Come on guys, stop kicking the dead horse already.

People are dumb. If they can't buy Monero using PayPal, then no one's gonna buy it.

By the time it becomes a necessity, all our devices will be locked down at hardware level, and running Monero wallet will be practically impossible for the 99%

Sorry I might sound pessimistic, but I've been watching Monero for almost 7 years now. Only way to make people notice you and start looking for a solution how to use Monero is a 100X pump. Nothing else opens eyes like greed.

No way that's ever going to happen. Online store with goods priced in XMR means having a web shop. Having a web shop means you're now a company accepting payments from strangers, offering escrow, refunds, warranty, all the works. Like tiny Amazon.

Because you're a company now, KYC regulations apply, and then why would anyone want to use XMR? If you're leaving your personal information, then just use eBay or credit cards.

If you're a "cancelled" person who cannot use banks anymore, then use gift cards for buying stuff instead of credit cards, and you're golden.

If no one is accepting Monero in your country, city, or neighborhood, then the fair price is zero.

Closing down fiat ramps is just one thing that regulators might try. Next step would be banning Monero wallets from app stores, or marking Monero as malware or state sanctioned software. Who would want to use Monero then, when the UX is worse than paper cash? People buying drugs can use Venmo and say that they're buying art commissions or something like that. Or exchange gift cars by mail.

Good luck! And stay vigilant. You're currently under the radar, and that's why you can do wonderful things.

The moment you make a blip in Big Money and Corrupt Government radar, they will come after you and everyone who accepts Monero with overwhelming oppressive force. You must be prepared.

Well said. Now, how to make crypto honest again? The masses already know about crypto as a get rich quick scheme, and would not dare touch it. Especially since regulations are closing down fiat ramps.

There's a better probability of goldbacks or silver coins becoming a new currency than Monero. Crypto's reputation is just that bad.

It took Internet and social media 10 years to fully proliferate, and crypto is already 14 years old. Perhaps its zenith had already passed, and people getting to it now are laggards. If I'm being overly optimistic, then maybe 50 years to replace current financial system could be a viable goal.

I've used crypto for purchases of various things, and it definitely is much better than current fiat system and the banks. However, adoption is still in infancy, while at the same time regulation ban hammer is coming down hard, cutting down anyone who dares to accept crypto as payment in the "above ground" world, where 90% of the economy happens.

If you can't use crypto in your day to day life, then crypto is just speculation. Big change isn't coming from us, we are few and our voices are unheard. Change is coming when some celebrity or famous person shows the world how easy it is to use Monero in their day to day life, and how beneficial it would be to the civilization. Sadly all of those "heavy hitters" are rich, and they won't risk their billions of net worth held in old money system. 'Monero' is the one single word that no one above $100M net worth is supposed to mention in public.

One more thing: about losing everything. I've bought XMR back in early 2018, and my average buy-in price is $250, or 0.025 BTC. I've already lost at least half of my initial fiat investment, so Monero has been an abysmal performer, not even inflation hedge. That's not how money works. Had I kept my money in co-opted and crippled BTC, I'd be able to get 4x as much XMR as I have now.

Welcome Mr. Vulpine!

End of an era. Monero had seen many people come and go, and many more will come. What matters is that the project always survives.

"The sietch at the desert rim was Liet's, was Kynes's, was Stilgar's, was Muad'Dib's, and, once more, was Stilgar's. The Naibs one by one sleep in the sand, but the sietch endures."

Wake me up when SHA-256 is cracked.

Intel/AMD x86 or Apple's M-series ~~CPUs~~ SoC are a privacy dead end. No matter how much internal backdoors you deactivate, it can always auto-magically come back and bite you in the ass. RISC-V is definitely the future. Perhaps one day this architecture will become powerful enough to fluently run a Desktop Linux or a smart-phone. Then Monero might stand a chance.

But yes, crypto on-ramps are getting squeezed from all directions. I even heard that Binance have blocked UK from becoming new users.

Another example: merchants in Serbia aren't legally allowed to accept crypto directly, they must go through a third-party "money transmitter" licensed by the government. I suppose only transparent coins will be supported, and even then customers will be required to undergo a KYC/AML with the money transmitter. It's a shit show. A merchant simply showing a QR code to their own private wallet would be committing a tax fraud similar to accepting cash OTC and not through a cash register.

It's still mind boggling how people are okay with buying phones without unlocked root and bootloader. Not your root, not your phone.

Some weeks ago I had a problem that a friend's phone was randomly wiping data from crypto wallet apps. He was furious, and wanted to leave crypto altogether. After some digging, I found that Google Play Protection (a.k.a. Google's Virus Scanner) detected there were crypto apps on the phone, and somehow decided to disrupt them. Not outright uninstall, but slowly disrupt them, just enough for the user to get frustrated and abandon it, or install another app.

Now think about it: if TPTB want to disrupt crypto adoption, they'll just gatekeep users from crypto wallets, or demand OS-level KYC/AML. In that world, crypto adoption is impossible... Unless some Chinese manufacturer decided to make cheap unlocked phones, or we have something like a Raspberry Pi phone.