Lightning is not as private/anon as #monero (onion routing won't save your ass from a global passive adversary, and that's just the tip of the iceberg).
Also, payments regularly fail if you don't have a direct channel to the destination, when the payments are just a few thousand dollars.
Also, it requires every node along the way (indeed, the whole network) to have the funds sitting on an always-online hot wallet.
Also, most lightning users don't even use it non-custodially.
Of the few who do, almost everyone uses a LSP, because it's a pain in the ass to manage your own node and your own channels.
Finally, it is a regular pattern that even the very small minority of bitcoiners who actually use it for payments, overwhelmingly and puzzingly use onchain payments, not lightning; here is an example from today:
---
The online crypto store ShopinBit just released its January 2025 update. Here are the payment numbers for that month:
Monero: 56.3%
Bitcoin: 42.9%
Lightning Network: 0.4%
Fiat: 0.4%
"Monero payments are soaring again, taking the lead at 56.3%! We’ve seen #XMR dominate before, but this start to the year is truly impressive."
Link to their post on X/Twitter: https://x.com/shopinbit/status/1889584085057896498
Link to the store: https://shopinbit.com/
---
p.s: calling #monero trendy .. lol. if only. but no, a lot of the real o.g's know, use and respect it, most of the noobs don't, and the zealot maxis are allergic to it :)
Nah.
The mixnet mode is a lot slower, but if you understand what a mixnet is and how it operates, that is not a surprise - you're trading speed for anonymity.
The fast mode uses two hops and is actually faster than most multihop VPNs I've ever tried.
This is a threat to our democracy!
Today is the day: Obscura VPN is NOW AVAILABLE!
Obscura is the first VPN that:
- CAN'T log your activity by design
- Outsmarts network filters
We believe Obscura sets the standard for a new generation of VPNs, and hope you’ll check it out!
----
Contrary to popular belief, traditional VPNs (even “no-log” ones) can track you – they see both who you are and what you do, just like your ISP.
Your ISP is no better. Since 2017, they've been able to legally sell your sensitive data.
Obscura is different – we never see your decrypted internet packets in the first place.
It’s simply impossible for us to log your internet activity, even if we were compelled to, or if our servers were compromised.
We achieve this by using a fully-independent exit hop run by @mullvadvpn. Ensuring that our servers never see your traffic, and the exit hop never sees your identity.
In fact, you can check your connected server’s public key against those listed on Mullvad’s server page!
But that’s not all…
You may have had the frustrating experience of trying to use your VPN on a restrictive WiFi: in an airport, a hotel, or certain jurisdictions.
Other VPNs will often fail to connect, as their off-the-shelf protocol is easily detected and blocked.
With Obscura, we built our own custom stealth protocol that is much harder to block.
Our protocol blends in with regular internet traffic using the same technology that powers HTTP/3 – QUIC – making it much harder for censors or network filters to detect or block.
To celebrate our launch, Obscura is just $6/month.
Our team has put in the hours to make this all a seamless experience, and I hope you’ll take Obscura for a spin.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you on the free and open internet. 🏄
P.S. For those looking for an exploration of our technical choices, here's our blog post! https://obscura.net/blog/bootstrapping-trust/
Have a look at https://nym.com 😉
Big if true.
Y'all hilarious, so dogmatic and zealot-y that the simple notion of using Monero while hodling bitcoin is a logical impossibility in your minds.
Most Monero users I know have been Bitcoiners for a lot longer than most of what passes for "Bitcoiner" today have been into Bitcoin.
Do you have a source on the UN no cash by 2030 thing?
Monero people will tell you monero is untraceable but you can watch a video of chainalysis tracing it transaction by transaction. Here is the video: https://v.nostr.build/D4Nzp22vRF35IRnz.mp4
Here are the timestamps:
26:55 - Morphtoken to the perp
30:43 - Perp to ChangeNow or Liquid Exchange
32:49 - Perp to Exodus Wallet
35:08 - Perp to Exodus Wallet or mining pool
36:51 - Perp to Centralized Exchange or Merchant POS, this is how they nabbed him
You continue to spread FUD and lies and demonstrating your ignorance about Monero.
That debate you did with Luke moderated by Seth was painful to listen to, but I managed to sit through the whole thing, only to hear you repeatedly twist words and attempt to deceive the audience, in very much the same way you are doing here.
Both Luke and Seth were very patient with you indeed. You were not arguing in good faith.
Where Monero and Bitcoin are both accepted it tends to overtake Bitcoin, Lightning or no Lightning - in fact, for some reason, Lightning payments always seem to pale in comparison to onchain bitcoin payments when those stats are published (shopinbit, nostr:nprofile1qqs06juvrw2txquvwshq9dzjffuzef294u7f55ttll02me4x8cx3q8cpr9mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuumwdae8gtnnda3kjctv9u0r0yw9, nostr:nprofile1qqszdzu53dd2kjatpe2rpmjfu08lz9mkeuvrm7fmxg2el9nsa42pf9gpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsz8thwden5te0dehhxarj9e3xjarrda5kuetj9eek7cmfv9kz7qg4waehxw309aex2mrp0yhxummnw3ezucn89uhccw4k, etc)
Where anonymity and privacy are an absolute must (DNMs) the market uniformly chose Monero.
This is undeniable, the facts speak for themselves.
You demonstrate the hubris and arrogance of the central planner, when you assert to know better than the people whose very freedom is at stake, concerning which is the better tool for the job.
The market has already chosen, and it isn't Lightning. Sorry.
You want the truth to be something else, and it isn't, but your ideological dogma prevents you from seeing it.
I want to use the better tool for the job. Today that's #monero. If tomorrow it's something else, I'll switch.
Hint: it's probably not gonna be the tech endorsed by Blackrock.
From the companies who do publish this data, the story is always the same.
Monero on top, and paradoxically enough, Lightning less used than onchain Bitcoin.
Seems the market has chosen, and it's not darknet markets only, either.
You can setup cloud backups too. But honestly it's pretty easy to backup to a USB pen (or two).
You're spoiled, friend.
Liquid will hide amounts, not addresses, so a blatantly obvious connection will remain.
Lightning.. yeah, good luck not screwing it up. The utxo that opens a channel is public knowledge and so are channel balances.
This is all downstream effects of lack of privacy on the L1. All satoshis have a history, this history can and will be used to discriminate between them - that's what this law does.
Entirely predictable, unfortunately.
I'm sure plants want to be eaten, that's why they evolved all those chemical defenses, no doubt.
Figures - a primate who sympathizes more with killing plans for food than other animals such as itself.
Every living thing needs sustenance. That would be other living things. The moment you expire you are food for worms too. It is the way of the world.
Beautiful, ugly - human concepts. Reality is as it is.
People got spooked with coinjoin-style things since Wasabi. Also, even the less attentive now seem to understand that coinjoining puts a giant red flag on the resulting utxos.
Staying private on a fully transparent ledger is a losing proposition.
You're seeing black and white. Already it is a safer country and a lot of the leftist bullshit is being openly ridiculed and dismantled. There's been a lot more good news than bad and it's only been a few weeks.
It's like you want everything to be perfect or nothing is worth it. Stop eating those black pills for breakfast, man.
You can't tell me you think it's just as good or just as bad that Trump won instead of Kamala.
Again, it's not black or white. Voting isn't useless and Trump isn't the holy saviour, there is a lot between those two extremes.
If voting is useless howcome Trump won, after they tried to kill him, put his supporters in jail, tried to bankrupt him, deplatformed censored and silenced him, and ran hit piece after hit piece in the mainstream mierda?
DEI and CRT are going away because Trump won, Ross was pardoned because Trump won, the border is magically safe (wasn't so hard after all it seems) in under two weeks because Trump won, and Trump won because enough people didn't have the same defeatist attitude you're displaying and did something to change the status quo (voting).
You may say you prefer a system without a State, and fair enough, but that is not the reality now.
Since THAT is the reality, you can use your vote to steer the system in a direction you find more productive. Or you can waste it and do nothing, but then don't complain things keep getting worse.
There's a lot of gray between voting is useless and only a politician will save us. Don't be so monochromatic :)
It's cheap due to lack of interest of transacting onchain at the moment.
I can only speculate, but the reason I personally almost never move my onchain btc is the horrendous surveillance-friendly lack of privacy and very weak pseudonymity the experience provides.
I would never pay for anything with onchain Bitcoin. And I doubt I'm the only one.