Give me a well informed response then in your own words.
Discussion
The RingCT proof is clever, but it forces trust in way more complex crypto (with a bigger attack surface and past bugs) just to hide everything.
Trust emerges from transparency full stop. Bitcoin’s transparency lets anyone verify no inflation or fraud, trust-minimized, battle-tested, and enables real emergent security.
On decentralization: there were dozens of delistings/removals across various exchanges and jurisdictions in 2024–2025 (Kraken in multiple regions, Binance zones, OKX, etc.), ~1/3 the nodes Bitcoin has, far fewer publicly reachable nodes and constant regulatory targeting. That’s not more decentralized, that’s fragile in practice.
Privacy on L2 (Lightning ecash, Ark) gives the benefits without mandatory opacity’s downsides.
Bitcoiners aren’t “nocoiners”. We trust the minimal primitives that have secured trillions flawlessly. Monero trusts newer, heavier ones that invite bans and limit scalability. People can trust Bitcoin’s model for a reason. They can provably trust bitcoin from inside and outside 24/7/365.
Privacy on L2 (Lightning ecash, Ark) gives the benefits without mandatory opacity’s downsides.
Bitcoin had 2 inflation bugs, not Monero.
Monero did have one. but it was provably non exploited and patched.
there are certainly benefits to l2's. but none of them are devoid of downsides. you're just conveniently ignoring them.
monero's additional complexity is certainly a trade-off.
but institutional adoption is also a trade-off.
Monero is at ATH in price, hash power and number of operating nodes. that isn't fragility.
I said that bitcoiners are like no coiners because they autistically insist that only the primitives that they understand are worthy of trust.
The number of people who trust *different and more complex* cryptographic primitives will only increase as time goes on.
Yes because Monero is private by default it does require more complex ways to verify supply but it can be done by verifying block subsidy and emission schedule. Not sure how this creates a bigger attack surface?
Bitcoins transparency also creates risks— financial surveillance not possible in tradfi, wrench attacks, black listed addresses, etc. This is where Monero shines and why I stated they make a good pair. Yes you can get some good privacy on layer 2s but none match Monero and it has been battled tested on DNM to a much greater level than any layer 2.
Not sure how exchange delisting affects decentralization of nodes and miners? Interesting how Monero has shown strength since all the delistings by almost any metric?
Overall I use and like Lightning but it does not match Monero for privacy. And you can easily screw yourselves on Lightning privacy if you don’t know what you’re doing.
If you can get over all the confirmation bias caused by believing “everything that isn’t bitcoin is a shitcoin” you might start to see the benefit of Monero.