Oddbean

Comparing apples and oranges. Gold was the best asset throughout history because it had the lowest inflation rate, at least in the last century this typically matched population growth (about 2%) which cancelled each other out and kept the value of Gold relatively unchanged in real terms over time. If Bitcoin's superior perfect programmed scarcity didn't exist, than Monero with it's less than 1% annual inflation due to tail emissions would be superior and likely become the dominant asset (assuming it was similarly decentralized). We do live in a world with Bitcoin though, with absolute scarcity and ever reducing block subsidies that completely disappear by 2140. There will only ever be 21,000,000 Bitcoin. As of June of this year there's roughly 18.5 million Monero, with new supply of 157,680 created yearly as a permanent subsidy from "tail emissions". This is currently and always will be under 1% annual inflation, that's better than gold's 2% but still loses a significant value over time compared to Bitcoin. When the last Bitcoin block is mined in 2140 there will be 21,000,000 Bitcoin and roughly 37,000,000 Monero (if it's still around). Over the next 116 years Monero's supply will double, reducing the value of each monero as a percentage of the overall network by half compared to today. Better than gold's 10x over the same period (90% smaller share of total supply compared to today) thanks to 2% inflation certainly, but inferior to Bitcoin's less than 10% increase compared to current supply over the same 116 year time period. Bitcoin is more decentralized, more secure, more beneficial for global financial transparency (we can clearly see how large institutions use their money with Bitcoin, which is much more important than making it harder to track the movement of money by billions of plebs on the base layer), and the reduction of block rewards by half every 4 years results in the value of its units doubling relative to energy costs used to mine it. Something Monero doesn't have due to its unchanging marginal cost of production relative to energy thanks to the perpetual tail emissions. This last point is IMO the most important factor of many in Bitcoin's success. Everything trends towards its marginal cost of production, the halving leads to a 100% higher marginal cost of production every 4 years, dragging the value of the entire network up with it. This value growth due to rising production cost and reducing available new supply drives adoption, and the ever higher energy demanded to mine blocks drives innovation to create new energy for the networks use. This unstoppable effect on the global energy market will lead to a world of absolute energy abundance, while storing value relative to that energy (and everything we create with it) better than anything else. We're on the same side, users of Monero and Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is the superior technology that benefits humanity far more than Monero can. Better privacy is great, but it can't compare to the value of absolute scarcity and rising marginal costs of production leading to energy abundance.