I've been reading a bit more about privacy in Bitcoin and I've come across a lot of people talking about Monero, claiming that it's one of the best tools for privacy.
Is this claim true? Are there other effective and cheap ways to achieve the same end?
No, it is not true. Bitcoins Lightning Network is faster and offers better privacy.
Additionally coinjoins on Bitcoin offer the same privacy.
What the M***** shitcoin offers is privacy within a set by mixing in other pubkeys for ring signatures. It's a nifty technology but it is 1. completely overengineered (The elegant thing about Bitcoin is that it utilizes only standard cryptography that is battle tested for decades and can be seen as the very fundamental building blocks of cryptography.) and 2. absolutely unnecessary (Bitcoins Lightning offers better privacy and if a shitcoins user gets tricked into mixing in only pubkeys from FBI agents then he has revealed his identity)
Monero amounts and addresses aren't even visible on it's blockchain thanks to Confidential Transactions and Stealth Addresses. Completely hidden. Less than a cent to transact too.
So yes, it is true, Monero is a great tool for privacy.
Coinjoins don't offer privacy, merely ownership obfuscation, a weaker form of anonymity. Nothing is hidden. Also it's slower, expensive, and tedious vs Monero.
Lightning isn't more private either. Lightning wasn't optimized for privacy. It was designed around cheap and fast payments. Receiver privacy in particular is terrible and there are many ways to probe the network. Incentives also naturally lead to less privacy (cheaper and more succesful routing require shorter routes thru massive hubs)
Here are literal LN devs telling us lightning isn't private:
bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/state-of-bitcoin-lightning-network-privacy
Also, another of many things to consider is that absolutely no one uses lightning on Darknet Markets. A place where privacy is paramount, with ultimate skin in the game, Monero has massive disproportionate adoption.
Transactions can be tracked with new software, and the user pool is relatively small.
No idea about Monero but Lightning is such a good tool some exchanges even trying to address that.