Let me be clear: Being the currency of criminals isn’t a flaw! It shows that this money doesn’t broadcast your transactions to the whole world, which is actually a desirable feature. It’s something that Bitcoin’s layer 1 lacks.

Say you go to your local mom-and-pop store and get a pack of gum—buying gum isn’t illegal in any nation as far as I know—but do you want everyone to know that you sent an amount equivalent to a pack of gum to the store’s receiving address and probably got gum in return? Definitely not.

So, preserving privacy is not only for criminals—it’s a right!

I don’t want to say that Monero isn’t popular among criminals. In fact, some hackers and crooks offer good discounts for Monero payments! So yes, it has appeal among criminals, but that appeal stems from a false sense of security. Tracking Monero is extremely difficult, but not impossible!

Finding the Monero transaction history of a suspect whose computer has been confiscated isn’t that hard. With access to their private key, you can see all their transactions. You might argue that this isn’t obtaining information from the Monero network itself, and your criticism is valid.

But there are cases where individuals have actually been arrested by tracking Monero transactions on the blockchain! Even though Monero is famous for the opposite and claims this is impossible.

Lightning has an advantage over Monero in this regard. Monero records transactions on the blockchain, and the blockchain is an eternal record of transactions. If a transaction can’t be tracked today, a way to trace it might be found tomorrow.

But Lightning doesn’t store transactions on the blockchain. You can even go into the transaction database and manually delete them, and since these transactions are on your server, they’re deleted forever with no trace left anywhere else.

On the topic of Lightning’s superiority over Monero, Super Testnet has provided a lot of insights, and I recommend his interview with Guy Swann:

https://youtu.be/eRPfcUI9ByI

With all that said, this doesn’t mean these solutions are feasible for everyone. They require a lot of skill. (I, for one, can’t pull them off.)

Also, it’s important to note that preserving privacy is a moving target. As technology advances, privacy measures need to be improved upon. It’s an arms race, like in the evolution of living organisms.

So, you can never say that a given privacy solution will be usable forever.