Oddbean new post about | logout
 How some people can't like Monero, practically removed from all stock exchanges for being excessively cypherpunk 👀 
 Agreed 
 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. 
 I often see LN users conflate Bitcoin adoption with LN adoption and I don't see it. LN has a fraction of acceptance with businesses vs on chain Bitcoin.

Everything has trade offs. And LN is not without it's share of downsides:

-illusion of final settlement (nothing is truly settled until on chain)
-relies on large middlemen nodes for succesful routing and cheapest fees
-need capacity to recieve to begin with
-can't send modestly large amounts 
-both parties must be online at time of transaction to transact
-can be rugged if your node isn't active (or trust to do it)
-bad receiver privacy and hidden balances can be discovered by a passive adversary
-can be force closed onto the base chain against your will
-ability to grief honest users with zero cost
-worst of all it isn't a real solution for scaling for all the things you downsides you take on

Monero lacks all the compromises of L2 and just works. Still not perfect, either, yes. But the trade-offs for what the original goals of Bitcoin were make more sense to me.

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