Scaling: if a lot of people suddenly have a need or want to use Monero, can it handle it? There is the dynamic block size, but no layer 2 to move transactions away from the chain. How many transactions per day can be handled before fees get to BTC levels? And how much would that grow the chain per day? It is my understanding that Full Chain Membership Proofs will increase the transaction size, so prefrebly add that to the equation.

In EU we have to pay VAT on silver, so it doesn't see much usage from what I seen. Only exchange traded paper silver is exempt AFAIK. Gold can be bought VAT free.

Think it is a bootstrapping problem on clearnet. Not many people ask to pay with Monero, so not many merchant implement it. Not many merchant accept, so fewer people have it. https://monerica.com/ maintains a list of some places to spend Monero.

The supply is not capped, it increases linearly. Yes, the inflation as a percent goes toward zero. And if the assumption that similar amount of coins is lost is correct, I guess the effect could be no inflation. This is looking at Monero in isolation. With highly inflationary currencies being the norm, prices in Monero might deflate.

Are you a proponent of inflation as a percent of total supply being linear? Or exponential? BTW insulting people in every post does not strengthen your arguments.

As your link mention, Monero has a tail emission of 0.6 xmr every block. So it is inflationary, but in a predictable fashion. In around 120 years the Monero supply should be doubled. Assuming no changes to emissions that is.