Monero [XMR]: A lot of regulators have a need for something like Monero, say Riccardo Spagni

Riccardo Spagni, the lead developer of Monero and Co-founder of Tari, spoke about whether Monero was digital cash or not, during an interview with Monero Talk.

Spagni stated that the concept of digital cash was “interesting” as it was the “ideal” that everyone was striving towards and added that Monero was already a “pretty good” digital cash. He further stated that for anything to be classified as digital cash, it had to be sufficiently secure, fungible and decentralized. He said that Monero met all these terms “fairly”. He stated,

“[…] So, Monero, I think to a large degree already is digital cash. I’m interested to see how that plays out because now we’ve got regulators starting to take an interest in Monero and they have been for a while. And regulators are interesting because a lot of people view them as the boogie man […] and I don’t view them that way […]”

FluffyPony also stated that a lot of regulators have a “need for something like Monero,” as they are deeply concerned about privacy in their own lives. This was followed by Spagni stating that governments have started to realize that “privacy is important” for running the government, along with other things. He said,

“[…] and that’s not to say that I don’t equate privacy with a lack of transparency. A government can still be transparent but […] they can choose what can be transparent about [or] they can be forced to be transparent about certain things through certain bodies.”

Spagni went on to state that this did not mean that everything handled by the government would be exposed on a traceable ledger, adding that it was a “pipe dream that’s never gonna happen”. He said,

“[…] there’s no government in the world that’s gonna say, ‘well, we’ve decided to operate in this completely traceable way and put all of our transactions on Bitcoin; so that everyone can see what we’re doing all the time’. It’s just not going to happen and even if it did happen someone would figure out a way to cheat the system […]”

The lead developer added that he was “very interested” in knowing how governments and regulatory bodies perceive privacy technology, considering that it already exists. He opined,

“[…] how these regulators, over time, and governments […] look at it and go like, ‘privacy can be abused, but its got a net benefit, its got a net positive and we need privacy in our lives as regulators, as governments’ and so cool maybe there’s you know ways of using this technology in a non-harmful way.”