I call this attitude "Total Surveillance is the price of Integrity" and it is a legitimate opinion that people can have. But setting aside the surveillance concerns for a moment, there are several reasons why you might choose to not trust hidden amounts on a blockchain. Because you don't understand the math and won't use something that's not understood. (how many of users are actually familiar with the underlying mathematics, Bitcoin included? Nobody has the time to verify ALL the things.) So maybe you don't trust the people who are *implementing* the tech. (I think we all have a responsibility to become members of the communities around the projects we use. If we can't personally verify the tech, we verify those who can) I'm sure there are others. But basically either you won't trust tech you don't understand or you don't trust the community developing the tech. Fine. Those are reasonable informed objections. Where the OP gets weird is in making the a priori statement that if it's not transparent it can't be good money. IOW a dogmatic statement, not a principled one. Additional complexity is a valid concern. A reasonable person would ask if the trade-offs that are made are worth it. In #Monero's case, that additional complexity gives Monero fungibility that #Bitcoin lacks. That fungibility gives Monero strong censorship resistance (that Bitcoin also lacks). IOW it preserves one of the core tenants of Bitcoins value proposition. It is a good trade-off that any intelligent Bitcoiner should acknowledge as reasonable *even* if they have concerns about the implementation or community or whatever. nostr:nevent1qqsvu7ezry8j8ztnf4tpgl49nh8aps96u2t062upp53ce5hksjsc65cppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qgsr9cvzwc652r4m83d86ykplrnm9dg5gwdvzzn8ameanlvut35wy3grqsqqqqqpaytcxs