reply on: Is Monero's privacy better than BTC's? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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210 sats \ 0 replies \ @yo2xncv0 8 Sep 2023 \ parent \ on: Is Monero's privacy better than BTC's? bitcoin

There is a very real possibility that future inflation bugs will be discovered in Monero, simply because it's consensus code is very complex. This is a serious problem, because someone (whether Monero devs or anyone else) could find and exploit such an inflation bug.

Not unique to Monero.

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2018/09/20/notice/

Apparently you have never heard of the 2018 Bitcoin bug. A single anon discovered a bug several years old that would've allowed them to inflate the supply without being discovered. Luckily, they were an honest actor and reported it in secret to devs. The devs could have also taken advantage of this in secret. If this anon had exploited this bug, and used fake bitcoin to buy real goods and services, there is no good remedy. You either:

Hardfork out the fake Bitcoin - screwing over all merchants and users who received this fake bitcoin and gave away real goods and services.
Or leave it - destroying 21 million meme.

Both are pretty catastrophic for user confidence. Remember, this can always happen again. Avoided by the good samaritan will of a single anon and dumb luck. Attackers have the advantage. Transparent simple auditability doesn't help after the fact.

I should say that there is a possibility that the privacy ideas in Monero could be applied to a second layer atop Bitcoin. Such a project would not have any inflation bugs (because Bitcoin handles final settlement), while giving some of the privacy benefits of Monero to Bitcoin users. But such a project will never begin unless Monero devs can be convinced to jump ship to Bitcoin. Their expertise would be critical for such a project.

You can't have your cake and eat it too, unfortunately.

Major value props of Bitcoin like self-custody, permissionlessness, p2p, or final settlement are sacrificed to gain Monero's level of privacy on L2. Liquid and lightning give up at least one of these and is still inferior privacy vs Monero.

The only thing on par with Monero's privacy right now would probably be Ecash, but you give up self-custody. The mints can also arbitrarily print tokens that are unbacked by Bitcoin.