Great post, and I 100% agree.

There are some very good and easy to follow resources on how to transition to XMR:

• See /d/Monero, specifically the Frequently asked questions pinned post;

• The XMRGuide site which can also be found on /d/Monero's banner menu;

• The /d/DNMBible.

Most definitely. It's really surprising that this hasn't been done yet. I guess one of the issues is people being unfamiliar with XMR but really if you know how to handle and manage BTC its no different with XMR. Just a different wallet.

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Fully agree with this post. After a bit of a break from DNMs save a very occasional purchase, I made the switch over to XMR when White House Market was clearly the best game in town and basically forced me to. People will change if pushed, even new users. The majority of buyers aren't going to give up on getting their drugs online because it's a hassle to learn something new.

Tribe Seuss offer a discount to people using XMR. A soft approach, but it would be nice to see it replicated on markets if possible, failing the markets collectively coming together and banning BTC. Presumably these fees are a nightmare for everyone - customers, vendors, markets. On top of that, it's not as anonymous. It seems many people are dealing in an expensive, insecure currency (BTC) out of fear that if they don't, they'll lose customers. But all of those customers once had to learn to buy BTC in order to get their drugs, and they will learn to use XMR.

I think it would need coordinated action from the markets to do this though. No one is going to want to be the one market taking the hit by banning BTC (WHM managed this but I think there was much less competition at that point?) but surely at this point, it's not in ANYONE's interest to keep using this ridiculous ponzi scheme of a "currency".

Lead by example. I switched all my listings to XMR only, all other vendors should do the same

Someone once told me that BTC is digital gold, and XMR is digital cash. I think once you begin to view it in this aspect, usage of each becomes more clear. That said, a very large majority of DNM users still struggle to obtain XMR and are solely comfortable with BTC. Markets that still accept BTC do so understandably, because if not they would be losing out on a lot of business (and this is coming from someone who works on a market that only accepts XMR). Eventually though, like all things, the status quo needs to be challenged.

Alot of us never even used btc in the first place. It fascinates me how many people are using bitcoin and think it's "anonymous" by default.

I honestly think its been time to use Xmr ONLY for all markets IMO, bitcoins fees are insane the past few days, so i definitely agree 1000% to this post!

recent spike in bitcoin transaction fees has made it a less attractive option for many users as well it's affecting the vendor's business the network has become congested in resulting in longer wait times and higher fees But still we have seen many transactions where people are preferring only btc don't know why

Honestly I could not agree more. People are people though, and tend to use the "laziest" path.

WHM proved successfully that a private coin can be used in practice, and together with higher transaction fees of BTC it gives us some hope.

I think all markets are moving to XMR. I see many new markets are only using XMR. I think some markets use BTC mostly because lots of exchanges dont use or support XMR. I think teaching vendors and buyers how to convert and where to do so safely would help move it along faster. I think if Zcash were more mainstream and users sent transactions anonymously all the time it may have a use case in the DNM as well. You cant rely on a single technology for your safty.

The one thing that scares me with bitcoin is the open ledger. If LE identifies your wallet, they can trace and charge you for your illegal transactions. The BTC ledger is complete and permanent forever.

Remember the last time that btc fees soared and users started moving to litecoin and ethereum which were a fraction of the cost to transfer? it took a while for vendors to hop on to accepting those alt coins but they did.

Great topic and indeed it should be the final push needed to cause more widespread xmr as default usage.

Markets would've gotten rid of bitcoins long time ago, however, buyers don't want to switch to monero. Buying and using bitcoins in much more convenient for them.

XMR is infinitely better than BTC and should be the de-facto standard. that being said you can still use BTC anonymously even if it came from KYC sources as long as you know what you're doing. i believe BTC should still be an option for advanced users but have XMR be the default.

Guys, please tell me where I can purchase XMR. Also might sound a bit of an idiot but I'm not sure where Ican get best direction for PGP. Would be extremely grateful... Thanks

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this should have happened a long time ago. & to everyone saying "but people won't use a market that's XMR-only," didn't a hugely popular xmr-only market just exit-scam, leaving a bad stench & a trail of snakeslime in its wake? if nothing else, they proved people will in fact use an XMR-only market. it's super easy to set up an account on localmonero or one of the wallet apps that lets you swap btc to xmr. people should be staying off kyc exchanges anyway. i'm still a comparative n00b & even i can see this is a no-brainer

Unfortunately the noobs struggle to buy xmr and they cant be assed to learn

It's been time for a while, Bitcoin sucks...

It was ~3 years ago time for that

Completely agree: Just a few reasons to Deal in XMR as BTC is a trustless currency. With btc address, outside party can gain info of all transaction input and output that have gone through BTC address; not good. XMR maybe comrade jump through extra hoop to get, but this worth. Comrade ever heard of saying "follow the money," take a second of comrade time to find the amount of informatioin available just from btc address - every transaction received and sent....... MOVE TO XMR team kustim current high suggest exchange aggregate --TROCADOR-- for sweat free exchange btc to XMR, has onion and i2p, no javascript, privacy based, data delete after 14 days, refund guarantee amazing service, search on duck go, , compare all exchange, grades them, only usee grade A exchange, grade a never ask for kyc, grade B sometime ask for kyc and refund if not, do not be attract by low % exchange rate, avoid FIXEDFLOAT at all costs, they have seized held fund and demand kyc, not good. with btc fee higher than ever - delay and all - all more reason for community to switch to xmr and never look back. BTC had it's time - now is time for XMR age, just wait comrade.

As of now, XMR blockchain is uncrackable for another proposed couple decades meaning transaction information is private until then.

With xmr transactions. receiver does not know sender address, this is why for transactions, people ask for txid as proof.

Private The amount of coins you own, send and receive are not observable on the Blockchain. There should be no "rich list" (a list of the largest coin holders).

Untraceable/Unlinkable The coins you send and receive are not traceable (to or from), nor linkable by way of transaction history.

Fungible Every coin is worth the same value and is thus mutually interchangeable. No coin risks potential blacklisting nor devaluement due to deprecating transaction history.

Decentralized All nodes have equal power and control; there are no nodes that have more influence than others, i.e. supernodes. The currency is not created, maintained nor represented by any one person or company, i.e. a central authority.

A recipient is able to receive multiple payments through a single address, while at the same time ensuring there are no links on the blockchain between their address and anybody else's address. This is made possible by stealth addresses, where a random one-time address is automatically created for each transaction being made by the sender. In other words, all payments sent to the recipient are routed to unique addresses on the blockchain, which in turn prevents any links – masking the recipient, and providing no way to see if anybody else has sent coins to the recipient.

While stealth addresses prevent linkability on the blockchain, when and where the coins are then moved by the recipient (if ever), is able to be traced by the original sender of the coins, by identifying outputs on the blockchain. This issue of traceability is solved by the utilization of ring signatures. With ring signatures, outputs are masked, so the sender is not able to tell if it's their coins that are then moved by the recipient, ultimately providing untraceability. This is done by grouping the transaction being sent, with other transactions from the blockchain, to obfuscate the outputs being spent and allowing for plausible deniability.

Privacy, Traceability, Linkability

Bitcoin does not offer privacy and has never claimed to do so. The Bitcoin blockchain is completely transparent; every transaction, its history, and the amount being sent or received is public and easily viewable by an observer. Thus, Bitcoin transactions are easy to trace and link. Although your Bitcoin address is "anonymous" in that no identifying information (e.g. name, address, etc.) is attached to it, it is presumed that at some point you will cash out your Bitcoins (e.g. through an exchange) or you will purchase an item with your Bitcoins (e.g. from a merchant), and you will at that point risk connecting your identity to your Bitcoin address(es), your Bitcoins, and their entire transaction history.

References:

getmonero

This sounds great, I agree! The privacy of Bitcoin assumes that your wallet address (public key) is not associated with your identity, but KYC exchanges enforce the opposite.

If the identity of the Bitcoin's owner is hidden then transactions would be anonymous, but not private! XMR is both anonymous and private :D

I agree that we all should be using Monero, but I dont know if we need to ban btc from markets altogether.

I'd imagine the vast majority of darknet purchases are personal amounts. Amounts of drugs that it really doesn't matter (legally) if we are ever caught ordering them (a gram of molly, a ball of coke, 10 tabs of LSD, a qp of weed or less, etc etc etc) as we'll just get a love letter and that's that. (speaking as NA citizen)

For those people, the amount of anonymity is not as make or break as it is for the rest of us on here.

Indeed, the time has come and it is long overdue.

E.D.

I think it has kind of defacto happened already I mean unless you are placing really large orders the fees of BTC alone are just insane tack that onto any small or medium order and you potentially have a really bad deal. I think the fact so many offer and vendors also accepting XMR already shows that its already in process.

Ive found XMR easy to work with, easy to move and at times super fast. It certainly is one of the coins offering consistent and reasonable transaction processing.

what exchanges are people using?

localmonero and agora are increasingly unviable, especially the cash by mail option

alpha only accepted xmr and that turned out great

sarcasm flag here

they just assume you should use bitcoin because of clever information control pushing them to think bitcoin is anonymous. only way to fix this is by teaching them otherwise.

When WHM was XMR only a bunch of motivated buyers figured out how to use XMR. Strange coincidence

"Want drugs, use XMR". Suddenly the whole world is an expert

The responsibility lies with markets and private shops not with buyers and definitely not with noobs.

The BTC thing is going to come back to haunt some people here, those records are permanent and public. When the quantum guys make cracking PGP the same as cracking a regular password, Pandora's box will not only be opened but liberally fingered.

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All the popular KYC exchanges have banned XMR. So this won't be possible. The most important thing is convenience. Your average drug user won't be willing to go through all the hoops that one must go through to purchase XMR.

Markets should enable bitcoin lightning, because bitcoin is much easier for customers to get a hold of than xmr.