Quote from: rocks on May 18, 2015, 11:20:20 PM

Quote from: smooth on May 18, 2015, 10:59:55 PM

Quote from: rocks on May 18, 2015, 10:45:01 PM

Quote from: smooth on May 18, 2015, 10:33:40 PM

Quote from: rocks on May 18, 2015, 10:21:25 PM

Quote from: smooth on May 18, 2015, 10:02:33 PM

Quote from: rocks on May 18, 2015, 09:55:03 PM

Am debating what are the innate properties that constitute money. For the reasons stated in prior posts I do not consider privacy to be applicable to what makes good or bad money and do not see that as a factor towards driving adoption.

Privacy is not necessarily a property of money. Fungibility is a property of money though, and without strong legal guarantees of fungibility, it likely does require privacy because if you can trace "bad" or "good" coins then fungibility isn't there. Bitcoin currently doesn't have whitelisting/blacklisting, etc. (for the most part; there do seem to be some exceptions involving Coinbase, etc.) but as long as that concept is in play fungibility is a question.

Fully agree. But as HeliKopterBen and dEBRUYNE pointed out a few posts ago, a fully private currency such as Monero could just as easily be outlawed in it's entirety. Which puts Monero in the same position as a Bitcoin where blacklist coins are outlawed.

Legally yes, but in terms of fungibility no. If I'm a fully compliant Bitcoin user I may -- purely as a practical matter -- have to check on coins I'm receiving to see if they are "bad", and because coins may be added to a blacklist (or removed from a whitelist) after I receive them, it means I'm left with performing my own KYC to convince myself that the counterparty is unlikely to be passing off "bad" coins.

I'm not doing this because the law requires it but because I'm worried about being left holding the bag with "bad" coins, even if the transaction itself is entirely legal. This is fundamentally incompatible with the concept of fungibility (again, which is distinct from legality).

The risk of this is fungibility concerns is far less to nonexistent with a private coin, where tagging coins as "good" or "bad" is technologically less feasible or impossible (Monero is not as private as say zerocash, so some issues remain there, but far less so than Bitcoin).

The only reason you would ever be worried about receiving "bad" coins would be because of some legal framework that makes such coins possibility "bad". The exact same legal framework could make 100% of Monero's coins "bad". And you're back to square one.

No you're not because if all coins are bad then all coins have the same value. You can't overpay and be left holding the bag.

That is the definition of fungibility. Again, you are confusing privacy with fungibility. Without regard for the merits of either/both.

I don't think so, it seems to be that you've confused them. I think my prior posts (that weren't quoted) explained why. Fungibility is an innate property, privacy is a question of usage. You're free to disagree but I'll still think that these arguments that a coin needs privacy to be built in or off the mark.

Fungibility also doesn't mean how I think you are using it. Even in your black/white coin scenario, Bitcoin coins are still 100% fungible, the bitcoin network will treat 1 BTC as 1 unit and 0.5 BTC as half a unit in all cases, that is perfect fungibility.

Things such as dimonds are not fungible, different people will value 2 different one caret diamonds differently. That is an example of something not fungible. Not black/white market coins where a government might try to force different values for them, but the network would treat them identically.

Correct about diamonds. Incorrect about cryptocurrncies. Fungibility means that units are interchangeable. Bitcoins are not interchangeable as long as they have an identifiable history. And in practice participants such as Coinbase are taking that history into account in evaluating coins and users.

Take a look at that post from a long time ago about "Bitcoin Island". If Bitcoins (really satoshis) are plots of land, which is in many ways a reasonable analogy, then they are not interchangeable. They become interchangeable with a pervasive mixing process, but at present in Bitcoin that doesn't exist, and may or may not ever exist (the greater the role of participants who are invested in AML/KYC processes, the less likely it is that will ever exist).

Fungibility isn't totally an inherent property either, there is a social context. Paper currency has serial numbers so in a technical sense it isn't totally fungible. However, the extent to which people pay attention to those serial numbers is every limited. If the social context changed so serial number scanners became widely used, paper currency would not be fungible by its nature.