As usual, Monero is mentioned as a problem (for criminals) and not a solution (no-one knows your funds). and KYC and CEX are good since the catch criminals.

Either way, the standard rule applies, always have a decoy account with enough money to be plausible that you can give up. Unlike bank accounts or CEX accounts, decoy wallets are easy and cheap and even if you're forced to give it up access, you'll be able to convince the thief and save the rest of your money.

I don't like CEXes and the whole transfer money in and transfer out process and Kraken appears to require an account. and I see a sign in. If ChangeNow or any other instant exchanges that don't require 3D KYC/AML, I'll use it. I haven't purchase XMR in the last few months since I have enough for a major emergency and I can't tie up more money, so I don't know the current state of instant exchanges. But when I do need to buy again, if I can't find an instant exchange with low KYC out there to buy XMR, I know that they still exist for the popular POW coins so I'd go the DEX route. But if those don't exist, I will be more open to explore other options like Haveno or Kraken.

I think it's because finance in general is more a guy's conversation area. Put two arbitrary guys from anywhere in the world together and they'll talk about one of the following: sports/gaming, business/finance, technology, politics and family. XMR covers at least three of these. Women tend to have more social interests so finance (other than budgeting, where women dominate, even it hyper-traditional families) is a much smaller percentage of most women's conversation. It's not to say that privacy isn't important to women, but if you want a privacy podcast for women, it has to be more social. If you want a pro-privacy podcast for women, get the following women to start a group podcast: Naomi Brockwell (privacy), Janice McAfee (privacy money activist), Vanessa Harris (practical altcoins with strong support for privacy in crypto), and some women in the "Women Leading Privacy" organisations around the world. If you want such a podcast, reach out directly to these women, encourage others to do so, and pledge to support the podcast, either by spreading the world, or helping organise it, or day to day, or even through a donation (in XMR of course).

Here's instruction on use: https://learn.robosats.com/read/en/

I think the key issue is the lightning network and the lack of user state so they user doesn't know how many steps there are or where they are in process. Getting rid of lightning solves parts of the issue. The user state issue is a newbie UI mistake that most DEXes have solved by including something basic like providing the steps involved in the sidebar, highlighting where you are in the process and how to get to the next step. What I found intimidating on LocalMonero was the openness of it and the fact that may ads requested either KYC or to use Telegram (which I have no need of installing). The two extra layers on anonymity in robosats discourages KYC or use of 3rd parties to discuss the transaction. The discussions can take place on an ID-less chat like SimpleX which is integrated. I believe that SimpleX supports plugins to allow for automation, so crypto-to-crypto trades can be done without user intervention.

The point I'm trying to make is that in the absence of LocalMonero, it is possible to build a replacement using existing technologies (Tor,Robosats,SimpleX,Haveno,BasicSwap,Serai, etc), in a more private, anonymous, an easier and less intimidating to understand technologies.

I'm not american, but it'd take this report with a grain of salt since Politico is left leaning, the former advisers were selected at a time when Trump was more naive wrt the deep state and more dependent on neocons (first term Trump was indifferent to FISA, now he opposes it since it targeted him). What we do know is that Trump wants a strong dollar since if the US looses its reserve status, it's a disaster. He wants to stop the haemorrhaging of US debt by stopping the wars and rebuilding US financial relations which were damaged due to the war and sanctions that forced many countries that tried to wean themselves off the dollar and SWIFT. His stance on Bitcoin has softened, so I don't think he'll be antagonistic to it. A lot depends on who he picks for VP and the military and FBI/CIA. If he picks Vivek Ramaswamy as VP and Tulsi Gabbard in charge of the military and FBI/CIA, he'll focus on government and military reform and he'll be very friendly to crypto, possibly using it along with gold to help to support the US dollar. If he does the reverse, you'll likely see more social programs and reigning in of the FBI/CIA. If both are excluded and MAGA conservatives are selected to those spots, expect him to continue pre-COVID policies which appeared to work.

Agreed but that's the wrong approach. You cannot just drop old blocks since old wallets would lose their money. A better approach would be to have wallets specify a 'preserve records for N months ' feature. The larger the number of months, the higher transaction fees are so people are incentivized to use a small number.. A small number would also help with privacy since if the view key is ever leaked or quantum computing ever takes off, old your old records would not be leaked. Once N months passes. Old transactions are replaced by a single forwarding transaction with the total amount in the account.

Don't laugh. Gold can be purchased in many jurisdictions without KYC, so having a tokenized gold sidechain that may be exchanged with real gold at participating local dealers might actually qualify as a legal fiat on/off ramp. If gold is KYCed in your region, just then use a silver, copper, or even industrial grade manure or toilet paper side chain token. You can't KYC all commodities. Imagine the field day the press would having on any politician that required KYC for trading fiat for bull manure (BS) and vice versa. The jokes just write themselves.

BTC/ETH sidechains would be silly but there are valid uses of sidechains. Currently all transactions are stored on the blockchain forever, but do you really need to have 600 coffees a year forever on the blockchain for a significant portion of the Monero community? It makes much more sense to farm that out to a Monero Mimble-Wimble sidechain. Since this side chain specialises in small purchases, the consensus rule might also be speedier, so you get all the benefits of the lightning network with none of the drawbacks. Similarly, having a sidechain for scripted actions like automatic subscription payments (or at least payment reminders) would be nice, or more complex multisig and escrow wallets. If done correctly, all this could be done without touching the main Monero chain so Monero can focus on being real cash and the sidechains can do the extras and test out experimental features that may come to Monero eventually.

The reasons you give for using Monero don't resonate with most people. No matter what political system you're under, most people generally live very similar lives, separated more by the city/rural divide than anything else. So even if you convince people of all the threats, they'd shrug their shoulders and adapt, no matter what actually happens. Every once and a while, things get really out of whack, like during the lockdowns, but they can't stay that way because people get bored of the political blah blah and tired of being manipulated and just go back to normal despite the consequences. Revolution doesn't defeat tyrants, indifference does.

So what can be done to help Monero? Just increase the parallel/circular economy. Convince shop owners that crypto in general allows them to avoid credit card service charges and that there are only a few cryptos that are actually used, Monero being one of them. Host Monero meetups in restaurants and convince them to accept Monero during the meetup. Talk to farmers and get them to accept. Get content creators and online services to avoid dealing with payment processors and accept Monero. Basically, the usual stuff. Also, improve Monero technology. There are a lot of gaps that need filing to make the user experience as easy as credit card to use and banks to manage your money. Make it easier to live off Monero using by providing services like Spritz finance (https://www.spritz.finance/). Yes these are KYCed services, but you are already KYCed by your landlord, tax department, and electricity company so there is no loss of privacy. This does, however, allow you to live on Monero without having a bank account and some services can be made non-KYC when possible.

Actually both since it is an important way to avoid and resolve payment disputes. Private ledgers mean nothing in a payment dispute. It's so important that without it, for large payments everyone will have to involve a "trusted third party" to keep everyone honest. It's the reason why good cashiers never put payments in the cash register until the customer leaves...without this "trick" it's easy to be scammed. It's the whole reason double entry accounting exists. MW also doesn't completely fix the issue of exploding blockchains. With 6 billion people on MW (arbitrarily chosen number) and each person having multiple wallets and wallets being lost and new people coming into MW regularly due to new births the number of wallets will explode. There needs to be a regularly get rid of abandoned and locked out wallets. Hard forks like Seraphis are a good way to find out who still has a wallet and eventually clear out the old wallets, but you can't keep doing that for a stable money supply. I've stated before, I fully support transaction fees being partially based on how big your blockchain footprint is as long as you can "close the books" and compact your footprint. I'm also open to fair schemes dropping abandoned wallets (e.g. calculate a "fee" based on blockchain footprint and time of last access. If the "fee" is less than the amount in the wallet, then do nothing. If it is greater than the amount, then the wallet can be pruned.).

Personally, I think the truth lies in the middle. I think having full history for purchasing coffee is not only wasteful of space clogs the blockchain (imagine 6 billion people adding 3 coffees a day to the block chain over 50 years). My back account keep track of all transactions for a few years and I've rarely needed more, but I absolutely do need a transaction history for budgeting and taxes. So a hybrid approach where important or big ticket items have full transaction history (until you ask to prune to a MW), and smaller ticket items can be in smaller MW subaccounts of different categories is the best of all worlds.

There are several possibilities. Here are four off the top of my head: (1) The "evil" had second thoughts and returned the money for one reason or another. I'm not sure why he'd return more than he stole since he was likely going to get away with it. (2) A white hat hacker took the money to force the CSS team to clean up their OPSEC and custody. He was always going to return it so once the message was relayed and the CSS community began a respond, he returned the funds. Why the extra 21 XMR? IMO, he was able to profit from the borrowing, possibly by taking advantage of the BTC pump (as his white hat hacker fee) and gave some of his gains back. (3) An insider "borrowed" the money, either for the white hacker reasons or take advantage of the BTC pump. The 21 XMR has the same meaning. (4) A BTC whale benefactor benefited from the pump but loves Monero and wants it not to suffer from the hack, so he gave his profits plus a 21 XMR hint.