Pretty well. Over the years I’ve managed to persuade people to avoid Bitcoin and received many complements. You can view my efforts in more detail on my ioRadio podcast. I’ve also created an entire documentary criticizing cryptocurrency and blockchain as a whole. I don’t have any vendetta against Monero, and all of them are the same.

My podcast and channel where you can view my work: https://ioradio.org https://www.youtube.com/@AmericanScreamVideo

When cryptocurrency eventually collapses, Monero included since it’s correlated with Bitcoin, my voice will finally be heard as a prophecy.

Monero usage from criminals can be tracked from CEXes, swaps, and cross-chain bridges. It can also be tracked by vulnerabilities mentioned in the “Breaking Monero” series. You are being dishonest by ignoring the main use of Monero among criminals. Your community is also vocal about Monero replacing Bitcoin on darknets and view it as positive.

Sources: https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/csam-cryptocurrency-monero-instant-exchangers-2024 https://www.ft.com/content/13fb66ed-b4e2-4f5f-926a-7d34dc40d8b6 https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2024-crypto-money-laundering

I tried ignoring Bitcoin for some time before modding r/Buttcoin and r/CryptoReality as well as creating the ioRadio podcast. It only became more and more popular. I don’t want the same to happen with Monero. I don’t want people to lose their money or unknowingly engage in helping online crime grow.

I want to help people who might be suffering from the propaganda in this echo chamber or who hold Monero to see the truth. My points against Monero are valid, and I don’t want anyone to be misled by Monero. If at least one person benefits from reading my valid skepticism that discredits Monero and decides to leave it behind, I would consider that a success. Monero is not for me or for anyone who is not a criminal.

Monero will never succeed. Monero only serves as an illegal tool to facilitate crime online until it will be regulated by our governments (hopefully this happens soon).

I will provide FOUR irrefutable arguments against Monero below.

Monero is supposed to be a cryptocurrency. As they say in the community, “Monero means money”. However, Monero does not even satisfy the criteria of money. Money is defined with the following properties: medium of exchange (widely accepted), unit of account (measure of trade for goods and services), and store of value (self-explanatory). Monero fails to be a medium of exchange that is widely accepted, except for crime and extremely niche cases that will eventually be regulated to oblivion. Neither is Monero a store of value. As proved by past price history, its extreme volatility and reliance on the price movements of BTC/fraudulent cryptocurrencies means that when they eventually fall, Monero will follow. No one on this planet would save or transact in a currency with extreme volatility that could mean losing half the fiat value of your money over night.

Monero has a tainted reputation. Governments are trying their best to delist Monero from CEXes to reduce its usage - for a good reason! Chain analysis companies have proved that almost all of Monero’s usage is crime-related darknet activity. Ransomware, drugs, CP, and all the worse things you can imagine are used strictly with Monero in mind.

A common counterargument to Monero being used mostly for crime by their many fanboys is: muh banks and muh fiat currency has crime usage too

Indeed, the US dollar is used in criminal activities due to its status as a global reserve currency. Unlike Monero, the USD serves as a medium of exchange, a fundamental property of money. The prevalence of crime associated with the USD is not a reflection of inherent evil within the currency itself, but rather a reflection of human behavior. In contrast, Monero is designed with a primary focus on privacy and anonymity, making it attractive for illicit activities. The majority of its usage is related to such activities, with only niche cases that the community often highlights as an exception.

Let us assume that Monero is not built for crime and used for good intentions. Let us assume cryptocurrency is not a ponzi and Monero will actually be used worldwide. Even in this best case, Monero can’t even serve as a global currency with serious use! It uses old blockchain architecture that only allows one block every 2 minutes with limited transactions that can barely handle the transaction throughput of Visa or Paypal. Adding on, Monero is confusing for average people to use. You have to sync the blockchain worth hundreds of gigabytes, which is continuing to grow infinitely, to run your own node. In the future, normal people won’t even be able to run any node as the size of the Monero blockchain grows extremely large. It will rely on data centers and centralized entities like Bitcoin making the network vulnerable to attacks. Also, unlike Bitcoin or other transparent blockchains, you have to scan the entire history of Monero that can take hours if you have unluckily stored your money in it long ago. Imagine waiting hours at the cashier register waiting for the blockchain to sync so it can register that $5 of Monero that you stored years ago!

Monero is centralized, as development and the community-funded initiatives (known as CCS in the Monero community), are vetted by a small group of people who have a complete say in what will or will not be allowed to be hard-forked. If Monero ever gets big, it will face the same problem as Bitcoin, where the community can’t decided unilaterally on what they want on the network leading to technical stagnation. If Monero develops a centralized entity, like making a foundation, as seen in Ethereum, to oversee development, this can be solved. But this can never happen because of legal reasons!

When considering these arguments, which are rarely mentioned in this delusional echo chamber, one begins to realize the absurdity of Monero. Apart from its association with illicit activities, the community often justifies its existence by conjuring up a CBDC boogeyman that governments are supposedly planning to release. The persistent fear of a CBDC’s arrival has been used for years without any tangible results. I was going to release a documentary on Monero, but I chose not to as Monero is the same as every other scam cryptocurrency, except instead of financial crime, Monero enables all crime.

Development is active, but unfortunately slow due to the limited number of developers and incompetence within the community. Unlike BTC and ETH, which have significant financial incentives, Monero relies solely on community-funded initiatives, which are infrequent and unreliable. Monero tends to attract hobbyist developers because of this who lack the motivation to deliver timely results, treating the project as a mere experiment to tinker with.

For example, Monero has not seen a proper DEX release in years, with projects like Haveno being complete failures with barely any volume and a basic AMM DEX has been in development for over two years by the so-called revered kayabanerve without any mainnet release - quite literally a Uniswap clone taking over 2 years without any solid results - how sad!