i think we are way past the point of no return, but happy to be proven wrong!
Discussion
I'd like to understand your reasoning. What is it that even a trillion dollars can't fix? Convince the holders of half the Bitcoiners that those funds are needed now to save their "generational wealth" and they will either lose it all eventually or some of it now but be up on their investment in generational terms eventually.
Sure, there's the tragedy of the commons but I doubt that we need that many resources.
Sure, we are all contrarians and will never pull in just one direction but the incentives should align for each and every conscious Bitcoiner to do their part to save this one chance we have.
it matters all where people put their money / how they adopt bitcoin. when i look at that, i only see doom and gloom. it's just all wrong.
part of the reason is the developers completely dropped the ball. bitcoin is unfit for it's purpose. it's unfit to be money at scale for low-trust settings. bitcoin also makes no sense in a white market legal framework high-trust context. it offers nothing to that world. as people will soon find out.
if i was an og whale i would be dumping too if i saw this.
I'm trying to interpret your writing but I'm struggling.
"it matters all where people put their money / how they adopt bitcoin. when i look at that, i only see doom and gloom. it's just all wrong."
Yeah, of course, monetary allocation matters and more and more people put their money into BTC, hence the value went up. The "how" is your worry I assume, as clearly the latest wave of adoption was barely touching the core values of Bitcoin. They just want to NGU tech without understanding what it is about. But where is the "doom and gloom"? Is it "all wrong"? If so, then the incentives were not aligned correctly because the incentives were - from the start - such that at some point the common man would start holding Bitcoin without much concern for why or even how. The latter is a big problem for those common men. The former is just how the world works.
"part of the reason is the developers completely dropped the ball."
I take it you don't like how long it takes to get covenants? Or how did they drop the ball? Or what is your interpretation of what happened? Did nefarious forces derail the process or what's your read on the situation?
"bitcoin is unfit for it's purpose. it's unfit to be money at scale for low-trust settings."
How so? I agree that fungibility isn't where it should be. Is this where you're coming from? Institutions and highly regulated market participants caring about "tainted" coins? How did the devs drop the ball on that one? What could they have done and how would covenants fix things here? I think, L2s can improve fungibility and with covenants, L2 improve but that's very gradual unless some major breakthrough would happen, where all Bitcoiners would move to some super private L2.
"bitcoin also makes no sense in a white market legal framework high-trust context. it offers nothing to that world. as people will soon find out."
At the very least it's an inflation hedge but not for those who buy bitcoins that don't exist of course.
"if i was an og whale i would be dumping too if i saw this."
Whale or not - did you sell all your BTC? You said "too", so who did?
"At the very least it's an inflation hedge but not for those who buy bitcoins that don't exist of course. "
yeah people "bullish" on bitcoin are not buying bitcoin. they are buying other stuff with no scarcity whatsoever. there is no cap on how much capital bs can soak up.
that is going to have very predictable consequences, when you couple it with survivorship bias. guaranteed people will learn the wrong lessons. the wisdom will be "you have to lever up on your bitcoin to make it!" and that it's a timing/skill issue if you go rekt.
"How did the devs drop the ball on that one?"
bitcoin is integrated into the traditional financial system. and that will undo everything good about it. this would not have happened if bitcoin was more suitable for p2p commerce especially black market use.
by not scaling the system _with_ privacy (actually they hard blocked both separately), the devs have condemned bitcoin to regulatory capture and massive debasement via paper bitcoin.
People will learn the wrong lessons? How? Those with paper bitcoins - levered or not - will get rekt.
Devs didn't increase the block size because it's futile. It would centralize mining much faster than it would scale use. Scaling proposals on L2 are looking more and more promising but we need soft forks. L2 also improves privacy. Let's get covenants and both will improve.
Which privacy proposal was blocked unreasonably in your view?
And again, massive debasement mainly hurts holders of paper bitcoins. Right now you can buy bitcoins - real bitcoins - at the debased price. You're inviting OGs to sell real bitcoins at debased price. Invite people to buy instead! And let's expose the Wallstreet Ponzi!
"People will learn the wrong lessons? How? Those with paper bitcoins - levered or not - will get rekt."
no. not all of them. many will brag about their huge gains and pretend their play was obvious (in hindsight). meanwhile those that hold bitcoin in self custody will simply not keep up with real inflation because of this massive suppression (whether intentional or not) going on.
"And again, massive debasement mainly hurts holders of paper bitcoins. "
see, this is what people get completely wrong.
But the dilution will only get worse if it's done systemic and thus people will get the real thing. It's not gold. You don't have to leave your house to get the real asset. For many it will click and the price will diverge accordingly. And it's our job to educate more people on the true value of Bitcoin. I'm glad you are the only "believer" who's "giving up" I know of but we can also track that to alert others that still want to fight.
"see, this is what people get completely wrong."
What do they get wrong? I think you see a conspiracy that can and will eventually get revealed and then it's game over for paper bitcoin.
it's not necessarily a conspiracy, that's not my point. i think it likely is, considering where the capital is allocated in this world and what their interests are. if they take bitcoin seriously at all they are looking at ways to sabotage the fuck out of it.
the thing is masses buying paper "bitcoin" debase every bitcoin holder, because that's how price discovery works in a centralized setting completely detached from the underlying scarcity. and when the size of entities is large enough, you won't be able to "short squeeze" them. no you are not calling bs on JP Morgan by taking your corn into self custody.
i kept telling people why a decentralized low-trust market valuation that interacts with the scarcity on a daily basis is important to turn this whole awful dynamic around.
if free range bitcoin provides an arbitrage opportunity to walled garden "bitcoin" that would create a force to suck bitcoin out of regulated high-trust markets where the massive debasement takes place. but we don't have that defense. the forces work out in the opposite direction right now.
all valuation happens inside walled gardens and at bifurcation the free range bitcoin will trade at a discount because it has reduced utility compared to "clean" coins.