The largest difference between monero and bitcoin is clear to me. It is the same difference that any privacy coin has (there are far better ones than monero). Bitcoin emphasizes understandability and transparency at the base layer.

Novel encryption features are a risk, bitcoin uses only well known and battle hardened cryptography. Obscure forms of cryptography are no guarantee of privacy. Layers above BTC layer 1 can be as complex as needed, and they won't affect the value of bitcoin itself.

This is a battle between classes, and between rulers and surfs, between incompetent moralizing technocrats that wield a monopoly on the use of force and the productive family that has little choice but to yield possession of their accumulated life energy. To add obscurity to the protocol is to give ammunition to the media-technocrat-intelligence cartel to scare people away from it. It is to invite the black market and create the false perception that the purpose of bitcoin is to skirt the law, avoid "fair share" taxation and increase dangerous crime. Regardless if that is true, it flushes any privacy coin into the mental sewers of the majority.

To win the minds of the people, you must first win the minds of those they respect. Unfortunately, that requires cooperation with the statists, and we have seen as of late, even one of the biggest statists (Kennedy) has found a refuge under the wing of bitcoin.