My gains/my group? I am confused. Did I not use the word "they/their" ? Also my gains have come from mining XMR when there were fewer than 10 miners, not by trading.

Having said that my opinions of some aspects of XMR have changed based on what I have witnessed in the past 2 years at different points in time. An year ago I would mention it to anyone in person (I will let BTCTalkers who have met me speak or watch doesn't matter), but now I won't. The landscape has changed with the type of crowd in it and just because I can withstand all this doesn't mean everyone else will. The people classifying XMR as toxic asset decided not to be in it, nothing more, nothing less.


Edit: See a "triple top" is coming .......

It is a difficult paradigm shift for the masses still. There have been zero assets to compare with Monero, so it makes it that much more difficult. I got into BTC when I read the whitepaper, a membership and knowledge about this forum came much later unfortunately otherwise I would have been a bit more financially successful (rocket had left the station) and I was just left admiring the math.

When the CryptoNote whitepaper came out, I knew what was in store. I also pleaded with @thankful_for_today to make changes initially, both in forum and in IRC but that was one headstrong dude. I miss @tacotime's presence these days. We were both OPs in the initial IRC channel that we later surrendered to the current team. Good times.  

I bet the CN team are all pleased with the hard work and continued research publications that come out from the current team regardless of the external animosity at times. The cryptography is top notch math.

Even Ethereum has published a lot of good papers. But there is no way that a model of distribution like that will see long term success. It has to be meaningful blood and sweat with respect to mining and verification for it to make sense and it is going to take a while for everyone to get off that train. This is also a big short coming and narrow sightedness of zcash. Awesome math, bad model. They will be flipped for Bitcoins and that is where it will end. XMR is going to be the real wealth.