dumb take; #monero is blacklisted because it works and is a threat to the totalitarian financial mass surveillance system that we live under. bitcoin is embraced precisely because it has zero privacy, which makes it surveillable, which makes it controllable. it's... really not hard to get. View quoted note →

let's try to understand something here. the idea that a transparent surveillance machine can "defend" "human rights" is laughable on its face. bitcoin is accepted everywhere and has been integrated into the legacy system precisely because it's not a threat to the system. that's not "winning", that's being coopted. take a big guess at what would happen if bitcoin magically hard-forked to have real privacy and anonymity tomorrow: would the USA still talk about a strategic reserve? would exchanges in Europe still list Bitcoin? would banks still accept it? would the ETFs remain? now, I'm not even saying those are bad things per se, in theory it's good for my bags too. but let's not pretend and let's not fool ourselves, bitcoin is more or less harmless, and hence it's not just tolerated, it's embraced. therefore, obviously, it's a bad idea to use it for anything adversarial, and it doesn't take a wizard to understand why. so, to the point here: this gladstein guy is either captured, highly ignorant, or a dangerous idealogue (possibly a combination of the last two). he promotes using a surveillance chain for work that might get you killed if you fuck it up. that's grossly negligent (or a honeypot). ironically, zcash is indeed a much better tool here than bitcoin, and it's not even mutually exclusive: anyone evaluating the situation purely on technical merits would recognize that #zcash transactions between people for whom transaction privacy is not a nice addon, but might literally be the difference between life and death, and then through NEAR intents converting those funds to bitcoin (for long-term storage, much bigger network, much better security, and very likely more stable over time) as needed. the full picture emerges: freedom tech chained, producing better outcomes for the individuals involved. #monero of course is also an excellent tool, but the original post was about zcash, and also, to be fair, zcash did play the near intents + mobile integration story better than monero did, and that is, for the moment, a real advantage. the point is simply this: it's irresponsible and dangerous to be blinded by maxi ideology like this guy is. again, assuming it's not an outright honeypot (and I mention that only because the level of incompetence seems rather high to be credible). rather than giving people the best tools for the right jobs, idealogues have a one-stop solution for everything. that's how they arrive at such idiotic conclusions as "a fully transparent chain is what human rights crusaders need in highly adversarial environments with potentially mortal consequences". View quoted note →

exact same mechanism why they ignore bitcoib's obvious nightmarish privacy issues, why they call #monero a shitcoin (foregone a priori conclusion, the cup is full, no new information will be entertained), and so on. as always, it's the same root: ego. they're unconsciously merged with certain ideas, to the point the ideas are now part of their identity, which of course is a set of ideas that the ego dresses itself with; to attack the ideas, then, feels to beings so possessed like an attack on their very essence. View quoted note →

this is leftism. View quoted note →

this is also leftism. View quoted note →

this too is leftism. View quoted note →

and this is why #grapheneos has storage scopes View quoted note →

globohomo Pope, just what the world needed! View quoted note →

this is leftism. View quoted note →

for those who truly care about freedom tech, this is a good one. View quoted note →

transcending the compulsion to think and disidentifying yourself with the thoughtstream while slapping an identity and entire life story to it puts you ahead of the 99.9999%. View quoted note →

this too is leftism. View quoted note →

"Ah yes, people with arguments which my dogma-indiced cognitive dissonance won't allow me to process! I know what I will do, demonstrate to everyone how smart I am by loudly proclaiming how I mute anyone that makes me think outside of my comfort zone!" View quoted note →

I'll go one step further. Using onchain addresses is a terrible idea, period. For exactly the same reasons. View quoted note →

it doesn't matter papi figos, you're being paranoid, no one would ever attempt to map out the tx graph in bitcoin. it doesn't matter papi figos, there are no names associated with the addresses. it doesn't matter papi figos, you just have to coinjoin and never mix outputs and separate everything properly forever and use tor and run your own node and run your own electrum server. it doesn't matter papi figos, you just have to buy noKYC. .... at which point are we going to understand that all of this predictably follows from radical transparency? it was an experiment. a beta test. the architects themselves understood privacy was fundamental, or it would become a tool of oppression, not freedom. none of it matters. 95% are not technical enough to reason from first principles, and 4.5% are captured, self-serving, and play tribal games. it shouldn't be so hard to understand. but somehow it is. you can't have privacy in your living room without the curtains. stop buying masks and rearranging furniture and just get some damn curtains. #monero