[KevinGlass]

So long as you can buy drugs with Bitcoin it will maintain a certain minimum value, regardless of what happens with these scam companies. If tether where to completely collapse I estimate Bitcoin would fall to to no less then 30% of it’s current value.

The price of bitcoin will never fall faster then the time it takes to login to a darknet market and update a listing.

[__MatrixMan__]

I'm not up to date, but a few years back I got the impression that Bitcoin was losing that fight to Monero. Is that not so?

[RealityVoid]

Oh, yeah, bitcoin is actually quite transparent for the outside so most darknet exchange use Monero last time I checked. Bitcoin is a whole different beast at this point.

[runnerup]

Theoretically…yes. In actuality governments can make it impossible to exchange Monero for USD/fiat which would render it fairly useless (at scale, anyways).

This is already being frameworked. “Coffee shop” sales of cryptocurrency (even BTC) is now de facto illegal in the USA. You can’t post a Craigslist ad saying “hey I have 100 BTC willing to exchange for USD”. The feds will (and have!!) arrest you for violating AML/KYC.

XMR is currently being considered for an “asset non-grata” classification where any exchange doing USD/XMR transactions would be held accountable for facilitating money laundering because participation in XMR inherently assists in laundering money.

[__MatrixMan__]

I question the feds' ability to pull this off.

Suppose I buy a bored ape or whatever, and then I sell it, and then the person I sold it to uses one of those non-KYC exchanges to buy XMR. How are the feds going to know whether it was me on both sides or not?

Are they going to correlate my IP to McDonalds wifi and subpoena the security footage and get me via facial recognition? At some point it's just too expensive to chase down.

[runnerup]

The feds will simply sanction any institution which allows XMR to be converted to fiat. The US government has ultimate control over global finance for now, although that iron grip is being weakened with Russia/China's alternative to SWIFT/etc. However, China has already banned XMR domestically.

US financial sanctions are very intense. The bank/instution that is converting fiat to XMR would be a complete pariah, unable to participate in any global banking or have any transactions with any bank which needs to participate with other global banks.

If you are an institution selling XMR and taking peoples fiat, you would have nowhere to store the fiat. You would have no one (Stripe/Visa/SWIFT/ACH/PayPal/etc) who would process those payments. You would be unable to travel to any western country. Anyone who does business with you could also get similar sanctions.

You could perhaps trade XMR<->ETH or something like that...but eventually someone with the XMR will want to convert it to fiat, and that would not be possible. Anyone doing a lot of BTC/ETH<->XMR trades could be found via blockchain analysis, and similarly investigated and prosecuted for participating in XMR, because XMR facilitates money laundering.

[RealityVoid]

The chain paper money -> KYC exchange -> BTC -> DEX -> XMR and viceversa is still valid and I don't think it's breakable by the feds.

[tsimionescu]

They could easily ban any BTC traded by a DEX that offers BTC/XMR exchanges, and any BTC that comes from a pool that also contains money that participated in this etc.

If the US government wants to ban an XMR, it can ban XMR.

[HeartStrings]

No. Monero is blacklisted on many exchanges due to actually being good. Too good for its own good.

[__MatrixMan__]

Sure, you've gotta have one exchange that knows your bank account, and then move it through a non-KYC exchange to XMR--which means you'll pay an extra fee or two--but unless something has changed in the last year or so that's not a difficult thing to do.

[ROTMetro]

Way way back I had Chinese acquaintances who were using it to get their money out of China and to Canada. No longer in communication with those people and I know China has since come down hard on it but is that still part of it's use?

[HeartStrings]

Why 30%? Why not 40%? Why not 10%?