>held true in terms of its principles of privacy (which was a perceived principle of crypto by users)

Crypto wasnt so much straight up privacy, but like high information / low revelation. The idea was to create an economic system where you the individual could have relative anonymity while being able to go online and audit the bank in detail. Not a criticism of you enjoying monero I just think this got lost somewhere.

I think Ethereum is probably going to strike the closest balance eventually, but it depends on a lot of factors.