Most people have heard of Bitcoin even without knowing anything about cryptocurrencies your at least aware of the branding, the zeitgeist has not escaped you. But what did they say to deter you from seeking self-sovereignty to those who never looked: Bitcoin is used by criminals in Darknet Marketplaces to buy and sell drugs on the Silk Road. You say that like it's a bad thing! Despite my own points of views my emphasis here is that Bitcoin first found relevance as a currency in a Black market. There are no dirty Bitcoins, none of them have been mined in Africa as blood diamonds have: none of them have ever left the ledger. This is a social construct imposed by the gatekeepers as means to confiscate your Bitcoin when you don't do your research and give up your keys. Bitcoin is just a tool and the morality and legality of how people use it is a reflection of humanity and not the protocol. Understand that your Bitcoin does carry a history and if you do not break the heuristic links that all you do can be traced back to you. This could be a problem where cancel culture is proliferated and all of a sudden you are no longer a law abiding citizen because you supported a cause that was a future enemy of the state.
Monero is a fork of Bytecoin - which was developed by a group called Cryptonote who proposed to make a protocol like Bitcoin but with optional stealth addresses and ring signatures to reinforce privacy. Long story short turns out Bytecoin had already premined 80% of the supply and many who looked into from Bitcoin Talk forum had written it off as just another scam coin. However some did have the opinion that Bytecoin's protocol was solid and innovative and thus the race was on for a fork that would capitalize off this flawed implementation. Cryptonote's developers weren't done they had concocted all this work and the scam must proceed despite these set backs hence the implementation of Bitmonero by one user called thankful_for_today. Monero was born out of a core group of developers who tried to work with thankful_for_today to integrate Monero's mining and issuance schedule with Bytecoin but it soon became clear that thankful_for_today had no interest in cooperating with the team and had his own agenda for Bitmonero.
"Monero shows the power of a community that refuses to be fed lies, finds the truth for themselves, and retakes the tools with which they can build their freedom. Monero may have started as a scam, but it has truly evolved into a powerful weapon to take back our financial privacy." - Diego Salazar
There are 2 Rules for Success...
1. Never Reveal everything you know
I follow Matthew R. Kratter a very intelligent Bitcoin Maximalist who I don't agree with everything he says but I believe that the Bitcoin community needs Evangelists who are well spoken and can intelligently defends the tenets of the protocol. But the reason I bring up Matthew Kratter is because he lead me to Seth for Privacy who can teach you everything you need to know about Bitcoin and Monero. When it comes to the Monero circular economy one has already been setup in Murica (https://monerica.com/) but the real precious gems to found at the site are Mastering Monero by SerHack even if you aren't interested in Monero specifically come understand the basic precepts of cryptography and cryptocurrencies.
I Don't have anything to hide but I don't have anything I feel like showing you either
These spends on the bottom are me buying t-shirts over the net and coming from Ethereum can I tell you what a delight it was to use Monero. The fee selection was low, medium, fast and high and all of them except maybe high were fractions of a cent. Confirmation were fairly quick within 10 minutes or less but since I'm going off my volatile memory I can't remember for sure but at the time it was what I was used to with cryptocurrencies. Small caution remember that you are dealing with immutable transactions and once sent cannot be undone. I had order a Monero hoodie from Germany and was so excited that I didn't pay attention to the size and when it came in the mail boy was I surprised. After getting in touch with the vendor and realizing how much it would cost for return shipping to Germany, I had to bite the bullet and give the Hoodie to someone who could fit it.
“Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly."
The third spend is to someone I felt obligated to donate to because his content was so profound to me that I had to show my appreciation. I share this with you because I have no fear of anyone ever finding out who he is or being cancelled because I donated to him. But remember that Monero is only a privacy tool and I'm sure many in the community would frown upon my OPSEC here but for once I'm trying to Evangelize.
Don't use MyMonero (Remote synchronization: these wallets share your private view key with a remote server, which continuously scans the blockchain looking for your transactions. They are faster to use, but your privacy can be lessened if you don't control the remote server.) if your just starting out and would like acquire your first moneroj nothing wrong with it but a wallet that can teach much more about Monero and cryptocurrencies in general is the Electrum Wallet our version in Monero is called Feather Wallet (Local synchronization: these wallets connect to remote nodes and scan the blockchain on your device without sharing any key with the nodes. They provide higher privacy, but require more time synchronizing, since missing block will be scanned only when the wallet is open)
Running a Monero node for yourself not only helps to give you the stronger network-level privacy guarantees, but also helps to increase the decentralization, stability, and speed of the Monero network.
A remote node:
- doesn’t know your addresses
- doesn’t know your balance
- cannot steal your funds
- cannot detect your incoming transactions
- does not know what addresses you’re sending money to or how much
However, a malicious remote node can:
- execute an attack that may reveal the true input of a transaction. This attack does not reveal how much is spent or to whom. This attack has a low chance of succeeding and Feather will warn you if it detects this attack.
- make your outgoing transactions stick out by manipulating the transaction fee that you pay.
- associate your outgoing transactions with your IP address (but only if all traffic is routed through clearnet. By default, transactions are broadcast over Tor.)
