[cyberax]

> Nobody cares about what percent, they care about what's actually happening and that's where the astronomically larger amount of fiat crime matters.

I absolutely care. Classical money system has regulations that make crime like ransomware or (physical) kidnapping impractical. Cryptocrap enables them. The entire ransomware field became possible _just_ because of it.

> Monero prevents mass surveillance which makes our society more free.

Hell no. Monero and other cryptocrap so far produced Trump, enabled CSAM, enabled North Korea to bypass sanctions, and so on.

They did not increase freedom for anybody but criminals. Go on, list the positive outcomes enabled by cryptocrap that are at least commensurate with its harm. I'll wait.

[Cider9986]

If you don't care about privacy, then state your address, bank account balance, phone number, family members, and post photos of the inside of your house. Monero protects some of that information.

It's a human right to choose what information to reveal about yourself.

Crypto is not crap on the whole. Many coins are worthless and scams, but some improves payments and give people more freedom and privacy. Just like everything, understanding crypto requires nuance.

Of course any privacy tool will first be challenged by the bad actors caught using it. That's just the way it goes and is the same with Tor, secure devices like GrapheneOS. But we shouldn't take away peoples rights because of a few bad actors.

There's a vast ecosystem of legal services that accept and use Monero like Mullvad VPN and many listed on donatemonero.org.

Monero prevents ransomware because it prevents others from knowing how much you have. I agree that regular transparent crypto is problematic because of that lack of privacy which enables bad actors like kidnappers or oppressive governments. Monero is an important iteration on transparent crypto. There's a reason one of the "rules" of Monero" is never say how much you have.

I've made 100s of Monero transactions and none of them have been for illicit goods or any crime. They just were for protecting my privacy.

[cyberax]

> If you don't care about privacy, then state your address, bank account balance, phone number, family members, and post photos of the inside of your house.

Nope. I'm fine with the protection that the classic legal system provides.

> Monero protects some of that information.

No, it doesn't. I don't use cryptocrap.

> Of course any privacy tool will first be challenged by the bad actors caught using it. That's just the way it goes and is the same with Tor, secure devices like GrapheneOS. But we shouldn't take away peoples rights because of a few bad actors.

The harm done by GrapheneOS and the harm that is being done every day by cryptocrap are nowhere comparable.

> I've made 100s of Monero transactions and none of them have been for illicit goods or any crime. They just were for protecting my privacy.

And by doing 100s of Monero transactions, you made a noticeable contribution to making the world worse. Congrats.

Go on, I'm still waiting for you to list the positive effects of crypto. It's been 12 years since it became mainstream, so positive effects should be visible by now. Has the world become more democratic? More privacy-oriented?

Perhaps smart contracts and unforgeable blockchains made new applications possible, and they became widespread? Like asset tracking or certificates of origin? Maybe NFTs transformed the art?

Nope. Nothing good came out of it.

[Cider9986]

Protecting and improving privacy is by definition excellent for humans.

GrapheneOS gets many of their donations from Monero [1].

I'm glad you didn't state any personal information. You now can see exactly why Monero is important. Using other online methods of exchanging value would say those things without your permission!

[1] monerostats.org

[cyberax]

So on one hand you have massive pig butchering operations that use slave labor trafficked across multiple countries to scam people and ruin thousands of lives.

And on the other hand you have donations to Graphene that can be done just fine using a credit card (I know, I've been donating to them for years).

Thank you for making my point.

[Cider9986]

>And on the other hand you have donations to Graphene that can be done just fine using a credit card (I know, I've been donating to them for years).

They can't be done "just fine" because people are debanked, have sensitive situations which require privacy, or just want privacy because it's a human right which should also apply to payments. You have zero privacy when donating to GrapheneOS. Many third parties know that you do it throughout the financial stack. They include that in their algorithms assessing your risk and which advertising to give to you. It's a violation of your rights.

Here's a comparison showing how Monero and even other crypto is better than traditional fiat payments in many ways.

https://eylenburg.github.io/payments.htm

I absolutely would support adding more privacy to traditional payment methods but banks are not interested in that.

I donate with Monero so the only way someone could know I donated is if I told them. That's how it should be. Privacy by default.

Many people clearly prefer to or can only donate with crypto or GrapheneOS wouldn't get so many donations in it.

They also support privacy preserving payments like Monero and Cash because they understand it's a tool that should not be banned because of a few bad actors using it because it protects the privacy of everyone which is important.

In fact they've said they pay most or all of their developers in crypto at various points.

Glad to see you supporting a project that benefits and endorses Monero so much.

>We accept cryptocurrency donations and currently pay all our developers with it.

https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1685926331534528512#m

>One of our full time developers prefers being paid via Monero due to harassment including swatting attacks targeting our developers.

https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1805302309284696529#m

>We receive most small cryptocurrency donations via Monero and most large donations via Bitcoin and Ethereum, especially via ETH recently.

https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1814703819118227598#m

>Yes, at grapheneos.org/donate#monero and it's one of the 3 cryptocurrencies we use to directly pay our development team rather than having to convert it to something else first.

https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1836818751078936885#m

>If you want to donate to GrapheneOS privately, you can use Monero. The weak privacy tools available for Bitcoin aren't comparable to that and have downsides including paying significantly higher fees by largely doing the opposite of consolidation and batching transactions.

https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1684897545544241152#m

>We get significant donations via other cryptocurrencies too. We've gotten almost as much via Ethereum as Monero, although it's mostly due to one very large donation and a couple other large ones.

https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1684901744604536832#m