Monero is the fight of OG Bitcoiners, my friend. At one point you need to stop riding a dead horse. We fight by demanding even more delistings from CEX, which has a short term negative impact on liquidity but a long-term positive impact on privacy and self-custody. We fight through the biggest DEX there is (RetoSwap). We fight through the services and merchants we use where Monero usually ranks #1. Monero is far from being perfect. It's just the best tool we have currently available to us and the state is afraid of even mentioning it in official reports to notcdraw more attention to it. The easiest way to pump Bitcoin to $1M+ for a Bitcoin maxi is allocating 10% of their stack to Monero. That will push Monero price and make the system try to chase away attention by pumping Bitcoin (or Zcash) to whatever number (go up) necessary. It's all about narrative control. Monero run up in 2018 was a wake up call to the financiers and banks of the world, that early Bitcoin capture through Bilderberg group was not enough as the community could flip at any time to a better money. That's when they softened their stance towards Bitcoin a were trying to push the general public into gambling and speculation. Distracting them with fiat "gains" from realising the one thing that actually threatens their reign. A functional private medium of exchange. It's so revolutionary that Bitcoin was not enough to realise it fully in one go. Monero is a revolution within a revolution. But the essence of the Bitcoin whitepaper never changed.

But what about the narrative that 70% of the coins are on the hands of plebs in self custody? 30% is enough for all this price manipulation?

Would love to fight with you! I don’t see any other alternative as much as the monero clowns like to chirp on here Think plenty of others are willing to do so as well. I personally try to buy as many things as possible with btc from vendors I found on nostr

1)

Why Bitcoin's 21M cap is not guaranteed (Paper Bitcoin)

The protocol can cap issuance at 21,000,000 BTC. Markets can create claims on far more than 21,000,000 BTC.

2) https://controlplanecapital.com/p/how-the-bitcoin-cycle-changes-in

Yeah, could be, for now, but as your article imply, I think new generations will generate a self custody revolution. We will be sad and rich.

I actually agree on most of the Monero vs Bitcoin points. As I previously wrote, I am not particularly bullish on any community, but I’d be more bullish on a community that has a single goal and some courage than a community that is pulling in ten different directions. In terms of perimeter leverage: Banks, brokers, ETFs, futures venues, app stores, and custodians can mediate BTC. That yields paperization, KYC funnels, blacklistable endpoints, and tax visibility. Monero's endpoints are harder to mediate without banning the rail itself. BTC looks like opposition while remaining policy-addressable. Monero looks like non-addressable opposition. Privacy-by-default is a political non-starter. Right now, the Controllers rely on: - Exchange treatment: On/offs ramped sporadically de-list XMR or confine it to geos with looser rules. - Liquidity starvation: Starve fiat pipes → starve network effects. Keep it "there", not "everywhere". Right now, BTC serves as a release valve for risk appetite and as a narrative safety valve ("you can opt out... via a ticker"). It absorbs dissident energy inside surveillable venues. But, I previously wrote: "At this point, I am more bullish on small, circular economies than any of these projects." What I've described in the post above of course is extremely unlikely. The base case is what I've described in the post below (the "What made me sell most of my Bitcoin a few months ago" article). In this article (

What made me sell most of my Bitcoin a few months ago

I am not bearish on Bitcoin's fiat-denominated price. I am bearish on Bitcoin's odds of becoming mass MoE, and I am pricing the coordination tax.

), I wrote about the "Coordination tax" (

What made me sell most of my Bitcoin a few months ago

I am not bearish on Bitcoin's fiat-denominated price. I am bearish on Bitcoin's odds of becoming mass MoE, and I am pricing the coordination tax.

). TL;DR on Coordination tax in regards to Bitcoin - Three Stacked Systems - S₀ Protocol: consensus rules, Proof-of-Work, supply. - S₁ Policy: relay/mempool defaults, mining templates, wallet behaviors. - S₂ Perimeter: banks, clouds, app stores, ISPs, payment networks, tax law, PR. Security: S₀ is math; S₁/S₂ are sociotechnical. Tax: recurring human + legal + distribution cost to keep S₁/S₂ aligned with S₀'s ideals. Attacker asymmetry: One cheap perimeter tweak (Acceptable Use Policy line, bank heuristic, pool template) can shift millions. Defenders must hold all fronts, all the time. There's of course much more to it, if interested, check out the article. As you said - "Monero is far from perfect". The Coordination tax applies to Monero, but mostly in different ways. The root of the problem is: 1. The Controllers have infinite resources (money printers). 2. You don't have a perfect solution. 3. Your odds of winning are slim to none. You can have a better solution, but it's not a good enough solution. Monero has the same Coordination tax, mostly in different places. When users can choose between sovereignty vs defaults, they default. In a world of defaults and choke points, sovereignty becomes a minority practice and a tail option. In regards to Monero, S₀ privacy helps — but S₂ punishes: Better on-chain privacy reduces forensic leverage, but increases perimeter hostility: delistings, geofenced wallets, criminalization narratives. Liquidity thins, spreads widen; merchants mostly don't take the onboarding/legal risk. Distribution choke: App stores and CEXes are the mass market. If they won't distribute, S₀ superiority doesn't compound network effects. Monero improves the Great Taking hedge (might be worth to get some) if you already live self-custody, but worsens monetization/exit and raises S₂ risk. That's why it stays niche. Monero is basically Bitcoin with S₀ strengthened (very nuanced) and S₂ enraged. Mapping S₀ / S₁ / S₂ for Monero S₀ – Protocol (math / code) - Design goal: privacy by default. Ring signatures, stealth addresses, confidential amounts. No equivalent of a public UTXO graph you can casually chain-analyst. (Of course privacy can still be weakened by poor wallet usage or statistical attacks.) Implication: - For users: every spend looks like plausible-deniable noise. - For the Controllers: forensic leverage collapses at S₀; you're forced to work the edges (on/off ramps, endpoints, devices, network metadata). Compared to BTC: - Bitcoin S₀ says: "All history is public; privacy = opt-in, fragile, and tool-dependent." - Monero S₀ says: "You get privacy even if you do nothing extra." From a control perspective, that's a hostile baseline. S₁ – Policy / implementation layer This is wallets, node defaults, mempool/relay rules, mining template norms. For Monero: Wallet defaults: - Privacy is not "a mode" it's the default. There's no "tainted coin" concept at the protocol level. - But UX, fees, and latency still shape what people actually do (e.g., how many mix-ins, how often they churn, etc.). Node / relay policy: - There's no big public drama around "spam vs free market inscriptions" like in BTC, but DoS/spam vectors exist all the same (e.g., bloating chain size, abusing ring structures). - Changing default relay rules or fee policies can still push certain usage patterns out of economic viability. Mining / pool layer: - Monero tries to resist ASIC centralization (RandomX), and encourages CPU mining. - In practice, hash still clusters: a few large pools matter. - A pool policy client that deprioritizes certain transaction patterns (even if you can't see amounts/addresses clearly) still influences effective throughput. Takeaway: S₁ for Monero is less about taint heuristics (those are hard) and more about spam economics, wallet defaults, and miner incentives. But the coordination tax at S₁ is still real: - Devs must maintain privacy properties under attack, - without blowing up performance, - while trying to keep nodes and wallets usable. S₂ – Perimeter (the real war zone) This is where Monero pays the heaviest coordination tax. Actors: Exchanges / brokers / payment processors - Listing = regulatory headache: "privacy coin → AML red flag". - Result: delistings, geofencing, higher withdrawal fees, restricted markets. - Liquidity thins, spreads widen, on/off ramps become fragile. Banks & fiat rails - Banks see "funds came from a Monero-linked venue/on-chain interaction" → immediate Enhanced Due Diligence or flat rejection. - Compliance departments don't care about cypherpunk purity; they care about regulatory exposure and examiners. - Users buy convenience; businesses buy liability shields; politicians buy cheap control. App stores & wallets - Apple/Google don't need a law that says "ban Monero"; all they need is: "apps that facilitate privacy coins are high-risk", then shove them down-ranking, slow-roll approvals, or reject updates on vague policy violations. - That kills distribution — not protocol. Jurisdictions & law - Lawmakers don't need to prove "Monero is bad"; they just say "privacy coins raise AML/terrorist finance risk", then require higher reporting, or effectively blacklist them from regulated venues. - Net effect: Monero is coded as "black market tool" in the legal imagination. Narrative layer - The more Monero works as designed (private), the easier it is to frame it as "only criminals need this". - That framing is enough for risk-averse users and institutions to self-censor. So: S₀ privacy directly increases S₂ hostility. The stronger the math, the stronger the perimeter reaction — because control loses an analytic handle. How the coordination tax specifically hits Monero Think of "coordination tax" as: how much continuous cost does it take to keep S₁/S₂ aligned with S₀'s ideals? For Bitcoin: - S₀ is "sound money, transparent ledger." - S₁/S₂ constantly drift towards: "KYC rails, chain analysis, ETF paperization". - Defenders pay the tax: devs, advocates, wallet authors, node runners. For Monero: - S₀ is "private-by-default money." - S₂ actively resists aligning with that ideal. It's not a drift; it's a counter-force. Where the tax falls: 1. Access & liquidity - Every delisting, every geofence, every risk memo raises the friction cost of using Monero for anything outside P2P niches. - Devs and users must constantly build/maintain P2P marketplaces, DEX bridges, or other workarounds. 2. Legal uncertainty - People holding or using Monero live with higher perceived regulatory risk than BTC holders, even if they're doing nothing illegal. - That uncertainty is a tax on adoption: most people opt out before they research. 3. Network effects - Payments need availability + acceptance + exit. - If CEXes, payment processors, and merchant Payment-Service-Providers avoid Monero, S₀ superiority doesn't convert into N(users) or N(merchants). 4. Psychological tax - For a normal person, "I hold BTC at a big broker" feels socially acceptable. - "I hold Monero" feels (and is portrayed as) suspicious. That emotional framing is deliberate; it's a compliance tool. So Monero's coordination tax is: - Lower on "privacy correctness at the protocol layer". - Much higher on "getting people, institutions, and pipes to align around that privacy". Why Monero doesn't get banned outright (and why that's worse than it looks) If S₀ privacy is so antithetical to control, why not just ban it? 1. Channeling "unacceptable" flows - Leaving a stigmatized but not fully outlawed rail around (like Monero) can serve as a honeypot for high-risk behavior. - You don't fully see the flows, but you cluster the highest-risk users in one subculture that can be monitored at edges (exchanges, devices, endpoints). 2. Avoiding martyring - Outright bans create martyrs and push development further underground. - Containment is cheaper: "it's legal, but good luck cashing out". 3. Policy optics - Authorities can say, "We're not against privacy, but institutions must follow AML". - That's enough for banks/exchanges to self-police Monero out of mainstream view without headline bans. So the equilibrium is: - Not big enough to matter as money. - Not small enough to bother exterminating. - Just stigmatized and throttled. The Monero vs Bitcoin coordination tax comparison Bitcoin: - S₀: transparent, sound money. - S₁/S₂: drift towards KYC, taint, paperization. - Coordination tax: on defenders trying to keep self-custody + MoE + fungibility alive. Endpoint: - BTC = semi-tolerated SoV / collateral, - MoE mostly contained, sovereignty a minority niche. Monero: - S₀: private money. - S₁: reasonably aligned with S₀ (default privacy). - S₂: aggressively anti-aligned: delistings, reputational attack, regulatory chill. Coordination tax: - Devs: preserve privacy + performance under adversarial pressure. - Users: accept liquidity and reputational costs to use it. Endpoint: - XMR = permanent gray/black-market niche, - very strong for some edge cases, crippled for mainstream flows. Broadly: - Bitcoin: attacked softly by co-opting / paperization. - Monero: attacked by containment and starvation of distribution. A) Incentives > ideals - Ideals: "Everyone deserves financial privacy." - Incentives: regulators, banks, app stores, and big venues get no upside from Monero but a lot of regulatory downside. Revealed preference: - They don't waste time integrating it at scale. - They quietly drop it or restrict it. So even if Monero is technically superior for privacy, the net payoff for large intermediaries is negative. That's enough to keep it niche. B) Control > fairness Bitcoin can be surveilled and steered via S₁/S₂ (paperization, KYC, analytics). So it is tolerated and slowly domesticated. Monero breaks too many control levers at S₀, so control shifts to: - Access suppression (liquidity, listings), - Reputational warfare ("only criminals"), - Legal gray zones ("high risk", no need for specific new law). From a Controller's view: - BTC = "Let's fence it in and use it as a supervised asset." - XMR = "Let's keep it small, suspicious, and peripheral." C) Stability > truth Having a large, liquid, truly private global money would complicate tax collection, sanctions, capital controls, and law enforcement. The system will look to keep global control and stability at all costs. Monero is collateral damage of that choice. So what does this actually mean? Monero's coordination ceiling is low. Not because the protocol is weak — but because: - S₂ actors have strong incentives not to touch it, - and S₁ actors must work constantly just to keep infrastructure functioning against that headwind. It improves "hedge quality" only if you already accept S₂ pain. For someone who already operates in self-custody, P2P, and is comfortable with legal/exit risk, Monero can be a stronger privacy hedge than BTC. For anyone who needs: - fiat exits, - compliant brokers, - low enforcement risk, - Monero's S₂ costs dominate its S₀ benefits. As a mass alternative, Monero is structurally capped. - Every step that makes Monero more user-friendly to normals (easier on-off ramp, better UX, more listings) triggers a counterstep from the perimeter. - The more successful it becomes, the more aggressive the containment. Where this equilibrates BTC: - Becomes a mostly-supervised SoV + tradable macro asset (with paper layers and self-custody minority). - MoE: tolerated in niches, but not allowed to undercut CBDCs/stablecoins. XMR: - Remains a voluntary fringe rail for those willing to pay the S₂ coordination tax (liquidity, legality, reputation). - Too small to bother abolishing, too private to integrate. From a control perspective, that's perfect: - The main energy is contained in mapped, surveillable BTC rails + CBDCs/stables. - The truly private rail exists, stigmatized, throttled, and non-systemic. So Monero "wins" S₀ so hard that it triggers a permanent S₂ containment response. That's the coordination tax: not on the math, but on access, liquidity, and legitimacy. Bitcoin gets co-opted; Monero gets quarantined. Ultimately, as you said, there is no perfect solution, which is why I am more inclined to focus more on the things I can control (being more self-sufficient, trying to stay outside the system) and less on competing with adversaries with infinite resources. Might still be worth to get some as a Great Taking hedge. More context on the Coordination Tax:

What made me sell most of my Bitcoin a few months ago

I am not bearish on Bitcoin's fiat-denominated price. I am bearish on Bitcoin's odds of becoming mass MoE, and I am pricing the coordination tax.

Let me know if you disagree. You've certainly researched Monero much more than I have (probably ~5-10 hours total), but most of what I've written is not S₀-related. Every architecture has trade-offs. I've covered 1 in the note below. View quoted note →

I don't think the article implies there will be self-custody revolution. I think there will be an ETF devolution. Can still be sad and rich, if we're allowed to.

I don't own any Monero, but I appreciate the community. I am much more aligned with the Monero community than the current state of the Bitcoin community. IMO, the best alternative is try to become more self-sufficient.

Having loosely followed your journey, my conclusion is basically that you have let yourself be convinced that Bitcoin is a bad idea by AI. While a lot of what you write makes sense, what is missing is a sense of agency and possibility. It's all very boxed in, and gives a fatal and nihilistic impression. It may be due to the inherent limitations of AI, but also a result of only looking at the money - without considering yourself as an active agent. From the top of my head, I'd recommend you read David Greaber's The dawn of everything - or bring it to recollection. For me, that book really underlined that, yes - most of the times your "Controllers" will screw you over - but sometimes, if the circumstances are right, you get to sever their heads from their bodies and things develop in a different direction for a while.

Not sure how you came to this conclusion. The entire note is about the Coordination tax which is less about S₀ Bitcoin (the protocol) and more about S₁ Policy (relay/mempool defaults, mining templates, wallet behaviors), and S₂ Perimeter (banks, clouds, app stores, ISPs, payment networks, tax law, PR). I've explained how Security: S₀ is math; S₁/S₂ are sociotechnical. Tax: recurring human + legal + distribution cost to keep S₁/S₂ aligned with S₀’s ideals. Attacker asymmetry: One cheap perimeter tweak (Acceptable Use Policy line, bank heuristic, pool template) can shift millions. Defenders must hold all fronts, all the time. > missing is a sense of agency and possibility. It's all very boxed in, and gives a fatal and nihilistic impression. This is literally a quote from the note: "Ultimately, as you said, there is no perfect solution, which is why I am more inclined to focus more on the things I can control (being more self-sufficient, trying to stay outside the system) and less on competing with adversaries with infinite resources." So how is being more self-sufficient and focusing on what you can control nihilistic? You say that I've "let myself be convinced that Bitcoin is a bad idea by AI", basically implying I'm stupid and my research is flawed without having addressed a single argument. Maybe you're just too mentally weak to be objective. Maybe you just can't handle the truth. If your whole identity relies on Bitcoin becoming what you want it to be, maybe you should reflect.

I was referring to the entire line of "research". And, I wasn't really implying that you are stupid. Not having considered everything, or not having assumed all perspectives, does not qualify for stupidity. Sure, I want Bitcoin to succeed as an MoE. Not sure if my whole identity relies on it. Maybe some does. Perhaps that was my point. I see myself as an agent set on its success - because it'd be interesting. And, success often depends on your ability to bind yourself. When it comes to progress, objectivity does not exist, ever - not even after a fact - because it's the winners that get to look back. I'm happy your research have worked out for you. You posting it on social media made me think you wanted some counter- and/or perpendicular arguments. I'll admit though that giving feedback without pissing people off is quite challenging.

I do think your analysis is spot on. It lacks some factor for non-linear impulses. Maybe I find the article, about a professor that researched around social tipping points through spontaneous network impulses. Think humans writing each other on social media. His studies were used to find control and surveillance measures to stop spreading the wild fire of ideas outside the well crafted overton window. It's not so much that they want to censor individuals. They regulate the amplitude. However you give too much credit to the AI powered central planners. Every living system hasan weakspot to dismantle the whole thing (think Achilles). We are going through a paradigm shift and all those perimeter controls behind the scenes seem necessary to maintain power, which tells me there is a window of opportunity of redefining some fundamental human interactions. Nostr, Bitcoin, Monero are social structures, tools and techniques that get discovered as the need for them increase. As long as they stick to principles they can be used as leverage at any point in time in the future, which brings us to markets that somehow will need to factor in the tail risk of a spontaneous global discovery of said tools. Self custodied BTC waking up and atomic swapping into Monero in the millions is one such thing they currently couldn't efficiently stop. It's our duty to have the tools (AMM, DEX, atomic swaps) available to facilitate spontaneous healing. That's why I said the short cut for BTC to reach $1M is swapping 10% for Monero. I believe in natural corrective forces in a world based on polarity. Any future potential of economic liberation will be realised sooner or later, no matter the walls you build around it. You might like this podcast. I'd like to hear your stance on state avoiding and state repelling (creating enforcement costs higher than gains from taxation).

> You give too much credit to the AI powered central planners. I definitely do, because I scrape and read policy synchronization standards summaries every week, and unfortunately we happen to live under a one world government ( https://controlplanecapital.com/p/rivalry-between-countries-is-curated ). Of course, there is a non-zero probability that we win. I've explicitly defined falsifiers, if not in every article, in 90%+ of my articles. I track most of these things weekly/monthly and adjust. We are the underdog by a wide margin. I just prefer to focus on the things I can control and the Bitcoin community is not one of them (nor is any other community, other than my immediate family/close friends). The only thing I felt like I owed the community is to publish most of what I've researched, so they can address some of these issues... or not. Which I've already done. So when you wrote: "At one point you need to stop riding a dead horse.", I don't know if the horse is dead, but it's castrated and domesticated. So I'll focus on other things until my falsifiers trip. This conversation gave me a deja vu to a conversation we had 2 months ago. 1) View quoted note → 2) View quoted note → I'll check the podcast out.

OK, I watched some of the presentation. He lost me when he said: "I don't believe the State is a cabal of bad people. It's an evolutionary strategy. The cat that eats the mouse is a result of evolution, it's not someone's design." 😂 I have looked in Zomia very briefly, but need to do more research on it. Mark Passio's Natural Law Seminar is great:

Odysee

Mark Passio - Natural Law Seminar FULL Version

Mark Passio - Natural Law Seminar FULL Version

I think it's quite clear it is someone's design. View quoted note →

Yeah, agree that's some weird analogy. Are you familiar with societal evolutionary concepts like "spiral dyanmics"? In that sense his point probably is, that at one point in time states or state like structures are an ineviatble part of societal evolution. Besides that I was more thinking about the philosophy, strategies and consequences of becoming "state repellent".

Was not familiar, read the TL;DR just now. On a long-enough time-frame, most things are going to be inevitable, at least in some places. You'd still want to delay being a slave as much as possible though. The moment you acknowledge a constitution, and need to rely on one to protect your God-given rights, you're well on your way to being a slave. The moment a central bank is created, you have rulers and slaves. > Besides that I was more thinking about the philosophy, strategies and consequences of becoming "state repellent". I think a lot of it has to do with making it expensive for the state to control you as the guy in the video said. I have mostly researched this from an investor point-of-view, but should definitely do some Game Theory and write about my findings. Maybe the book that analyzes the Zomia region is a good starting point ( "The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia" by James C. Scott ). "Government is nothing but men acting in concert. The Morality and value of Government, like any other association of men, will be no greater and no less than the Morality and value of the men comprising it. Since Government is nothing but men, its inherent 'authority' to act is in no way greater or different than the 'authority' to act as individuals in isolation. Government has no 'magic powers' or 'authority' not possessed by private individuals. Let he who asserts that Government may do that which the individual may not assume the onus of proof and demonstrate his contention." - Chris Lyspooner Bruce Maguire has recorded some great podcasts on this and adjacent topics. This one is great: