Actually both since it is an important way to avoid and resolve payment disputes. Private ledgers mean nothing in a payment dispute. It’s so important that without it, for large payments everyone will have to involve a “trusted third party” to keep everyone honest. It’s the reason why good cashiers never put payments in the cash register until the customer leaves…without this “trick” it’s easy to be scammed. It’s the whole reason double entry accounting exists. MW also doesn’t completely fix the issue of exploding blockchains. With 6 billion people on MW (arbitrarily chosen number) and each person having multiple wallets and wallets being lost and new people coming into MW regularly due to new births the number of wallets will explode. There needs to be a regularly get rid of abandoned and locked out wallets. Hard forks like Seraphis are a good way to find out who still has a wallet and eventually clear out the old wallets, but you can’t keep doing that for a stable money supply. I’ve stated before, I fully support transaction fees being partially based on how big your blockchain footprint is as long as you can “close the books” and compact your footprint. I’m also open to fair schemes dropping abandoned wallets (e.g. calculate a “fee” based on blockchain footprint and time of last access. If the “fee” is less than the amount in the wallet, then do nothing. If it is greater than the amount, then the wallet can be pruned.).

Personally, I think the truth lies in the middle. I think having full history for purchasing coffee is not only wasteful of space clogs the blockchain (imagine 6 billion people adding 3 coffees a day to the block chain over 50 years). My back account keep track of all transactions for a few years and I’ve rarely needed more, but I absolutely do need a transaction history for budgeting and taxes. So a hybrid approach where important or big ticket items have full transaction history (until you ask to prune to a MW), and smaller ticket items can be in smaller MW subaccounts of different categories is the best of all worlds.

Why not both? No one platform dominates today. Reddit’s monero community, lemmy’s monero community, nostr’s monero community, matrix’s monero community, and twitter’s monero community are all distinct. Monero needs to be supported everwhere since the world is moving away of the “one world monoculture”. WRT Nostr vs ActivePub (Lemmy/Mastodon), Nostr has a unique ID assigned to each person that can be easily portable, but the over-reliance on GUIDs makes it harder to identify people. ActivePub has a more diverse community but your identity is tied to a server. That being said, it is possible to move profile identities with the host support. The GUID and identity issue can be solved in both protocols within a year with suitable software upgraded, but the community issue is a much more difficult issue to change. Nostr tends to be more geeky while Lemmy tends to be more an “every day folks” forum.

There are several possibilities. Here are four off the top of my head: (1) The “evil” had second thoughts and returned the money for one reason or another. I’m not sure why he’d return more than he stole since he was likely going to get away with it. (2) A white hat hacker took the money to force the CSS team to clean up their OPSEC and custody. He was always going to return it so once the message was relayed and the CSS community began a respond, he returned the funds. Why the extra 21 XMR? IMO, he was able to profit from the borrowing, possibly by taking advantage of the BTC pump (as his white hat hacker fee) and gave some of his gains back. (3) An insider “borrowed” the money, either for the white hacker reasons or take advantage of the BTC pump. The 21 XMR has the same meaning. (4) A BTC whale benefactor benefited from the pump but loves Monero and wants it not to suffer from the hack, so he gave his profits plus a 21 XMR hint.

Put yourself in the place of the grocer. If one person asked you to accept platinum as payment, would you? Probably no. If 10 people or a few loyal customers did, you might look into it.

Diversity is your friend. It has been illegal to have gold. During the Canadian trucker’s protest, trucks have been confiscated, and companies have been forced to close. Bitcoin wallets have been tainted so they could not be withdrawn from CEXes. During those protests, many properties with mortgages were foreclosed because banks froze trucker accounts so they could not pay mortgages. As long as DEXes and P2P exist, Monero is safe. Diversification can reduce the risk of any single attack.

@aodhsishaj@lemmy.world It seems as long as you have an anonymous email and mail box somewhere, you can be anonymous with these cards. It’s an easy off ramp for daily living for the average person. One thing I don’t like about these cards is that they’re not refillable. So unless you have a purchase of exactly $50, you’ll have large number low spend amount cards ($1.23 on this card, $4.06 on this card, $0.02 on this card) which you’ll either never use or you’ll have to convince someone to accept payment with several of these cards.

I don’t know where to begin but I’ll give it a try:

Statement: …at present monero-multisignature wallet tech is not 100% … and would probably make things more complicated and not easier. Response: The easier it is for you to get funds, the easier it is for a hacker to get them, so what’s wrong with this.

Statement: Using direct donation payments to devs is not an option for couple of reasons since there will be no oversight on their work / spend hours. Response: It is if done naively, but trivial if each CSS proposal had its own wallet. After validation, final payment can be made by handing over the keys (no transfers required). If there are multiple milestones, make a wallet for each milestone. This will take less time to manage than a big wallet, it would be easier to automate, and be harder on hackers.

Statement: Bitcoin multi-signature is much more tested… Response 1: And Monero multi-signature will always be less tested if it isn’t used. Please “eat your own dog food” (i.e. use Monero the way it should be). When Linux lost access to the proprietary version control the core team was using, Linus wrote his own. It was buggy, but did the job. Because it was used, it was made to work the way the core team needed, and eventually took over the world (i.e. GIT). Use Monero multi-signature so that it becomes better and works the way you need it to work. Response 2: Effectively, the CSS team would be proclaiming “Don’t trust a big chuck of funds to Monero. Use Bitcoin”.

Statement: I gave plowsof and luigi as example to keep CCS structure as much AS-IS. Response: This is precisely the problem. If there are OP-SEC issues, you can use multisig and all the advanced tech you want but it will not stop the funds being being hacked because tech wasn’t the problem. Please see the most recent Monero-Talk with Artic mine for details. Yes, having good OP-SEC is a pain, but rebuilding trust is a lot more expensive. How much do you think the CSS will raise if people don’t trust it? Note, the core team might be the most trustworthy people on earth, but if they had poor op-sec, it can happen again. Also, I am extremely trustworthy to a fault, but if someone but if someone put a gun to the head of my family, I don’t know if I wouldn’t give up the keys to save them.

Something is seriously wrong. There’s a reason decentralisation is important. Anonymity or not, you never put all your eggs (digital or physical) in one basket for precisely this sort of reason. Once the wallet size reached a certain threshold (say 100 or 500 XMR), a new wallet should have been created for subsequent funds and the previous wallet should be in a hardware or paper wallet with a different trusted person ideally multisig. If funds were stolen via hack or the police forces the wallet holder to give up the keys, only a fifth (for a 500 XMR wallet) or a twenty fifth (for a 100 XMR wallet) of the amount would have been lost. If multisig is buggy, it need be ready for Seraphis. If it’s just a matter of UI, then it needs to made usable and widely adopted. Remember, one of the key advantages of Monero is that it make privacy easier. You can try use Bitcoin and go through a lot of hoops to get privacy and forever stay vigilant, or just use Monero. Multisig and managing multiple accounts should be at most as difficult as Bitcoin.

Depending on how serious you are about “getting government approved”, you can do a cross chain analysis on yourself and provide necessary view keys. To prove you bought 10K of Monero, just show that your bank account went down 10K and your Monero account went up 10K (at the past exchange rate). To show you exchanged 5K Monero for 5K Bitcoin, show that 5K Monero was transferred from your wallet at the same time 5K was added to your Bitcoin wallet. It’s extremely cumbersome and requires that you have access to all wallets/accounts and is extremely invasive on your privacy, but it can be done if you really want to. Personally, I’d agree about the tax attorney. Often there’s a way of “legitimising” grandfathered funds, but expected to be taxed to the max. Alternately, there may be a way of doing crypto loans so that you get the money without actually cashing out.

Exactly which problem is it trying to solve? If it’s KYC-free purchases, Bitcoin and Monero and Gold/Silver already give you that and unless it has enough mindshare (something that is almost impossible to get even for megapower, see Microsoft vs android and Microsoft vs iPod) this option won’t be available. If it’s privacy, Gold/Silver and Monero gets you that. If it’s traceability but privacy for “legal uses”, CBDCs are supposed to give you that. Note, a big issue today is banks not holding enough reserves and not allowing you to move your money. Tales, by its nature depends on 3rd party custodians thus can be shut down or collapse if the custodian goes out of business or refuses to validate spends. Bitcoin and Monero and Gold/Silver allow for self-custody, ensuring that your money stays your money.