Most basic economics academic reviews show a few main qualities of cash[0][1].

(1)durability

(2)portability

(3)divisibility

(4) uniformity

(5) acceptability

(6) limited supply

Monero beats plaintext chain coins at uniformity, as BTC for example is non-fungible because there are tainted and non-tainted coins. Monero is truly fungible. It loses to even similar weight class coin at acceptability.

I suppose you can argue the gains in uniformity overcome the losses in acceptability. I'm not sure reality has bore that out if you actually want to use your cash. In practice BTC/LTC can shed their taint and public trail by being mixed and this seems to make up for this weakness enough for acceptance while still allowing a public chain for the last few transactions before it enters/leaves the KYC/AML panopticon, which is highly desirable for 'acceptability' (this is probably also why ZCash is far more easier to access than XMR, as it has a feature to disable anonymity so it can go to/from central exchanges and KYC/AML'd vendors).

Note: if you go to some cryptocurrency shilling website, you can find 'anonymity' as a trait, but this deviates from the more common definition.

[0] https://inomics.com/terms/characteristics-of-money-1545438 [1] https://illinoistreasurergovprod.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net...