Is Monero Really Worse Than Bitcoin for Privacy?
Context Matters
Recently, a Bitcoin maximalist posted a long-form critique of Monero's privacy, citing everything from view key exposure to targeted law enforcement arrests. You can check out that website HERE. On the surface, it looked like a solid takedown..but the devil, as always, is in the details. Let’s unpack it.
What’s Actually True?
Yes, Monero isn’t invincible. Some legitimate critiques exist:
- Sender sees the recipient’s stealth public key (that’s how payment works).
- Monero wallets connecting via RPC to public nodes may leak IP and view key.
- Ring signatures can be weakened under certain heuristic or collusive analysis.
- Private key compromise = full transaction history (same for Bitcoin).
But none of this means Monero is “worse” than Bitcoin. Most of these flaws depend on poor OPSEC or network misconfiguration, not on protocol failure.
Bitcoin's Privacy Problem
Bitcoin leaks everything by default. Addresses, amounts, connections..it’s all right there for the whole world to see. Unless users opt into tools like CoinJoin or Lightning (correctly), Bitcoin offers essentially zero privacy.
Lightning Isn't the Savior
Lightning is promising, but also problematic:
- Custodial wallets dominate.
- Channel opens/closes are on-chain.
- Routing exposes metadata to intermediaries.
- Probing and timing attacks are real.
So no...Lightning is not a default-privacy solution. And it requires technical literacy to even approach Monero’s default privacy level.
Arrests and Forensics
The article cited multiple criminal cases where Monero was “traced.” But let’s be honest: these arrests happened because of:
- KYC exchanges
- IP leaks
- Spy nodes
- Seized devices or private keys
That’s not a protocol failure. That’s poor OPSEC. And that’s true for any coin, Bitcoin included.
Conclusion
Let’s not confuse corner-case vulnerabilities with systemic failure. Monero isn’t perfect, but it offers sender, receiver, and amount privacy by default. Bitcoin doesn’t. And Lightning, while clever, isn’t ready to replace it.
Monero isn’t broken. It’s just under attack...because it works.
Privacy is a spectrum. Don't let ideology obscure the evidence.