everybody has to make intelligent decisions about where to place trust.
but you going to have to show some receipts if you're going to say that Monero isn't decentralized.
Discussion
1. The RingCT point: “Every transaction proves inputs = outputs = zero”
Yes, Monero’s RingCT (with Bulletproofs+) cryptographically proves no hidden inflation at the transaction level without revealing amounts. That’s technically impressive.
But it’s not a free lunch:
• It relies on much more complex cryptographic primitives (Pedersen commitments, range proofs, linkable ring signatures) with a larger attack surface.
• These have had real bugs and fixes in Monero’s history (e.g., early RingCT inflation vulnerabilities patched, decoy selection issues).
• Bitcoin’s simple UTXO model + transparent ledger lets anyone fully audit everything in real time—no need for heavy ZK proofs that could break in subtle ways.
• Opacity means fewer people can meaningfully verify the system’s integrity. Recent example: Monero suffered an 18-block reorg in September 2025 (deepest ever), invalidating 118 transactions—harder to detect/prevent issues when everything’s hidden.
Transparency enables broader, trustless auditing. Privacy-by-default limits it.
2. “Monero isn’t decentralized—show receipts”
Easy receipts (as of January 2026):
• Exchange delistings → Monero survived 73 delistings in 2025 alone due to regulatory pressure (e.g., Kraken, Binance regions, others in EU/Canada). This centralizes access—fewer on-ramps, forcing P2P or DEXs, which reduces liquidity and accessibility for average users.
• Node counts → Bitcoin: ~24,000 reachable nodes worldwide (bitnodes.io data). Monero: Public nodes in the low thousands (monerohash.com shows ~7-8k distributed, but many Tor-only and harder to count/verify—far fewer than Bitcoin’s open network).
• Practical decentralization → Regulatory targeting hits privacy coins hardest, shrinking global reach. Bitcoin has spot ETFs, institutional custody, and no widespread bans—more resilient and decentralized in practice.
• Mining: Monero’s RandomX is CPU-friendly (decentralized there), but overall hashrate is tiny compared to Bitcoin’s (zettahashes vs gigahashes), making it theoretically easier to attack if targeted.
Monero’s mandatory privacy makes it a regulatory magnet, harming real-world decentralization.
3. Trust in cryptographic primitives
This is where his analogy completely falls apart.
• Bitcoiners trust the minimal set of battle-tested primitives → ECDSA, SHA-256, PoW—proven secure for 15+ years under massive scrutiny.
• Monero requires trusting more (and newer) primitives → ring signatures, stealth addresses, Bulletproofs, upcoming FCMP++.
• These add complexity and risk—larger code base, more potential for undiscovered flaws (see academic papers on potential de-anonymization via timing/chain analysis, e.g., 2025 IEEE work on ring signature tracing).
• Nick Szabo’s “social scalability” point: Transparent systems scale trustlessly because anyone (even non-experts) can verify and defend the network. Opaque systems require trusting the crypto works perfectly forever—no emergent defense from outsiders.
Bitcoin minimizes trust. Monero increases it by forcing everyone into complex privacy tech.
The number of people willing to trust this? Bitcoin: Trillions in market cap, institutional adoption, global nodes. Monero: ~$8B cap, strong but niche, heavily delisted.
4. The “Bitcoiners are the nocoiners of 10 years ago” analogy
This is just smug reversal—it’s bullshit.
• Nocoiners rejected digital scarcity entirely.
• Bitcoiners embrace it with the simplest, most robust design—fixed supply, transparent auditability, optional privacy (CoinJoin, Lightning, ecash like Cashu/Fedimint).
• Monero forces mandatory privacy on everyone, which sounds great until it gets you banned from exchanges and scrutinized by regulators.
• History shows simplicity wins long-term → Bitcoin’s minimalism has survived everything.
• Adding layers of complex crypto is the riskier bet—like trusting fancy fiat controls instead of hard rules.
People first focused on privacy first are resisting layered solutions that give privacy without the trade-offs.
These sources explain transparency’s critical role: it ensures security, trust, and resilience, letting markets uphold satoshi fungibility actively strengthened by traceability, and why traceability/transparency is a critical feature.
Transparency enables anti-fragility, not possible without base layer transparency.
Nick Szabo, Money, Blockchains, and Social Scalability (2017, Unenumerated blog) : Szabo, a pioneer in smart contracts, explains Bitcoin's transparent ledger creates broad awareness by letting anyone audit transactions and supply in real time.
This openness enables emergent defenses-miners, nodes, and even non-participants can spot attacks (like double-spending attempts) and rally to protect the network, no trust required.
This counters your UTXO gripes: transparency ensures satoshis' equal value is verifiable, preserving fungibility.
Pierre Rochard, Bitcoin Governance as a Decentralized Financial Institution (2014, Nakamoto Institute) : Rochard argues Bitcoin's transparency allows anyone, even non-technical supporters, to verify the blockchain's integrity, fostering trustless participation.
This creates emergent defense mechanisms community members or political advocates can support the system by running nodes or voicing support without needing to trust others.
This supports the point that traceability doesn't break satoshi fungibility; it strengthens market confidence.
Elaine Ou, Bitcoin's Social Contract (2018, Bloomberg Opinion) : Ou highlights how bitcoin's open ledger encourages broad participation, as anyone can check transactions, enabling collective defense against threats like 51% attacks.
Political or social supporters, even non users, can bolster bitcoin's legitimacy by affirming its transparent rules, no trust needed. This refutes your friend's claim by showing transparency protects satoshi value, not undermines it.
Aaron van Wirdum, How Bitcoin's Blockchain Secures Itself (Bitcoin Magazine, 2016) : This article details how transparency in bitcoin's base layer allows global awareness of network activity, enabling miners, nodes, and even external advocates to detect and counter threats without centralized coordination.
It supports transparency ensuring satoshis trade equally, as markets trust the verifiable ledger, despite UTXO histories.
Caitlin Long, Bitcoin's Censorship Resistance as a Financial Fortress (2023, Forbes online) : Long explains that Bitcoin's transparent base layer enables anyone to monitor and defend the network, fostering trustless verification.
Even non-participants, like policy advocates, can support Bitcoin's integrity politically, reinforcing its resilience.
This ties to the point: transparency underpins satoshi fungibility by ensuring market-wide trust in equal value.
Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Mastering Bitcoin (2nd ed., 2017) : Antonopoulos explains Bitcoin's transparent blockchain as key to its decentralized trust model.
Anyone can verify transactions and the total supply, ensuring no hidden inflation or fraud, which supports satoshi fungibility by proving equal market value despite traceable UTXOs.
Jimmy Song, Programming Bitcoin (2019) : Song highlights how Bitcoin's transparency allows developers and users to verify consensus rules, making the system robust against attacks like double-spending.
This supports the point that UTXO histories don't undermine satoshis' equal value.
Lyn Alden, Broken Money (2023) : Alden underscores the transparent blockchain's role in making Bitcoin a verifiable, trustless system. It ensures market confidence in satoshi equivalence, refuting reputation based arguments by showing transparency strengthens, not weakens, fungibility.
Saifedean Ammous, The Bitcoin Standard (2018) : Ammous argues transparency in Bitcoin's base layer is critical for its sound money properties, like scarcity and verifiability.
It lets users independently confirm the system's integrity, countering your friend's claim that traceability breaks fungibility satoshis trade equally regardless.
Parker Lewis, Gradually, Then Suddenly (2020, Unchained Capital blog series) : Lewis emphasizes Bitcoin's open ledger as a feature, not a flaw, enabling global auditability and resistance to censorship or manipulation.
This ensures satoshis' fungibility holds in markets, as privacy is handled by Layer 2, not the base layer.
Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin Whitepaper (2008) : Satoshi emphasizes a transparent, public ledger for a trustless system.
Transactions are broadcast openly, ensuring anyone can verify no double spending or manipulation happens, which builds trust without intermediaries.
This counters UTXO traceability gripe, transparency protects satoshi fungibility by proving equal value.
Nik Bhatia’s Layered Money (2021) : Bhatia highlights Bitcoin’s transparent base layer as the foundation for layered scaling.
It ensures auditability and security, letting Layer 2 solutions like Lightning add privacy while keeping the core tamper proof, which is critical for maintaining market confidence in satoshi value.
Bitcoin Magazine, The Nakamoto Strategy (July 2025) : This article praises Bitcoin’s transparency for enabling public verification of the blockchain, fostering trust and efficient price discovery.
It underscores that a see through ledger prevents hidden attacks, unlike opaque systems like Monero.
Transparency is important for the base layer money and has nothing to do with fungibility.
Nakamoto Institute, Satoshi’s Forum Posts (2009-2010) : Satoshi’s writings stress that transparency allows everyone to audit the supply and transactions, making Bitcoin resilient against fraud or central control.
This reinforces this argument that UTXO histories don’t break satoshi equivalence in markets.
Forbes, BitChat and eCash: The Future of P2P Payments (August 2025) : This recent piece notes how Bitcoin’s transparent base layer enables secure, auditable transactions, and tools like eCash adding privacy on Layer 2.
It shows traceability (like UTXOs) is irrelevant to fungibility, and that transparency enables trust, adaptation and advancement as markets ensure through universal audibility of satoshis equal value, system functionality and integrity.
Much more including podcasts and other writings from credible, ethical, knowledgable, well-regarded professionals. From College professors from economists to scientists/credentialed technologists and others.
If I wanted to debate with an LLM… well I don’t so….
You just don't want to debate truth
No it’s just easier to type a response to one or two points then respond to a plethora of things with my two thumbs on my phone.
If you want to debat type a response in your own fucking words and I will respond I’m not going copy paste into an LLM to respond to you.
It's a well formed response to a bullshit assertion, i'm sorry if the full explanation is hard for you to dispute and/or trivialize
Give me a well informed response then in your own words.
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.
Your shit isn’t even coherent you posted “if you want to trust a layer 2”
“Monero isn’t a layer 2”
In the same thread
Yes, exactly, and you claimed with bitcoin, as i explained it's completely separate from bitcoin
Where in the fuck did I claim Monero is a layer 2?
I said that because it's not a layer two, and you said "with bitcoin". Here was my response right after that:
Bitcoin’s layered approach delivers robust, optional privacy without the trade-offs of mandatory base-layer opacity.
Monero isn’t a Layer 2 (it’s a completely separate Layer 1 chain), so “pairing” it with Bitcoin just means holding two assets with no seamless integration, extra complexity and monero offers risk in no transparency in exchange for privacy that bitcoin incentives and is always building to improve.
I get it—some folks discover privacy risks with transparent transactions and jump to Monero.
But studying deeper shows Bitcoin’s ecosystem is evolving exactly the right way: rock-solid transparent base layer for settlement, auditability, and anti-fragility, with ever-improving optional privacy on higher layers.
Bitcoin’s advancing secondary layers address privacy effectively—while preserving the transparency that enables broad verification, emergent defenses, and real-world resilience.
• Lightning Network: As you said, open a channel and get private, instant transactions off-chain (onion routing hides details from intermediate nodes). Channels can stay open indefinitely, with watchtowers and justice transactions enforcing honesty. Big players (exchanges, payment processors) have strong incentives to play fair to protect reputation and liquidity. No need for a separate chain.
• CoinJoin (via Wasabi, Samourai/JoinMarket): Mix your UTXOs with others on-chain for excellent privacy without leaving Bitcoin. It’s non-custodial and improving constantly.
• Chaumian eCash (Cashu, Fedimint): This is the killer—blind-signature ecash tokens that are truly private and cash-like. Mint operators (communities, trusted groups, or even solo) issue untraceable tokens backed 1:1 by Bitcoin. Redeem anytime, no history attached. Fedimint adds community custody for scale and resilience—perfect for high-privacy use cases without Monero’s downsides.
• Ark Protocol (gaining traction in 2025-2026): A newer L2 that lets thousands of users share off-chain liquidity pools with non-interactive payments. Faster onboarding than Lightning, cheaper on-chain footprints, and built-in privacy options—all settling to Bitcoin’s secure base.
These aren’t theoretical—they’re live, improving, and built on Bitcoin’s proven foundation.
Transparency at L1 means anyone can audit supply, detect attacks, and rally defenses (as Szabo’s social scalability argues). Institutions, ETFs, and nations adopt Bitcoin partly because of that auditability—not despite it.
Monero’s mandatory privacy sounds ideal until you hit reality: 73 exchange delistings in 2025 alone (Kraken, Binance regions, many others due to regs), shrinking liquidity, and constant regulatory targeting.
It’s niche (~$8-9B market cap vs Bitcoin’s trillions), with far fewer nodes (~8-10k public vs Bitcoin’s 24,000+ reachable). That hurts accessibility and decentralization in practice.
Pairing them? You’re just exposed to two separate networks’ risks—Monero’s complex crypto (bigger bug surface), potential de-anonymization research, and ban vulnerability—without the seamless benefits of true L2s.
Atomic swaps exist but are clunky and low-volume. Bitcoin gives the best of both worlds: optional, upgradable privacy on layers that leverage the hardest, most decentralized money ever. No biases needed—the design wins long-term.