0 sats \ 2 replies \ @yo2xncv0 9 May \ parent \ on: if bitcoin became illegal by law (part two) Personal_Finance
How is it moot? Lightning and Bitcoin both don't scale. Even for Lightning to kind of scale it needs more than 100MB blocksize and that is being conservative. ~95% of lightning users don't use it sovereignly (without custodians or permission) and even the tiny bit that do arent completely private. All these L2s so far gut the sovereignty of on chain transactions.
Technology is not static. It's always getting better and cheaper. Monero won't need to scale for awhile and when it does we can just make it more efficient as we did with bulletproofs or upgrade the protocol like what is coming down the road with Jamtis and Seraphis.
I always find your last argument to be fairly weak. Bankers, political crooks, and tyrants will never use a transparent currency. If they wanted to be upfront and honest they would be doing that now. And even if you can see what they do...what are you going to do about it? Right now they are sending billions of our money to foreign nations and no one is doing a thing about it.
It's moot if layer 2 bitcoin gets privacy. As in, if both Monero and Bitcion require Layer 2 or Layer 3 to scale to the world AND if privacy can be had in Layers 2 or 3 then I'm not sure I see the benefit of Monero in the long run.
I think the argument about bankers and countries is far from weak. Look at the gold standard back when it was a thing. It was huge. Countries were using it all the time. If Bitcoin (or Monero, or any other) become a world reserve currency then nations, bankers, etc will be using it - they will either want to or have to. If there is a far superior money/asset then everyone will want to use it. Now, I suppose you could argue that fiat will never die and crypto will always be a second-class citizen. If that's the case, then my argument is weak.
Anyway, I appreciate your replies. I do like Monero and keep an eye on it. I, personally, think bitcoin will get privacy on layer 2 or 3 and that it'll become the common way to use it. I could be totally wrong, though. In the meantime, I'd be more than happy if Monero got way bigger and was accepted in way more places. I see no reason why I wouldn't trade my bitcoin for Monero to have privacy when buying stuff (assuming I can't get it with layer 2/3 bitcoin). I like that folks are building out multiple solutions - and Monero may very well be the one that tops the list.
reply
The problem is the base layer will always be the weak spot for any upper layers of privacy exactly like it is now for lightning closing/opening. And it breaks fungibility of Bitcoin as a whole. I agree that neither Monero or Bitcoin will necessarily be around in the long run. Could be something else.
Yea, but look at where gold got us. Who uses actual gold? They IOU'd the shit out of it and relegated it to an impotent pet rock which seems to be the path Bitcoin is on.
Maybe you are right we will see. Let's see if Bitcoin layers can have strong privacy without sacrificing sovereignty of on chain. That would make both camps happy I think.