Oddbean

I find it really hard to understand how you can both call Monero a shitcoin and yet also correctly recognize the fundamental need for privacy. It is precisely because of that reason that Monero is *not* a shitcoin. I'm sorry but it comes across as close-minded. Monero offers today what we all would like Bitcoin to offer in the future. Therefore, pragmatism demands that Monero be used as the useful tool that it is. It's not either/or. YMMV, me personally I save in BTC but spend in Monero (and to a lesser degree Lightning). And the only reason for that is Monero's always-on privacy. So putting XMR in the same basket as all the other cryptos is a bit naive and ignorant. No offense.

Monero is a shitcoin for a few reasons, but mostly because it does not have anything close to the network effect that Bitcoin has. It certainly cannot be Bitcoin’s properties that make us value it. I can fork Bitcoin right now, give it a different name, and nobody would buy it. It’s the story, and that story will fall apart without privacy. The technology that Monero uses is not shitcoinery at all*, and Bitcoin should steal that technology with BIP300. The existence of Monero breaks the 21 million rule, especially when used as a fake L2. It also encourages economic activity on Monero nodes, and we need that activity on economic Bitcoin nodes. *If anyone thinks the privacy Monero uses is shitcoinery, they should know that Satoshi was already developing it in 2010 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=770.msg9074#msg9074