All it is is a useful privacy tool. It's untraceable digital cash, nothing more nothing less. That's always been the claim.
The core disagreement is that you cope about lightning and coinjoin making Bitcoin better at being untraceable digital cash. Not only is this wrong on a technical level, which I've explained many time and will happily do so again if requested, but also wrong when observing free market choices. Monero has been almost exclusively used on darknet markets, which are the largest p2p free markets in the world that REQUIRE cryptocurrency, since around 2020 starting with White House Market. Despite Bitcoin's dominating market cap, network effect, your claim of comparable lightning privacy, and that darknet markets started originally with Silk Road because of Bitcoin, they've almost exclusively switched to Monero.
Not just in darknet markets we find this trend, however. If you look at Nano-GPT, Coincards or ShopinBit payment stats you see comparable or even dominant Monero usage despite vastly smaller network effect and market cap. This is especially stark when each of these platforms are basically advertised and begun on other currencies: Nano for Nano-GPT, Bitcoin for Coincards and ShopinBit.
Purely looking at these free markets, we find a clear preference for Monero as untraceable digital cash. Why then does Monero anger you if it's proven to so many users to be superior as medium of exchange as shown by their choices? Perhaps these markets have been illogical for the past 5 years and are due for a Bitcoin Renaissance soon?
