Oddbean

But it does matter. I 100% agree with you that the best is there being no record at all, but failing that, with Bitcoin the exchange/bank/regulated institution will bother you for mixing coins after withdrawing, for example - all due to onchain Bitcoin piss-poor privacy, which does not do any freedom lovers any favors. While with Monero, all they know and will ever know (unless something massive goes wrong with the privacy and anonymity protections that Monero employs), is that you got some, and then you withdrew some. Still not as good as there not being a record at all, but at least the fact that there is a record doesn't condemn you to eternal surveillance and blocking of the KYC account if you ever do something the Masters don't approve of. I guess for people who just use crypto as ngu tech this doesn't matter much, they will not mind being fully traceable and really only want the increased spending power.. but for those of us who want true financial autonomy and spending crypto peer to peer.. the surveillance stemming from the lack of priv/anon is a real issue.

My opinion is that store of value is most important to the market. You can find ways to be more private in bitcoin (e.g. mixing, liquid, cashu) but you can’t improve store of value without a fixed supply. Trading with people in monero is more far difficult than finding non kyc bitcoin. There are no perfect solutions, only tradeoffs. The tradeoff with bitcoin is you do more work to keep privacy based on your needs but have the best store of value.

Personally I don't think that Monero's technically infinite supply is the issue when it comes to it not being as good a store of value as BTC, since 1) it is known that the supply will grow (not fraudulent/scammy like central bank monies) and 2) the increase is so small spread over so long that for practical purposes, for the user of the currency, it's the same as having a fixed supply. The biggest differentiator (imo) is that Bitcoin was the genesis of the crypto space, and this will never change. It's like the face of the whole brand, and inside that it's its own unique brand. I don't think that will ever change, and indeed I am banking on it. Which is why my savings are in BTC, not XMR. What does bother me is how many otherwise rational people dismiss XMR outright just because it's not BTC! In the long fight for more freedom, there is more than one tool.