11 sats \ 16 replies \ @om 27 Mar \ parent \ on: KYC'd Bitcoin is Worthless bitcoin
Market tells you LOUDLY that it wants private ways to move Bitcoin rather than another altcoin.
How do you figure that? Where is the Bitcoin layer everyone uses for privacy? All the general crypto market is saying is it wants NGU. Completely unrelated to private transactions.
That only relevant markets that we can say have a dire need of privacy and anonymity are Darknet Markets and Bitcoin is being phased out there in favor of Monero.
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Where is the Bitcoin layer everyone uses for privacy?
All the layers I can think of except Rootstock offer some privacy:
- LN hides senders assuming they do routing on their own
- Liquid hides amounts
- Cashu hides everything except amounts
- Fedi is a hypothetical offspring of Liquid and Cashu, check out its beta
Also check out dark.fi, they're sort of like Liquid but with ZK, and they move Bitcoin and various cryptos privately.
That only relevant markets that we can say have a dire need of privacy and anonymity are Darknet Markets
The market segment that has the dire need of privacy values privacy, sure. But the market as a whole doesn't value it that much. So if I planned to only buy drugs in the future, then I'll stock up on Monero. But I plan to buy food, so I'll stock up on what the market in general values, which is Bitcoin.
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I'm fairly familiar with these. Everything you listed has small or microscopic use though vs Bitcoin on chain or even altcoins so I'm not sure how it helps your point about the market choosing it. Even when compared to Monero its pretty small. Liquid is mostly empty blocks and no one uses. Most LN users are on custodial wallets or rely on LSPs so have reduced or no privacy. The only things that offers comparable strong privacy is Cashu and Fedi and those are custodial.
DarkFi is a cool project. They are merged mined with Monero actually.
Yes, I agree the market overall doesn't value privacy much. But of the market that does value privacy they are overwhelmingly choosing Monero, not a Bitcoin privacy layer. They are even increasingly replacing Bitcoin itself with Monero.
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I'd say LN is used a lot, Liquid... yeah not so much, and Cashu with Fedi are still beta.
Using an LSP doesn't mean you can't do routing yourself. Breez is a consumer-grade wallet that does routing on the phone. Of course, if the recipient is also using Breez then the route is trivial and there's no privacy...
Now Monero has its own usability issues because light wallets have to do O(n) work where n is the unseen chain size. In other words, Monero mobile wallets suck and won't improve. So Monero is good for mail ordering drugs but for buying pupusas on the street it won't work. I think we'll see a lot more Fedi on the streets in the near future and then the drug markets will also start accepting ecash issued by major mints.
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It's hard to compare LN since there is no public way to see tx count (although the largest nodes and cutsodial wallets have a pretty good picture, but we can't access that data afaik). There might be more small value transactions in LN, but there is less Bitcoin in LN than Wrapped Bitcoin on Ethereum (~3% of WBTC). It's also a tenth the size of Moneros cap.
The real problem is vast majority of LN users are using custodial wallets that see everything. Whatever little left uses LSPs like Phoenix that see destination and amounts. Almost no users run their own LN node to benefit from the full privacy of that. Just look at LN wallet downloads as a rough indication. Also look at Bitcoin node count versus number of users. If users arent running simple Bitcoin nodes they definitely are not dealing with the hassles of running their own LN nodes.
Yea, syncing is kind of annoying if you haven't used your wallet in awhile, but it is not that big a deal for the privacy and sovereignty you gain. Not sure when the last time was that you used a wallet, but there have been several major improvements to sync speed over the last year or two. Also, some wallets allow background sync so you are always caught up.
Maybe people will start using ecash for smaller things we'll see.
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there is less Bitcoin in LN than Wrapped Bitcoin on Ethereum (~3% of WBTC).
I don't think that's a fair comparison as LN wants to replace cash in a pocket wallet while Ethereum wants to replace an investment account.
WoS reports 16.4M transactions right on the front page, if they're telling the truth then LN should be at least on the same order of magnitude as Monero for the total number of transactions processed (I assume Monero has about 40M transactions: 60G chain / 1.5K tx size).
The real problem is vast majority of LN users are using custodial wallets that see everything.
Monero users exhibit selection bias, meaning that they won't suffer a wallet that sees everything simply because the whole reason they bother with the coin less capitalized than pepe is privacy. But if Monero was the top coin instead of Bitcoin, that same people who use WoS now would use Monero through custodial wallets too. In other words, neither LN nor Monero deliver all three of convenience, privacy and sovereignty.
I've mentioned Breez before, it's basically Phoenix without the privacy problem, but users have to sync the LN graph. And people would rather use Phoenix instead of syncing the graph. Those guys who don't sync the LN graph because it's annoying aren't going to repent and sync the Monero blockchain for the sake of privacy.
but there have been several major improvements to sync speed over the last year or two.
OK, good to know! But there's one more issue: non-instant settlement. LN settles on the spot, but Monero only sends transactions on the spot, the buyer can still broadcast a conflicting transaction later, pulling the rug from under the vendor. The current plan of Monero (and BCH) users is to pretend that it won't be a thing because now it isn't. But it isn't a thing now precisely because so few people use Monero on the street.
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I don't think that's a fair comparison as LN...
Yea, that's why I said it is hard to compare so I threw out different metrics. Not sure if it's fair to compare ETH as wanting to "replace an investment account" either.
WoS reports 16.4M transactions right on the front page...
I guess we just have to take WoS word for it? Where do you get Monero chain as 60Gb from? It should be closer to ~200Gb.
Monero users exhibit selection bias...
I don't see what bias has to do with it as this whole conversation was around privacy.
I've mentioned Breez before...
Yes, I know of Breez with a whopping 10k downloads, but it's not as popular as Phoenix, and even Phoenix is nothing versus custodial wallet popularity like WoS which was something like ~500k last time I checked.
...Those guys who don't sync the LN graph because it's annoying aren't going to repent and sync the Monero blockchain for the sake of privacy.
I don't know how this helps your case. You're just proving my point that no LN users are going to use Lightning in a private way. If they can't deal with simple syncing they definitely won't run a LN node. If you want to scratch off all custodial users of both LN and Monero I would be glad to, but then that would just leave lightning with almost no one using the network and Monero resembling pretty much what it is now.
LN settles on the spot, but Monero only sends transactions on the spot, the buyer can still broadcast a conflicting transaction later, pulling the rug from under the vendor...
Ok, so for any delivery that isn't instant, or the customer doesn't immediately leave (online purchases, dine-in restaurants, entertainment venues, etc) this doesn't matter. If someone double spends the vendor can just cancel the order, tell customer to repay, kick them out, etc.
For everything else...we already exist and function in a world where you can commit fraud for everything above PLUS the instant delivery and in-person-immediate-leave transactions you are worried about (either thru chargebacks or counterfeit money). 0 conf, especially with DSP like on BCH, would still be a massive improvement over that. The customer would also have to rebroadcast a conflicting transaction within seconds of paying or it won't work (original transaction would propagate to more and more nodes the longer they wait decreasing chance of success with it) and the vendor would just know they tried to double spend while they were still in the store.
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I guess we just have to take WoS word for it?
That's why I wrote "if they're telling the truth".
Where do you get Monero chain as 60Gb from? It should be closer to ~200Gb.
I got it from https://bitinfocharts.com, good to know if it's wrong.
I don't see what bias has to do with it as this whole conversation was around privacy.
Let me put it another way: nobody has the tech that provides 3 of 3 of convenience, privacy and sovereignty, but Bitcoin has the next best thing: you can pick 2 of 3, namely:
- convenience and privacy: ecash
- convenience and sovereignty: Phoenix
- privacy and sovereignty: own LN node or Breez
Thus Bitcoin is, in political terms, big tent. Monero on the other hand says that only one choice is correct, namely privacy and sovereignty. How dare other people make different choices than I do!
If they can't deal with simple syncing they definitely won't run a LN node.
It looks to me that you understand users as making the choice between Bitcoin and Monero first and the choice between convenience and privacy second. So you observe 10k Breez users vs 500k WoS users (+? Binance/Coinbase users) and you see sinners that make the wrong choice, and you pinpoint the issue to the original sin of choosing Bitcoin instead of Monero, and the 10k/500k figures just prove to you once more how sinful Bitcoin is.
But in my understanding users have preferences first and choose their tech second. So I look at those 10k Breez users vs 500k WoS users differently. The 10k Breez users are at least willing to sync the graph so they will potentially listen to Monero people with all their chain syncing requirements - what's left for Monero users to explain is why bother with the coin number forty-something. The 500k WoS users, however, exhibit preferences that are wholly incompatible with Monero but can be satisfied by Fedi. So I see that 10k/500k split as 10k Monero growth potential vs. 500k (+ Binance/Coinbase users) ecash growth potential.
Ok, so for any delivery that isn't instant,
Yeah, I agree here.
counterfeit money
That is way harder to accomplish than broadcasting a transaction.
0 conf, especially with DSP like on BCH, would still be a massive improvement over that.
There was a fork of Monero called Oxen that offered that exact feature, they called it Blink. So why hasn't Monero adopted it from Oxen then?
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