Oddbean

It can be publicly auditable AND opaque. This is a very common misunderstanding. You have to trust something in the whole system, that trust might be reasonably placed in cryptographic primitives that assure anonymity and privacy as well as assuring no inflated coins are created, primitives which have been reviewed and audited, over and over again. From compilers to central processing units to hash functions, you are already trusting a LOT in Bitcoin. #monero adds a little bit to that gigantic pile or complexity. All of this is explained in https://www.moneroinflation.com

So, if monero is so good then it can be used as a privacy sidechain to btc, as can perhaps LN. Because , as it stands, xmrbtc is getting hammered. I don't think monero will ever have the first mover network effect, mining power and number of nodes. Also, I don't like tail emissions. Inflation is a distortion of price throughout the economy, leading to malinvestments and economic malaise. No thanks.

I largely agree with all you said, which is why all my wealth is in BTC, not XMR. But you can bet it's XMR i'm gonna use when I need to make that $20k payment that is not gonna route over LN and which I don't want to keep on a wallet I need to remember to open every 2 weeks in order not to be rugged.

Then don't use Monero to save. Use it to transact. You already do this with fiat. Network effect isn't some immutable law of the universe. Dominant brands and technologies die off in the market all the time. Ask Kodak and tape cassettes. Monero is already proving that theory wrong in DNMs. Monero and Bitcoin have roughly the same amount of nodes. You can't directly compare hash power because they use different PoW algos. *unpredictable* inflation and centralized issuance leads to distortions in the economy. Monero is predictable, decentralized, and even smaller inflation than gold. https://bitnodes.io/ https://monero.fail/map

All of what you say is true, except once you take the first inflation step the market never trusts you again. With money its all about trust. Its like tax, once introduced it never gets withdrawn and only gets worse. The market has voted , xmrbtc is plummeting over the long term. Bloated block chain also a factor ? . Use monero as side-chain to spend privately. Imo

Not sure what you are talking about. Gold has inflation and it has been that way for thousands of years and it is much larger mcap and more trusted with value than Bitcoin. Even Bitcoin has inflation right now. Using xmrbtc price charts is only a single metric and is price discovery in action. Here are a few examples that show the market choosing Monero over time: https://image.nostr.build/975326fdc046527477af1c338f959485e7ff210e5ebd7129dd115c28131f1fa6.jpg https://image.nostr.build/1f90427dc509f688d750d255d92b72f31f9bd43b8d097617e5418697e49f98a7.jpg https://image.nostr.build/4546e4e58976e70d252c1a1dec4e86a1de8d0ddbb577227e85ff069b94a0a277.jpg https://image.nostr.build/80fbb7770109c61e10775484e031bfed633b94e7883c562df5e7e4d6aba2899a.jpg

Then why is it rising by every other metric I've shown? Maybe you are right degenerate gamblers and speculators are the only ones that don't like it. It's clear that those who actually use it are adopting it.