BitcoinMechanic is a bit of a controversial figure in Bitcoin. Co-Founder of OCEAN mining. BIP-110 supporter and the subsequent BLAKE2b bitcoin fork.
"Monero is a rare exception in a space where everything that isn't Bitcoin is a scam. Monero isn't a scam and the people involved in it clearly have other priorities that are commendable that are reflected in the design choice of this thing. That is really super impressive when you get into it. And a lot of the ways in which it actually works in practice are super impressive too which is very very rare."
Well... I'm not impressed by that guy. I saw the whole video: it was beyond pathetic. In the end, his takeaway is that using crypto technology to defend ourselves against the state and dinosaur banking is "naive." Just another guy defeated by his own ego.
Please, Mechanic, ask the Paraguayans whose accounts were just looted by Ueno Bank if they think it was naive to rely on a legacy bank account, or if they wish they had used Monero to prevent their funds from being stolen...
By the way, instead of acknowledging he and his team were wrong about BTC all along, humbling themselves, and swapping to Monero, they preferred to play Satoshi and launch a "fork" (XBT) that is already repeating every single problem of BTC at the speed of light.
Why? Because his ego is too big to accept the superiority of Monero's ethos and its community. He'd rather be a big fish in a small, compromised pond than admit that the real paradigm shift is happening somewhere else.
He's completely off the mark on some arguments: "At some point you have to get back inside the walled garden", he argues that Monero allows you to do a lot with its privacy, but will eventually requires the user to switch back into fiat or bitcoin or some other asset in order to use it.
Which is odd, since that same argument can be made against Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency as well for that matter. The entire goal of these alternative forms of money is to create circular economies and NOT exit the ecosystem. Bitcoiners nowadays just operate in totally different wavelengths from the bitcoiners of the past. A decade of complacency does that to one's mind.
He also falls into the mindset of "Monero is great for crime", which is an extremely shallow point of view.
I wasn't able to finish the video. It's interesting that he compliments Monero in some areas (mostly technical) and doesn't outright dismiss it as a scam, which is already a big accomplishment compared to your average bitcoiner, but other than that, he misses on almost everything else (as far as I got into the video).
I will take some of that criticism back regarding the "walled garden" and circular economy. Later in the video he makes some comments to address that. I'll just refrain from commenting unless i finish
He doesn't particularly like Monero, but at least he lays out his points in a rational manner instead of just going for, it's a shitcoin.