There are trade offs to everything. Monero is not hard money and will therefore trend to zero against Bitcoin over time. Sure, a decent tool, but not something I would want to hold a large position for the longterm in a world where Bitcoin exists. Absolute privacy is the ideal, but it will mean nothing if your purchasing power can’t be protected. You have to start with hard money and then make it absolutely private, not the other way around.

The privacy of liquid will improve as adoption increases and more types of assets are issued on it. It’s still In its infancy. If it never gets a high adoption rate, then yes I would agree with you—the anon set is not large enough to offer any real privacy benefits. And in that world, we would still have whirlpool.

As for “permissioned”, it’s a multisig wallet that only needs one federation member to sign for a peg out. There are many exchanges like Sideswap that have this built in. The federation model I agree is not as trustless as on chain Bitcoin, but it’s far more trustless than using custodial lightning or, in the case of Monero, hardforking the project with relative frequency.

If your marketing strategy is to call everyone that disagrees with you a cuck or larp, good luck with that 😂. Maybe you can get some weak men who are insecure about their masculinity to jump the fence. And what a way to build a community.

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We aren't talking about holding it long term, we are talking about using it. Different argument you're shifting to. But ok, in that case save in Bitcoin, spend in Monero.

We also aren't talking about a hypothetical Liquid future, we're talking about *right now* (and even then it would still be permissioned = antithesis of bitcoin)

Whirlpool is a time-consuming, tedious, expensive, and an inferior obfuscation bandaid to real privacy tech. Monero > Whirlpool > normal Bitcoin txs

So you need someone to approve for you to peg out? So it is permissioned.

Sorry if you took it personally. I'm saying Liquid is cucked and larping because it is VS actual private permissionless protocols.

I share your distaste for larps and cucks so understand the sentiment. Just disagree with where the energy is pointed.

Nice so we agree that the majority of wealth should be stored in on chain Bitcoin. It’s the only way to protect yourself against certain debasement.

The disagreement is in how to spend small amounts of your wealth. Any of the options comes with downside:

-Self custodial lightning -> technical barrier to entry running your own node (with the exception of Phoenix Wallet and a couple others) and the need for good privacy hygiene to not dox yourself

-Custodial lightning -> requires trust and good privacy hygiene, but very low barrier to entry.

-Liquid Bitcoin -> requires trust in the Federation. This is better than trusting a single custodian. Does not require knowledge of privacy, only more adoption.

-Whirlpool -> I agree this is expensive and would not use for spending. Only cleaning KYC coins if you happen to have them.

-Monero -> risk of being debased, no need for knowledge of privacy but need to learn about mechanics of a second currency.

I will also say all of the Monero wallets I’ve tried take a very long time to sync.

Tradeoffs. I personally know how to acquire and spend Bitcoin privately, so never have the need for Monero.

For the masses, we’ll see; the market will figure that out. I’m glad there are options and the trend towards private-by-design tech is increasing.

So far, Bitcoin has been the best SoV. Any extrapolation into the future is speculation. But if you have conviction that will hold, then yes, it makes sense to save in Bitcoin long term.

Agree, everything has trade offs, but some sacrifices don't make sense for the problems Bitcoin was made to fix. Permissionlessness is a major core value prop of Bitcoin (Liquid) "...the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required..."

Liquid also doesn't protect sender, reciever, or IP address. Feels like a half-assed attempt at privacy from people like Adam Back who should know better.

You can virtually eliminate any risk of Monero debasement if you only save long term in Bitcoin. Short term volatility is the same for either Monero or Bitcoin.

Yes, wallet sync times are a slight annoyance, but if you prioritize privacy + self custody + permissionlessness it really isn't a big deal. Usually it is several seconds. Try Stack Wallet or Stack Duo wallet. Seems to be optimized somehow for quicker sync times. Even Cake Wallet was quick. Noticed it was significantly longer using Monerujo for whatever reasons.

There is an improvement coming down the pipes soon for lite clients to eliminate sync times while preserving trustlessness if you run your own node. Seraphis upgrade will also further improve sync times without it.

Monero shines in it's default layered privacy, simplicity, fungibility, and low tx fees. Much better MoE imo. Because Monero doesn't have RBF, it can also do 0conf "instant" txs for small payment relatively securely (99.9%)