Thread

The most likely outcome is that many Bitcoin holders will "succeed" by accident (fiat gains over time) because Bitcoin is the containable focal asset that keeps attention away from more off-grid rails (e.g. Monero). That isn't an endorsement of freedom; it's incentives doing crowd control. I'll write more about this later, but: - Privacy-by-default is a political non-starter (especially in a low Gross Consent Product cycle). Bitcoin's base case: Managed cyclicality, net up over multi-year windows, less upside convexity than "maximalists" hope, more containment than cypherpunks want. So Bitcoin is the sanctioned pressure valve. That design likely lets many holders win in fiat terms while the system keeps Medium-of-Exchange at scale off the table and diverts attention from privacy rails. It's not emancipation; it's containment with upside. A few signals that support this reading (non-exhaustive): - Growth of ETF/ETN share of total BTC exposure; - App-store/wallet policy pressure toward KYC defaults; - Tax and reporting regimes that bless ETF/custody rails while frictioning self-custody; - Selective exchange de-risking of privacy coins; - Compliance narratives that frame privacy-by-default as aberrant but Bitcoin Store-of-Value as acceptable. Many holders will win in fiat terms - by accident, not because the system ceded control. I don't own any Monero, but I still appreciate the community. Definitely not a shitcoin.

Replies (6)

🛡️
Been a vocal bitcoin maximalist for a long time but never could sell the small amount of monero I held. Last month or so been stacking more even swapping some bitcoin for it. With cores delusional vision of the future and the states digital surfdom goals I cant see a reason not to at least hedge my bitcoin bet with monero. The only question is how much.
I like your takes. I said that before. What you write about is a well known and understood attack vector for at least 5 years. Back in 2018, Monero reached #4 spot on Coin Market Caps and some reports came out that saw a Bitcoin-Monero dupoly as a likely future scenario for 2030. Then we saw the next clycle pumped by the expansion of Tether where literally no money found its way into Monero, while memecoins x100 and x1000 (pull in/positive diversion of attention) At the same time we saw exchanges like Binance, OKX, Ploniex, Huobi {on order or by incentives) go deeply fractionally reserved on their Monero holdings (push out/negative diversion of attention) resulting in a completely lost cycle of media attention and awareness for Monero All that for buying time to weaponise thirdparty custodians and CEX (enforcing state defense policies aka AML/KYC) to exclude (delist) Monero from liquidity (capital flight). Meanwhile placing a media and political speech embargo on anything that could draw (positive) attention to Monero. E.g. hit pieces bringing up only its criminal use or coining the term AEC anonymity enhancing coins (in policy reports across US/EU papers) without ever mentioning the one coin that does 95% of all those transactions. This is a very interesting story. Feel free to reach out to the community if you can't get easy access to background knowledge and assumptions. Last but not least, the Bitcoin maxi op made many Bitcoiners believe it is fiat NGU that means winning, when it's all about usage for whatever reason (limitation, control, privacy, programmability,..) in the longterm.
↩ replying to npub1ah3a...l76e
What you're saying is basically true, but I think the financial competition is more interesting than you're getting at. Part of the BTC/doge value proposition is waking people up from brainwashing by saving in a currency that every adult is encouraged to fully understand. Monero's supply audit process is so much harder to understand, it doesn't offer that same advantage for savings. The extreme difference in speculative growth matches an extreme difference in deserved market share in a potential post-dollar world, where hard money has replaced savings accounts. The Monero community could add cancelable timed transactions to manage inheritance, which would be unmatched by Bitcoin and doggie. Also more suited to a "privacy coin" even if the other coins wanted to copy it. That would make it a more competitive offering to expect a lot of people using for savings in the future. Then the "ASIC resistance" might still be a problem. If privacy coins start being taken more seriously, Monero could still lose to a Monero fork with a different mining algorithm. That could be seen as better for hashpower, or for privacy itself. There are also a lot of outsiders who are suspicious of Monero and its community for overhyping its level of privacy. That factor might always make Bitcoin and doggie coin more successful in the value growth game. To fix that, we might need to fix global cybersecurity itself.