Oddbean

Maybe there is something I'm missing, but I don't understand why Bitcoin and Monero, instead of warring with each other, don't ally. - Bitcoin as a store of value. - Monero as a spending system. A quick and easy swap between them and off they go. Am I naive? Am I ignorant? What am I missing?

Because in practice currencies compete, and because people usually don't want to jump through layers with money, it introduces friction, if you save in BTC and i save in BTC, why would i want you to pay me in another coin like monero? It's a lot easier for everyone to use the same base currency.

What? Aren't layers literally all Bitcoiners talk about? You already do this with lightning, ecash, liquid, etc. Those all introduce friction. My on-chain address doesnt work if you want to pay me with any of those.

True, that all of those add friction like I said, but all of them are compatible through LN, the layer swap is onchain to LN and there are many compatible tools for it, many LN wallets support onchain and LN, so you only need one wallet. With monero in theory, you would save in BTC, have some monero stack to spend or move to btc to save, and to spend, if people don't accept monero, you have to still swap for btc before spending.

To be clear on what my last reply means: having BTC as your only payment method means you're probably not getting my money If someone is wasting a lot of the money they receive on bitcoin transaction fees by having no other wallet address, they clearly have more than enough money & don't need mine

You still have to swap for the other so it's effectively the same thing. That's why things like boltz.exchange exist. There are multi-coin wallets like Cake and Stack that support both Bitcoin and Monero. Still fail to see any real difference.

Bitcoin maxi nowdays is areligion, they do not care about privacy and that most of people use Bitcoin via ETF and censored custodial wallets. Currently only monero provides privacy and an easy wallet to selfhost

I'll personally never use monero. Also i'll never openly fight against it. I simply think bitcoin is generally better. That said...if anybody likes spending monero for privacy or whatever reasons that's ok, but i don't think there can be such thing as an alliance between the two, only peoples who use it and peoples who don't. Time will tell pros and cons of each choice P.s. i'm on the verge of muting the word monero 🤙

My point against the "multicoin" scenario is that normal people don't want to mess with multichains, different change rates, different onchain formats etc. They do want to receive, spend, save. Monero is fundamentally different from bitcoin and sure has privacy at the base layer, but that wouldn't work at the global scale either. How am I supposed to spread the wealth? 90% bitcoin and 10% monero? Why should I hold monero for a long period of time and risk to reduce my purchasing power? If not holding it for long periods, what's the alternative? Is it to swap in and out from monero only when I need it? In such a scenario, i pay double the fees, it takes ages for enough confirmations on bitcoin + the 10 confs in monero. I like monero and if someone gives me that I'm fine. I like the adversarial behaviour of monero users. I'm not sold the idea that a global consensus blockchain could work in a decentralized way if used by +1B people.

Monero’s strength is privacy not spending imo— especially since exchanges have begun delisting it. But even if you were to say bitcoin spending and privacy is poor, there are solutions in the works for both, eg lightning, mimblewimble, coinjoin, fedi, those ecash nut things I think. If one agrees both have similar function, I’d go with the one that is auditable (bitcoin) and has the largest network effect (bitcoin), personally.