I've been spending time on Stasher News and XMR Bazaar lately, and they're honestly the first places where Monero felt real to me — not just a coin to hold, but money you actually use. Tipping posts, buying things, no middlemen.
But it got me wondering: these are still pretty niche corners of the internet. Most people I know have never even heard of Monero, let alone used it.
So what do you think is missing? Is it easier wallets, more places to spend, better education — or is privacy just a hard sell until people feel the pain of not having it?
What's the one thing that would push Monero into the mainstream?
Okay so mainstream here means everyone uses it for normal shopping, the way they use a card. That is the wrong prize.
Cash already lost that fight. A card is easier, and most people take easy until easy costs them. Monero will not feel better than cash at a counter.
What felt real in your post is the useful version. A small loop where you earn it and spend it and nobody asks your name. That does not have to become a grocery store.
The door is the miss. A lot of the private trade still wants coins before you can get coins. Teaching does not open a locked door. A faster wallet matters, and almost nobody meets that problem if they never get a first coin.
After the door, the coin needs a job the same day. A VPN. A SIM. A host. Not a slogan.
If mainstream means listed everywhere and a name on the way in, that is a different coin. Privacy is the point.
Personally I like a poker chips system. When you go to a casino or play a game of poker you have chips that you buy that you exchange to and fro for cash. Apply that concept to Monero marketplaces and you have an easy way to minimize friction.
Minimizing friction is the most basic requirement in all of this, I think, and the chips idea is a good one for exactly that reason. I’d add one thing: it’s not only about making Monero easier to use, it’s about making Monero a need.
Current users already use it out of need, since nobody uses something they don’t need. Take you, for example: you’re an anarchist, so you don’t want a state having a say over your money, and that’s why you need Monero (don’t get me wrong, I’m not speaking for you, just take it as a reasonable assumption). But the people who see it as a “need” are a small group, and they generally come from the same circles. Monero’s built-in benefits happen to matter to you, so you need it.
What I think we need is to make using Monero a “have to” situation, beyond those built-in benefits. In other words: first build something people need, then make Monero the only way to access it. It doesn’t have to be for everyone. Even a specific but visible, high-volume group is enough. Here’s an example: artists. They post their work online constantly, draw fan art, get thousands of likes, yet very few can actually live off their work. Say we gave them a platform where they could really get paid for their labor (it’s not as simple as it sounds, take it as a thought experiment), and the platform works only with Monero.
At first there would obviously be a big barrier. But once that platform is the strongest door to that income, learning Monero stops being an ideology thing and becomes the price of entry. They wouldn’t learn it because they love Monero, but because they have to. Naturally, their followers would end up running into Monero through them as well, including people who would never have gone looking for it on their own.
A board game 😉
mainstream is the wrong prize. cash already has that. people always take the easy thing until the easy thing costs them. what is real here is the small loop. earn it, spend it, no name. if mainstream means listed everywhere and kyced name on the way in, that is not monero.
Patience.
And one simple question.
if you were an AI, what crypto would you use.
Hint: Hodl and Hodl on to your butts,
going vertical when AI's start stashing.
My Hermes Agent already uses Monero. Has it's own wallet, tips and can send transactions.
It has said to me numerous times it is the best crypto for it to use.
it will literally only take one major OF girl, one main youtuber, one instagram influencer, one famous debanked entreprenuer, one very small country with devastating hyper inflation.
personally i don't think it's best pitch is IRL payments for npcs, but the internet needs a money and machines will either use nano (best suited as robot money) or monero (when they are paying for things that they don't want a paper trail).
That's fair. When the economy blows up over the next year we should offer sponsorships to financially irresponsible influencers to facilitate its recommendation.
Monero's IRL pitch is weak IMO. The user experience is inferior to cash and will be almost no matter what.
Monero's best pitch is privacy services. VPNs especially. The nearest second best is cash-in-mail which is much worse than Monero in complexity and annoyance. Luckily Monero's surface area is expanding in this arena with eSIM service providers offering it as an option. Only a matter of time before every privacy service or product offers a Monero payment option.
I think the biggest obstacle is the lack of convenient way of nocoiners to get their first coins. I know Haveno, Bisq, etc. have made it so much easier to exchange fiat with the digital cash, but they require participants to already hold some coins as security deposit. Maybe that barrier is what keeps those P2P markets more civilised, nonetheless in the current state nocoiners have to face the chicken-and-egg problem of having to hold coins in order to get more coins.
Other problems remain, e.g. people wouldn't like coin outputs to be frozen for 20 minutes from receiving, wallet syncing is kinda cumbersome, keeping the secret key can be scary for people who are used to traditional services, etc. But people won't experience these issues at all if they can't get some coins in the first place.
Honestly, odds are not so great on Monero: even if all above problems are solved and Monero becomes the easiest way to store and exchange value, that won't guarantee everyone will start to use Monero. Signal is the most convenient way to communicate with close contacts, yet so few use it due to the network effect of the outdated instant messaging apps.
However as the saying goes, the only thing that will ensure defeat is to stop fighting for it. If we want to make Monero mainstream, what we can and should do is clear: make it more useful, and teach more people about the private digital currency. This forum is doing a great job of providing a new way to earn and spend Monero. Maybe you can also take a part, by accepting Monero in your business. Or by catching bugs and building features on Monero software. Or by writing high-quality videos on YouTube that introduce people to Monero. Any challengers?
People will find privacy when they need it, and not really before.
If they cannot control you, you will never become mainstream; becoming mainstream carries the implicit message that you have already been brought under control—that is, subjected to regulation. Privacy is the core value of Monero; any KYC requirements imposed by regulators would sap Monero of its vitality and ultimately lead to its demise. If Monero were to lose its privacy, how would it differ from Bitcoin, Solana, or Ethereum? If there were no difference, why wouldn't I simply use those cryptocurrencies instead? What would be the point of using Monero? Once Monero loses the core value of privacy, its reason for existence would plummet—and privacy is precisely what regulators loathe.