Could anyone explain why Monero isn't more popular than Bitcoin? On the surface it seems to do everything Bitcoin can but adds privacy as a bonus, so why doesn't everyone use it?
1. Audibility. I know for certain that my BTC is safe, sitting in a UTXO that everyone in the universe can see. Counterparties can verify the provenance of the coin.
With Zcash and Monero, you face the risk of (invisible/unknown) inflation (a property of an unauditable supply), protocol bugs (such as failures in the zkp) and counterparty rejection due to lack of coin provenance. This risk affects the market price.
Both these scenarios have happened, and could happen again. The first generation of ZEC had a broken zkp, which could be traced back to errata in the academic paper. [1]
XMR (and other CryptoNote deriv coins) were failing to check for low order keys, so you could 8x-spend tx's.
2. Lack of exchange exchange support for US people, eg: real USD into XMR. 'not on coinbase'.
* Kraken does XMR, but they also do not have a bitlicense (NY residents are blocked).
* Gemini only has ZEC
Back when I actually had some crypto, I considered Monero / Zcash / Dash more risky, precisely _because_ they were so focussed on anonymity.
Bitcoin's ledger is a dream come true for financial investigators and tax collectors, if there was one thing a government might decide to ban entirely (and I don't accept that governments can't ban crypto, of course they can!), it would be privacy coins.
For most people though, I think the brand recognition is what does it for Bitcoin
It’s more difficult to use and build light clients for. Importing a private key requires a full rescan unless you remember when you created the key in order to rebuild your balance and limited history. It’s relative unpopularity compared to bitcoin means the network effect is weaker. And major exchanges like Coinbase and Gemini fear regulatory impact so it’s less supported.
Another question: Why some sites still only accepts Bitcoin (without Lightning?) even though its fee is insanely high due to price increasing? It's no longer feasible payment method for a dozens of dollar.
If a bad actor could crack Monero, do they stand to earn much more than $625k? If so, what would be their incentive to tell the IRS and accept the $625k? I see none. So that statement doesn't tell us anything about the strength of Monero.