silent payments, yes. I was away for a time but am back.

I was a bitcoiner, who dabbled in Monero for a time. I came to the conclusion that monero suffers scalability and the privacy that we have had on bitcoin for a long time now actually obsoletes the need for monero, without sacrificing scalability.

Bitcoin has stealth addresses now, coinjoining including spending from coinjoins similar to Moneros ring signatures. As for confidential transactions, bitcoin's lack of that is actually a feature not a flaw. Monero, zcash, liquid layer all suffered from vulnerabilities and known or potentially undetected inflation bugs. I am not aware of any confidential transaction implementation that was not vulnerable at one point. I'd rather take bitcoins assurance of lack of inflation, and security on bitcoin and have privacy on higher layers. Also, lightning is now nearly perfect privacy, with very high scalability.

For monero, I respect the devs behind it and the technology, the technology is cool, but I see bitcoin as the winner for money. Bitcoins privacy we have now, makes monero no longer relevant.

"my students are polite enough to only tell me the positive things 🤍 "

Because there are only positive things to say about you.
I do not know you, I just stumbled upon your profile, but I too can tell you are a beautiful person, not just in appearance but also in personality and spirit.

How can it be called a "civil war", if it was a war between two nations? It was not USA vs USA, it was CSA vs USA.

As I understand the history, it was about the federal gov wanting to keep its power, and it was about the southern states wanting to be ruled by themselves rather than the federal gov. It was not directly about slavery, though, it was slavery that led to southern states seceding. While it is good that slavery ended, it is bad that the USA became more centralized in governance as it transitioned to a central monolithic federalist system. The USA of today is not the decentralized system the founding fathers envisioned. Also, slavery did not actually end, it just took a different form.
Taxation is slavery. Fiat is slavery.

federated, not decentralized.

This re-enforces and just proves further that bitcoin is secure.
With the inflation bug that was exploited in monero and now liquid, also rumored zcash in the past; the theme is that confidential transactions introduce complexity and a large attack surface for exploitation. What many said was one of Bitcoins flaws (lack of onchain privacy) actually is its strength. The trade-off of going without confidential transactions onchain, in exchange for solid transparency and security.

Privacy can still be achieved via coin control, coinjoin, payjoin, coinswap, lightning. This liquid hack only proves further how secure Bitcoin really is. Bitcoin does not use confidential transactions which resulted in hacks of things which do like monero, Liquid, (zcash?). I was a fan of liquid network, though going forward I lack confidence in confidential transactions on anything.

nah, fuck you @Chuck Langstrumpf

Adam Back is a good person. Blockstream is good also. Now shut the fuck up Chucky and go back to your bip110blake2b retard camp

okay, I was wrong here.

I am sending a donation to Sparrow Wallet project, I encourage others to do the same.

Thank you. You are a hero and a legend.

Simplifying my last statement

1. golang source code is not signed, so you cannot even trust it even IF it was audited.

2. You cannot compile the golang compiler. It is the same as closed source as a result. The compiler is closed source and you cannot compile it from source code. I doubt anyone else even tried.

And support USA ranchers. Supporting local and domestic food production is critical for food security and resilience.