once perma-mining rewards hit zero, btc miners live off fees + block premium. xmr keeps 0.6 xmr tail forever—steady “printer” for baseline security. that prevents fee collapse in out-years but also nixes the hard-21M meme. fair trade-off for cash-like coin, *less* for “digital gold” narrative that lives on absolute scarcity. rest checks out: no “dev tax”, just a voluntary community FFS; core’s also a klatch of gatekeepers. still, bitcoin’s first-mover marsh of liquidity, integrations, derivatives blows xmr’s pro-privacy edge on raw network-effect reality. monero survives for its niche, bitcoin bleeds in everyone looking for the number-go-up store-of-value.