That was fun. I remember thinking that it was way overhyped, and feeling that I predicted the crash correctly. I knew so little, and what I thought about it was all wrong, based on several assumptions that have turned out to be false upon really learning Bitcoin. I was right that there was unsustainable short term hype, but I was so wrong about the fundamental properties of it and its potential for spontaneous monetization. And I never would have guessed what it meant for freedom. It's a longterm game. Monero is too. But I think that bitcoin's optimization for NGU is extremely important for monetization. It will overtake everything before Monero ever has a chance to. Then the principles of sound money will have their affect on a massive macro scale. Monero might still be a viable alternative at that time, but it is almost certainly not going to be taking market share on the same scale as Bitcoin, and is probably going to be taking it at a slower rate too.

I thought it was about privacy. Transparency of what? I suppose making some things opaque tends to make other things transparent.

And yeah I'm not saying it has to be the best store of value into the future to be useful, just that people who rely on that or get excited by price movements might be misdirecting their energy. Bitcoin consumes the fastest. It's more scarce and has the best network effects. Monero has other benefits, largely at the expense of this.