The darknet markets have spoken. Monero is winning.

All white market transactions are permissioned. Bitcoins entire value prop rests on being permissionless. Regulators can impose any arbitrary restriction they want on white markets up to, and including, banning Bitcoin.

Silent Payments on Bitcoin is an improvement but the concept itself is old and not that great in the grand scheme of privacy tech especially when used on a transparent chain. Counter party can still naively determine what address their money went to and follow it from there. Even third parties can figure it out if they get their hands on any combination of time, amount, sender address.