Proposed state attack on "the coin that shall not be named" [Monero] failed.

The coin that shall not be named

It's highly likely that one of the following events will bring Monero to the forefront of the minds of "crypto" investors despite the media and governments trying hard to not name [redacted] at all.

1. Imagine writing this EU report about "crypto" and "drugs" and not mentioning Monero or XMR even once: https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/drugs-library/cryptocurrencies-and-drugs-analysis-cryptocurrency-use-darknet-markets-eu-and-neighbouring-countries_en

2. An other example is the use of the "AEC" acronym (anonymity enhancing cryptocurrencies) that is widely used by the US government. Monero has a market dominating position both in DNM as well as the privacy currency sector.

3. Chainalysis (a private crypto tracking company that sells data to big corps and big gov) stopped mentioning Monero in their reports years ago.

A couple of interesting developments

Here is a short overview of recent important developments before diving deeper into an interesting part of crypto history. The collaboration of Binance and state actors to suppress prices for coins that work as actual currency equivalents such as Monero:

• Introduction of CBDC's - Monero is basically the anti-CBDC
• MoneroRun - the Monero community created a "proof of reserves day", which takes place yearly on April 18th, Monero's birthday.
• Organic demand overturns naked shorting as the main force behind market movements (extreme price stability)
• XMR adoption in DNM and everyday life.
• TA suggests a multi year outbreak is currently going on

A deep dive into the ongoing state attack/price suppression scheme:

This was first published in the Journal of Cybersecurity https://academic.oup.com/cybersecurity/article/7/1/tyab004/6166133 [Back-up link]

In this paper the authors are broadly talking about risks stemming from routing around AML and weighing AML vs "privacy rights" (GDPR) from a state perspective. As many here know, AML/KYC has never been intended to stop money laundering (at least not within government and the big banks). It was always a measure of control to ensure that normal people like you and me have no easy way to off-shore their wealth.

Now enter the crypto era where suddenly, according to the words of Obama "Everybody is running around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket". Now that's an outrageous scenario, isn't it? Imagine free constituents taking care of their own financials without anybody else snooping on them.

In the paper the authors haven been classifying the following three coins along certain criteria involving AML/KYC and GDPR compliance, which they define as "good".

• Bitcoin (good, but likely not GDPR compliant),
• Zcash (good) and
• Monero (bad, because not AML/KYC compliant).

Now let's jump to the interesting part, where things get really exciting.

Monero as classified in this paper is seen as a risk to public safety and hence deserves to be state attacked.

Quite a few mechanisms are described in that article that many here suspected for a long time (e.g. price suppression, network attacks,...).

To quote the paper:

"A set of tools to combat privacy-coins may include means of a different technological, regulatory, economic (fiscal) nature, also including state attacks on underlying privacy-blockchains. The letter tool, as possible regulatory access points of the blockchain space, was already mentioned by Finck [16], however, without further analysis in that domain. The AML/CFT measures should concentrate on the cryptocurrency of indicated networks, instead of targeting the people who are members of their communities. The tools can and should aim towards reducing the particular currencies’ value, consequently inducing a voluntary outflow of their users."

Now if we look at the data it might become very clear that certain state actors in cahoots with certain exchanges have been meddling in price suppression for some time. At least that's what the data tells us. Anybody remembers the fractional reserve practices by many of the big CEX first discovered by the Monero community years before FTX went down?

You'll find a lot of interesting background data regarding Monero for those of you who want to dive a little bit deeper here: https://moneroj.net/metcalfeusd/

The good thing.

Price suppression only works for so long. If usage doesn't decrease because of the suppressed price like in Monero's case and rather to the contrary usage and user base grow, the suppressors get into trouble. We are currently at the point where fractional reserving/naked shorting/ price suppression however you may call it stopped to be the leading force. Organic demand, actual use cases. adoption and also the acceptance in DNM are now guaranteeing a rather stable environment (you can verify that by looking at Monero's long term average price).

To conclude this post, we are where we are in this fight because certain covert attacks no longer work. Them switching their tactic from covert attacking to attacking in the open shows three things everybody can observe for themselves.

1. They were not successful in suppressing prices and now need to apply strategies that are more in the open
2. They are afraid of the next wave of adoption especially of protocols they can not surveil or control and that challenge the dominance of fiat by being used as actual currencies/everyday money
3. They are starting to fight everything and running around like headless chickens which can only be interpreted as a sign of extreme weakness

Hold the line. Buy some Monero and withdraw and by that help squeeze the price manipulators out of the market.

This stage (the old system fighting back) in the process of wider adoption of crypto as actual currency was always envisioned by OGs and it is meant to be temporary. The old system won't go away with a fight, but it will go away.