Oddbean new post about | logout
 And..?
Dodging the main point 
 What's the main point? 

What does a fiat company have to do with a freedom tech? 
 Bitcoin is more easily controlled than competitors like Monero, and lightning is more difficult for the average person to self-host, then a self-host wallet that just works.  This degrades the use of crypto for the real world transactions.

Therefore, the point is that being a Bitcoin Maxi is in the US government’s interest.
And so you being a cheerleader for this defeats the purpose of uncensored technology. 
 In what way is Bitcoin "more easily controlled" than Monero?

As for Monero being easier, I literally spent a morning this week resyncing the entire Monero blockchain because the db file got corrupted. I've been running Bitcoin nodes since 2012 and have never had to do that, because file corruption only affects individual blocks and crashes only affect the tip of the chain. 

I've also hosted a Lightning node for two years. It's not that hard. 
 It's possible you had issues with a Monero node, sure. It's possible.

But without a doubt, the end user using a Monero wallet is easier than self-custody Bitcoin lightning, especially if we're talking self-liquidity.  And this is why it's more easily controlled, because the end users give up custody/control, to make it easier.

There are other reasons as well, such as privacy, censorship, and legal complexity of layer 2 middlemen. 
 I am also not a fan of monero lacking things like SPV, forcing the user to sync the whole blockchain. it sucks and it's the thing I dislike the most about monero. but I would happily do that instead of attempting to self-host lightning.