Quote from: vuduchyld on April 16, 2016, 03:59:00 AM

Bullish indicator: look at all the Monero trashing threads on page 1 of Altcoin Discussion.

I love it!

Wow, that's pretty hilarious. bitcointalk is so full of noobs that can't do their own homework or evaluate software themselves...I think those threads actually influence people.

I just started getting into Monero recently but did my own independent analysis of privacy options in cryptos before starting to buy some. I also own or will own most of these, but monero is an increasing part of my portfolio now.

Bitcoin with Stealth Tx and Confidential Tx - Too much taint in the chain already and optional privacy is not as good. Great for global adoption currently, but lacking in many areas with the number one being scalability at this point.
Ethereum with future optional Ring signatures - Even Vitalik said, "Ethereum makes privacy voluntary, as you have to use mixers to get privacy, whereas Monero makes privacy compulsory, which is better."
Dash - Dash does offer usability in a privacy marketed coin via mixers and darksend if you choose to use it. It is again, voluntary which as Vitalik pointed out above, not so good. Also, as a student of cyber security, I would believe that any centralized / federated control structure with masternodes or whatever, can be comprimised via takeover, legal judgement, or via the use of honeypots like the Tor network. If I can avoid some structure like that, I would prefer it. Dash also has the highest privacy minded coin marketcap and an incentive structure to buy and hold the coins in masternodes which makes it #2 on my list of investable privacy coins.
Monero - No gui. I'm pretty technical and have been in bitcoin since 2010 and it took me a few weeks to become comfortable with monero. The learning curve is not as steep as ethereum, but it's up there. New users should probably not invest in it or use it yet unless they are technical and want to contribute to the development and QA testing. The default stealth tx and ring signature system in monero is super compelling to me as the only person you need to trust is yourself and your own private node. With future RingCT enhancements, it becomes even better.
ZeroCoin / Moneta - Supposedly launching this coming week, and funded by some people that have been around for a while, I think this is a great research project and something to watch, but AFAIK, it's not really usable in a high tx type environment yet.
ZeroCash - To be launched August-ish of this year, backed by big names in the space and based on zk-SNARKs and extrapolation of the ZeroCoin transactional concept. The tech looks really interesting but tx signing takes 90 seconds + 8.5GB RAM on a high end Intel machine right now. Also, the devs haven't really decided on scalability hard limits to be included into the coin or how coinbase transactions and fraud detection will work. Something to watch over the next few years, but no way close to usable.
There were a couple other coins like ShadowCoin or whatever that I looked at quickly but found major flaws so I'm not going to even put them here.

Monero is the only one that I think I would actually be able to use soon and not be concerned about the technology limitations, privacy, and anonymity. The whole no GUI issue isn't a big deal to me because as long as there's a command line API, someone can build a user friendly app that abstracts out the monero technical stuff. It's not like Bitcoin adoption is super great because of Bitcoin-QT.

EDIT: Oh yes, forgot to mention. The primary goal for me to find a privacy / anon coin is to ensure 100% fungibility of the coin. I don't want to do some trade with someone and find out later I got a tainted coin from some dark market tx or a coin from a known stolen address and not be able to spend it again. Part the reason I wanted to find a fungible coin is because after coinbase closed my account without giving me a reason (even when I asked them), I have to only assume it was because of some tainted bitcoins that circulated into my account or were traced back to my account.