@tuvok
#[4]
#[5]
@hopfield@nostrplebs.com
#[6]
to answer your questions:
-hard fork: not every upgrade is a hardfork. the community decides about it. it was decided by the monero community to implement a hardfork on august 13th 2022 in order to make mining of monero with asics inefficient in order to avoid what happened to bitcoin- centralization of mining
-transactions: monero can do confirmed 7000tps. this is the real transaction amount of the visa network. the number of 20000tps is propaganda. at no point does visa do 20000 transactions. when monero will replace visa and mastercard, it can even be made more efficient by consensus building a new hardfork.
-kyc: even if you bought your monero from binance (not recommended) or kraken (recommended) and you withdraw the coins immediately after buying, all they will know is how many monero you own. they cannot touch them, they cannot block them, they cannot tell you what to do with your coins. monero is fully fungible. it is the same as receiving cash from your bank. monero from kyc exchange is fully useful. bitcoin from kyc is not.
you can also buy monero with bitcoin from localmonero, habanero(soon), from cakewallet (excellent, self custody) or from tradeogre (recommended, no kyc)
-bitcoin and privacy: there are the tools available you mentioned in order to make bitcoin somewhat private. there is no tool to make bitcoin 100% private. all tools mentioned are very expensive and too complicated for the average user.
lightning network: the lightning network is very good. fast, scales... it has three major flaws: centralization, security and privacy.
centralization: it is an additional layer on the bitcoin network. it is NOT bitcoin. most people think that it is but it is NOT. i believe that this is done on purpose. lightning is pushed by corporations and billionaires. as you know a lightning node needs to provide liquidity. it is a complicated system, frustrating for many and hardly profitable for anyone but for the billionaires and corporations who provide this liquidity increasing the cost for every transaction.
security: there are at least 5 known attacks possible. none of those attacks happened (yet). the double spending problem which you find in satoshi's white paper, one of the major problems of cryptography, is not solved with lightning.
lightning itself does not recommend to use it for larger transactions
privacy: there is no privacy with lightning. today's computers can trace your lightning transactions back yo you. it takes a much higher effort than with bitcoin but it is possible. you can make it kind of private using vpns, multiple nodes etc. but who wants to take those efforts when privacy is not guaranteed with even those measures?
what was not even mentioned, is the monero community. you will not find any corporations or greedy billionaires. the monero community also values freedom of speech. see for yourself:
