Oddbean

I don't hate it. Even held a nice chunk back in '17. But it just doesn't have the utility or active use Bitcoin has. Heck I kept BTC,LTC,ETH, and XMR. I use my coins as money or compute (eth). Up until recently LTC was my main money and BTC was just a wealth store. But btc lightning network and the lack of developer support in building new and useful features killed it off for me. I converted my LTC early this year. XMR had even less work in this area but I held on because of its privacy features. But theres no lightning for fast payments. No physical cards like satscards or opendimes for transferring value. Until recently hardware wallet integration was flaky, software wallets for mobiles and desktops were few, and those that existed were very buggy (moneruju). Recently you have more places to spend XMR but even Cake's own gift card store has like 6 cards for purchase. And many sites that claim otherwise expect the user to first convert to BTC. Like I said I don't hate it but of your main use case is as a private money then it needs to be fast like cash and as flexible. Doesn't need to be perfect but it should strive for that. For example something I do with BTC on lightning. I go to a fast food place or regular restaurant. They tell me the amount. I buy a giftcard for the exact amount right there and then. Settled in seconds and paid under a minute. The old way was to buy a gift card in 30-60 minutes in advance of going to a place for more than the expected amount. I would then need to juggle leftover giftcard balances. Anyway seeing hardware development is great. Not a fan of seedsigners though since cameras are everywhere these days so a qr code isn't safe. But it's a way forward.