Thinking out Loud: I’m looking for ways to promote Monero internationally and it’s crossing my mind that I think Monero’s primary differentiator is more attractive to westerns than the Global South.

Monero users are often trying to escape the surveillance of their governments but the global south doesn’t have that issue. They more so want to escape the mismanagement of their central banks and government. But many of their governments have sparse crypto surveillance abilities.

And then due to network effects and general shitcoinery of crypto scammers all over the internet, it’s hard to talk to members of the global south about any coin other than the obvious one.

So my question is, anyone have experience on-boarding people outside the “west” to use XMR as currency and savings?

Westerners* on that first paragraph

Spammer ^

I'm from the East, not South or West, so this may not answer your question(s), nevertheless, I feel it is useful for the discussion.

I think you are correct that Monero's privacy features are more attractive to Westerners than people in other countries. But I don't find it hard to talk to (even non-technical) people about cryptocurrency or Monero. I think in East Europe and Russia people generally have an open mind. They CANNOT imagine that their government (or any bureaucracy, e.g., banks) are NOT corrupt, in fact, they believe corruption (as long as it does

not hurt anyone but maybe only the state) should be or even must be part of everyday life. This was an important part of survival behind the iron curtain and still is today.

Also, governments and banks are not in peoples' (everyday) financial lives as much as in the US, at least not yet. In addition, cash is practically synonymous with money. Sure, people like the convenience of electronic payments but cash is still king and people trust it more, at least for everyday transactions, but even for healthcare, e.g., dentist (= get great and inexpensive service, no IDs, no questions.)

Financial privacy is a luxury at this point and therefore secondary. More important are low fees and low inflation. As I see it, the two most important blocks of adoption are high volatility and pretty much zero vendor acceptance. So from this viewpoint, emphasizing lower fees and perhaps lower volatility(?) than that of Bitcoin, should serve better to argue for Monero.

In addition, if someone could suggest a way of transferring larger sums of money (say 50-100K USD/EUR worth of RUB) to and from Russia (in the current situation with the SWIFT system down), that would be great. A solution to _that_ problem (perhaps involving Monero) would definitely be a killer app right now. (I thought about localmonero -> monero -> localmonero, but not every country is easy to buy XMR in on localmonero at least

not in those amounts + still involves having to trust a third party that's not even a bank.)

<jozsef[m]> "In addition, if someone could..." <- Divide the monero into random amounts of bitcoin and trade them for fiat on bisq or an exchange if kyc is not an issue, might work. Don’t send the divisions to the same btc address after the division though.

What Bisq payment options are available for Russians? Is Revolut legal there?

Google

eudaimon36[m]: idk. Some domestic transfer system? I imagine they have them.

<aremor[m]> "Divide the monero into random..." <- And don’t spend them in the same transaction

<aremor[m]> "idk. Some domestic transfer..." <- I ask because if they have some more universal payment methods like Revolut, more Rubble liquidity can be added: more BTC entry points, then more swaps for Monero.

idk what you mean but I’m sure everything international is shut down now unless it goes through India or China or some other neutral third party.

I think I see what you mean. Yeah more fiat < > btc liquidity.

There are currently NO available trades in the Rubble on Bisq

I would place some sell offers, if I knew a payment method they can take

For the Monero -> ₿ it’d be faster to do use a good instant exchange from kycnot.me though

maybe they get some BTC and I get some profit

Bisq has instant swaps for BTC/Monero

no necessarily disagreeing with you, just saying

<aremor[m]> "Divide the monero into random..." <- That's too complex and not trustworthy enough for someone who has never even heard of cryptocurrency. I think it would be better to go a lot more oldschool and take the train, get cash locally (RUB or local currency, in this case GEL) and take the train back. 😀 But in this particular case, there are other problems: the Georgian bank simply refuses to give out larger amounts per

day per person, so even this not practical.)

<eudaimon36[m]> "What Bisq payment options are..." <- I think local, inter-, and intra-bank transfers. But I'm not very familiar, as I'm not Russian, just happen to be here amd try to help some family members.

jozsef[m]: You should see whether Revolut is available to them. It would open some doors.

Revolut banned all transfers to/from Russia in March

So transfers within Russia work just fine also electronic (fiat, RUB) payments and purchases. Only international transactions involving the west are screwed because SWIFT is down.

you can't open Revolut account in Russia

it only works in EU/EEA and the US

Anyone from Russia here has used KoronaPay? I heard rumors that KP might be able to transfer EUR to RUB?

KoronaPay was working in May for transfers to Russia (last time I used it)

Tjeir googlepay page only lists: manat, lari, lira, tenge. I

s/Tjeir/Their/

s/Tjeir/Their/, s/googlepay/googleplay/

but they have low limits, it's only for small amounts

Natutally.

<sech1> "Revolut banned all transfers to..." <- Of course they did.... unfortunately NOT unbelievable.

On another note: currently re-downloading the blockchain through the GUI--massively slowing down my computer. I have a few things to do: will closing the wallet during download be a potential problem? I do not want to have to start over again owing to another low-iq move...

Yeah, you know how this goes: they got an offer they could not refuse.

eudaimon36[m]: just use the command exit and it will save what you downloaded, when you restart it will resume at the point that you closed it

Command in the daemon

Disclaimer: I only use the cli but the gui uses the same daemon ofc

I know how to end processes I started in terminal, but not sure how to do this with the GUI.

(Besides the obvious of just exiting the wallet)

I am pretty sure the GUI shuts down the daemon it started "gracefully" so it won't corrupt / lose the blockchain, all on itself, without needed any manual daemon commands.

If for the only reason that something else would not make sense

True, and if it didn't do so I imagine we would hear about it :D

Agreed--just playing it safe owing to a stupid move a few days ago that screwed up the blockchain

rbrunner: it attempts to shut down the daemon gracefully but it will kill it if it takes too long

nioc: Ahh, already remember seeing all my issues :(

I ride the little bus

selsta: is there a way of accessing the daemon separately in the gui?

what do you mean with accessing separately?

you can send commands to it

Settings -> Log textbox allows you to enter "exit" for example, or "status"

Long ago I used to start the daemon b4 starting the gui and exit daemon b4 gui

You can still do that

selsta: Just run monerod in terminal before opening GUI, then stop it from terminal? What's the advantage?

no advantage really, just that it's possible

some people run monerod as a service on their system all the time

I see

otherwise you have to wait for it to sync every time you start the GUI and daemon

That makes sense, excellent idea, I'll start doing so

<plowsof> "is that bridgerton ? i think sgp..." <- monerobull @monerobull:matrix.org:

thanks sgp ! he has fixed the bridge in Monero already 🚀

monerooutreach.org seems to having issues. Wasn't there previously a lot more articles and content?

I've just been made aware of hintos new CCS - at the last meeting there where some doubts about monero-bash' usefulness to the community, i support that proposal myself but at this moment in time its not going to funding (unless more support rolls in) , he has returned with a new project, a GUI for XMRig + p2pool to achieve as close as possible, a "1 click" solution to mining on p2pool with the most hashrate that is noob friendly. More

info / proof of concept here if you are interested repo.getmonero.org/monero-project/ccs-proposals/-/merge_requests/350

Why not use p2pool directly

The p2pool built in miner*

If xmrig and p2pool are on the same device?

If xmrig hashrate is higher, is it 1% higher, to cover the dev fee? Though I though p2pool and xmrig can achieve the same hashrates out of the box.

sech1: is there any hashrate improvements in xmrig vs p2pool?

up to 10-15% higher

mostly because of MSR mod

of course you can run the MSR mod as a separate script, then the difference will be only 2-3%

Thanks. Good to know

i never saw anything about a built in p2pool miner in the p2pool docs. it supports external miners at the same time?

monero-gui uses that with the p2pool integration

otherwise we would have also had to implement xmrig support which is tricky with AV

btw, vdo's monerokon/monerotopia voiceovers are already funded, clearly there is alot of support for his work v1docq47 Congratulations! 🥳

so the gui is 10 to 15% faster than having xmr + p2pool separate?

that's a big difference

the other way around

ahh

ok

0.5808527526 xmr left sorry, blind ^

i was looking into the CCS wallet and discovered that due to the rounding up of totals on the site , we've been under funding our developers for years! Sarang: research funding for 2020 Q3 underfunded by 0.003552452154 xmr , the writing has been on the wall for years 😛