It's because the Khazarian bankers are behind Proton, as deep state as it gets.

The site(s) should operate like Nodes in a peer to peer network over TOR, where it is impossible to trace it back. We need strong enough technology where bravery is not required, the same way that Monero has been designed, for a hostile environment.

I find myself limited to purchasing non-essential items because the marketplaces that accept Monero primarily offer goods that aren't necessary for survival. Essential services and products like fuel, property tax, internet service providers, electricity, insurance, phone service, and food are currently inaccessible through Monero transactions. For Monero to facilitate a successful circular economy, there must be significant progress in making these essential items available for purchase using XMR, whether through direct or indirect payment methods.

Also, Monerotopia is once a week. I think there is room for someone to do another podcast, maybe not entirely dedicated to Monero, but something that is themed on privacy, yet rarely let's an episode pass when he/she does not mention Monero. Speaking of SHE. Where are all the WOMEN standing up for private digital cash? Is there something in their DNA that screams "I want to be your slave"? Oh, no, wait that must have come from last nights dream. Seriously though, why aren't more women speaking out about freedom. There's Mel K, Ann Vandersteel, and Sarah Westall, and Whitney Webb. all truth tellers, but never mention Monero. I personally would like to see Ann Vandersteel on an interview discussing Monero.

I look forward to the day when all the people that "invest" in Monero have lost interest and moved on to greener pastures. Most of the folks in this community, at least the vocal ones, are more into expanding it's usage, promoting the build-out of the circular economy and helping spread the word to the "normies" without becoming brain damaged maximalists that can't really explain the value of their coin in coherent terms.

Another thing I look forward to is slowly phasing out any discussion of comparisons to and with Bitcoin. The ship has sailed and Monero WON. The two crypto-currencies now have less in common than they did several years ago due to several factors:

• The delisting of Monero from Centralized Exchanges worldwide has removed it from the pick list for most CEX's, therefore taken it off the radar for those swapping in and out of various crypto's for profit.
• The crackdown on any privacy tools associated to Bitcoin makes clear to the public that Bitcoin's authorized uses will be very minimal going forward, and being part of a circular economy in a peer to peer exchange will not be happening with BTC. This coin has been captured by the cabal and therefore, unable to fulfill any of it's original missions as outline in Satoshi's white paper.
• The capture by the stock markets and Big Banking with the formation of numerous ETF's, based on derivatives which re-hypothicate (i.e. counterfeit) BTC to a point where it more closely resembles an over-valued tech stock than it does a bonafide cryptocurrency. Also, the ETF has affects on the price that DO NOT resemble that of crypto-currencies. It's like trading forex on the commodoties market, apples and oranges.

I predict ratting out colleagues, neighbors, even friends and family may soon become a part of our reality in the near future. Mind your OPSEC.

When I hear about integration with any other centralized platform, I see it as a potential attack vector. I'd stay far, far away from this integration unless and until it's had years of rigorous testing. You do know that the NSA hacked Tucker Carlson's Signal account to discover and warn him against traveling to visit with Putin, right? Signal has been compromised by the same groups that are opposed to liberty and sound money.

Bitcoin has lost it's status as a viable crypto-currency, starting when ETF's were created, which had the effect of fiatizing what was before immutable, now has adopted all the worst properties of fiat money, the concept of derivatives. Derivatives is simply fakery by large institutions to get the benefit from each unit of money multiple times. These large institutions have a monopoly on this behavior. It is not possible to behave this way on an individual level. Great care should be taken as any potential new crypto-currency intermingles with the existing financial system. The Monero community has the benefit of learning from each mistake made with Bitcoin, and preventing that with it's own digital cash.

I am running a full node with the Official Monero GUI and also mining. I have not broken that connection in several days since I own a computer that doesn't need a reboot several times a day, so I haven't noticed any problems yet. Will update thread if I notice anything after power restart.

As a point of reference, when I first sync a full node after installing GUI or CLI program, it's not unusual at all for the first sync to take three or four days. I've done it several times.

That's why I don't use Ubuntu, because of their over-reliance on snaps, which do NOT undergo the same quality controls as standard repository feeds. Stick with Debian, don't use untrusted snaps, appimages, or flatpaks. All of the three formats seek to circumvent the exhaustive vetting that gives Linux a significant advantage over Microsoft Windows. Wallets are especially sensitive for obvious reasons.

May want to hold off on buying, price continues to fall...