Oddbean

Thank you for your elaborate answer. I understand your point and I have had some XMR in the past. At the moment I am not seeing using it again. If privacy is a must for me in some small transaction, I believe I would do it through lightning or some non KYC stack I could get.

Although better privacy than on chain Lightning privacy is not as robust as Monero. When you open/close and receive it is particularly bad. This all assumes you are running your own LN node, otherwise you have no/little privacy from custodians or LSPs. Lightning is also not very good for moving larger sums. You'll likely run into routing failures. I'm sure you already know all these things though.

I do. But I am not seeing using monero for large transaction. In my case it would be always less than 500 usd, like some HW wallets or vpn subsciptions type of thing. I am not complete ignorant on the potential of using XMR to buy of sell BTC on places like Bisq, but for my own use I have no need for it and would prefer to use some coinjoin service. I am not saying that you are not right. If I was a darknet guy looking to use the markets there, I guess monero would be my choice. But that would be the only case I see for myself.

Why is Monero privacy only for people who use darknet? Its such a silly logic to say you prefer Bitcoin as it has weaker privacy/darkenet associations. kind of begs the question, why not use something even LESS private and LESS darknet asociated like paypal or visa. Either you want good privacy or you don't. Privacy isn't only for darknet users, its for law abiding citizens too . If you don't want privacy what IS the point in bitcoin? Just to profiteer at rising prices? Because that is its only remaining utility if privacy is not.