I like your takes. I said that before.

What you write about is a well known and understood attack vector for at least 5 years.

Back in 2018, Monero reached #4 spot on Coin Market Caps and some reports came out that saw a Bitcoin-Monero dupoly as a likely future scenario for 2030.

Then we saw the next clycle pumped by the expansion of Tether where literally no money found its way into Monero, while memecoins x100 and x1000 (pull in/positive diversion of attention)

At the same time we saw exchanges like Binance, OKX, Ploniex, Huobi {on order or by incentives) go deeply fractionally reserved on their Monero holdings (push out/negative diversion of attention) resulting in a completely lost cycle of media attention and awareness for Monero

All that for buying time to weaponise thirdparty custodians and CEX (enforcing state defense policies aka AML/KYC) to exclude (delist) Monero from liquidity (capital flight).

Meanwhile placing a media and political speech embargo on anything that could draw (positive) attention to Monero. E.g. hit pieces bringing up only its criminal use or coining the term AEC anonymity enhancing coins (in policy reports across US/EU papers) without ever mentioning the one coin that does 95% of all those transactions.

This is a very interesting story. Feel free to reach out to the community if you can't get easy access to background knowledge and assumptions.

Last but not least, the Bitcoin maxi op made many Bitcoiners believe it is fiat NGU that means winning, when it's all about usage for whatever reason (limitation, control, privacy, programmability,..) in the longterm.