Monero is an also-ran cryptocurrency, in the same proof-of-work family as Bitcoin and Etherium.
Monero.town is a Lemmy instance whose main communities are: Monero, privacy, Monero Memes, Meta, and Monero Mining.
Enough has been written on the negative ecological effects of proof-of-work based cryptocurrency that I think it's not controversial to say it is incompatible with the Solarpunk vision.
Pictured inciting incident is a person advertising the crypto-capitalist Lemmy competitor "Nostr" in the anarchism community.
I don't personally mind a debate about Nostr, but like most of the content from Monero.town, it doesn't belong here. More sales pitches from a crypto-currency hype instance are going to be tedious, and crowd out the kind of progressive politics and human interactions we're looking to nurture here. Reddit's /r/anarchism had to constantly repel assholes trying to pass off their edgy capitalism as anarchist, Lemmy gives us the unique opportunity to send a strong message and nip this in the bud.
Fediverse sites that have already blocked Monero.town --
reject (10): solarpunk.moe, polyglot.city, freethought.online, icosahedron.website, sunbeam.city, vtuber.house, fruef.social, cutie.city, fuckcars.social, karas.social
followers_only (3): toot.cat, orbsafe.masto.host, partyparrot.social
Image Description
[Image description: Screenshot of an exchange between user [email protected] and Five containing the following text
Yea, that’s just not how Nostr works. Take a look here: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips These are implementation possibilities that the protocol enables. Every client must implement NIP-01. All of the other NIPs are optional so every client that you use (an app for example) has decided to implement different NIPs. You decide which client you use and how Nostr should feel like. Almost no client prioritizes content that received bitcoin.
Your “login mechanism” (private cryptographic key) has nothing to do with cryptocurrency. If you want to send btc to people you have to set that up yourself, manually linking a wallet to your key.
Five
I’m confused why you’re downplaying Nostr’s primary selling point - its close integration with Bitcoin. It’s clearly a cryptocurrency capitalist con job.
Almost no client prioritizes content that received bitcoin.
That’s not what I was saying, but I’m fascinated that you’re implying it’s much worse than I anticipated. Which clients have their priority linked to received bitcoin? ]
We shouldn't defederate. The environmental impact depends on the tech and how you produce power..
Also other than cash, bartering, monero is the only currency that respects privacy.
We need privacy and anonymity in a free society, even a solar punk one.
people need privacy and anonymity – we don’t need currency
Solarpunk's goal is anarco-comunism, there wouldn't be any money nor a need for it, it would follow gift economy.
I’d argue that like most leftist ideologies it’s about both the ends and the means to get there, so we shouldn’t ignore the utility of privacy in transactions as we work towards that future, but I do agree with what you said. We should try to use currency only as necessary. It’s unproductive to hold one currency on a pedestal for its qualities, it should only be seen for its immediate practical utility while also weighing negative environmental and political impact
Solarpunk is also how we achieve eutopia, which involves the starting point of "here and now"
I agree we need privacy and anonymity in a free society, but the only people making the claim that Monero respects privacy are Monero people.
Block-chain crypto-currency relies on the concept of a public ledger. Without a openly verifiable record of wallets or money, a zero-trust system cannot function. Therefore Bitcoin and Etherium are not private or anonymous, though they were often falsely advertised as such during their inception.
I don't know the precise method Monero uses, but I know that it's mathematically impossible to make a zero-trust block-chain cryptocurrency that is as private as cash transactions; only to make de-anonymizing more computationally expensive. For this reason Monero is worse than Bitcoin and Etherium, which are more widely known to be public records. Since more people currently believe Monero's marketing, they are less likely to take other precautions to protect themselves. When faced with the tools of an adversary with resources like the IRS, the Monero chain is effectively transparent.
I don't feel bad for not deeply understanding the mechanism behind Monero's privacy claims, because it's clear that the Monero people don't understand it either. All the ledger information for Monero for the last three years is now publicly visible, and will continue to be available for public analysis. There is no way to guarantee there are not more bugs of this type still in the complex codebase.