Privacy is a fundamental human right.
The way the three letter agencies and lsraeli spyware software Pegasus have been exposed, we have to collectively take action to regain our privacy. One of those ways I believe we can do this is through Monero. Naval Ravikant is a brilliant human who recently tweeted "The inevitable endpoint of crypto is maximum decentralization and maximum privacy."
Nicolas Van Saberhagen is credited with being the original author of the whitepaper for Monero, but I believe he might be Satoshi Nakamoto (creator of Bitcoin). I'm just speculating here and don't have rock solid evidence, but it really wouldn't surprise me if he was Satoshi. The beautiful part about this is that it doesn't really matter because the tech speaks for itself. And that's for almost all cryptocurrency tech.
Evidence of Satoshi talking about core Monero tech in use today, referring to the solution (ie: Monero) as "better, easier, and more convenient". He mentions Ring Signatures, Ring Confidential Transactions, and Stealth Addresses. All of these are used to hide the sender's address (Ring signature), the amount (RCT's), and the recipient's address (stealth addresses). These are multiple complex concepts that Satoshi talked about and ended up in Monero's tech that is used even till this day.
Bitcoin was an amazing creation and this post isn't a stab at it, just pointing out the possibility of incorporating a privacy solution. The key issue is that in order to transfer from Fiat <-> BTC, you have to undergo a process called KYC (Know Your Customer). KYC is a part of AML (Anti Money Laundering) regulations that the SEC and other agencies require. Since your identity is compromised at the point of fiat <-> crypto swap, your entire history is public. So BTC can't be private unless you buy it off of a stranger and protect your privacy at time of fiat <-> crypto. LocalBitcoins dot com used to be a website that allowed you to buy anonymously but now they require KYC also. Localmonero dot com, however, is private and the coin is also the industry standard for privacy. So BTC is lacking and we needed a better solution, one that Satoshi alluded to in the link above.
Monero was the next logical step. You need to be able to hide the sender, the amount and the recipient in order to achieve true privacy. Also, the fact that Monero uses a mining consensus mechanism that can be done on many average CPU's vs BTC's ultra advanced/expensive ASIC miners, it significantly increases its decentralization potential because many more people can participate with their existing computers. Another major aspect of Monero that is absolutely an improvement over BTC is that it truly is fungible (equally exchangeable for one another). Since BTC is public, it's history can be tracked, but since Monero is untraceable, Monero has maximum fungibility.
There's also other tech coming out to bridge Monero to other blockchains. The Secret-Monero bridge is one such example. Secret network is a open sourced, permissionless blockchain that allows you to gain privacy while locking up your Monero and getting Sefi tokens. Since it is in the Cosmos ecosystem, you can participate in DeFi. The Secret-Monero bridge comes out today so check it out!
Monero atomic swaps are also another amazing technological advancement that allows you to swap your coin without putting it on an exchange.
In addition to Monero, I'm also a huge advocate for other private technologies like: Graphene OS (only unlocked Pixel phone), Tor browsing, Qubes OS (PC), hardened Firefox/Brave browser, and many more. With all of the ridiculous regulations politicians are trying to pass against the crypto industry to force KYC, I think it's absolutely vital that we start actively increasing our individual privacy. Monero allows you to regain that privacy that you've been stripped of. Whether it's the lsraeli Pegasus software or NSA overreach, privacy has to become a central theme of cryptocurrencies going forward, IMO.