoin.
If you were to try to make truly fungible by nature crypto coins, they would be easily, infinitely, counterfeitable. Which is something else about fungible currency that people think is bad, but is actually good. It can be counterfeited. But, a good fungible currency is difficult to counterfeit to the extent that it doesn't completely devalue the currency.
Well, that leads to the other only issue I have, without doing some serious research - some of it pretty deep and technical, you can't tell which of the dozens of different cryptocurrencies are scams and which are real. If someone is putting time and money into promoting something, they probably have a stake in some sort of return. If it's not promoted, people aren't going to know about it - and it won't go anywhere. I love the concept of cryptocurrency, I really do, just - yeah - it's not basically intuitive.
I'll research it. I think I remember when it first came out. It looked interesting. I get the trade, get rich stuff. I've never been good at that. I don't value money the way smart money people do. No matter how hard I try to convince myself it's something meaningful, I can't seem to do it. But, that doesn't mean that I don't like eating, it's more that I have difficulty getting into the mindset of an investor. Sad for me, in ways, it would be fun to be rich sometimes. Though, money investor people tend to be forced to have less fun because of the way they think, so double edged sword. But if Monero is what you say, it's a good thing.
Ok, did some research. Monero's stated goal is fungibility. That's good, but from what I can see they have some methods for tracing transactions, which is - for the most part - what ruins the fungibility of cryptocurrencies. This could probably be fixed better than it is in future patches.
Which leads to my biggest concern - fungibility needs to be maintained. It must be constantly kept in that state. Which means if the devs maintaining the code decide they no longer want to develop it, or if they decide that fungibility isn't the most important thing on their plate, or if a new algorithm doesn't work or is exploited, etc., it instantly loses that property. The whole blockchain could, just instantly, become as bad or worse than Bitcoin.
That's not saying there's better out there, I haven't found better. Just that there are major weaknesses in the whole thing that frustrate me.
What we need are bill transporters, lol. A scanner that scans and destroys a regular dollar bill, and spits one out the other end instantly. It's easy to make physical objects fungible, not so much with crypto. The problem, really, comes back to everything in the digital world requiring an identifier in order to separate it from everything else, and requiring places for that identifier to be stored.
Real money has serial numbers, but those serial numbers are not copied down and stored for every transaction they are used in. It's impossible. Meanwhile, with crypto, the serial numbers ARE the currency, and they must be written down and stored for every transaction. Some crypto is coming along that allows the deletion of the blockchain. That's closer, but I haven't dug into it. Really, if block chains could be completely deleted, it would be an improvement. It would require the coin to be manually tracked. Dunno.
Most people don't understand how privacy and fungibility are fundamentally linked. I lose a dollar, someone else picks it up off the ground, they have a dollar - I no longer have a dollar. Another concept that people don't understand is a good thing.
From what I've read, Monero is still traceable with about 80% or more accuracy through the blockchain, even after the changes. I'm not saying it's not the best we've got, but it's not perfect. Again, what if one of those devs isn't on board with fungibility? What if they all decide to abandon the project? These things can and do happen. It's why I don't trust crypto in general. It's inherently exploitable. A computer cannot hold a block of something, or 10 blocks of something, that aren't identified in some way. Which means Monero, essentially, isn't fungible. It gains some fungibility through obfuscation. If someone can find a way through that obfuscation, then it's non fungible nature is directly apparent.
A block of gold, however, is fungible by nature. It has to be made nonfungible by external means, and even then it's very difficult. You could put a chip in it, but then someone can melt it down and take the chip out. You can't melt and reforge any bitcoin.
If you were to try to make truly fungible by nature crypto coins, they would be easily, infinitely, counterfeitable. Which is something else about fungible currency that people think is bad, but is actually good. It can be counterfeited. But, a good fungible currency is difficult to counterfeit to the extent that it doesn't completely devalue the currency.