The Europol investigation and presentation says Monero works as advertised, I trust that, especially since chain analysis companies aren't on the other side advertising their capabilities to undermine Monero
It doesn't matter if the technology or the mathematical theory behind it is trustworthy or not, the problem is that get-rich-quick money-for-free pyramid schemes attract untrustworthy people, so even if they technically work on the chalkboard in the lab, those people ruin them in the real world.
Social engineering and deceptive marketing trump Razzle-Dazzle Globetrotter Calculus every day.
I just find it incredibly easy to understand private digital assets without being led on to the guru's other untrustworthy product
What you are basically saying is that because people lack critical thinking skills, you distrust the other people that happen/claim to actually know about the topic, that seems awfully reductive.
Even after your edit, I don't know what you are saying and how it relates to trusting people less for a relevant short comment mentioning Monero. Care to articulate that specific sentiment or how its doing more than painting with a large ignorant brush?
In the case of buboard's post, first he posted something wrong about Bitcoin (and plugged upvotes.club), then when corrected, backtracked to "then Monero". In the case of your post, first you posted something promoting Monero, then you claimed you found it "incredibly easy to understand private digital assets", but then criticized other people who "lack critical thinking skills".
What do you find so "incredibly easy to understand" about private digital assets that people who "lack critical thinking skills" don't get, and why are you more trustworthy than they are? "Incredible" literally means "not credible". Bragging about how "incredibly" clever you are and how dumb other people are doesn't make you sound trustworthy.
Like many words, incredible has multiple definitions usable in context, such as nothing to do with credibility, and typically what English users do is pick the most likely applicable context to the circumstance, such as the definition which completely undermines your entire argument and is more congruent with everything I have said.
With that in mind, how would you rewrite your entire post?
Since you asked: With the fact in mind that you're deliberately trying to misunderstand what I'm saying, I'd repeat my question that you didn't answer:
What do you find so "incredibly easy to understand" about private digital assets that people who "lack critical thinking skills" don't get, and why are you more trustworthy than they are?
Isn't it a bit ironic that you want us to trust your claim that we should trust Europol about a "trustless" system?
"There are trustless systems though, like bitcoin" -buboard; "there is a system [Bitcoin -- bzzt -- oops! -- Monero then] that minimizes trust" -buboard; "I trust that [the Europol investigation and presentation about Monero]" -rolltiide.
So why should we trust you and buboard, then? Care to link to your resume or PhD dissertation or any code or research papers you've written on the topic, since it's so "incredibly easy" for you to understand? Or should we just trust you without any evidence to tell us who to trust about a trustless?
So on the topic of Monero there are two parties that I mentioned: Europol and chainanalysis companies. Europol, a government agency, can be incentivized to lie about their investigative capabilities to help with their investigations. They detailed how they cannot track Monero, but lets assume they are lying.
Chain analysis companies advertise their investigative abilities in order to attract business. By theory alone they cannot track Monero transactions, and in practice, they are not advertising that they can while they do advertise how they can follow transactions on surveillance networks like Bitcoin. This is a second confirmation that Monero works as private digital money.
This part is a cat and mouse game, all while Monero continues receiving software updates to improve its use, via open source pull requests, which bolsters confidence I have in the system as it doesn't exist in a static state. A lot of people analyze the digital asset ecosystem in a current or prior state and dismiss them based on that.
I think that is enough ammunition for you to investigate further to come to similar conclusions without you needing to trust me or buboard.
But if you would like to dive deeper on why these parties are not able to follow Monero transactions in both theory and practice, there are some books on the subject and then code you can compile yourself to test it out. That's typically what we are referring to when we say trustless, the independent verifiability.
When that happens, I'd surmise that the following is not going to be a good hedge: a completely ephemeral "asset" that is not backed by any conventional power structure or society, while at the same time being fully dependent on a highly sophisticated infrastructure made possible by said power structures and societies.
Cryptocurrencies depend on a redundant and highly interconnected network of many diverse actors to be able to maintain their trust guarantees. How that network is going to stay around in a doomsday scenario is very much up in the air.
The main point, the crucial point of a doomsday hedge is that it should depend as little as possible on the intricacies of the old world.
the same goes for cash & credit card, and in any case an apocalyptic war resets all prices to 0. Or you could extoil the virtues of gold but good luck carrying your gold in an EU country from Jan 1st, let alone the Moon and Mars
Of course traditional assets are highly uncertain if the world goes tits up, but you were the one hinting that cryptocurrencies would be a good hedge in a doomsday scenario.
The truth is that it is extremely difficult to predict what asset to hold in such a case. Physical assets can be confiscated by force, ephemeral assets are likely to just cease to exist.
Perhaps the best hedge is nothing as material as gold, or guns, or money, but having a large and robust network of friends and acquaintances. Ultimately, being connected (not just in a technical sense) is the best enabler of success in or out of a doomsday event I think.
