Monero is hard to obtain and spend if one doesn't know how. If one has an app like Cake Wallet, it's easy. Monero has a strong culture of self-custody, competitive DEX swappers, and P2P swappers, although a few service providers occasionally are scammy. Centralized exchanges are scammy too though in that they have a habit of going offline during a crash.
I am not opposed to the existence of more privacy coins and features. Anything that loosens the grip of surveillance is good.
Besides default privacy, one other thing that Monero has is constant emissions, making it sustainable for transactions in the long term beyond the next century. To my understanding, both Bitcoin and Zcash will in contrast shift toward pretty high transaction fees, keeping them relevant as a store of value, but irrelevant for small transactions. Bitcoin will survive via an efficient layer 2, e.g. Lightning, but will Zcash? Switching to PoS and other such gimmicks won't fix the core issue.
> Monero is hard to obtain and spend if one doesn't know how.
So is writing python. Hell, so is writing bash. So is literally anything.
What matters is not how difficult something is once you know how, what matters is how difficult something is when you don't know how.
> If one has an app like Cake Wallet, it's easy. Monero has a strong culture of self-custody, competitive DEX swappers, and P2P swappers, although a few service providers occasionally are scammy.
So you expect average people to
- Download an app they have little to no familiarity with
- Buy a different currency like LiteCoin
- Perform a swap to Monero
- Reverse the process to spend their XMR since essentially no service allows direct purchase by XMR
You're right, it's not hard, but we're two people talking on a tech form who are familiar with tech. If I tell my partner with a PhD in econ to do this they'll be confused even if they will have no problem with the process after doing it a few times.
> Monero has is constant emissions, making it sustainable for transactions in the long term beyond the next century.
My understanding is that ZEC and XMR have similar transaction fees[0]. ZEC has a cap but I'm sure they'll deal with that when it starts to be an issue. You can vote on their policies, including the governance fund.
While XMR has a larger block size they're still longer times than ZEC. That still presents an issue as well[1,2]
[^]Again, I want to repeat myself because I want to make this part abundantly clear
>> Maybe it's not the right play, but at least we have people trying different things.
I'm not trying to say "switch from XMR to ZEC" I'm saying "It's nice that we have multiple attempts to solve the problems here as there is yet to be a coin that solves all problems." We can go back and forth all day pointing out problems with both XMR and ZEC. They're both far from perfect lol. That's not what matters, what matters is that there's competition and people are working on finding solutions. The reason I'm pointing out the problems with XMR is because you're painting a picture as if ZEC is foolish and XMR is obviously right. Maybe this was the wrong response and ignore all that until this point. But it is also crypto and there's a lot of cult like attitudes around this that prevent the technology from actually progressing. I like ZEC, but that also doesn't mean I have to dislike XMR. Me, Godelski, wants a private and secure coin that is easy to use (by every day people), fast, and solves a wide number of problems. But currently the union of XMR and ZEC doesn't begin to get there. Are we techies or evangelists? As a techy I want the problems solved and I'm going to recognize that neither XMR nor ZEC has solved them. As an evangelist? I've been in more than enough cults in a lifetime, I really don't want to be an evangelist. My advice to most people is don't buy any crypto. Have some for fun or interest, but the cult mentality and hype hinder their development ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> ZEC has a cap but I'm sure they'll deal with that when it starts to be an issue.
They will try, but as per my understanding, due to the cap, there is no mathematically conceivable solution that doesn't require escalating the transaction fees dramatically once the supply diminishes.
I am not opposed to the existence of more privacy coins and features. Anything that loosens the grip of surveillance is good.
Besides default privacy, one other thing that Monero has is constant emissions, making it sustainable for transactions in the long term beyond the next century. To my understanding, both Bitcoin and Zcash will in contrast shift toward pretty high transaction fees, keeping them relevant as a store of value, but irrelevant for small transactions. Bitcoin will survive via an efficient layer 2, e.g. Lightning, but will Zcash? Switching to PoS and other such gimmicks won't fix the core issue.