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More humans holding Bitcoin self custody is indisputably a good thing.

Slow, careful improvements to facilitate and scale self-custody, over time (with an abundance of caution for potential negative externalities) is perfectly acceptable.

Even if a fraction of humanity held Bitcoin in self custody, but using Bitcoin as a unit of account, store of value, and medium of (large-scale) exchange became the global norm, it would dramatically reduce central banks’ control/use of fiat currency, thereby reducing the systemic rot that fiat money inevitably becomes.

It would still lower society’s time preference, improve privacy (eCash banks, etc), and override our current system’s corrupt incentives that drive capital misallocation.

Yes, scaling self-custody to everyone is good. We should strive toward that ideal, and we will get closer and closer as the years go on.

But even if we don’t get “all the way there”, humanity is still going to be exponentially better off, simply from Bitcoin’s continued adoption and the low-time-preference impact it will have.

Blend your passionate drive with your big-picture zen. We’re winning.

It’s working.

#bitcoin #showerthought #exhale

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Discussion

Dr. Bitcoin, MD 1y ago

There is a possibility that you can’t simultaneously have 1) sound money, 2) censorship resistance, 3) self custody for all, and 4) low fees per transaction.

boston wine 1y ago

Exactly. And I think it may be the case that we don’t need all four to get most of “fixing the world” done, at least to a meaningful degree of success

Qas 1y ago

Agree with this take. Obviously we should aim to scale self-custody to as many people as possible and there’ll always be conservative improvements that can be made. However, I believe a lot of the work should be done at higher layers as opposed to the base layer to maintain decentralisation and security at the heart of what society is built on. I feel like more self-custody solutions for Lightning and other Layer 2s would go a long way too.

With various layers, each one can cater to lots of different demographics, wealth brackets and technical capabilities. People can simply opt for the layer that meets their preferences/needs. For example, I can imagine my grandparents opting to use custodial Lightning or Ecash solutions whereas I’d person always split between on-chain and self-custodial Layer 2s.

boston wine 1y ago

🎯🎯