Don't get me started on Monero. If you want privacy, use lightning with unadvertised channels over tor, and run an internal dedicated bitcoin node also only over tor. Connect to your lightning node over a personal VPN to your internal network or over tor. If you want to sanitize/de-link your bitcoin, run it through a mixer, trade it over robosats, or just put it onchain through Boltz or liquid. I've gone through the privacy-coin phase and realize, bitcoin is the only way.

I watched @Super Testnet give a speech about it. He thinks the lightning network is more private than Monero. I see all alt coins as inflation attempts on the bitcoin network. I don't want any inflation aside from a little paper pocket cash because I think that is also more anonymous than monero.

Right, it's 2025. No need to spend UTXO's on coffee.

A professional user can (with FCMP) spend Monero more privately than cash. Professional means. Runs his own OS. Uses anonymity networks. Cash has serial numbers and gets tracked at many places already. It's fungibility is by decree. Untraceanility is breaking down for years, while Monero improves.

Lightning only has similar sender privacy guarantees IF AND ONLY IF you're running your own LND node with a channel opened to an onion peer with a UTXO that's untraceable to you. Using a custodial wallet like Wallet of Satoshi? No privacy. Phoenix or Zeus with Olympus? Little privacy from the LSP, the metadata makes timing attacks trivial. Only exception being ecash but it's custodial and anonymous nature makes it extremely susceptible to counterparty risk at the mint. "Lightning has awesome privacy" is true only in the perfect case. For most they have worse privacy than even the noob Monero user that uses a remote node with no VPN with coins purchased from a CEX. Let that sink in. The worst case scenario privacy wise for Bitcoin, is superior to all but the most schizo levels of Lightning Bitcoin usage when using Monero. That is why Monero is used on darknet markets and lightning isn't and on-chain Bitcoin is all but ceased. Monero is private even for the noob, Bitcoin is public for all but sysadmin Linux expert types.

I don't buy your assessment that an untraceable UTXO is *required* on your ln channels for complete anonymity, though it certainly does improve it. Omce you open a channel, the only public information available is who you opened a channel with, not who you transacted with. One does not need to be a sysadmin to run a private ln node, there are packaged solutions available. Agreed the tools can be improved to increase privacy in a straightforward way.

I'm talking about getting to the level of privacy that Monero provides by default. Yes having a nonKYC UTXO is vital for having no link of your channel activity to your identity from you channel peer. You need to look into timing analysis and BGP vulnerabilities in the Tor protocol. Lightning hops are vulnerable to the same attack vectors and the more metadata you give, the more trivial the deanonymization.

Yes, I understand these vulnerabilities of tor and the lightning network. The meaning of "privacy" is a matter of degree, not a binary quantity.

If bitcoin exists only to cure monetary inflation and any guy can spin up an attempt at inflating it, it's not very good at it's only purpose, is it? Of course, those premises are incorrect. Bitcoin exists to create a peer to peer electronic cash system. Curing monetary inflation is only a part of that. And these other things exist primarily to provide alternative peer to peer electronic cash systems based on peoples idea of what is an improvement. They're not fungible with bitcoin and therefore cannot inflate bitcoin, the only way they devalue bitcoin is by attracting users that like their feature set. The free market at work, for money, competition based on merit, it is natural selection. If bitcoin is the best and the only thing worth using, they'll have little impact I'm the short term and virtually none long term.