Bitcoiners do not spend enough bitcoin and that hurts the whole ecosystem (except exchanges and hardware wallet companies)

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People don’t get paid in bitcoin so it’s an extra obstacle to buy and replace, especially if you are not using KYC exchanges. Can’t blame them.

For me it’s especially difficult to get sats and practically nowhere to spend them.

Sure. It’s chicken and egg problem. I don’t have good solution and I also don’t judge people, just observe what I see. I think we don’t encourage each other to spend enough though…

Most bitcoiners don’t have Lightning wallets, or know how to use them. I know this from firsthand experience.

It's prob not the best metric for comparison, but helps to put things into perspective: if we consider Lightning Network capacity relative to market capitalization, it would rank as the 130th shitcoin

there’s not enough bitcoin beaches and pubkeys with dense lightning sellers and users in physical spaces

maybe need more bitrefil / online options

HYPERLIGHTNINGZATION

Even a bitcoin bar in every city won’t fix this.

that’s what I meant.

feels like ā€œonline lightning adoptionā€is the killer app

I have to agree with that. As much as I’d love to see physical space adoption, it’s not happening any time soon. I’ve done my part to help move the needle on that. Bitcoin was created as a native internet currency, and we’ve barely even started adoption online after 16 years.

Not bad considering has no shitcoin issuance or yield

I think as long as bitcoin is going through a major monetization phase (maybe up to $5m), it’ll always be a challenge spending it. But it’s a good challenge to tackle! I’m for it. Wish more people accepted bitcoin here, I’d go out of my way to pay them in it.

the cool thing I find is that bitcoin naturally acts as a liquid hardening agent, flowing in and filling problematic gaps where it’s needed most. I’m all for spending and trading in it 1000%, it just seems like right now the store of value issue is the bigger widespread gap naturally needing solving. and like a liquid, it’s now flowing to that area. as we run more into the issue of censorship in transactions, it will also naturally fill in that gap (not without the nerds continuing to build, and us still transacting in it). case in point, most normies still seem to be thinking of it as an ā€œinvestmentā€ at best

in the meantime, I won’t argue against it being up to us to keep building and transacting, cause we know that will eventually be the ā€œgapā€ that needs filling too

We need more merchants to accept bitcoin. When merchants accept bitcoin, people go out and support them. Steak n Shake is a good example of that. Hopefully the Square rollout will change things. I haven’t seen anyone post about any merchants using the Square POS to accept bitcoin yet though.

I predict it will be a flop.

In most places in the world with some merchant adoption, bitociners also spend little and often choose fiat even if they can pay w bitcoin.

That probably means those bitcoiners have too much fiat. You should come to Uvita again next month where bitcoiners actually buy everything with bitcoin even when the merchant doesn’t accept bitcoin šŸ˜‚. I’ll be there with a bunch of other bitcoiners.

Uvita, Berlin and few other places are exceptions and always require very strong community and lots of effort. Its also very hard to replicate in a bigger cities.

I think it’s going to take a long time. It’s slowly getting better and we’re moving in the right direction. Just gotta keep going. For now, it’s clear that HODLing is the main use case. Bitcoin backed loans have found product market fit and are what’s going to be the main use case that dominates this cycle.

How is the food @steaknshake ?

I haven’t tried it yet. I kinda want to take a road trip just to go to one though.

I bought some fries and a shake using Lightning. I tend to have a 'fat tooth' instead of a sweet one, so I enjoyed the fries most.

There's no incentive to beyond feeling good. It's a net loss if you're paid in fiat. If network charity is the incentive, it's probably going to fail. Strike bill pay, for example, makes this somewhat easier but there's some loss of value there vs spending fiat monthly and saving in Bitcoin. Even without a fee they usually seem to have some markup baked in. Either way, all it's really doing is the same 'spend in fiat, save in Bitcoin' tactic with extra steps. It feels good, but most people have little incentive to actually do it. And it complicates taxes, even if Strike calculates everything. It's still an extra step for no real gain. Admittedly, the only reason I have to use it is to feel good. I'm happy to be proven wrong if I'm missing any other incentive.

I happily spend sats with merchants who accept it. It's so much easier than fiat. But almost no goods and services I used accept Bitcoin. My only option is something like Strike bill pay that only makes sense if I'm no longer being paid in fiat. To be clear, I spend my fiat every month and save everything else in Bitcoin. So if Bitcoin dumps I'm getting volatility on my monthly bills on top of everything else I mentioned. The upside is neglible, and the downside loses me sats. It's a disincentive.

I will pay a merchant in bitcoin if they accept it, but it’s very difficult to convince one to do it, and logically challenging for them if they don’t have any background or experience.

Same.

And Lightning is generally a lot better to pay with in my opinion. I genuinely enjoy spending Bitcoin as money if someone accepts it. I suspect this is just the price we pay for living in a transitionary period. Ideally, the miner reward supports the network during this period of adoption.

And to clarify, I am considering using Strike bill pay in spite of these things. I'm just saying that my incentive is purely a first-world desire to support the network. I'm willing to lose money doing that. Most people aren't, hence few doing it.

Again, happy to be proven wrong on this being more work for no real economic gain in the US as someone paid in fiat.

Hi sorry to bother you guys!! please check out my Geyser. it’s for my son šŸ™šŸ» thanks so much!! anything helps

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Hoarding without permission

Waiting until the producers of high quality stuff refuse fiat

Spending options are limited, let's be honest

I agree, but in places where its not spending is still usually low.

If there will be more demand on spending side more options would emerge, but there just isnt

Respectfully I disagree. As soon as Square's bitcoin POS integration is live I'll be paying in sats anywhere I can, which will be almost half the places I spend money normally.

I'm not sorry about that, neither Copernicus would be. He figured it out 500 years ago... "bad money drives out good".