Replying to nicodemus

Yeah… see, I’ve heard all of this before. And it continues to be, at best, dubious speculation.

Did anyone *really* believe that bitcoin would become a unit of account via monetary velocity overnight?

Did anyone really believe nation states would abdicate their power to control the flow of wealth?

Of course nation states are deciding alternatives (like gold)! They already own that monopoly! Nevermind the susceptibility of gold to violence - which they also own a monopoly on.

Listen - for those that need to hear it:

Bitcoin has proven itself as a Astor of Value. Thats step 1.

It’s slowly building up more and more momentum as a Method of Exchange. Thats step 2. Nostr is proof of this. The scale is still really small.

Once a critical mass of exchange is happening with sats - by the people (!!), not corps who answer to nation states (!!) - *then* we start the slow process of bitcoin becoming a Unit of Account.

The authorities may *never* accept bitcoin. This does NOT matter. Ask people in Nigeria whether it matters. Look at the primitive numbers we see on cross-border remittances in bitcoin.

If bitcoin grows as an economy mostly in the hands of plebs, then this means it depends on distribution. That distribution is going to happen slowly. In fact, you should *prefer* it to happen slowly and more organically. (But spend your sats wisely - not on stupid influencer shit).

Face it - peaceful revolutions don’t happen overnight nor do they happen with approval from the existing authority.

It’s gonna get way, WAY messier. If you make enough value to improve your life along the way, by all means - TAKE IT. And distribute the sats.

But don’t buy into this crap that bitcoin is destined to fail because it faces opposition and it’s growing slowly - thats what it is supposed to be doing.

Who gives a shit what the nations do? Survive, outlast, let freedom money work for you in every way it can.

My post brings up the trajectory not use case of BTC. It may shine some light on why Jack Dorsey also said without P2p bitcoin will fail. What i want people to be aware of is two things that even now after reading my post people wont recognize:

1.) Its clear that people will accept CBDCs and total monetary capture in the real commodity with only a promise that Wall Street will pump their bags. This gives government unlimited power over people who claim to want freedom money. Its regulatory capture of BTC eventually if not already because governments still have leverage to shut down big businesses and supply chains.

2.) BTC from this point on in the current trajectory appears to be defined by the products Wall Street provide and already the banks are rehypotheticating Btc based on this, the same happenes to Gold until China and Russia said ok enough is enough. It wont be a million dollars like even the great Samson Mow suggests in this environment and if no one is spending BTC in the real economy its destined to eventually become less important as time goes on by design.

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Discussion

This goes for #btc and any other #cryptocurrency

Unfortunately I agree but the arguement for the last 14 years was that BTC was not crypto its something more because it has to be. BTCs raise happened because people recognized we have to at least try to break the debt based system. Then the people that became millionaires are trying to convince everyone after us that Microstrategy/blackrock ETF shares owning 10% of the supply is good for bitcoin.

That "btc not crypto" bullshit is moronic, to say the least. I feel that btc became kind of a religion, with true belivers and true grifters, like any other church. Usualy the true believers are the ones oaying for the grifters good life and maintaing them in positions of power. Case in point: microstrategy. The moment they began talking about etfs I knew it was ovet and it was time to find a good oportunity to liquidate. A shame realy, cause this was a beautiful idea, but I am out.

It doesn’t matter who owns how much. It will eventually be distributed further.

It’s simple - mistakes are going to happen. Bitcoin is incredibly easy to lose. Very very hard to gain. That’s the point!

Think of it this way:

You lose 10%. Now, to recoup, you have to gain 11%. Lose 30%, you have to gain 42%. And so on.

As it exchanges more and more hands, bits get broken off. It gets splintered.

The ultimate end for any wallet is to have handfuls of sats in it.

It keeps getting said, but people really don’t get it: we are so, so early.

I expect wrench attacks to become common. I expect nation states to seize bitcoin from anyone they can. I expect the on-ramps to bitcoin to be shut down to all but “licensed” bankers, but the off-ramps to be plentiful.

And if not? If there is no interest in bitcoin by the bankers, authorities, the infrastructure corps, et al? Then bitcoin grows ever more slowly while becoming more distributed and more decentralized. If it survives, it just gets stronger.

The only way it dies is if everyone just accepts their fate and rolls over - which history is against, on a global scale - OR something better comes along.

The history of money is clear. Strong money drives out weak money. It always has. Our little fiat experiment? A cosmic blip when compared to hard money. It’s easy to forget that. But that’s the kind of timescale we are talking about for bitcoin. History tells us that bitcoin’s “end game” is likely decades away. So, so early.

I agree with everything you said and tell you that you and bitcoiners are walking into a situation where BTC will become irrelevant.

If bitcoin is still operating, it is not irrelevant. That’s how the market works.

So it either dies completely, or it will be a means of escape for those that embrace it.

And that’s always been the deal. It goes to zero or ends up eating everything.

So are you saying it’s going to die?

What im saying is not hard to grasp, BTC is turning into a expensive Blackberry. Youll make money trading with someone who sees value in it at a high cost, like an ebay auction bht not as money. There is usage but its path isnt global freedom peer 2 peer money. For some thats ok, for the original vision its a horrible end to a brilliant movement addressing a real problem.

I guess I’m saying your arguments fail to make a compelling case for that. But thanks for your warning - this has always been a possibility.

On another note i am warning you like a mirror reflecting something you cant see. Be careful thinking that bitcoin has to win, because you will allow the state to take everything else from you on the promise that they will use bitcoin as a way to help people, the promise youll be financially strong and that the countries economy will survive. Its the same playbook with stocks in the 70s, some people did get rich but its just delaying the optics of decline of the overall situation.

Yeah, see bitcoin winning doesn’t involve any of those things. At least to me.

Bitcoin winning means it continues to survive and hasn’t had 100% of all coins captured by the state - something that I think is impossible over any reasonable length of time.

I don’t think nation states will ever use bitcoin as their currency. Best case is that they use it as a settlement for trade with other countries (that they don’t trust).

I don’t expect countries to ever serve their people, and bitcoin certainly won’t enable that - tho it may hinder the state from harming them on some small scale.

I don’t think bitcoin will make most people rich.

I don’t think bitcoin will protect people’s money from theft any better than a bank can. UX and personal security will always fall flat.

I *expect* economies to fall over and even some nations to die (and be reborn as something else). The EU is done, as far as I’m concerned.

So perhaps your warning is to the foolish. The utopian dreamers.

Bitcoin promises the ability to always allow me to send money where I want anywhere in the world quickly, prevent theft when I take no action, and to prevent monetary inflation.

None of those promises guarantee it as a store of value - but they sure do help.

I think your concerns are largely echoing ideas and values that people have assumed and aren’t part of bitcoin’s core mechanics.

None of those mark bitcoin as a failure. It’s just hard money. So long as it survives, it will continue to be hard money. And eventually it will be used by people where the state prevents them from doing what hard money allows.

Of *course* people will accept CBDCs. This should be expected. They will not leave the incumbent until forced to.

As the old adage goes, “bitcoin will be forced upon them” due to economic reality. Either because bitcoin is so valued OR because they need the economic freedom in one way or another.

You might say, “but they control the fiat on-ramps and off-ramps”. And you’d be right. But that won’t stop its usage, because at the end of the day bitcoin is and will be used to purchased goods and services between merchant and buyer - no other intermediary needed. The level of authoritarianism endured will dictate how bespoke the goods/services are. And it will be different from nation to nation. The eta of globalization and global trust (which is needed for the kind of coordination you suggest) is *fucking over*.

Wall St’s usage of bitcoin and crypto at large is just going to be a fiat money making scheme, for the most part. It can largely be ignored unless you’re primarily interested in trading out your sats for fiat.

Infrastructure like mining and hosting is unlikely to go away due to the fiat-making schemes. Left to its own, this *could* result in regulation around who gets to mine - which is an issue. But the bitaxe projects and others have already shown that this will only lead to further decentralization as the people fabricate their own machines off of the (unprofitable) others. This plus nodes continuing to be easy to run should give anyone a great deal of confidence.

But it ain’t gonna be a fun ride. Anyone who has thought this isn’t a war and that the masses would just adopt bitcoin have been deluding themselves.

We have a long, long road ahead of us. I think maybe some people are just now waking up to this.