I don't see Monero as alternative, it's something completely different, with different rules (like infinite inflation).
It's like suggesting to use truck in F1 race because it can fit more drivers inside, or to play tennis with baseball bat because you can hit ball further with it.
Also it's seems to be very hard to use Monero to gain any meaningful privacy 🤔
You're suggesting it's hard to use Monero? Or that it's not private?
I'm meaning that it is hard and cumbersome for a person use Monero as a privacy tool for financial transactions.
Monero is way easier than lightning. And barely different than Bitcoin, in fact Feather wallet has a similar UI to Electrum.
I am willing to bet you that some random normies will be able to use MyMonero wallet, over setting up a Lightning Node Server and self-hosting custody. Want to wager? I'm serious
If there's a starting point where two persons wants to use the hardest asset which offers strongest assurances and highest protection for value preservation as a store of value (bitcoin).
If they then want to use Monero as a privacy tool for sending some of that value between each other, how would that practically work?
1. At first the sender would probably need to convert BTC to XMR
2. Sender sends XMR to recipient
3. Recipient converts XMR to BTC
In my view there's quite a lot of problematics what comes to privacy preservation for example in phases 1 and 3 where one would probably need rely on 3rd party services. Then there's economic (fees) and UX (exchange, dealing with different protocols etc.) perspectives.
Monero's technology is interesting, and of course if we could use it to send directly satoshis between each other, that would definitely change things and be cool, but as far as I understand, that's not (yet?) possible.
It's simple mate. You got a Bitcoin wallet as your savings account. You got a Monero wallet as your checking account. You swap some Bitcoin to Monero for some expenses.
Any good ways to make those swaps without relying on a 3rd party while preserving privacy?
Even if there is, I don't think that's very good UX from the normie perspective if they have to trade, manage multiple assets and run multiple protocols and wallets 🤔
Something like Cake Wallet (or others), have both in it. You can swap right in the app for under 1%
As far as trustless no 3rd party swaps, there's Haveno now, which is fairly easy to setup. Bisq already. And BasicSwapDEX, which is a pain in the ass to setup now. Also Serai just got funded over 100k for audits, that's a DEX. And another dude has been telling me about his project as well. All of these offer trustless swaps of BTC and XMR both ways
