Quote from: aminorex on March 20, 2018, 12:05:06 PM

Quote from: alaskabm on March 19, 2018, 12:11:16 PM

... G20 news.

I thought that XMR was way more resilient to regulations. Unfortunately correlation works both ways, up and down

Short-term correlations do not always correlate with long-term correlations. Crypto is somewhat like the broad equity or bond market, and all varieties correlate with Bitcoin for many immediate impulses, because so much accounting is done with Bitcoin numeraire, just as alpha-seeking is done with reference to a broad index. Within crypto there are sectors, such as contract- focussed or PoS, or various hash algos, for which both psychological and fundamental factors cause increased correlations in their impulse response to some triggering events. But in the long run, the small but persistent fundamental factors drive dispersion, as each stock (or alt) is driven pseudo-randomly by short-term factors of high correlation, but consistently and monotonically by long-term fundamental factors which differentiate it from it's "peers", and do not correlate.

Monero is unlike its "peers" because it has moneyness in spades. A tighter regulatory regime will cause a price shock, but if your time preference is long-term, it will not matter. The same contraction which drives the price down short-term will only drive the price up in the long run. The privacy sector will suffer shocks, but they will only serve to expose the fundamental factors which create demand for privacy, and discriminate Monero as the highest quality private currency (in terms of factors that matter: liquidity, usability, and antifragility).

Gold is a larger, more integrated part of the economy (compared to crypto), moving on scales of decades and centuries. How successful were Keynes, Roosevelt, Nixon, and Mao in suppressing the price and/or global trade in gold? How successful was the London gold pool? In the short-term their actions shocked the market. In the long run, they are history while gold persists, and inexorably rises in price. Monero is much, much more like gold (but faster) than are it's "peers", which are more like the North Korean Won, or Theranos shares.

In fact, I contend that the crypto which is amenable to surveillance and central control will lose value in the long run, simply because it is surveilled and controlled - and not to your benefit - while the more decentralized and private crypto will experience consistent, persistent demand which inexorably pushes the price up. A smack-down punch can take the price arbitrarily low, but the inexorable forces of demand will continue. In fact, even in the near-term, the smacks just cause corresponding spikes later because they encourage speculators to enter.

Surveillance and centralized control serve the surveillor and controller, but privacy serves the users of the currency, and thus the denominated economy. Hence the free economy will inexorably grow and produce wealth, while the slave economy founders and creates poverty. We have seen this repeatedly throughout history. So vivid is this lesson that Will Durant considers it the first and foremost "lesson of history: There is and endless cycle in alternating ascendance of the forces of accumulation and centralization, on the one hand, and the forces of distribution and liberty on the other.

As always, an articulate and intriguing read.

I still believe XMR is a good future hold, have you any thoughts on whether BTC+Layer2 will be 'enough' privacy and erode the XMR value prop?