pull down to refresh
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @guts 11h \ parent \ on: Is homeschooling allowed in the country where you live? Education
It really isn't
AI vs. AGI vs. ASI
-
AI: Specialized AI systems designed for specific tasks (e.g., playing chess, facial recognition, language translation). These systems cannot adapt beyond their programmed purposes.
-
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): General-purpose AI with the ability to perform any intellectual task that a human can do. AGI can adapt to new tasks, learn across domains, and reason flexibly.
-
Artificial Superintelligence (ASI): AI that surpasses human intelligence in virtually every field, including creativity, problem-solving, and emotional/social intelligence. ASI represents a level far beyond AGI.
What is talked about in AGI there will be domain specific, general and meta which it will learn and adapt by itself
If Bluesky users want the governance to consider ban a certain user because hate speech then it is not decentralized and censorship resistant.
Liquid + LN may suit niche scenarios, but Monero provides unmatched privacy, decentralization, and simplicity for real-world, censorship-resistant use.
Liquid + LN adds complexity but doesn’t achieve Monero’s default privacy. LN requires on-chain BTC to open channels, leaving a trail. Monero's privacy is built-in no need for additional layers or tools to obscure sender, receiver, and amounts.
Adoption and use cases of Monero highlight its true value: a permissionless and uncensorable currency. It's not just for the dark web but it's widely used by individuals and organizations needing financial privacy. Liquid, tied to BTC, still relies on a trusted federation, making it less ideal in censorship-prone environments.
Associating Monero solely with illicit use is outdated. Privacy is a right, not a crime. Legitimate use cases (e.g., donations, salary payments) grow as awareness of financial surveillance increases. Monero users aren’t 'isolated'; they’re safeguarded from mass surveillance.
Monero and Liquid BTC serve different purposes, and dismissing Monero ignores its unique value:
-
Privacy: Monero offers default privacy with ring signatures, stealth addresses, and RingCT, ensuring full anonymity. Liquid BTC’s Confidential Transactions only hide amounts, not identities or links.
-
Decentralization: Monero is trustless, while Liquid relies on a federation to maintain the peg, making it less censorship-resistant and more centralized.
-
Store of Value: Monero’s capped supply and growing adoption as a private transactional currency support its long-term value. The claim it’s unsuitable for holding is speculative.
-
Lightning Comparison: Monero’s low fees make second-layer solutions unnecessary for small transactions, avoiding Lightning’s complexity and custodial risks.
-
Adoption: Monero is a proven tool for private, uncensored transactions in real-world use cases, offering a level of privacy and decentralization unmatched by Liquid or BTC.
Monero remains indispensable for those needing true financial sovereignty, privacy, and trustless operation.
You’re absolutely right that Bitcoin's privacy is flawed out of the box. Coinjoins, while useful, are not perfect—they are expensive, take time, and often leave detectable patterns on the blockchain that a skilled observer can analyze. As for Lightning, while it improves privacy for routing transactions, the receiving node can often still leak key information.
Why Monero? Monero was built with privacy as a core feature, not as an afterthought. Every transaction is private by default, combining tools like stealth addresses, ring signatures, and RingCT (Ring Confidential Transactions) to obscure sender, receiver, and amount. This means no additional cost, effort, or technical know-how is needed to ensure anonymity.
Regarding eCash (such as systems like Cashu), you’re correct that it can offer strong privacy once tokens leave the mint since transactions are not recorded on a public ledger. However, it has its limitations. Unlike Monero, it typically relies on centralized mints, which introduces trust and censorship risks. If a mint shuts down or is compromised, users lose their ability to transact or redeem their eCash. Dark markets, therefore, are unlikely to adopt eCash widely without decentralized solutions.
Why dark markets gravitate to Monero: It works. Full stop. XMR provides default privacy with a decentralized network and robust cryptographic assurances, without relying on third parties like mints. That’s why it’s not just used in theory—it’s actively the de facto currency for anonymous online commerce.
While eCash shows promise as an alternative for small-scale private payments, Monero’s trustless, proven privacy solution makes it unmatched for anyone serious about financial anonymity.
55 sats \ 15 replies \ @guts 17 Dec \ parent \ on: Is ecash private enough for dark markets? privacy
Your point against Monero is that they are cult, are you serious?