Secure means your funds can't be seized without your keys,
private means no one sees your balance or transactions,
untraceable means chain analysis is useless,
Monero is the only cryptocurrency that delivers all three by default.
I like XMR but “untraceable” is an overstatement and implies mathematical certainty, which doesn’t exist. A better description is that it’s computationally expensive to trace with no guaranteed outcome, which in practice is nearly as good, but isn’t the same thing as untraceable.
Monero is definitely not the only one that delivers all 3 by default, nor does it have the strongest encryption.
Monero’s real advantage is its ecosystem size, liquidity, and years of battle testing.
Monero means well, but on chain traceability of balances is necessary to ensure there are no inflation bugs. Plus, only the largest balances (banks, nation states, and corporations) really get watched and those are the ones that the world needs to know about and shouldn't be hidden. Plebs benefit from the pseudonymity of Bitcoin, because the big players can't hide from all of our eyes.
Also, Moneros permanent and unchanging tail emissions have frozen the value and prevent the exponential growth in network value relative to input that the Bitcoin halving provides. As Bitcoin grows, Monero stagnates.
Finnish Customs seized Silkkitie's Monero and publicly stated they couldn't crack it. "Computationally expensive with no guaranteed outcome" is what winning looks like against an adversary with law enforcement resources and a financial incentive to break it.
When Bitcoin's subsidy reaches zero, hashrate follows revenue. Fee markets that can't currently fill blocks aren't going to secure a multi-trillion dollar network on voluntary tips.
Tail emissions solve the problem.
Bitcoin hasn't.
if it is already difficult for them to decipher with ring signatures, would it be economic suicide to try to decipher the addresses of the wallets once FCMP++ is already in operation?
Bold of you to assume the network subsidy will disappear in over 100 years just because the current ruleset leads to that end. IMO it will become clear that the Halving is core to why Bitcoin is revolutionary, it's effects on value appreciation will also likely make it necessary to increase division beyond the Satoshi on chain before much longer.
@Contra
The Silkkitie case doesn’t actually demonstrate that. It was a server seizure with a Bitcoin seizure — not Monero holding against law enforcement. The Finnish case where Monero was traced, they succeeded — through exchange records and user error, not cryptographic resistance.
Where did they ever say we “couldn’t crack” Monero?