this is so wrong. go to el salvador or any of the places on this map that has high density of bitcoin-accepting businesses
www.btcmap.org/map
if you scroll around you'll see quite a few hotspots, eg https://btcmap.org/map#13/46.00261/8.93870
i've been in bitcoin for a while and i can tell you in the context of bitcoin's history this is an absolute explosion of growth - driven mainly by lightning fwiw
lightning is critical to merchant adoption
yep and it works perfectly now. for many businesses it is simply cheaper to accept lightning than any other payment method
(and yes, I paid at this business with bitcoin)
lightning is literally the cheapest, fastest payment network ever devised, it's faster than any of them, 90+% of the time and the fees are absurdly low
also, i don't know if this is inherently different to credit cards, but i really like that you get the invoice on your phone, showing the amount, and then choose to pay it (or not)
rather than you just ok whatever the merchant has on their terminal
(i guess paying with a card on a phone will be able to do this, but i have never done that)
the only thing i dislike is that it means i need to have a phone - but hopefully dedicated devices will be available
yeah, unfortunately so far the cards i know of all have some serious downsides and quite high costs
from the perspective of adoption, almost everyone has phones, and some sort of lightning custodial wallet or semi-custodial LSP based client is easy enough to get... phoenix is pretty good, wallet of satoshi, but that isn't accessible to americans, they can use stuff like phoenix just fine, idk about xapo there but they have lightning built in now, you can receive and make payments with it as well
it's just gonna take time, i guess, and that's the thing, it really needs to be concentrated in small areas, like el salvador and there's that thing in boracay (philippines i think?) and here in madeira
i probably would join in more here if i could live somewhere quiet while not being so far away from where all the community is based in funchal
honestly, check out www.btcmap.org/map - there are a lot of apparent hotspots in unexpected areas
of course, they might not be real but the guys who run the map are legit
eg, the isle of man in UK.. ...lugano in switzerland.. ..some islands i never heard of off belize!
if this is at all real, it's a grassroots uprising
yeah, most of them are legit but some not very serious... there is a pharmacy in the next town west of me but they haven't got their shit together... the guy i was working with on https://github.com/p9c/p9 - you can find him on the map in Novi Sad, no idea what he's actually up to, but he's a web dev mainly, he used to run Bitstickers
for sure it is an uprising, maybe i should look closer at the map because i have some regions in my mind that i'm interested in, if they are bitcoiner hotspots that might help me pick my next move... i have the idea of leaving here in may or so, and i need to plan my next stop, i want it to be the place that i build my hermitage, i mean citadel, whatever, depends on whether i catch myself a wife i guess
yeah, nah, it's really just not happening in former yugo, i think even that there is less now in Split than there was, i'm not gonna put too much weight in it at this point... partly why i paid the insane fees for xapo bank was to have the freedom to not care if they accept sats or not wherever i am, just need either ATM or EFTPOS that accept mastercard
Nowadays virtually all merchant adoption uses Lightning. And lightning is 100% up to that. Anybody who says otherwise lives in the past. OK, I concede 99+% :)
But the big problem is with incentives. The vast majority of merchants don't have the incentive to accept btc. And nobody can force them.
In the west, that's probably true - and they'd need another reason, like ideology. But it's still happening - eg see lugano - and that just means they are Our People, you can go along and meet your family..
But in other parts of the world modern payments are very problematic and have much greater costs. In this case it is perfectly possible that what seems to be true, is true: lightning is cheaper for them.
I feel you are very optimistic.
That's not incorrect but I invite you to consider the evidence I am proposing as well!
El Salvador is a very specific case.
In Europe it is impossible to live with Bitcoin because it is not accepted anywhere.
If you have to travel 400 km every day to use your bitcoin it is not very practical.
The only thing we have in Europe without KYC is bitrefill.
But actually I have another reason beyond business adoption that I am optimistic.
I have recently travelled quite a bit, and for the first time met bitcoin communities in person. This is a very new thing for me, they simply didn't exist during most of the time I've been in bitcoin. And the wonderful thing is, they are into bitcoin not to get rich, not because they get the tech.. ..they are into it because they have found out in their lives that the governments are not to be trusted, and that they need a way to resist them an build a future for themselves.
Most of them discovered this during covid, and when they looked around - in genuine desperation - to find something to give them hope, they found bitcoin.
I thought when I met actual bitcoiners most of the talk would be about the tech, or closely related, or the price maybe or adoption.. ..but it's mainly about the fact that something is rotten in the western mainstream, and they don't trust their kids to be part of it, and they want to build a new world based on freedom and respect.
Many of these people had taken significant risks to choose their paths - including selling all fiat property, moving to places like el salvador. They are doing it because they are completely committed to freedom.
And the wonderful thing is, they all know now they're not alone. I'm not alone. We are a global family and we are rising up..
So yeah, I am optimistic 😆
Totally agree with you
i turned maxi in part because of the scamdemic, i was always interested in a lot of "conspiracy theory" stuff and it makes sense that a lot of bitcoiners are because bitcoin was born out of a movement that was against the control of secret police over society and against secret cabals of bankers, what flipped the switch on me finally was the great crypto crash of 2022, as i was just getting into my first year full time working as a crypto dev
i wish i could get more into the local areas of bitcoin community but i don't really want to live in any of those places lol... i am in madeira because of this but i hate madeira
There were never any conspiracy theories, just critical thinkers questioning what became facts.
preaching to the choir
and i like to think stay on the cutting edge of the important stuff... big focus right now is space weather for me, i think this is of way underestidated importance and the best part is it totally shows a way to debunk this fake eco agenda cult
Please feel free to post links, I’m always open to info
mainly at the moment the highlight of my day is watching this pod https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klrscLgxkD0
i was following that Donut Factory guy for a while but i am inclined to think that most of his stuff was nonsense, but it was interesting
i don't follow it closely but stuff relating to Atlantis and ancient egyptian artifacts and other archaeology that hints towards this, the book The Apocalypse of Yajnavalkya really opened my eyes to a lot of really interesting stuff, got me to read things like the book of Enoch and other apocrypha, Hair of the Alien - this stuff also relates to the space weather because the history of Atlantis and the War in Heaven is connected to the disaster cycle and is referred to in especially Enoch, and there is also mentions of things in ancient Hindu books and lots of other stuff, i would dig more into it if i weren't quite so busy with my dev work
Fascinating. I’ll have a look thanks
Chris Horlacher and this solar storm dude are both scammers, selling you fake space, invented DNA helices and aliens.
Reading The Apocalypse of Yajnavalkya , Enoch, Ezra 2, etc... only lead my more away from these sort of guys and toward a more Biblical history, cosmology and morality.
If you can, I recommend taking a holiday to el salvador. You will meet people just like you, with very similar stories and history.. It's incredibly wholesome!
What's wrong with madeira?? I was literally thinking of visiting there..
noisy people, really noisy noisy people
plus transport is a nightmare because of the terrain - i just plop myself down somewhere and if it's more than an hour on foot i won't go there more than once a season probably
