Discussion
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People who missed out on the good ol days of bittorrent have no idea how awesome it was. The Pirate Bay had an entire published page of cease and desist and summons and every other letter and demand on their website where they posted all of their responses. The sheer magnitude of GFY was incredible. There are few things as empowering as a kid than to see someone stand up to what appears from your vantage as a giant, unstoppable institution, and succeed... and in a huge way.
The torrent world truly had the heart of the cypherpunk. They wrote code and they didn't fuck around. This was about disrupting the powers that be, not downloading free music. I was 100% here for it.
The decline of torrenting is one thing that bothers me regarding the "certain" future of Bitcoin. Torrenting wasn't (and still isn't) hard, but still most people - the same people - who did it daily just switched over to Spotify and Netflix. I don't think it was morals that caused them to do so (I don't agree one bit that piracy is immoral, for the record), nor do I think it was fear of legal action - everyone knew that it was rare, and VPN:s have existed for a long time - I think it was simply that it requires fewer clicks and can start playing when just a little bit has been downloaded. Today it's hard to find stuff on TPB. Far from everything gets there, while back in the day there were usually at least three torrents of everything I wanted to download. This huge decline despite the fact that the streaming services monitor everything and sell data, and if they decide you can no longer listen to a certain song or see a certain movie or series, you can't.
If the CBDC apps are one bit easier to use, say, automatically determine where to pay to by some form of geolocation or Bluetooth beacons in the stores, or just the fact that more stores accept CBDC than BTC (because they are mandated and/or subsidized to), I'm afraid the vast majority will happily accept complete surveillance and control. We have already seen it go from cash to cards and mobile payments (here in Sweden, it's extreme. Very few people use cash, and many places don't even accept cash).
Sorry for sending out black pills, but I don't like it when everyone ignores a potential problem (and usually then blame me for pointing it out. If someone reading this feel the need to do so, please instead explain why I'm wrong. That helps. Calling me a fiat shill etcetera only convinces me you don't want to look at the problem. Problems exist regardless if you can solve them or not.).
I like this input, but I think it understands the precise reasons for the decline of P2P, as well as its difference to monetary networks and the limitations of centralized alternatives.
In this context, if we want an accurate picture of the distinctions, we should mentally frame #Bitcoin more like the internet itself rather than like BitTorrent.
Bitcoin is fundamentally a new way to come to consensus without a central authority. The benefits and capabilities of that cannot be recreated in a centralized, closed network. Much the same way that the closed phone networks or ācurated netsā like AOL online could compete with the open internet. Inevitably, of people arenāt all using the same CBDC, they will be restricted from trade and the frictions of centralized validators, whitelists, permissioned access, and all the rest are inescapable. Not to mention the blatant inflation. While everyone gets wealthier on Bitcoin, everyone will always get poorer with CBDCs.
You can only have any unit of value in a single money at one time, it explicitly cannot be separated. Meaning to get the benefit of one, itās at the direct trade off of the other. CBDCs (or fiat) can never be convenient enough to match the potential of Bitcoin, because itās specifically *consensus* that fiat/CBDCs lack as closed platforms.
Iām pretty sure I talk about this difference and expand on it at length in this episode. Super blast from the past but still very relevant:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7914VQ2dOJIeWvOzLS0KBX?si=GMIAabSsTYWh37qR-LGyYQ
True, but not many people will understand that. I think it - or rather the information - may become a catch 22: maybe Nostr and similar technologies could be free (as in freedom, regardless of if as in beer or not) ways for people to discover this, but they will first need to know such things exist, and also experience a reason to use them. For obvious reasons, it's in centralized social media platforms' interest to shadowban the information as hard as possible. I'm actually surprised that for example Reddit's r/nostr still seems to exist.
It may also be in governments' interest in the future (or already) to force social media to shadowban all information on Bitcoin's benefits, and things that may lead people to finding out, such as information about Nostr.
I realize I'm still doom-and-glooming about things that aren't certain, it's probably a result of two decades of privacy mainly going in the wrong direction... I just don't have much hope that people in general are going to have any strong desire and/or ability and/or knowledge, or whatever it is that has been lacking in the privacy matter, to make any difference in any other important matter either.
Anyway, I'll listen to the episode some time in the coming week.