Oddbean

No, Bitcoin on chain transactions being public is a feature not a bug. Layer 2 will give small transactions the anonymity they need, but when transferring significant sums of money everyone should be able to see it. I'm not talking about transactions of more than $10,000, I'm talking the equivalent value of millions or billions of dollars in Bitcoin.

I'm really not currently concerned about custodial vs non-custodial for lightning wallets and other layer 2 tech. The benefit is in the fact that we can choose the services we use based on their reputation on the open market. Eventually I believe most people won't keep more than 5% of their stacks in custodial services. 95%+ will be in cold storage that rarely moves. If we don't like a custodian then move the coins to a different one, and people in general will learn not to do business with custodians with a poor track record. Custodianship isn't inherently evil, it's just that until Bitcoin we had no way to keep custodians in check by maintaining self custody of the majority of our wealth as it was just too costly (such as with gold, needing expensive security) and inconvenient. The beauty is that these technologies are still being developed and all these issues will be solved with different techniques, such as was recently proven possible on the main chain with silent payments. Until that time Monero does fill a need for truly private transactions on the main chain, but BTC is still the superior store of value and as more BIP are developed Monero will likely become obsolete.

Monero is quite literally the crypto currency used in real world since years now. Crypto has the latin meaning of "hidden" or to "keep private". There is no freedom without privacy, just as nobody needs to know how much money is in your wallet or bank. Your dear coin isn't a cryptocoin, it is a virtual coin used for casino playing. Only speculators, naive people or fed agents even promote non-private virtual coins. https://m.primal.net/Jfgc.jpg

I'm anything but. However until states are made obsolete (inevitable IMO, at least for states as we know them today) I see ₿ being used by states on their way to becoming insignificant compared to individuals who can prevent their assets being seized. The transparency of the Blockchain already allows us all to know when governments move ₿ (as recently happened with both the US government and the German government), and prevents them from printing money and moving massive sums around unnoticed. The only reason we're currently afraid of being tracked as individuals is because governments have significantly more power due to their ability to print money and move it in secrecy. This power is slowly shifting due to the power Blockchain grants the individual to control their own economic energy outside of government interference and manipulation. With billions of people, only the largest wallets will be paid attention to enough to matter once the government loses it's unlimited money source. Until then, small fry like us can just use common sense in how when and where we use our coins.

ok. the transparency of BTC doesn't do anything to prevent the state from moving money around. and they can seize your shit whenever they want. as long as they have a monopoly on force it won't matter in many cases who holds they keys. but its as you say, good to have publicly verifyable ownership at this stage.

The transfers of institutions and governments (who both represent significant groups of individuals) should be public so we all know it happened. For too long large institutions have had their transactions private and through those same institutions we have lost anonymity in small transactions.

Bitcoin with layer 2 technologies flips that on its head and restores things to the way they were. Everyone knew when large quantities of gold were moved, few knew when and where small coins were spent.

If we don't have them yet then we will soon. I think more about the macro effects of Bitcoin on society because the governments no longer have a money printer. Bitcoin's planned every 4 year halving events are superior to Monero's perpetual 0.45 (IIRC) block subsidy. Monero never becomes more valuable related to time anymore. Bitcoin does in perpetuity, which means it will grow in value in perpetuity.

IDK what you are talking about, they have their printer and its running great. There is nothing which forces governments to use BTC - and they will surely not do it for stuff you should not know in their opinion. Monero keeps an incentive for miners to mine blocks with its tail emission. BTC will sooner or later switch to that too, wait for it. BTC lost almost all properties which made it revolutionary. It will lose the 21m cap too.

People aren't as stupid as they appear, as time goes on ever greater numbers of common people will realize that their FIAT is shit compared to Bitcoin (especially as it continues to stabilize and reduce volatility). Laws and governments are subservient to sound money, they won't have a choice but to adopt Bitcoin or get left behind. As populations grow to refuse the government's debt notes, they won't be able to benefit from printing them anymore because they'll be worthless. This doesn't happen overnight, but it is happening. Bitcoin will never switch to tail emissions, it doesn't need to. The beauty of the halving is that Bitcoin is forcing its value to double every 4 years because it doubles the amount of TIME it takes to produce the same amount of Bitcoin. Time is the ultimate resource and what we all ultimately value the most, the ultimate money has to be related to Time and Bitcoin does this beautifully through its halving mechanism. Never changing tail emissions break this fundamental growth driving force. Monero's hashrate has been on a downward trend since 2022. It's value and growth is stagnant. There's a reason why Bitcoin has nearly 500 Times the market cap of Monero, and why Monero has lost nearly 75% of it's value against Bitcoin is 5 years. Monero is never going to surpass Bitcoin.

#Bitcoin with its public #blockchain is superior to #Monero. Not even mentioning it's first mover advantage which makes it exceedingly difficult for new competitors to catch up and meet or exceed the same momentum. Bitcoin is such a leap beyond anything that came before it, and coming first means it's the most likely to succeed long term compared to any potentially mildly improved assets.

Thought so too for a long time. I think i was delusional. BTC without privacy onchain is the most retarded idea we ever had. Would you store your value on a public transparent ledger with no privacy if the government would mandate it? Hell no. But somehow people think this fundamental flaw of BTC is a advantage. People just hodl and do not use BTC. As soon as they start using it, they see that it is a crappy medium of exchange.

Think about today VS 1000 years from now. Open forced honesty is superior over the long term and levels the playing field. The more value is held in an address the more eyes are on it, the less value is in an address the less eyes are on it. Balance is attractive to eyes, the bigger the balance the more eyes. On the other hand the more individuals who participate in small balance self custody, the better hidden in the noise we each become. This is good for society. The greatest natural defense we see in nature is being a part of a truly large group so any individual is unlikely to be targeted, this has been taken advantage of by humans who just catch every animal at once (such as in a school of fish). But when we combine the numbers of billions of individuals, with the inability to just capture all of them through how difficult it is to actually get access to their Bitcoin even with home invasions and court orders, we benefit from the natural security by numbers. On the other hand, unchecked spending of massive amounts of money is bad for society. With open Blockchain everyone will be very aware of how big wallets move funds to different organizations and people. The entire world ends up auditing the whales in real time. In the current climate where governments have unlimited resources through the theft of value via monetary debasement, sure, the lack of easy privacy is a downside for individuals. But long term it isn't a concern IMO. (My opinion may change, but this is what my view on this currently is)

Nobody is anonymous in the crowd when you can pick non conforming individuals out by analyzing all their transactions. Nobody wants to expose all their financial transactions to the whole world. People will choose the alternative which gives them privacy if the open ledger has been abused enough.

Superior to Monero at what? Being an easy target for surveillance and mining censorship? Tell the darknet markets about your "first mover advantage". They must have missed it. https://image.nostr.build/1f90427dc509f688d750d255d92b72f31f9bd43b8d097617e5418697e49f98a7.jpg https://image.nostr.build/305ddddd998a40b0bf14775adb40415acb42e752fa204feb384947fda6c2a877.jpg https://image.nostr.build/c444a5dca74587682aeb7ea469eec4255bba134d25c5b594c4d21c6f4b3b319f.jpg

How much of that total Bitcoin market cap and volume is over permissioned white markets, ETFs, custodians, and central exchanges? https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-system/wiki/Permissionless-Principle

You don't understand the point of the question. If custodians and large institutions (AKA intermediaries) are moving Bitcoin, on-chain or IOUs on a centralized database, then why does that daily volume matter? If those transactions are on white markets (following all rules and asking permission) we can discount them as they offer no advantage over fiat. In fact it is worse than fiat in several ways.

No advantage over #FIAT is laughable. #₿ being #debasement proof is it's biggest advantage over FIAT. The government's primary source of power, fueling it's ability to be a surveillance state, is it's ability to steal wealth by printing money which ₿ stops. #Meanwhile BTC having it's block subsidy continually reduced by half every four years, thus pushing the value of every ₿ in existence up due to it's increasing marginal cost of production over time, is it's biggest advantage over #Monero. It used to take 10 min to create ₿50 and they were worth much less, now it takes 160 min (2.66 hours) to create ₿50 and it's worth much more. In 12 years it will take 1280 min (21.33 hours) and in 40 years it will take 163840 min (2730.66 hours). Every time the halving occurs Bitcoin's time-cost of production doubles, dragging along the value of already existing coins with it. This relation to time is it's driving factor for value, and BTC's main reason for being the best store of value ever found. Monero fixing it's subsidy to it's current tail emotions forever means it is never going to become more valuable related to time, so it's value is stagnant and loses to Bitcoin. Despite Monero having better on chain privacy, it's inability to increase it's value relative to finite human time does nothing to fix our financial system. In addition, it will not bring about a new age of global abundance through incentivising the production of electricity globally (like Bitcoin does) to give our species the energy it needs to grow beyond our current abilities. Monero is very useful to those who use the darknet and prioritize privacy above all else, it is not very useful at freeing humanity from it's self imposed bondage. But Bitcoin is.

Yes, and all those advantages only apply when you are using Bitcoin in a self-custodial manner and transacting without permission (BLACK MARKETS by definition) If a custodian has my Bitcoin and is issuing me Bitcoin IOUs they can still inflate supply for those users (fractional reserve). If I'm making white market transactions I'm following any arbitrary rules the state wants for those transactions. That also applies to bitcoin transactions made on white markets. This is what I meant by saying Bitcoin has no advantage over fiat on white markets. It's slower, more expensive, much less accepted, and allows the general public to see your financial transactions (at least you have privacy from the general public with digital fiat) "The government's primary source of power, fueling it's ability to be a surveillance state" Ironically, Bitcoin also enables state surveillance because it is a transparent blockchain.

I agree that custodian Bitcoin (or anything really) is not much better than FIAT if they can issue more IOUs than assets they actually have. I agree that for the time being due to custodians and KYC market places Bitcoin is easier to track due to its transparent block chain, enabling surveillance states. Self custodial non-KYC Bitcoin is the best overall. At this stage, with few businesses accepting ₿ and most people owning it in KYC custodians, it has large disadvantages. It's inevitable that people will break free of the custodians and KYC though once it really takes off and we can transact person to person more, but I acknowledge that until that time it's not much better for privacy than FIAT. Thanks for the friendly discourse! 🙂