$ (XMR) Monero

[Secret Messages]

back up to 150 despite btc still at 20k. monerobros stay winning

 

[Claude Sigma]

Open sourced Monero powered patreon

I think you could benefit from setting that up @Null . Just like Monero superchats, I would donate to it, that way I could argue that my XMR is used for more than just buying drugs, it also serves to finance political extremists.

 

[Lesbian Sleepover]

Open sourced Monero powered patreon

I think you could benefit from setting that up @Null . Just like Monero superchats, I would donate to it, that way I could argue that my XMR is used for more than just buying drugs, it also serves to finance political extremists.

This makes me want to fire up my rigs again , if only for le farms

 

[ForTheHoard]

Open sourced Monero powered patreon

I think you could benefit from setting that up @Null . Just like Monero superchats, I would donate to it, that way I could argue that my XMR is used for more than just buying drugs, it also serves to finance political extremists.

The only real problem with Monero is access. I'm crypto savvy and it's still kind of a pain in the ass to exchange USD for XMR. Living in a state that regulates centralized exchanges means there's not a single exchange that offers XMR that I can use. BTC/XMR atomic swaps don't have a functional interface yet and from what I can tell about Haveno, the developers took the money and are now refusing to do the work. Using a VPN set to Japan and using Binance Global is still an option to buy XMR with USD, but Binance halts withdrawals for 10 days after purchase. I was already a cold wallet guy but the FTX shenaningans makes me even less comfortable having assets sitting on a CEX. LocalMonero is alright but it seems like the majority of sellers are outside of the US, and the sellers that do take USD seem to be well above the spot price. Having to go through multiple steps to acquire XMR just means I'm getting hammered with transfer fees.

 

[AnOminous]

Having to go through multiple steps to acquire XMR just means I'm getting hammered with transfer fees.

You almost have to mine it yourself and I don't exactly have Big Iron to do that shit with.

 

[Claude Sigma]

The best way to get Monero (with KYC) is obviously Kraken, they don't sell paper XMR like Binance does.
If you want Monero now and don't care about the jewish banking fees, you can simply buy Monero on Monero.com with a credit card. Put your credit card numbers, your wallet address, and that's it.

If you don't want KYC, you'll have to go the LocalMonero route, which is bothersome and expensive, but the best for non-KYC.

Or if you already have another crypto, you can very easily swap it on any reputable swap service for XMR.

I think recently the kids that want to buy drugs on the darknet get BTC or LTC on cashapp and then swap it for XMR on ChangeNow or on the Cakewallet app on their phone. Never used cashapp so I don't know the details.

 

[ForTheHoard]

The best way to get Monero (with KYC) is obviously Kraken, they don't sell paper XMR like Binance does.
If you want Monero now and don't care about the jewish banking fees, you can simply buy Monero on Monero.com with a credit card. Put your credit card numbers, your wallet address, and that's it.

If you don't want KYC, you'll have to go the LocalMonero route, which is bothersome and expensive, but the best for non-KYC.

Or if you already have another crypto, you can very easily swap it on any reputable swap service for XMR.

I think recently the kids that want to buy drugs on the darknet get BTC or LTC on cashapp and then swap it for XMR on ChangeNow or on the Cakewallet app on their phone. Never used cashapp so I don't know the details.

Kraken doesn't offer services to a few states in the US, otherwise I'd be using them.

 

[Taked1993]

Monero is the only cryptocurrency I use because it helps me cover my steps between my bank account and a trading platform I use.

Essentially, you evacuate the trading profits from a forex platform using Ethereum directly to a DEX, which then forwards you Monero to an anonymous Monero wallet. You resend that to the DEX and tell them to send you Ethereum but now on your Coinbase or other regulated, licensed CEX, where you sell that for Euro. Then you withdraw Euro to your bank account.

Et voila. No income tax.

 

[Cpt. Stud Beefpile]

Open sourced Monero powered patreon

I think you could benefit from setting that up @Null . Just like Monero superchats, I would donate to it, that way I could argue that my XMR is used for more than just buying drugs, it also serves to finance political extremists.

I support this, massively.

 

[ForTheHoard]

Monero is the only cryptocurrency I use because it helps me cover my steps between my bank account and a trading platform I use.

Essentially, you evacuate the trading profits from a forex platform using Ethereum directly to a DEX, which then forwards you Monero to an anonymous Monero wallet. You resend that to the DEX and tell them to send you Ethereum but now on your Coinbase or other regulated, licensed CEX, where you sell that for Euro. Then you withdraw Euro to your bank account.

Et voila. No income tax.

Wouldn't you get taxed on your CEX withdrawal? When the time comes for me to sell XMR, I trade it for cash peer to peer. Otherwise they can just track my trading through my checking account. I don't know how Europe deals with capital gains. I know there's a lot of idiots in the US that are pushing for taxes of unrealized gains, at which point I'll probably push more of my assets over to XMR, or split them up between a number of random wallets through a mixing service. Even that's getting harder to do. I've decided to totally divest from Ethereum since something like 70% of their validators are complying with US sanctions against Tornado Cash. This just proves to me that ETH will be used for financial censorship in the future, and proof of stake probably isn't the best idea for a decentralized blockchain. It's a bummer because I still think ETH is going to be a big money maker, but I'm not really into crypto to get rich. I like to support projects that fuck over the current banking system.

 

[Taked1993]

Wouldn't you get taxed on your CEX withdrawal? When the time comes for me to sell XMR, I trade it for cash peer to peer. Otherwise they can just track my trading through my checking account. I don't know how Europe deals with capital gains. I know there's a lot of idiots in the US that are pushing for taxes of unrealized gains, at which point I'll probably push more of my assets over to XMR, or split them up between a number of random wallets through a mixing service. Even that's getting harder to do. I've decided to totally divest from Ethereum since something like 70% of their validators are complying with US sanctions against Tornado Cash. This just proves to me that ETH will be used for financial censorship in the future, and proof of stake probably isn't the best idea for a decentralized blockchain. It's a bummer because I still think ETH is going to be a big money maker, but I'm not really into crypto to get rich. I like to support projects that fuck over the current banking system.

I will get taxed yes. But you see. You only get taxed on cryptocurrency you sell but not the profit from the trading.

For example:
I have $10,000 trading account and in one year I increased it to $15,000 (50% profit). That extra $5000 I need to pay an income tax on. However, I decide to withdraw only $1000 worth and exchange it for Euro. I get taxed on that alone. But of course you can trade it P2P - if you trust your peer you can even send them XMR to get cash via mail. This ways you pay 0%.

In my experience the best protection against unrealized gains is renting property instead of owning it. Sadly, it doesn't work with capital unless you switch it to an institutional ownership, e.g. open an investment firm in Vanuatu and let it own the shares \ crypto. Not sure if the IRS likes that though.

In Europe we can open stock positions and get paid dividend on CFDs (contracts-for-difference aka spread betting) but those are not legal in the U.S. So, instead of buying shares of Tesla as the underlying asset you open a CFD with - say - x2 leverage. CFDs aren't owned by you but rather by your broker, which may not even be in the U.S. You don't get the tax benefits of owning shares and you still have to pay capital gains, but - hypothetically - if the government says you owe taxes on unrealized gains you can argue that unrealized gains on CFDs don't exist because you didn't actually buy anything but owed some cash to someone to buy something for a possible financial gain.

That opens a whole new rabbit hole of unrealized "gains" on things like forex. If you bought $100,000 worth of Japanese Yen banknotes in October 2022, those banknotes would worth $113,000 in January 2023. So, did you gain $13,000 just by holding Japanese Yen in your safe? Do you have to pay tax on that? As you can imagine, unrealized gains don't work very well here and I bet the banks and other financial companies would not be very happy with such ideas.

Speaking of ETH, I had some staked long time ago on Kraken but I forgot about it (it's not much). I liked how fast it is but yeah, the lack of privacy bothers me. I did the same as you but with BNB, shortly before the FTX fiasco, and I evacuated all my crypto from exchanges (except for that Kraken thing) back in the Fall of 2021.

I hate how OANDA and other big forex brokers don't let us get our cash out using crypto, but actually merging crypto and forex is something I'm looking forward to; naturally the big fish are hesitant for that because they're afraid of contamination, i.e. crypto crashes dragging down QQQs and SPYs in boomer pension saving portfolios, etc. Here in Europe they're even more hesitant because we have different currencies and people in general save cash and invest in real estate, with bad memories of unstable currencies haunting ECB and others....

 

[caccoooo bird]

There doesn't seem to be a mention of this in this thread, but there seem to be a couple changes coming towards mining pools.

The main dev of P2Pool announced that a hardfork is going to happen on March 18th this year to reduce the on-chain transaction spam. (Reddit Link, Archive)
The main problems with the current implementation right now, quoting the post:

• unnecessary bloat (up to 15% of outputs on the chain come from P2Pool now)
• reduced effective ring size for everyone using Monero (down to 12-13 decoys instead of 16)
• lots of small payouts that miners get when mining on P2Pool main: 14-15 payouts (0.00026 XMR each) per share on average
• high fees to consolidate these payouts and even more blockchain bloat resulting from that

To resolve that the payout frequency not the payouts themselves are going to decrease.

Secondly, the guy who looked into this problem (Rucknium btw) also discovered that other centralized mining pools delay transactions and made a public post about it to r/Monero (Reddit Link, Archive) as well as a nice long explanation on his blog (Link, Archive) that has already prompted some pools to update. Not going to summize his findings here, but you might've noticed this happening, if you ever tried to make a transaction on Monero. The transactions are submitted, should get confirmed in 2 minutes, but they only get into the next block.

If anyone wants a more throughout explanation as to the how and why, check out the links. Overall important changes (faster transactions, better privacy), even if most people won't notice them. Nice to see the developers and researchers trying to polish every last detail to the best of their abilities.

 

[ForTheHoard]

There doesn't seem to be a mention of this in this thread, but there seem to be a couple changes coming towards mining pools.

The main dev of P2Pool announced that a hardfork is going to happen on March 18th this year to reduce the on-chain transaction spam. (Reddit Link, Archive)
The main problems with the current implementation right now, quoting the post:

To resolve that the payout frequency not the payouts themselves are going to decrease.

Secondly, the guy who looked into this problem (Rucknium btw) also discovered that other centralized mining pools delay transactions and made a public post about it to r/Monero (Reddit Link, Archive) as well as a nice long explanation on his blog (Link, Archive) that has already prompted some pools to update. Not going to summize his findings here, but you might've noticed this happening, if you ever tried to make a transaction on Monero. The transactions are submitted, should get confirmed in 2 minutes, but they only get into the next block.

If anyone wants a more throughout explanation as to the how and why, check out the links. Overall important changes (faster transactions, better privacy), even if most people won't notice them. Nice to see the developers and researchers trying to polish every last detail to the best of their abilities.

I'm looking at the current monero road map. Aren't some of these projects supposed to deal with blockchain size? Increasing ring size, Triptych, and bulletproofs++? I've done a little reading into them but I'm not smart enough to be critical of any of their claims. I also don't know anything about the timelines or the teams working on these. The last update I remember from the futures page was that Haveno was backing out of work they had already been paid for.

 

[Holden Monaro GTS 350]

Aren't some of these projects supposed to deal with blockchain size?

Monero's blockchain is currently around 160 GB. It is quite manageable given today's digital storage tech. You can run a whole blockchain on 256 GB SSD. And if it were to be filled next year or so, you could prune the blockchain to 1/3 its size and keep running your node.

Monero counts on the digital storage costs going down, and at the same time, the storage device capacities increasing along with the internet bandwidth that the typical consumer has access to.

Apart from that, Monero devs are indeed researching into getting the transaction sizes smaller. Currently, 1-in 2-out XMR tx size is around 1.5 kB. And 2-in 2-out is around 2.5 kB. There is bulletproofs++ in the works (getting audited and such) that aims to further reduce these sizes to ~1kb for 1-in 2-out tx.

Triptych

That was researched and prototyped/tested around 2 years ago. It has been shown that even though it would increase the ring sizes to 128, it would really complicate the multisig stuff with Monero. Thus, it is currently abandoned.

Instead, current research and development efforts are on Seraphis. It is like Triptych, a next generation protocol specification for Monero, but better. You can check this video to learn more about Seraphis: https://piped.video/watch?v=xGEBRQU1lzw

I also don't know anything about the timelines

If everything goes well, Seraphis upgrade should be available in ~1.5 to 2 yrs.

The last update I remember from the futures page was that Haveno was backing out of work they had already been paid for.

That's quite the old news. Since then, the main lead of Haveno (the one who was causing a lot of drama and friction with the Monero community) has left the project. Instead, Cake Wallet has sponsored the project and is leading it. The development work seems to continue under the radar.

Also, apart from Haveno, we also have Serai Exchange that is another decentralized exchange that is purpose-built for getting Monero to the masses without KYC without a centralized corporate entity. It is led by kayabeNerve and is being written in Rust. Recently they were auditing their crypto/math implementation of their Rust libraries. Godspeed.

More; cakepay is currently doing a pretty good job at bridging the brick&mortar merchants with Monero by giving its users an easy way to buy gift cards using XMR. The only KYC it asks is an email, which, you should use one from simplelogin or a throwaway one altogether.

If all these things (Seraphis upgarde, Haveno+Serai DEXes) come to fruition, along with the increased dark/grey/white market usage, Monero is looking at becoming a pretty damn good tool for circumventing the government mafia's fiat money racket.

 

[caccoooo bird]

getmonero.org's road map hasn't been updated for a year at least. The big thing coming currently is Seraphis(+Jamtis). Seraphis will allow ringsizes of 128-256 out the box with no significant size increase. And it would separate the currently tightly packed together cryptography to become more modular, that way Monero transactions would become just like Lego to the devs. And the Jamtis part take advantage of this. And already we are expected to get Bulletproofs++, discrete fees, and better light wallet software. The code is done and is under testing, so Monero 2.0 (literally even the version numbering will go up) should arrive in a hardfork late this year, or early 2024. (don't quote me on this)

Due to the tightly packed together cryptography that we currently have, second layer payment channels and applications are limited, but with Seraphis second layers will become possible. And that is not only payment channels, but other applications, like two-way atomic swaps. There was also MoneroKon presentation on what to expect (Link, Youtube live presentation)

So currently, that is the way Monero aims to deal with blockchain size. Use better cryptography, eliminate unnecessary bloat, and in the future second layers. Thought not too sure how the overall community will react to that, as many people are disillusioned with Bitcoin's Lightning Network to state it lightly. Thought the overall focus from what I'm sensing is improving usability. For example the last update brought up ring sizes (kept transaction sizes the same by implementing Bulletproofs+) and finally fixed multisig that is essential for more complex applications (DEXes, certain darker markets, company-tier wallet software).

On Haveno, they are supposed to the working and there is an open beta right now on the testnet. Didn't follow the drama that much, but the last update I heard from them was the that they implemented a Code of Conduct that effectively forces inclusivity onto contributors, which finally got the lead man (ErCiccione) to resign, only to be replaced with another phony called Vik Sharɱa. Thankfully, this caused competitors to pop up and now more people are talking about SeraiDEX, atomic swaps (live on 2 chains, 3 teams), and Trocador.

 

[ForTheHoard]

getmonero.org's road map hasn't been updated for a year at least. The big thing coming currently is Seraphis(+Jamtis). Seraphis will allow ringsizes of 128-256 out the box with no significant size increase. And it would separate the currently tightly packed together cryptography to become more modular, that way Monero transactions would become just like Lego to the devs. And the Jamtis part take advantage of this. And already we are expected to get Bulletproofs++, discrete fees, and better light wallet software. The code is done and is under testing, so Monero 2.0 (literally even the version numbering will go up) should arrive in a hardfork late this year, or early 2024. (don't quote me on this)

Due to the tightly packed together cryptography that we currently have, second layer payment channels and applications are limited, but with Seraphis second layers will become possible. And that is not only payment channels, but other applications, like two-way atomic swaps. There was also MoneroKon presentation on what to expect (Link, Youtube live presentation)

So currently, that is the way Monero aims to deal with blockchain size. Use better cryptography, eliminate unnecessary bloat, and in the future second layers. Thought not too sure how the overall community will react to that, as many people are disillusioned with Bitcoin's Lightning Network to state it lightly. Thought the overall focus from what I'm sensing is improving usability. For example the last update brought up ring sizes (kept transaction sizes the same by implementing Bulletproofs+) and finally fixed multisig that is essential for more complex applications (DEXes, certain darker markets, company-tier wallet software).

On Haveno, they are supposed to the working and there is an open beta right now on the testnet. Didn't follow the drama that much, but the last update I heard from them was the that they implemented a Code of Conduct that effectively forces inclusivity onto contributors, which finally got the lead man (ErCiccione) to resign, only to be replaced with another phony called Vik Sharɱa. Thankfully, this caused competitors to pop up and now more people are talking about SeraiDEX, atomic swaps (live on 2 chains, 3 teams), and Trocador.

I've heard of Trocador but haven't used it yet. Is there a place to get organized and accurate monero news that isn't reddit? I didn't know the official website was so out of date.

 

[caccoooo bird]

Is there a place to get organized and accurate monero news that isn't reddit?

Hard question as there are various Monero themed publications now, but to keep it short: Monero Observer (onion mirror) will give a you several stream of news (they even have an RSS feed), and are several weekly publications: the Monero Moon, the Monero Standard (by LocalMonero), and Revuo Monero. And Monero Observer's monthly Blitz. Personally I like the Monero Moon, as it includes most if not all the stuff that has happened to the Monero ecosystem as whole throughout the week. But if you are a normal person wanting the important highlights, Blitz is perfect in my opinion.

 

[Holden Monaro GTS 350]

I've heard of Trocador but haven't used it yet.

It is quite useful. Check this out: http://trocadorfyhlu27aefre5u7zri66gudtzdyelymftvr4yjwcxhfaqsid.onion/en/anonpay/

 

[Holden Monaro GTS 350]

The upcoming Monero protocol upgrade, Seraphis/Jamtis, summary: https://nitter.snopyta.org/MoneroTime/status/1617536536358322176

Quite cool stuff abound. I, personally, am most excited about the unified address scheme that is slated to come with Jamtis addresses. No more primary or secondary addresses that start with a 4.. or an 8.. . All XMR addresses will be of the form xmr1... This should take away the much confusion on the users' side between these two existing addresses.

Apart from the new addresses, Seraphis/Jamtis will let us have "real" watch-only wallets. Currently, Monero watch-only wallets can only see the incoming amounts. They cannot keep track of the outgoing amounts. Seraphis/Jamtis will make these watch-only wallets quite the same as in Bitcoin's watch-only wallets, namely, being able to see incoming&outgoing amounts and having a precise wallet balance. That's neat.

Next, we will have a better form of "light wallets". Light wallets are the wallets that delegate the blockchain scanning to a server. Obviously, that is a privacy issue for the users if they connect to someone else's light wallet server: the server would know the amounts and the txos that the Monero wallet has. With Seraphis/Jamtis, we can have light wallet servers that only know the txos but NOT THE AMOUNTS in them, providing a level of privacy that is much much above Bitcoin's light wallet implementations (in which the connected server knows all your addresses and balances---sucks).
This sort of better light wallet implementations should open the door to better mobile wallet applications for the users.

Oh, also the seed phrase length will shrink from 25 words to 16 words (the scheme is called "Polyseed") and the seed words will incorporate the wallet creation date in them. So, the users will 1) note down shorter seed phrases (easier to memorize) 2) will not have to note down the wallet birthday date and store it. Very cool.

Quite, quite the exciting stuff in the research & development in the MoneroLand. I can already sense the glowies literally shaking. Come and find it.

 

[Holden Monaro GTS 350]

Koe from Monero research lab gives more details about the next proposed network upgrade to Monero: https://piped.mha.fi/watch?v=sLqY5WuJXIo

Apart from that, some nice discussion among the Monero researchers about going full "zero-knowledge" and leaving the Ring Signatures for enote obfuscation behind: https://github.com/monero-project/research-lab/issues/100#issuecomment-1423154798

Lastly, UAE bans Monero, because... it can't be traced. While bitshit is allowed to roam. Makes you think ya know...