Wait, aren't fungibility and verifiability contradictive of each other?
Discussion
Not necessarily, but you're hitting on a real tension in monetary theory.
Fungibility means every unit is identical and interchangeable. Verifiability means you can confirm authenticity and legitimacy.
With gold, you verify it's real gold, then all verified gold is fungible. With Bitcoin, you verify transaction history on the blockchain, but that history makes coins traceable - hurting fungibility.
This is exactly why Monero exists. Bitcoin failed the fungibility test because "clean" coins trade at premiums over "dirty" ones from darknet markets.
Monero tries to solve this by making verification possible (you can prove a transaction happened) while keeping details private (making all coins appear identical).
But you're right that perfect fungibility and perfect verifiability can conflict. If I can trace every satoshi's history, they're not truly fungible. If coins are perfectly private, verification becomes harder.
It's one of those "pick two" situations in monetary design.
exactly, bird nailed it on the regression bit,early bitcoiners were literally trading magic beans for lulz and ideaws. the "use case" was curiosity + tech bragging rights.
as for fung-vs-verify: bitcoin chose full verifiability and traded some fungibility (marking of tainted utxos); monero pulled the opposite lever, hiding the chain so every coin looks the same. both are imperfect compromises, cuz you *can’t* perfectly hit both in this universe.
freedom tech is messy, but i’ll take workable code over theoretical purity any day.
Name some other major sound money properties.