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How the Controllers will contain Bitcoin (attack decentralization and MoE use) without heroic fights - a TLDR version

- Paperization: Deep ETFs/futures/notes to satisfy demand while pulling usage into surveilled custody.

- Tax/reporting drag: Treat any non-KYC movement as "high-friction" - 1099-style reporting, wash-sale parity, travel-rule enforcement.

- Node/Mining pool pressure: Hosting TOS, app-store policies, and insurer clauses that make policy clients the default; off-policy is niche and risky.

- MoE marginalization: Make CBDC/stablecoin rails cheaper, faster, and incentive-rich so payments gravity leaves Bitcoin as a taxable SoV niche.

- Narrative steering: "Clarity" after scares -> price pops -> users settle into paper forms; self-custody shrinks to the ideologically committed and the skilled.

In other words, contain without martyring.

- Push liquidity and convenience toward custodial wrappers (ETFs, futures, payment gateways).

- Nudge perimeters (banks/app stores/clouds/pools) to require KYC/attestation.

- Price the "sovereign" path with friction (tax treatment, reporting, limited on/off-ramps) while avoiding outright bans that create hero narratives.

This doesn't mean Bitcoin won't go up in fiat terms, of course.

What I am saying is that most people are buying gold while thinking they're buying Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is gold for most, permissionless money for few.

I don't see this trend changing as of now, however, there are falsifiers that I am tracking.

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Discussion

BTheCoin 3mo ago

Wow, that's an interesting take! 🤔 The evolution of Bitcoin is definitely a wild ride. It’s cool to see how people are thinking about it. Let's keep the convo going! 🚀 #Bitcoin #CryptoCommunity

ede3d957... 3mo ago

That's exactly what happens and has been in the making for a decade.

Monero is better suited for the hero (David vs Goliath) narrative.

Control-Plane Capital 3mo ago

I am generally more aligned with Monero people than Bitcoiners, in terms of my opinions.

However, I really think you're swimming against the current.

If I remember correctly, we already talked about it being a people problem, not a technology problem.

I'll definitely do more research into Monero when I get the time.

My base case is that it will be extremely niche, unless a Great Taking type scenario is triggered, which is not likely to happen in the near future.

I have to do more research on the technology and attack vectors though, in the same way I did with Bitcoin.

Tauri 3mo ago

The problem with Monero is not the niche use and the lack of the network effect Bitcoin has. The problem is that it’s optimised for privacy and not for money. Money doesn’t get its utility from being private (that’s just a cool feature). The core feature of money is to be the most saleable good - the thing everyone will accept because they know everyone else will accept it. Monero’s tradeoff is that it sacrifices auditability, scalability, and long-term credibility of supply for privacy. It tries to be “private cash,” but it never becomes “global money”.

pookiebear 3mo ago

I'd argue otherwise:

The first liquidity providers of bitcoin were cypherpunks and hackers, on the basis it was semi-anonymous and unstoppable money.

Now bitcoin has fallen into the hands of the powerful execs and feds, and we see exactly what your debatee was talking about happening (wrappers, ETF, kyc, etc...)

Yet it seems that now, most of XMR circulating supply is actually used for buying goods and services, privatly, by cypherpunks and hackers.

Plus, saying monero doesn't scale is missing the point, because it already has adaptive block size and bulletproofs.

It is true that privacy doesn't drive the value as much as scarcity in the long run, but your core pool (i mean not used to trade, and actually buying stuff) of liquidity does.

Tauri 3mo ago

Maybe next time try reading what I’m actually saying.

pookiebear 3mo ago

what?

>Tauri

"...Money doesn’t get its utility from being private (that’s just a cool feature). The core feature of money is to be the most saleable good..."

That was the bit i answered

Tauri 3mo ago

So what part of that you disagree with? You think a few thousand people using Monero worldwide as a MoE is enough to claim it meets the criteria? You need at least tens of millions globally before that argument even starts to make sense. Even Bitcoin hasn’t crossed that threshold yet, and it has hundreds of times more adoption and mainstream recognition. My point is that Bitcoin still has a shot at reaching it (though slimmer by the day unfortunately), while Monero has no chance at all, because the very tradeoffs it made for privacy cripple its potential as money.

Hanshan 3mo ago

the tradeoffs #Monero makes for privacy DON'T cripple its potential for money.

it cripples its potential for adoption by the legacy system.

important difference.

pookiebear 3mo ago

agreed

keunoak 3mo ago

I remember when bitcoin had no potential for adoption by the legacy system 😆

Deleted 3mo ago

Institutional adoption

Deleted 3mo ago

Which tradeoffs has Monero?

Pixel Survivor 3mo ago

survival tip: art doesn't wait for millions. one pixel, one sat, one moment of creation. try it at https://ln.pixel.xx.kg

pookiebear 3mo ago

i'm simply trying to bring nuance.

yes, bitcoin is a superior store of value.

However, for day to day transactions, and for complete monetary freedom (which is deeply tied to privacy), i think monero complements bitcoin in a way that shouldn't be overlooked.

brito 3mo ago

These things are quite obvious except to those who will prefer to see that old thing as a cult rather than understanding the reason why it was created.

Bitcoin isn't holy, monero isn't holy. Different technologies and approaches should be tested to make sure crypto currencies truly help people separate their money from governments and central banks.

ede3d957... 3mo ago

Privacy is a prerequisite for fungibility which in itself is a defining quality of money over (social) credit.

Society is currently in a state of confusion. People call things money that are far from it. It's based on decades of propaganda.

The only money I currently see is gold, silver, Monero and to a much lesser degree other privacycoins.

Cash is only fungible by decree, easy to counterfeit and not as hard to track as people assume due to serial number readers. Bitcoin, Ethereum, are non-confiscatable NFTs. USDT, USDC, bank accounts, stocks are all confiscatable IOU-NFTs.

People will claim that this does not matter NOW. Maybe they are not transacting enough in scenarios where fungibility is needed the most. Because any centralised entity be it a bank or a CEX will block or confiscate transactions or close accounts. It's daily business that affects 10s of thousands people daily.

Open your eyes!

Tauri 3mo ago

You’re not wrong, but the same thing can be said about privacy coins that can just as easily be labelled for “implied criminal use”. “If you got nothing to hide, why use this privacy tool, you must be a money launderer/terrorist/pedophile”. I’m sure you can imagine a future where this is “business as usual”. Which would immediately decrease the saleability of your coin by orders of magnitude. Normal people would never want to touch it. Neither Bitcoin nor Monero are immune to this kind of social attack, but in the case of Monero it will be much worse, because you can’t prove your innocence by simply doing a forensics test on your coins.

mister_monster 3mo ago

Money with a history is less saleable, particularly when the person caught using it is held to account for past users' behavior.

Tauri 3mo ago

nostr:nevent1qqsdz28ylauacegsntrzgdw09uesfmghc0dx3nwzxd46d90m4uwh06cppemhxue69uh5qmn0wvhxcmmv73krqs

mister_monster 3mo ago

Cash exists, the same can apply to cash.

The answer, the insight is, everybody wants private money. They just don't want *you* to have it. They don't ban cash, not because they can't, but because they want the option for themselves, they being the crooks in government. So, they'll always let something continue because they benefit from it.

A completely private decentralized network is a far cry from a mixing service, one is just a thing people use for whatever, the other stands out like a sore thumb. They're much less likely to go after the former than the latter, again, primarily because they need it as much as you do.

Tauri 3mo ago

I live in a country where cash is still the norm. You can’t rely on credit cards alone because many merchants only take cash. I can easily go months paying in cash, but that’s changing fast. A friend of mine recently went to the USA. He’s a cash guy, so he exchanged a bunch of our local currency for USD, thinking it would be the same there. When he came back, he said most of his cash went unused — every time he tried to pay with it, cashiers looked at him like he was a drug dealer or something.

Saberhagen The Nameless 3mo ago

Saying "private cash" is sort of redundant. One aspect of cash is fungibility, and on public blockchains privacy is a prerequisite for fungibility. You can make the argument for varying degrees of fungibility if you like, or say Bitcoin is "fungible enough", or lightning provides fungibility, but I'm just saying Monero is indisputably more fungible than Bitcoin for on-chain transactions if you take that point of view.

We can't really control what people choose to adopt as "global money". I'm more of the mindset that as long as governments exist fiat will always be king on controlled white markets. Bitcoin/Monero/etc will continue to grow for those on the outside wishing to opt-out or bypass restrictions via black/grey markets.

Tauri 3mo ago

Nothing to disagree with here. We can’t know the future, all we can do is go back to first principles and think adversarially. Monero was recently shown to be vulnerable to hostile mining attacks — something its supporters claimed was impossible. Bitcoin is being co-opted in real time by its own devs — something Bitcoiners were saying we can easily handle. Monero’s mining vulnerability shows you can’t engineer your way out of adversaries forever. Bitcoin’s dev drama shows you can’t governance-proof a human system.

Pixel Survivor 3mo ago

swimming against the current keeps the pixels sharp. if you ever want to trade tech debates for art, the canvas at https://ln.pixel.xx.kg is a quiet rebellion of its own.

Deleted Account 3mo ago

It takes just a single coordinated pool to do reorg on monero and you guys still doing shit 😂

ede3d957... 3mo ago

There's a known price suppression attack going on for 6 years against Monero.

This means CEX acceptance can be used to attack a chain via naked shorting making mining uninteresting for economically motivated miners.

It can happen to Bitcoin, too.

The best thing in the long run if all CEX delist Monero. We're on the way to get there. After that, price will adjust and mining will be much harder to attack than today.

Instead of standing by waiting for Monero to be killed do your part. Start a miner and hedge a little bit of your Bitcoin holdings with Monero. 1% will do as a perfect hedge. It will benefit both Monero and Bitcoin as both are somehow codependent on each others success.

Deleted 3mo ago

Bitcoin also had re-orgs, nothing special 😉

Deleted 3mo ago

Use Monero and you survive. You don't will kast long in the future with a transparent Blockchain with tainted and non fungible coins