I agree that bitcoin has a better potential of being accepted, but only because it can be regulated and tracked down to an individual retroactively and forevermore.
Being unable to purchase anything discreetly leaves a bad taste in my mouth, any vendor knows that that is your wallet and can track your purchases from then on. Anyone who sees your QR code and catches it when you send a transaction can track your wallet forever, and of course any authorities will be able to track you. I do think because of this, they’re going to push Bitcoin or similarly non-fungible coin, but that by no means makes it the best currency.
I don’t think Bitcoin is more agreeing than people think, It uses more energy than some countries and that is only increasing(Bitcoin consumes almost 1% of all electricity produced on Earth and it’s still going up). There’s no plans on ameliorating that problem at all, like other coins that are actively working on sustainable forms of currency that have all of the benefits of Bitcoin without being completely public and unsustainable.
Bitcoin has a fixed supply, but many other less energy intensive, more private coins with much faster transaction speeds are finite as well.
And decentralization, bitcoin has about it as bad as any coin out there. Practically, a coin that favors heavy capital invested in completing its transactions, and rewarding capital invested, necessarily means that it will become more centralized and has become more centralized as Bitcoin has developed, long as the transactions are rewarded the way they are, the coin will continue to centralize. There are very few massive companies that make the farming equipment, which also have a large impact on who can buy the equipment and wear and for how much, furthering centralization of bitcoin. Then there are mining pools, just four of the largest pools make up well over 50% of all mining in the world, so if they teamed up they could rewrite the blockchain if they wanted to.
It’s nice that Bitcoin sort of introduced everybody to the idea of cryptocurrency, but there are so many better options than Bitcoin itself, with all of its idealized advantages and none of its practical disadvantages, if we’re considering the next form of currency.
I think Bitcoin has become a relatively static commodity, a measure of wealth similar to good powder, but it’s impossible to use it as a functional currency as it is now and as it was originally designed.
There are no better coins than Bitcoin. Any altcoins that seem better only appear so because they’re not operating at the same scale as Bitcoin.
Monero’s transactions are 4x as large as Bitcoin’s on average, and Monero has no equivalent of the Lightning Network. As far as I’m aware, it has no second layer whatsoever, so all transactions must be done directly on chain. There’s no realistic way to scale it up without introducing immense centralization pressure. Once it’s sufficiently centralized, governments can shut it down or impose regulations on it.
Bitcoin transactions can be anonymized through CoinJoin and other methods. It’s not anonymous by default, but if you need that there’s a large enough crowd to hide among.
As for energy usage, there are likewise no viable options other than proof of work. Proof of stake compromises on security, and introduces economic centralizing pressure. The more coins you have, the more coins you can make through staking, which you then reinvest. With PoW on the other hand, you have to choose between holding more coins or having more hashpower. A dollar spent on one is a dollar not spent on the other.
Other coins have solved scalability, whereas Bitcoin is chained for the foreseeable future to its internal structure and cannot scale sustainably, hence its becoming centralized and using an ever-increasing amount of energy even though its transactions are not increasing, while transactions on other chains are increasing without a comparable increase in energy use. Since you mentioned XMR vs. BTC, which uses a CPU versus a GPU to process a transaction, much more energy is used by a GPU(BTC algo) than a CPU(XMR algo).
Your arguments against proof of stake(security, centralization, energy use) are problems that POW NFCs like BTC already have in spades, it’s like arguing a hatchback is more dangerous than a sedan because the hatchback has four wheels that could pop at any moment. The sedan has an identical problem.
At the moment, XMR block size is 4x the size, occurs five times as often, and the xmr tx cost is 5000 times lower than Bitcoin, 1/10th of a cent(XMR) vs a little over $5.00(BTC). So even if XMR caught up to BTC price, that’s less than a 200x increase, less than 5% the cost of bitcoin if the costs scaled as BTC has, which they would not do since XMR 1) is a different coin/algorithm and 2) has a deg team that is constantly increasing privacy and security while refining their transactions and their tx cost, which regularly decrease.
The important point here is that each coin is different and scaling up will not immobilize all coins the same way that BTC has immobilized itself.
Basically, different coins use different algorithms to process cost, so due to the nature of each coin, no matter how many transactions you complete, the coins will function differently because of how each coin was created.
Your argument about scalability is like pointing to a flatscreen monitor and arguing that if the flatscreen ever gets as big as a CRT monitor, it will function identically. No, of course it won’t, it is a different machine.
Coinjoin and coin mixers are fine for helping to obscure your non-fungible coins some of the time depending on the service, though the problem is not with the service but the coin itself they “mix”, since coins like BTC are non-fungible, or uniquely identifiable as a function of their existence.
As a potential user, I don’t see the point in using non-fungible currency that is so easily tracked and traced by literally anyone when fungible currency is available, unless one prefers more nth-party regulation over their finances and prefers anybody who has ever once made a transaction with you, or simply scanned your wallet once, being able to trace your transactions forever.
I understand that’s what regulatory agencies prefer and that’s why when state coins become more popular, they’ll use NFTs like Bitcoin, but just being popular doesn’t make it a better choice than many other coins, particularly as a practical currency.
I agree that bitcoin has a better potential of being accepted, but only because it can be regulated and tracked down to an individual retroactively and forevermore.
Being unable to purchase anything discreetly leaves a bad taste in my mouth, any vendor knows that that is your wallet and can track your purchases from then on. Anyone who sees your QR code and catches it when you send a transaction can track your wallet forever, and of course any authorities will be able to track you. I do think because of this, they’re going to push Bitcoin or similarly non-fungible coin, but that by no means makes it the best currency.
I don’t think Bitcoin is more agreeing than people think, It uses more energy than some countries and that is only increasing(Bitcoin consumes almost 1% of all electricity produced on Earth and it’s still going up). There’s no plans on ameliorating that problem at all, like other coins that are actively working on sustainable forms of currency that have all of the benefits of Bitcoin without being completely public and unsustainable.
Bitcoin has a fixed supply, but many other less energy intensive, more private coins with much faster transaction speeds are finite as well.
And decentralization, bitcoin has about it as bad as any coin out there. Practically, a coin that favors heavy capital invested in completing its transactions, and rewarding capital invested, necessarily means that it will become more centralized and has become more centralized as Bitcoin has developed, long as the transactions are rewarded the way they are, the coin will continue to centralize. There are very few massive companies that make the farming equipment, which also have a large impact on who can buy the equipment and wear and for how much, furthering centralization of bitcoin. Then there are mining pools, just four of the largest pools make up well over 50% of all mining in the world, so if they teamed up they could rewrite the blockchain if they wanted to.
It’s nice that Bitcoin sort of introduced everybody to the idea of cryptocurrency, but there are so many better options than Bitcoin itself, with all of its idealized advantages and none of its practical disadvantages, if we’re considering the next form of currency.
I think Bitcoin has become a relatively static commodity, a measure of wealth similar to good powder, but it’s impossible to use it as a functional currency as it is now and as it was originally designed.
There are no better coins than Bitcoin. Any altcoins that seem better only appear so because they’re not operating at the same scale as Bitcoin.
Monero’s transactions are 4x as large as Bitcoin’s on average, and Monero has no equivalent of the Lightning Network. As far as I’m aware, it has no second layer whatsoever, so all transactions must be done directly on chain. There’s no realistic way to scale it up without introducing immense centralization pressure. Once it’s sufficiently centralized, governments can shut it down or impose regulations on it.
Bitcoin transactions can be anonymized through CoinJoin and other methods. It’s not anonymous by default, but if you need that there’s a large enough crowd to hide among.
As for energy usage, there are likewise no viable options other than proof of work. Proof of stake compromises on security, and introduces economic centralizing pressure. The more coins you have, the more coins you can make through staking, which you then reinvest. With PoW on the other hand, you have to choose between holding more coins or having more hashpower. A dollar spent on one is a dollar not spent on the other.
Other coins have solved scalability, whereas Bitcoin is chained for the foreseeable future to its internal structure and cannot scale sustainably, hence its becoming centralized and using an ever-increasing amount of energy even though its transactions are not increasing, while transactions on other chains are increasing without a comparable increase in energy use. Since you mentioned XMR vs. BTC, which uses a CPU versus a GPU to process a transaction, much more energy is used by a GPU(BTC algo) than a CPU(XMR algo).
Your arguments against proof of stake(security, centralization, energy use) are problems that POW NFCs like BTC already have in spades, it’s like arguing a hatchback is more dangerous than a sedan because the hatchback has four wheels that could pop at any moment. The sedan has an identical problem.
At the moment, XMR block size is 4x the size, occurs five times as often, and the xmr tx cost is 5000 times lower than Bitcoin, 1/10th of a cent(XMR) vs a little over $5.00(BTC). So even if XMR caught up to BTC price, that’s less than a 200x increase, less than 5% the cost of bitcoin if the costs scaled as BTC has, which they would not do since XMR 1) is a different coin/algorithm and 2) has a deg team that is constantly increasing privacy and security while refining their transactions and their tx cost, which regularly decrease.
The important point here is that each coin is different and scaling up will not immobilize all coins the same way that BTC has immobilized itself.
This comment helps technically explain why with xmr specifically, unlike Bitcoin, equal use does not equal cost: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/13deshy/if_xmr_monero_was_priced_the_same_as_bitcoin/
Basically, different coins use different algorithms to process cost, so due to the nature of each coin, no matter how many transactions you complete, the coins will function differently because of how each coin was created.
Your argument about scalability is like pointing to a flatscreen monitor and arguing that if the flatscreen ever gets as big as a CRT monitor, it will function identically. No, of course it won’t, it is a different machine.
Coinjoin and coin mixers are fine for helping to obscure your non-fungible coins some of the time depending on the service, though the problem is not with the service but the coin itself they “mix”, since coins like BTC are non-fungible, or uniquely identifiable as a function of their existence.
As a potential user, I don’t see the point in using non-fungible currency that is so easily tracked and traced by literally anyone when fungible currency is available, unless one prefers more nth-party regulation over their finances and prefers anybody who has ever once made a transaction with you, or simply scanned your wallet once, being able to trace your transactions forever.
I understand that’s what regulatory agencies prefer and that’s why when state coins become more popular, they’ll use NFTs like Bitcoin, but just being popular doesn’t make it a better choice than many other coins, particularly as a practical currency.
This is a deeper level of misunderstanding than I have the patience to deal with. Good luck.
If you don’t understand anything or need help, just ask.
My answer includes a lot of technical information, but the fundamentals of each point can be made fairly simple for you.