Honey badger will win in the long run if we can do a better job of incentivizing self custody. Self custody needs to be sufficiently easy, more useful and more profitable than custodial.
Discussion
It is already way more profitable when you consider that custodial bitcoin historically gets you rugged
There are too many people who just don’t seem to know that. Or they do but just (understandably) don’t all have the time to learn what they need to learn to do self custody.
Unfortunately, I think there will always be a large group of people who won’t self custody, regardless of how “easy” it is, for the simple reason that they don’t want the responsibility. They would rather pay someone to hold it, have a false sense of security, rely on oversight and regulation to make them whole in the event of lost $, and not think about it.
Many of my friends who are DIY in so many areas of their lives, lean libertarian in their political views, distrust the government and corps, still won’t self custody. They keep it on exchanges, or hold the spot etf.
Unfortunately, I think they need to get wrecked to change their behaviours with regards to custody of their btc. I try my best, but pain is often the best educator.
Human nature is what it is. I think honey badger’s gonna win in the end, but if it doesn’t, we can’t go blaming human nature. Bitcoin either wins in the real world or it doesn’t.
And as we build solutions, we have to take human nature into account.
Personally, I think decentralized web of trust is going to be the dark horse that works synergistically with bitcoin and changes everything.
Bitcoin: permissionless, anti-statist money.
Decentralized WoT: permissionless, anti-statist flow of information
Thank you for your optimism. As I age, it gets much harder to keep my cynicism at bay.
I’m optimistic bc I think I can see exactly how it can be done — see the url in my bio to the 30 min presentation I made about 2 years ago. Am in the process of writing a paper now with my updated thoughts.
Thank you. I’ve watched it and have been following your conversations with hodlbod and others. Much of it is over my head, but it’s opened up a few avenues of exploration as well.