NYT honestly never paywalls me (I don’t live in North America/EU), so I can’t figure out if the article is free or not.

I usually add an archived version if I know there is a paywall (going to do that).

What are you on about?

I never mentioned anything about capitalism and communism.

At any rate, tankies are supporters of genocidal, authoritarian state-capitalism, so whatever you’re trying to imply is moot.

Childish take. Perfect example of why western online leftism will always be a failure.

You wouldn’t be writing this shit if your family had to leave their due to a russian invasion and then eight years later having to deal with another full scale invasion (with a shad part landing in the house next to yours).

Grow up!

And why exactly is it a use case if you can already buy erotica/porn via specialized payment services without monero?

What’s the benefit here? Be clear and specific. Don’t randomly bring terms like “privacy”, “uncensored” and “freedums”.

This does not make sense.

What you’re saying is that it’s impossible to buy porn/erotica online without monero. This is clearly wrong.

You most definitely could do that before blockchains were a thing.

No, it’s not a viable use case.

Developers of such games what the broadest market possible and consumers want easy accessibility and stable updates/support.

The groups outlined above are interested in the product and not promotion of some cryptocurrency.

Both these goals are best served using real currencies, not monero. Such payment systems (using real currency, aimed at content with erotica/porn) are widely available and haven in use for 30+ years.

If you don’t want to deal with such payment systems directly (e.g. setup an LLC and other such matters), there are multiple easy to implement distribution approaches that one can launch in ~15 minutes.

This is why I don’t trust crypto promoters.

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What’s wrong with calling genocide white-whitewashing, pro-russian genocidal imperialism individuals scum.

The funny thing is the tankies don’t even speak Ukrainian or russian and have never lived in Ukraine or russian.

Literally scumbag roleplaying as communists.

What about it?

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It’s got its issues (for me the main one are the tankie scum devs), but it seems to be the best platform there is.

The good thing about it is you can move to clients like Piefed and still access all the content / communities.

bottom up

built by the people for the people

Love your style!

I was rude because I found the notion that monero is a great tool for “victims of domestic abuse” and “activists and political dissidents” distasteful.

Shilling some crypto coins (even if does have technical privacy features) under guise of concern about “victims of domestic abuse” if pretty fucking low. This is scumbag level of polemics.

Privacy is a social political issue. A social and political issue cannot be solved via technical means (even though this is a very common propaganda argument).

Where did I say I believe that everyone pays taxes? Why bring up this random accusation?

Ironic to be talking about going dark when posting via an internet connection.

If you need the protections that privacy coins provide, both sides of the transaction will find a way to make it work.

This is a fantasy. With respect to specific transaction you can make anything work. You can dried fruit in such a transaction too. Doesn’t mean it’s viable to live purely via exchange of dried fruit.

I am not talking about what the xkcd comic alludes. I referring to the fact that a world exist outside of the monero blockchain and believe it or not, one has to interact with the real world.

Monero is a red herring. It is not simple to cash out monero and it provides a false sense of security.

Banks too are available for crimes for “small time people” if you know what you are doing.

The direction of this discussion is a red herring. My point was that beyond financial speculation and crime/fraud, crypto has no viable (not purely theoretical) use cases.

With all due respect, you don’t understand what you are talking about. In a sense, your arguments (and their complete disconnect from reality) just proves that monero is not a viable use case for value exchange in authoritarian countries (or even democratic countries).

Your monero for drugs for local cash idea is idiotic and that’s not how any of this works. Have you ever given an “under-the-table” payment for utilities? Of course not! You are just making shit up, I can’t put this in a more diplomatic manner.

Because of what I mentioned, I won’t go into an in-depth discussion around how you would be tracked (I trust you have sufficient common sense to think this through).

That being said I will point out two things:

1. I never challenged the technical merits of monero (vis a vis cash, bitcoin or drugs).
2. The world does not exist on the blockchain, you don’t have to break the monero protocol to enable tracking. That’s arguably the most inefficient way possible of getting what you need.

Make of this what you will.

Have to disagree on this one.

How would this even work? You transfer monero to a person in an authoritarian state and then what? What do they do with Monero? You think an authoritarian state is going to allow you to pay for utilities with Monero? Buy food?

Monero doesn’t allow for private transactions as this issue is a social and political problem, not a technology issue.

I wouldn’t be surprised if your transactions would be less private with monero than a bank payment (because of Monero’s unlicensed nature).

That’s fair. I do agree it has some properties to potentially be used in payment infrastructure systems.

I would argue something like India’s UPI (we don’t have a name for it in Ukraine) is better in every possible respect than a payment infrastructure based on blockchain tech.

I’ve heard such arguments before, I don’t find them convincing in the least. I don’t believe you’ve thought this through.

You bring up cash? So what? You can use banks for crime as well. I believe one of the major US companies that got rescued in 2008 had several billion USD on the books that no one came to pick up because of disclosure rules.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, there are multiple massive red flags with your arguement that don’t require specialist education/experience/knowledge.

You don’t need crypto as an alternative to MasterCard/Visa. There are multiple national payment systems that de facto work on a public benefit basis or offer no fees or very low fees.

One major example is India’s UPI:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface

Even in a medium sized developing country like Ukraine, I can send anyone money (P2P, business payment, business transaction) with minimal or no fees on a near instantaneous basis off my phone.

I am not on top of recent payment infrastructure developments, but from memory this is relatively common.

No need for scam services like PayPal, Venmo.

And this has been avaible for half a decade minimum (was living in another country before then).