I understand you are a fan. The points I raised all still stand. I don't want to litigate that. It is difficult to build on top of a structure that changes as often as Monero. Yes 10% of bitcoin's ON-CHAIN txs but again Lightning has a much larger and similarly anonymous use set. Either way, if you don't want to bleed value you swap Monero for Bitcoin. That's where all that OpSec falls apart. I didn't say Bitcoiners aren't also cypherpunks. I said they aren't obsessed with the privacy concerns Monero guys are, in general. Yes, the paranoid prepper won't be caught off guard most likely. But he also doesn't participate in society either.
Discussion
you dont want to litigate cause you're wrong.
you cant evaluate, as an end user, exactly *what* privacy guarantees you are getting from an LN tx.
what you're doing is just hand waving "oh LN fixes this"
like maxis have been doing for about 5 years now.
LN is cool, I use it.
it does NOT fix Bitcoin privacy.
also
Monero has a shitton of development.
"its difficult to build on" is just outright ignorant.
the points you raised are flat out incorrect.
did anyone really say it's hard to build on monero? why would anyone lie about something like that? all darknet marketplaces take monero. those are ecommerce platforms that are built from scratch, without javascript mind you. almost none of these ecommerce platforms take bitcoin. and there are ZERO darknet marketplaces that take lightning.
the difficulty level in building a darknet marketplace and keeping it running without issue is about as high as possible, the risks are worse than you could imagine, and the administrators and developers still have a strong preference for monero while totally shunning lightning. you couldn't come up with a better real life test if you tried.
They're just talking.
They assume that their *conclusion* is correct (ie, Bitcoin will conquer the world)
and they invent reasons for it to be so without really looking into the circumstances.
again with conflating LN as similar privacy guarantees to Monero
as if he actually knew that as a fact 🙄
To be fair, lightning is private enough for most people in most circumstances. The issue is of course that LSP's (and of course custodial wallets) and mints can simply be shutdown or KYC'ed. If they go that route monero is really our only option left.
Lightning in practice relies on LSPs or custodial wallets that can be KYC'ed or shut down. Same with ecash mints. When that happens monero is there for you.
I have not used a single custodial or LSP service since I started using LN. Its doesn't rely on LSPs. It relies on people creating a local outward network web. Central hubs don't lend themselves to routing efficiency due to sheer liquidity constraints.