- "once an asset fails at its primary functional mandate -being an uncensorable medium of exchange- liquidity inevitably migrates toward systems that actually function" : this is if anything the function Bitcoin fulfills. No-one can censor it. You might not like reality but its market cap proves how it's still recognized for this one attribute. Hell, Iran is taking BTC for insurance premiums over the straight of Hormuz !
-Corporations don't decide anything over or on top of individuals in the space. I run a node, as do tens of thousand other individuals. The area that needs to be monitored is the attemps by big corporations to influence the protocol with grants to devs. Saylor recently announced an effort to support research into quantum. That needs to be monitored. But BTC has already experienced attempts at capture like in the blocksize wars. Small blocks won in the end, users, not big caps. I find your second argument quite off topic really. You know very well that holding more BTC doesn't grant anyone more power over the network. Spot volumes, yes, could be in the hands of centralised entities. It still won't grant them anymore say. I understand if you dislike Saylor but follow me here. About a year ago I heard him support Mathew Krater, the BIP 110 supporter on youtube. Now Saylor has publicly said he's against it. Any big actor knows very well that the moment BTC is perceived to be less decentralised, captured or otherwise, it will get dumped, it ceases to have any relevance. I don't think we are there now.
-Fungibility is another topic altogether albeit a very important one, I agree. And it's why I'm also interested in XMR on top of the privacy it grants. Can certain actors decide to stop accepting certain UTXOs ? Sure they can. Is the pb widespread ? Who else will accept those UTXOs ? As far as I can see we're not at the stage where fungibility is a make or brake issue. By the way, this weakness has always been part of the protocol. Let's see how it develops going forward. At a personnal level, I've never had any small transactions being rejected in lightning.
-I agree with your 3rd point, again that's why I like XMR. But declaring BTC dead in the water because it lacks privacy is being idealistic about privacy whether you like it or not. I read a lot about it, I'm a big advocate but let's be honest, look around you. Who's interested in Privacy ? Snowden experienced a great sense of failure because the public reaction to his revelations were so underwhelming. And in a sense he's lost his big bet, look where we are now, 14 years later.... I'm not arguing privacy isn't important of course, on the contrary, but as much as we share about it in our seeming echo-chambers, I think dismissing BTC because of it at this stage in today's world is not realistic. Actors throughout the world need a permissionless medium of exchange. So far, it's BTC. But by all means I would love to see XMR grab some of the lion's share.
You know what will slow XMR adoption ? Not the fact centralised entities want to ban it. I think that should accelerate it. But imagine the tax implications of transacting in it for small and medium to large entreprises. I appreciate the tool for what it is, untraceable cash. But I don't see my baker accepting it anytime soon. If he did, he would quickly have all sorts of issues he didn't have before. Sorry, not very cypherpunk I agree. I'm just trying to stay grounded in the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.
Bitcoin as I view it today helps anyone opt out of forced monetary debasement.
XMR helps anyone opt out of the control grid being built all around us.
