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Going back to the point: decentralization means that something is managed by two or more entities. Obviously, the more the better. But if there isn’t just a single central authority, and instead there are two—or dozens, or even hundreds as in Bitcoin’s case—the protocol can be considered decentralized. Bitcoin is decentralized not only in terms of nodes (as already pointed out) but also in mining (there are dozens of major pools with thousands of miners each), and in development. And I dare say that decentralization in development is the most important—and Bitcoin is the only coin to have truly achieved that.

I'll dedicate another paragraph to freely discuss this third layer of decentralization, which is extremely important. Bitcoin is decentralized in development today, but it wasn’t always like that. In fact, it started off the exact opposite. In its early days, development was extremely centered on Satoshi Nakamoto. After Satoshi disappeared and left the project to the community, Gavin took over the role of "Satoshi", but he too left the project soon after. In other words, the only two individuals who at some point had significant influence over development consensus are long gone and no longer influence the protocol.

I’ll examine three main cryptocurrencies here: Ethereum, Monero, and Bitcoin Cash—because these are the ones whose communities I’ve been most involved with recently.

2.1: Ethereum Ethereum lacks decentralization in terms of full nodes, which I’ve repeatedly mentioned as one of the most important layers of decentralization. This is due to the high cost of running a full Ethereum node. Are there many full nodes on Ethereum? Yes. Does that make it decentralized? Yes. But is that decentralization in the hands of regular individuals? No. It’s mainly in the hands of big players, institutions, and shitcoins. On top of that, Vitalik holds a level of influence over Ethereum today that Satoshi had in Bitcoin's early days—which is terrible for decentralization. Even worse, he’s doxxed. If a government or company wanted to pressure him into pushing changes to the protocol, leveraging his charisma to convince the community—they absolutely could. Goodbye decentralization!

As for mining—it doesn’t exist in Ethereum anymore, which many Bitcoin maximalists argue is a bad thing for various reasons. I won’t get into that here, but feel free to explore the topic on your own.

2.2: Monero Monero was a good privacy-focused cryptocurrency. Nowadays, however, it’s extremely difficult for an average person to remain untraceable on Monero (check out Super Testnet's posts on Twitter). Monero can be considered decentralized in two of the three factors: full nodes (running a Monero node is as easy as running a Bitcoin one), and mining (individuals can mine Monero using their home computers). That’s good, I admit—but it might also harm the network’s security. Mining Monero at home is largely unprofitable, limiting the total hashrate the network could achieve. In contrast, Bitcoin's ASIC profitability encourages increased hashrate, thereby enhancing security.

Monero was once a great coin until the invention of the Lightning Network, which is significantly more private. Lightning transactions literally don’t exist on-chain, while in Monero there's still a 1 in x (x < 15) chance of identifying the true sender.

Regarding development, this is concerning. There’s just one core team of developers, and the community seems to accept whatever they propose without much questioning. That’s worrying in my view. The Monero community tends to be ideologically homogeneous, with little internal debate—quite the opposite of Bitcoin’s ecosystem.

2.3: Bitcoin Cash Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork of Bitcoin that occurred in 2017, introducing larger blocks to allow more transactions per block and thus scale better. While this change had some merit, it also brought long-term downsides. Larger blocks increase the cost of running full nodes, sacrificing one of the key layers of decentralization.

There’s not much more to say—Bitcoin Cash is essentially Bitcoin with a bigger block size. It uses ASICs for mining and has several developers. Perhaps one criticism is, like Monero, its community is overly homogeneous in opinions and ideas.

I’ve spent a lot of time inside various shitcoin communities and took note of some of the most common arguments they use against Bitcoin. Let’s address and refute them.

3.1: Bitcoin doesn’t scale If you understand how Bitcoin blocks work, you might initially think Bitcoin doesn’t scale—at least not on Layer 1. But that’s false. Bitcoin enables scalability through sidechains (like drivechains) and the Lightning Network. In fact, the Lightning Network itself was made possible by changes on Layer 1. With drivechains, Bitcoin could even scale to the entire world—while maintaining privacy and self-custody. This technology is ready and only awaits further community debate and adoption.

3.2: Bitcoin is traceable / non-fungible That’s true—but it’s a feature, not a bug. Bitcoin’s verifiability was essential to its early marketing. In anonymous cryptocurrencies, self-verification is harder, especially for beginners. If you want privacy on Bitcoin, run your own Lightning node and conduct all your transactions there. Lightning’s privacy surpasses that of Monero, Zcash, and others—as already explained.

3.3: Bitcoin lacks security funding This theory suggests that once block subsidies halve too much, miner incentives will fall. But recent halvings already showed blocks where fees surpassed subsidies. This trend is expected to grow with each halving, making the concern less relevant.

3.4: Bitcoin has high fees You can use second layers like Lightning with near-zero fees—or future drivechains. If you insist on using Layer 1 and dislike the fees, remember: you’re paying for the most secure computer network in the world to validate your transaction. That’s a bargain when seen from that angle.

3.5: Bitcoin lacks privacy Bitcoin does support privacy via tools like silent payments and PayJoin, which are integrated directly in Layer 1 (not just second-layer solutions). These can be used via wallets like Cake Wallet. You can also easily run your own Lightning Node for completely anonymous payments.

As a tech enthusiast—and someone who dares call himself a cypherpunk—I do appreciate Monero’s technology. Many think Monero usage is untraceable. But that’s not entirely true. Without running your own node and using proper OPSEC, you’re likely to be tracked. And guess what—the same OPSEC applies to Bitcoin.

So it’s more logical to use Bitcoin for value storage, with proper OPSEC, than rely on Monero just for an "extra" layer of privacy. That privacy is real and valuable, as proven by its adoption in the dark web. But it’s not a universal need.

Back to the main point. As I wrote in my book, I like to quote Descartes and deconstruct concepts to their essence. Doing that, I concluded that Bitcoin is software—a computer program. And like any software, it can be improved and adapted, like we’ve seen with SegWit and Taproot.

If new privacy tools haven’t been invented for Bitcoin yet, they will be. It’s open-source. Anyone can build on top of it. And in fact, those Monero advocates who claim Bitcoin has no privacy are lying. There are already two privacy tools natively available on Layer 1: silent payments and PayJoin. Again, both are accessible via Cake Wallet.

Bitcoin may also adopt drivechains in the future—potentially creating a "Monero drivechain" that mimics Monero’s rules but runs on Bitcoin’s mining and coin supply. In such a scenario, Monero becomes obsolete. Why would merchants go through the hassle of swapping back and forth between BTC and XMR when they could use a Bitcoin-native drivechain offering the same privacy?

That’s my main criticism of Monero and Monero holding: various future paths lead to its redundancy. My efforts are better spent promoting the upgrades that will allow Bitcoin to achieve the same or greater functionality.

After spending hours in the Monero community—even mining it—I must admit they fight for a good cause. But that same cause is also entirely alive within Bitcoin.

Just because your shitcoin can process millions of transactions per second or has dozens of blocks per second doesn’t mean it will gain mass adoption. Bitcoin succeeded because it was rigid, the first, and has a hard cap of 21 million coins. Speed or low fees alone aren't enough.

The best argument a shitcoiner might have is privacy—and yes, some markets do choose privacy. But some users still prefer transparency on Layer 1 and privacy on Layer 2.

Bitcoin is software and can adopt any successful new technology—ring signatures, BlockDAG, whatever—via drivechains or second layers, all while maintaining self-custody. There are numerous BIPs (like CAT, CTV, 300/301) enabling these features. If any of them are adopted—or implemented externally—then even the only advantage of most shitcoins (tech) becomes obsolete.