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.

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.

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.