I installed Haveno-reto but haven't used it yet. Is it not possible to contact the seller directly (without deposit)?

If so, then why not just contact the seller directly and handle it out of Haveno? Other than listing an order book, Haveno wouldn't be providing any value in mediating the order since only one side is actually using Haveno.

Give it time. I never used LocalMonero since I was happy with instant exchanges but I came close to using it just before it got shut down. At the time, there were only 2-3 acceptable sellers of XMR for Canadian Dollars and the best one kept having banking issues. There are currently 2 acceptable sellers of XMR for Canadian Dollars, which means that in Haveno's short life it's getting close to replacing LocalMonero for me. My hope is that eventually it gets integrated with Unstoppable Swap and BasicSwapDEX (and maybe Serai DEX) since there's no technical reason it can't automatically mirror the offers. Once that happens, it'll have more than enough liquidity for anyone.

I would agree with preferring light mode (with an off white background), but the community is split on the issue. Having a toggle mode would be helpful, but there might be a third alternative that might work for the community, beige mode like FIRO does ( https://firo.org/ ). Imagine using the hammermanns design but using the more beige versions of the Monero colors (toned down orange, dark grey, and white) as being the primary colors on the web site. It would show Monero is different and is a compromise between the "hacker black" and "corporate white" used by nearly every other crypto.

Granted, but searching bank records requires a warrant and you'd have to have one for all possible banks. Donations might be tracked (if not made in person), but distribution of donations are a whole another story since the people involved were already debanked...they could only spend the cash and they would likely mostly spend the cash in places that didn't scan bills. Even if they directly deposited the money into the bank, there would be no record of who got the donated money (remember, the people involved were debanked so the only way for them to get the cash if it were directly given to them). With Bitcoin, there's a clear trace from donator to donation collector to debanked person stored in the blockchain so it can be retrieved for analysis at leisure. With AI it's possible to greatly narrow down the path to the extent that standard police leg work and warrants can find the path with a high degree of accuracy.

The "sources" are extremely sus. Most CEXes have delisted Monero and no-KYC exchanges by definition don't have KYC. The addresses are not stored on the blockchain. If an address is known to be CSAM, it would be blocked off so no transactions would have been made and because of the previous point, you can't go back in the blockchain to find past offenders. The CSAM site likely has other non-CSAM porn so many actual purchases would be legal so usage on honeypot exchanges would not mean much. Reading between the lines, the article is basically coming up with its statistics via inference. (1) Most BTC blockchain activity is speculation, (2) CSAM makes up a significant percentage of BTC actual usage, (3) Monero's popularity is growing, (4) Criminals prefer privacy, (5) therefore Monero's growth is mostly from CSAM. The main counterpoint to this is Monero's increase use in coin cards, VPN and other privacy tool/services purchases, Shopinbit, etc where Monero's use exceeds that of BTC and lightning. So (1) does not apply to Monero, and it's likely (2) if it were ever true is increasingly not the case so (5) is absolutely false.

Yes, adopt those threads on Monero Town but do not be surprised if it doesn't change the size of the reddit population. People on reddit that have no other interests, might move to Monero Town, but most reddit users started with interests in several reddit forums and monero just happens to be one of them. They won't leave reddit for Monero Town, although they might add to their social media if Monero Town is much better than /r/monero. If you want them to move from reddit, you have to make sure the other groups are also on lemmy. My suggestion is to have a poll on /r/monero asking people which groups do people look at. Once you have that list, then find the comparable lemmy group (if there is any) and then post it on reddit. That resource would open people up to considering life outside of reddit. Without that resource, expect slow change.

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).

Eventually Monero will ossify and be linked to the existing financial system just like cash and gold. But when it happens it has to be on Moneros terms. Unfortunately bitcoin ossified and got adopted before it became popular. Btc.maxis believe Btc is popular but that is only in comparison with other crypto. If you look at people like rebel capitals on YouTube try to live off crypto outside Europe or the US you see it no crypto is anywhere near usable except perhaps Usdt on tron. That's to Btc, monero has a guide on what not to do.

While I agree, it's not impossible. MimbleWimble has proven itself on Litecoin and it was implemented (I believe) using a soft fork. So just as Ordinals was forced on the maxis, MimbleWimble can be forced on the maxis as a payment channel if the demand is there. Note, MimbleWimble isn't as private as Monero, and the fact that it's possible to know when something goes into and out of MimbleWimble may make you targeted as a "money launderer" makes it risky. But at least its a step forward.

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.