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Monero Project admits thieves stole 6-figure sum from a wallet in mystery breach
(www.theregister.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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If you're going to use Luna, FTX, and NFTs as arguments about something like Monero, and I don't want this to sound to mean (hard to convey tone through text), but you probably don't really understand any of them.
I have been both a long time supporter of crypto and the ideas behind it, and I was quick to make fun of the NFTs and have always warned against both keeping large sums money in exchanges and warning against trusting stable coins. I certainly can't garuntee crypto's future, but your argument sounds a lot like somebody saying "a trading card site and two unlicensed online banks went broke so you're stupid for buying Cisco stock" right after the dot com crash.
I reccomend looking into it just a bit more. Even if it's just to be a better anti-crypto advocate.
Ah yes, Monero, from the WannaCry incident, the premier currency for criminals. Also I've made a detailed list of points and most of them (except 1, which is about stablecoins and 5, which only half-applies) apply to Monero. It's still proof of work, so it wastes energy, it still destroys consumer protections, is perfect for scams and makes it even harder for authorities to pursue criminals. And it is still a bigger fool scam, despite being useful for criminals.
Ftx was one of the largest exchanges for the whole of the crypto market. This is like Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank all going bankrupt and their execs sentenced to prison at the same time.
(There are no major licensed crypto banks btw)
Addendum: Cisco is a company that offers products and services. Crypto is used by criminals and speculators.
Proof of work does not waste energy. It burns exactly how much it needs to.
The very same things that allow these things can allow the people in power to spy on all your digital transactions, as well as deny service to people they don't like (which they would more eagerly do to opposition rather than real scammers)
Oh, and not to mention that even with protections like this, most scams and crime still happen in the "traditional" payment systems anyway.
My point on the comparison wasn't that that they're 1:1, but more so when a market does crazy stuff in a speculative frenzy there's things that potentially have legitimate value and things that don't. Comparing potentially good projects to obvious BS isn't really a a good way to debate the value or lack of.
As for unlicensed banks, yeah probably an imperfect comparison, but not entirely irrelevant IMO. Something like Coinbase (that does have licenses BTW) is probably a lot less likely to go bust than some shady exchange based in the Bahamas. Now, as a counter point ftx probably had the appropriate licenses for their US based front, but then just funneled that elsewhere right.
And sure, they were one of the biggest, but back to my original point: in a crazy speculative bubble the scams and legitimate projects all have to be evaluated individually.
Speaking of banks though, its kinda hilarious you brought up Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank. Last I checked two of the three were kinda involved in a pretty big thing known as the 2008 financial crises and would have collapsed had they not been bailed out. Their executives aren't in prison, but many people believed they should be.
Finally criminal useage is valid criticism, but Monero is not the first thing to be used to transfer illicit funds. Cartels, hitmen, and people who kidnap children for ransom all seem to like cash (well, that and the banks, some of which have a horrendously bad record of transferring illicit funds). If you were to convince me that Monero is making the world a way worse off place then maybe you'd change myind, but right now as it stands it appears a small percentage of criminals find Monero slightly easier than cash and are using it because it's the path of least resistance. Last I checked, the drug trade, computer hacking, and any other active criminal enterprise existed before the use of Monero.
My point is there isn't any other usage to it. People won't use Monero for buying their groceries or online shopping, but its nature lends itself to being used to commit crimes. Cash at the very least has serial numbers - you could possibly track that.
The reasons why it isn't suitable to be used as a currency are exactly what I listed, and you failed to interrogate: volatility, lack of consumer protections, anonymity for wrongdoers, extremely high transaction fees and energy usage, consensus protocols favoring big money and the inability to perform even a basic rollback without splitting the entire economy of your chain in twain.
With e-commerce, you could have someone send you some coins and then not deliver the product. What are they gonna do, get a non-existent chargeback?
As a person who has been buying my groceries with Monero for almost a year, I must dispute that. Is Monero less stable than the US dollar, sure. However, compared to a lot of crypto Monero is quite stable because it has real world use and extremely low transaction fees. monero is also quite stable when compared to (admittidly bad) fiat currencies such as the argentenian peso.
Where are you buying your groceries in Monero? If it's available where I am, I'd like to get in on that.
For now Instacart via Coinsbee
My original point I meant to make was just that your first argument, XMR = bad because NFTs/FTX/Luna was either that you didn't understand the differences of them, or that you did and were presenting a disingenuous argument.
The other points are more of a come to your own conclusions type of deal. But, if we're on the topic:
Volatility? I'd point out that, yes, it's volital like every other thing that's new. It'll figure out a stable price (what price that'll be, or if it'll be 0, I can't say). New tech and volital speculative markets and all that, churning out crap and jems alike.
Anonymity, consumer protections, & no transaction reverses? Again, cash, see what my take on it is above. + If tracking serial numbers stopped crime they'd be doing that already.
Energy useage? Yup, there's a lot, and that's a good criticism. But as these things grow there's work towards more efficient models. Also, it's not like everything else (from mining gold to making a PlayStation) uses energy in an often inefficient way.
No use as a currency? There's already a growing amount of using it as a currency. A lot of people are talking about the "Monero circular economy" with the idea being a community both earning and spending Monero amongst themselves. There's also a surprisingly large amount of merchants accepting Monero compared to a few years ago, and a large number of crypto services (including Monero) that offer a middleman type service to allow you to spend XMR and have a business get fiat.
Addendum: to elaborate on eccommerce a bit more, last I checked it's a good idea to buy from trusted platforms. What's to stop food I buy from being contaminated with lead? Buying that 80 cent box of pankake mix from wish is just probably a bad idea. So is entering your credit card details and social security number on totallynotascam(dot)legit that you got spam emails about.
Beyond that, though, it's not like Monero existing makes credit cards not exist. Any danger to the user isn't really an argument against something existing if the user chooses to use it.
So you buy Monero with fiat, just to convert that Monero to fiat again, so the vendor can receive fiat? What for?
Political statement? Ease of use? Social experiment? Ideological preference? Spending crypto you were paid in? A stand in until more merchants accept Monero directly? For no reason, but it's not hurting anybody and it's not illegal so why not?
Pick any of the above.
You don't have to repeat hundred times Monero is used by criminals, and many of us glad for Monero used by criminals.
Before explaining to me "why criminals are bad!!!!": Criminality ≠ morality
Ideally you would want laws to reflect morality. If drugs became legal, monero would no longer be useful for buying them, if that's what you're talking about.
I don't see reason to publicly make financial transactions. So no, if possible i would like to spend Monero for my grocery shopping.
Tell me you don't understand what you're talking about without saying you don't understand what you're talking about. It really sounds like you only get your info about crypto from headlines.
To go through each of your points:
There are plenty of stable coins that are stable, such as USDC. Many of them exist for a multitude of different purposes.
Non stable coins also can have different uses. Reddit, for example, had its own coin for a while, and Ethereum exists to allow for programmatic transactions (ie: you pay a program to do something, and it'll get done)
While it is true that laws around crypto are nowhere near as mature, as they are very new, crypto offers its own consumer protection advantages over fiat. For example, as an attacker it's a metric fuck ton harder to get into a crypto wallet than it is to get into a bank account.
What makes you think fiat currencies aren't controlled in the same way?
Pick one. Both cannot be true at the same time. While it is true most crypto uses a publicly available ledger, you can only start tracing purchases when you know the identities of the ones holding the accounts. This is muuuuch easier said than done, especially given how easy it is to simply make new accounts with zero identifying info attached to them.
If you're the kind to fall for Nigerian Prince scams, you're fucked regardless if you used fiat or crypto. Banks will not refund you over payments you yourself sent.
For now. All the stable coins that failed were stable until they weren't. What incentive is there to actually providing that kinda service, if you won't make money with it?
NFTs. SAY THEIR NAME
And remember what a resounding success Wolf Game was? As a hobbyst programmer I can tell you there isn't an idea dumber that putting code into something immutable, that you have to destroy, create anew, rename the new thing you made to the old one, while paying for each step of the process, just so that you can fix a bug is a terrible idea.
It's pretty natural that what ended up being contained in those smart contracts was links to jpegs - it's much harder to mess that up than an actual interactive program.
I have too many people hammering me with comments to respond to all your points. I spend like an hour writing responses to you goobers, unless I see something really stupid I'm not responding any further.
So a quick round: 3&6 social engineering is far more common than simply hacking your account. So no, it's the opposite. Also, 6- completely false, why do you think they avoid using bank accounts?
5- I gave you an example where someone would know your identity - if you're using it in a non-anonymous context, like getting paid. It could also be the case when buying something, with your name/delivery address. Unless you go off chain, there is no point of setting up new accounts, as transactions can be traced and connected to the intermediate accounts.
4- Financial policy is decided by elected representatives. Corruption is an issue, but in crypto it's built-in.
This is the nature of all emerging technologies. The internet itself went through a similar phase in the late 80s up until the early 2000s. Remember Gopher? NetBeanz?
I didn't say NFTs because I wasn't talking about NFTs. I was talking about smart contracts. They are two very seperate things.
This is why I say you don't understand what you're talking about and only get your info from headlines.
A shitty flash-style game who's only defining feature is having a blockchain. What of it?
It's not like the regular videogame industry started with Super Mario Bros either.
And yet people wrote immutable code all the time in the 80s and 90s. Many people didn't have internet back then, so the only ways to get patches out reliably would be extremely expensive.
Also: it's not like bug fixing traditional apps is free either.
Again, if someone socially engineers you into sending money, you're shit out of luck when dealing with fiat currencies too.
If you're worried about someone divulging a password and hoping 2FA could catch them, there are hosted exchanges like Coinbase for that. If your person is the kind to give 2FA codes too, again, you're just as fucked in fiat environments; banks do not cover that shit.
Banks will only cover fraud incidences that you can't reasonably be blamed for, like your card details being exposed because a website got hacked. They leave you high and dry when it comes to social engineering.
If you're that worried, just make another crypto wallet, send the money to that and then make your purchase. Your employer doesn't know who owns that other account. If you're really worried about traceability, use BitTornado, and any would-be hobbyist investigator is fucked.
Cute that you think corruption in fiat isn't part of the design. You do know how, for example, the federal reserve in US works, right?
Wut. Immutable OSs are super hip right now
You have no idea what that phrase means.
The "immutable" I'm talking about here is not in the sense of "immutable OS", but rather immutable like punched cards. You literally needed to punch another set of cards if your program contained a bug. You need to create another smart contract to replace your buggy program. Paying gas fees for it.