On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 03:40:04PM +0800, James A. Donald wrote:

Money, says Moldbug, is a bubble that never bursts, until it does.

A very long time ago, all sorts of strange things, such as dog canine teeth, were money.

It came to pass that only silver and gold were money.

And then only gold. The demonetization of silver gave us the long depression, which by modern standards was not bad at all - because it was long, gold rose, which is to say prices fell, very slowly, because silver was demonetized very slowly. People did not like it, hence the "cross of gold speech" demanding that state power be applied to remonetize silver,

I agree with all this.

but all the supposed horrid evils of deflation turned out to be not very evil at all.

This is a lie or propaganda (I assume unintentional on your part). The reason this last statement is pure propaganda is that whatever the "supposed horrid evils of deflation" being "not very evil at all", can only be true by specific metrics: There are two primary metrics, which those in the free/libre software world fortunately know rather well these days: 1. Freedom. 2. Utility. The latter (utility) principle in the context of money and "the economy" is often colloquially and cynically referred to "shiny stuff" or "muh free shit", and on this metric, "modern" "Western" economies (what many people mistakenly refer to as "society" or even "community") are doing fabulously - we have lots of cheap cheap two dollar cheap shit, brand new plant food spreaders (aka vehicles) for incredibly low prices in comparison to inflation-adjusted comparables from half a century ago. Even this utility/ shiny-thangz metric is a lie, but I'll get to that later. The former metric, which ought be our primary consideration, is our Freedoms - our freedom to communicate, to travel, to (attemp to) create a raise family, to work/ build wealth, to grow any plant, to collect water to drink, clean with and water your plants with. And also, the extent to which society proclaims, values, upholds and most importantly, protects, these freedoms, is a fundamental corollary - it's all very well to "get away with" growing a few dope plants, or skirting draconian monitoring and revenue raising rules (e.g. vehicular and licensing taxes etc), but that's not the same as the fundamental corresponding freedom actually being upheld, proclaimed in public, and protected by the authorities. Now back to the lie about how great fiat-based pyramid schemes and the "inflationary" (i.e. reducing cost of shiny things) "economic miracles" we supposedly live within: - 100 years ago in Australia, we build railways and roads all over the place, into the hills, across every state etc. - we did this with horse and bullock, and steam engines - we now have 1000's (or 10's of thousands) of TIMES more productivity with modern machinery - one man can do the work of 100,000 labourers with a big earth moving machine, single road-laying machines can lay 6 or even 8 frigging lanes of highway, simultaneously, continuously (fed by other trucks/ machines), at meters per hour! - Yet the average household is a dual-income household now, earning roughly the same as a single-earner did back in the 1950s! (in today's money, about $60K annually). So the lie is, that the most incredible, phenomenal, and in fact astounding growth in mechanistic productivity has been witnessed in the last century - the industrial revolution, and yet we people are on average still struggling to get by, and focused on survival rather than living a creative life, family life, anything other than "work for the man" life! And the truth is that this is by mathematical design - money is brought into existence by the creation of debt, encumbering future generations perpetually (the "debt based credit expansion system" or aka "debt based money expansion" system). And the most recent institution of this system began in Germany in the the 19th Century, by Lord Rothschild the first (he adopted this name, forgot his original name), and entrenching this banking system was the fundamental cause behind both World War I and WWII. Every time we go get a house or car loan etc, we are consenting to future enslavement, and the steady transfer of wealth to those who are the primary shareholders/ owners of the banks. For those with mental competence and/or connections, this system is an almost irresistible system to involve oneself within - any tiny vestige of egotistical self interest (or the much more obvious human failings of greed and lust) readily cause the typical human to fall straight into this simple yet highly effective and entirely mathematically based, enslavement system. Would you knock back the benefits of a hedge fund? In the 12th Century in England (I think - may have been somewhere else in Europe), the people spent 3 months of the years planting and harvesting, and roughly 9 months of the year living their lives with family and personal development etc - being creative, helping out your neighbours and whatnot.

From time to time governments discover that they can make some arbitrary thing money by the mere exercise of power. This usually ends horribly badly.

Due to the nature of humans. It is our duty to future generations to, as far as possible, hold to account those in our community who are in power. And that means more than voting once every 4 years.

Right now we have the disturbing and strange situation that it is hard for savers to receive positive real interest on their money, and at the same time hard for worthy borrowers to borrow money. The system is malfunctioning rather badly,

NO! The system is working exactly as its mathematical design intends - control over the entire system by a few powerful individuals at the top of the BIS/ World Bank etc. And the current circumstances are merely the evidence of the, once again mathematically certain cyclical "reset" which in the past has typically signified the casus belli for a world war. Certainly those deca-billionaires and above with their underground luxury hotel bug out bunkers consider that war is nothing but profit all the way to the next bank+MIC shareholder dividend bonanza.

but monetary systems have frequently malfunctioned one hell of a lot worse, so I will not bother explaining why we are in this hole. (tl; dr; Governments did wicked, but extremely popular, things with money. To the surprise of

Yes and no. It seems you have not read the book, Creature from Jekyll Island. Governments were undermined - "democratic governments" are the easiest to undermine by those with inordinate wealth.

many people, myself among them, this did not destroy the currency, but it had other extremely bad effects.)

Because of governments doing bad things with money, the thought occurred to some people: maybe private individuals, not armed with state power, could make some arbitrary thing power.

Turns out, we could.

There is always hope, but the fundamental you can never avoid is that humans are involved, with all their usual foibles - greed, lust, gluttony, impatience and anger, pride and the rest. Commoditization of the power to issue economic value, I believe will be a good thing - an interesting dynamic in the human experience if nothing else, so, good luck all. This world seems to be (in the words of Harold Klemp) "a big ole school house". Regards,

Claming privacy enforced... Monero [up until basically now] doesn't either. Z's "optional" is a plainly documented feature. All are 'opensource', "communities" can "back" / ignore / fork them at will. Only Zencash has TLS and full overlay network support today. Comparing Monero to the Z-family of currencies can't be done with just newsbites. The debate between Monero and Z-family is ongoing, and depends a lot on future developments, both of their own, and in the space. Don't expect any existing currency to survive long term. Be prepared to migrate, often, over the near towards long term. Here's a dozen bites, analysis of more and deeper would be needed... https://blog.okturtles.com/2016/03/the-zcash-catch/ https://blog.okturtles.com/2016/09/how-to-compromise-zcash-and-take-over-the... https://forum.z.cash/t/parameter-generation-ceremony-discussion/6691/3?u=zoo... https://z.cash/technology/paramgen.html https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GJwBAxZ3eEdcjPn4iSpKcWXXrl5YxWSMX8I0K2wi... https://web.archive.org/web/20160726150109/https://www.reddit.com/r/Zcash/co... https://www.coindesk.com/defending-zcash-blockchain-art-security-theater/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_multi-party_computation https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/2719/how-does-monero-privacy-and-... https://www.monero.how/how-does-monero-work-details-in-plain-english https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/83/how-does-monero-privacy-and-se... https://zensystem.io/

On Wed, Sep 13, 2017 at 2:22 PM, vdo wrote:

https://themerkle.com/blocksci-succesfully-traces-transactions-performed-wit...

The article is shit. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.02489.pdf The whitepaper clearly states - They demoed breaks in BTC, BCC, LTC, NMC, DASH. - They excluded Monero and Ethereum from research, because they didn't want to bother authoring code structures to read their chain formats, etc. - They excluded the Zcash family (ZEC, ZCL, ZEN, etc) from research, because their shielded transactions are currently believed provably crypto secure against tracing. [1] S. Goldfeder, H. Kalodner, D. Reisman, and A. Narayanan, "When the cookie meets the blockchain: Privacy risks of web payments via cryptocurrencies," https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.04748 [2] A. Miller, M. Möser, K. Lee, and A. Narayanan, "An empirical analysis of linka- bility in the Monero blockchain," https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.04299 [3] M. Möser and R. Böhme, "The price of anonymity: empirical evidence from a market for Bitcoin anonymization," coinjoin https://academic.oup.com/cybersecurity/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/cybsec/tyx... https://www.reddit.com/r/joinmarket/ https://themerkle.com/top-4-companies-providing-bitcoin-blockchain-analysis-... Those wanting anonymity today might exchange around with some Z's, Monero, etc in the middle on a number of decentralized or at least anon markets, make money on the idle with joinmarkets in any coin, all over I2P / Tor, while managing a large pile of one time use accounts. They obviously have to support the adoption of the set of anon capable coins otherwise the edge markets interfacing realworld won't list them, making transit of nontrivial sums in / between / out worlds very difficult. Here's another proposal... Adam Fiscor - Zerolink Bitcoin fungibility framework https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY-QQOjycgI https://breaking-bitcoin.com/

On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 08:36:54AM +0300, Sergey Matveev wrote:

...

Everything is right here. Anyway you *will* depend on people, society, its behaviour and huge quantity of empirical factors and assumptions. It is not cypherpunk's reliable and risks-predictable world -- it has nothing in common. Replacing the need to trust the human, with the need to trust the algorithm and technology -- that *is* the exact reason why I am interested in crypto. Requiring and depending on society again -- that is the exact reason why I standing aside from blockchains. They do not offer any guarantees[4], but likelihoods, lottery.

But this is the point - exchange of energy between humans, whether money, voluntary labour, crypto money, barter of food or other goods, these things ALWAYS depend on other humans - that is (how ever unfortunate this might be) the nature of involvement with other humans and with interacting with other humans.

I am curious about Sergey's point. While humanity is generally a piece of shit, they are akin to a cancer patient whose every cell has been infected -- they themselves are not guilty, they are product of external factors that are larger than them. Ultimately, like all mammals, they are organized around the heart (that's what separates them from lizards), so that natural force can be harnessed. This is also why technological solutions have not been affective. If you take my premise that humans are organized around the heart, then pure rationalism will fail to lead them because their minds are already infected and they distrust it. So, in a way, the same forces of the heart are already working -- too block further memetic codons from creating more nucleic load.

So when it comes to exchange of energy of any form between humans, you will always be involved with other humans, to a greater or lesser degree :)

Yeah, humans are both the cause and the cure. The major source of inadequacy in THIS population (crypto-anarchists) is the failure to examine why the 60's failed to produce the revolution it desired. It had love, peace, and an awesome soundtrack -- yet it failed. The only reason I've found in my analysis is that it was missing either truth or justice (in some way they HADN'T recognized) or both. Both of these are necessary for peace. Without truth, people argue. Without justice. people continue fighting. \0xd

On Wed, 13 Sep 2017 19:22:45 -0700 Steven Schear wrote:

I am not at all surprised that CPunks did not kick off the revolution many of us desired.

One reason was that, despite Tim C May's mantra that, "cypherpunks write code", not many of us were capable or did. Many who hung out on the list and were technically competent weren't true believers

so the obvious explanation is that the number of people actually interesed in freedom is like 3 or 4... furthermore, the idea that purely technical means are going to solve the political problem is nonsense. if anything, technology gives incredible power to the government nazis and the nazis working 'private' businesses.

and/or were still more focused on their careers. When times were poor for our employment there would be a significant surge in doing coding but as soon as the good times returned these people were no where to be found.

Another reason is our lack of understanding of the importance of UIs

come on....

and network effects for widespread take-up (Why Johnny Still, Still Can't Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.08555).

Steve

Dont trust zcash - made by the blue team. Doubt they burnt the master ring sig key. Boooo! On Sun, 17 Sep 2017, grarpamp wrote:

Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2017 14:37:27 -0400 From: grarpamp To: cypherpunks@lists.cpunks.org Subject: Re: Why I can't sleep soundly with blockchain, being the cypherpunk

More on Monero vs Zcash (including usual armchair and bias)...

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/70kx3g/let_me_clear_some_th... https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/wiki/comparison

They're not so easy to compare due to being different approaches with evolving development in each. Here's a partial family tree, newest generally towards the bottom...

https://getmonero.org/ - Monero XMR

http://zerocoin.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zerocoin https://smartcash.cc/ - Smartcash SMART https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=846471 - Zerovert ZER https://zcoin.io/ - Zcoin XZC http://zerocash-project.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zerocash https://credacash.com/compare - Credacash, license issues https://z.cash/ - Zcash ZEC http://zclassic.org/ - Zclassic ZCL https://zensystem.io/ - Zencash ZEN

As usual, a few years / generations out will see new coins emerge that combine both old and new elements into more capable, private, anonymous, overlay transport, txrate, resistant, encrypted, trust less / mitigated setup, mixed, ringed, whatever, etc solutions.

And exchanges, whether 'git clone and host on darknets', or fully distributed (blockchain / p2p), and whether funds-on/off-exchange, are complete greenfield and a highly needed ecosystem part that's still missing.

Some early examples...

https://bisq.network/ https://www.openbazaar.org/

b0z0@sdf.lonestar.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

On Sun, 17 Sep 2017 18:58:24 +0000 (UTC) b0z0@SDF.ORG wrote:

dash.org hasthe most anonymous tech will will ever see in your life.

not run by blues

you mean, run by scammers who issued a few million coins to themselves in a few hours?